THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN «^W^2^ CUj^y^ ^^^ thp: ESSAYS OF SHIRLEY yusT KEAUy. A complete and choice Edition, on fine paper and antique binding, in Two Volumes, crown octavo, of The Essays of Shirley. Vol. I. ESSAV.S IN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. Vol. II. ESSAYS IN ROMANCE, AND STUDIES OF SCOTTISH LIFE. This Edition, in addition to Sir Noel Paton's Design, contains an engraving on steel of the Portrait of Mary Stuart at Ver- sailles. The number of copies for sale in this countrj- is 75. ESSAYS IN HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY INCL UDING THE DEFENCE OF MARY STUART BV JOHN SKELTON LL. U. (EDIN.), ADVOCAIE AUTIIOK OF 'Nl'GyE CRITIC*,' 'a CAMI'AIONEK AT IIOMH, ANn OTHER ' ESSAVS OF SHIKI.Kv' WIJJ.IAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS KDINBUKGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXIII All Rights reserved 4^ Ail S5^ CONTENTS. I. II. - III. ^ V. VI. ^ V ^11. \3 1 VIII. • IX. X. XI. Some Last Words : by way of Preface, The Defence of Mary Stuart — the introduction, . the speech for the lords, the speech for the queen, William the Silent, The Roses of Kilravock, Chester in 1488, The Marquis of Montrose, . Claverhouse, John Dryden, The great Lord Bolingbroke, From Chatham to Canning, . Disraeli, PAGE ix 4 8 80 123 135 M3 165 203 240 vi CONTENTS. XII. William Blake, . 260 XIII. Lacordaire, . . . . . 268 XIV. Charles James Napier, . 272 XV. Lord Macaulay, • 279 XVI. John Wilson, . . . . . 287 XVII. James Frederick Ferrier, . . 290 XVIII. W. M. Thackeray, • 293 XIX. Charlotte Bronte, . . 296 XX. Robertson of Ellon, . 312 XXI. Robert Lee, . . . . • 317 XXII. William Edmondstoune Aytoun, . 322 XXIII. Lord Neaves, . . . . • 324 XXIV. John Hill Burton, . • 327 SOME LAST WORDS BY WAY OF PREFACE SOME LAST WORDS B Y WA V OF PREFA CE. THE VOLUME in which the Defence of Mary Stuart originally appeared went out of print a few weeks after it was published, and is now scarce and dear. I would have reprinted it at the time, but for one con- sideration. The speech of an Advocate is always open to the observation that it is — the speech of an Advocate. This rather recondite reflection had been expanded by more than one of my critics, who held that a tone of partisanship was thus given to what was in substance an unimpassioned and impartial " summing up." I would have liked, therefore, to have turned the argument into a less forensic channel, — to have made it a charge from the Bench rather than a pleading from the Bar. But the experiments I tried were not satisfactory ; I found that a change of form involved radical reconstruction ; and for that I had neither time nor patience. It is now reprinted almost exactly as it was written. One or two new paragraphs, however, have been introduced, and there are many additional notes. A very pleasant incident (I may be permitted to add) is connected with the publication of the Speech for the h X SOME LAST WORDS. Queen. We had been wandering among those delightful valleys which drain into the Traun and the Salza ; we liad been at Ischl and were going to Berchtesgaden ; and were now again for a few hours in Salzburg to pick up our letters and spend another niglit in the cool vaulted chambers of the Erzherzog Carl — like the Drei Mohren at Augsburg or the Goldenes Kreuz at Eegensburg, a medieval hostelry.^ Among our letters from Scotland was one which contained the gratifying intelligence that the Queen had been reading with interest and sympathy the Defence of Mary Stuart, and proposed to procure a copy for the Eoyal library. As the volume was out of print, I requested permission to send one of the two or three copies which I had retained — a request which was graciously acceded to. In the letter intimat- ing that the volume had been received, it was stated : " The Queen desires me to write and thank you for your Defence of Mary Queen of Scots, and is most happy to have it, affording as it does conclusive evidence of the innocence of poor Queen Mary of the terrible crimes so cruelly and unjustly laid to her charge. The Queen was most interested last year in your Defence, and is pleased now to accept the record of it that you send her Majesty." The students of history, who believe that justice, full justice, has not yet been done to the most remarkable woman of her age, are, I think, daily increasing ; and I have therefore ventured to refer to an incident which shows how keen and intelligent an interest is felt in Mary Stuart by the Royal Lady who wears ]\Iary 1 The spirit of " progi-ess" is ravaging the old German towns. The Drei Mohren at Augsburg has been transformed into a gi'and new hotel ; and the fine old walls have been levelled and replaced by a second-hand second-rate Parisian boulevard. The Goldenes Kreuz of Regensburg, where Don John of Austria was born — the fair hostess, Barbara Blum- berg, being the hero's mother — is not much changed since Charles Y. was there in 1546 ; but the rest of the town has begun to be modern- ised. Only Ntirnberg is intact. SOME LAST WORDS. xi Stuart's crown, — a happier and more fortunate Queen of Scotland. I liave obtained Mr Froude's permission to print the interesting letters which he wrote me on the subject of the Defence. "What I have to urge in reply will be found at page 76. "Holm Paek, Ashburtox, September 15. " ]\rY DEAR Skeltox, — You maj'' as well send your ]\IS. to the printer (Spottiswoode & Co., Xew Street Square). I shall look for what you say with great anxiety, but I am rather sorry that you address yourself only to the stock arguments. You con- sider, I suppose, that I have not added to their weight. I could only give what weighed with me — the impossibility that any trick could have been practised which should not have been seen through by Cecil, "VYalsingham, Knox, the French Court, the Spanish Court, the whole of Europe ; and the further possibility that men in Cecil and Walsingliam's position would have sanctioned such a trick, or that the rest of Catholic Europe would not have protested against it. I have never seen the slightest serious attempt to meet the position, I have often heard it spoken of with contempt, but never considered, and it is simply everything from my own point of view. The details are known to us only in fragments, — much is utterly lost, which was too familiar to the whole world at the time to be mentioned by anybody. The contemporary conviction of a competent judge (if you can be assured of his probity) is worth cartloads of Hosack conjecture. Anyway, however, I shall be delighted to read Avhat you say. I observe that a German Professor announces a book, the result of ten years' labour, which is to contain a triumphant and final refutation of the calumnies against the Queen. " Be this what it may, I have said my say, and shall return to my vomit no more. The only thing which I fancy would really convince me, Avould be a discovery of some paper of Maitland telling how the plot was got up. " ilaitland knew the whole, — if any one in the world knew, ^laitland, though devoted to Mary, died and made no sign. Study Maitland's character. Scotland never produced a more xii SOME LAST WORDS. remarkable, or in some aspects, more interesting man. Explain his silence, if you can. . . . Ever yours most truly, "J. A. Froude." " Holm, Odohrr 2. "My dear Skeltox, — I have read the Article. What shall I say % At any rate that it will be a high credit to Fraser. Eut you do not touch on any one of the points which weigh most with me. It may be easy to you to suppose men like Burghley, or Walsingham, or John Knox, to have been accom- plices in a forgery. It is to me impossible. You can account to yourself for the acquiescence of the Catholic world, French, Spaniards, Pope, and the rest, in the defamation of Mary Stuart. Knowing as I do that she was the very hinge on Avhich the fortunes of the Catholic Church revolved, that all their hopes were wrapped up in her, and that to have proved her innocent if they could, or even to have asserted her innocence before Europe, and defied Elizabeth to prove her guilty, would have been a matter of perfectly transcendent importance to them, their utter silence about it for ten years is to me utterly inexplicable on any hypothesis but one. " You cannot argue a question of the kind in detail from the fragments of evidence which survive. Eead only the Duke of Norfolk's trial. You will find innumerable things mentioned, or alluded to, of which we know nothing. Walsingham writes to Cecil before the Westminster inquiry, that if evidence was wanted separate from the ' Casket Letters,' he had persons ready to come forward and prove the Queen of Scots' guilt. Who are they 1 We cannot tell. But Walsingham was one of the great- est statesmen, perhaps the very greatest, in Europe. " You speak of Lethington as a person who might have forged the letters, and doubtless, if the letters were forged, he knew by whom it was done. Now, consider Lethington's later life. He devoted himself soul and body to the Queen of Scots' interest. He married one of her Marys. He was the person whom evi- dently she trusted more conqiletely than any one else in Scotland, ('an you seriously suppose that she would have thrown herself on the support of the man whom she knew to have forged her handwriting to prove her a murderess, and thus to have been SOME LAST WORDS. xiii the cause of all lier misery ? Can you seriously suppose that Maitland would have allowed a secret to die with him which, if told, would have overwhelmed the enemies of the cause to which he had devoted himself with instant infamy 1 " I do not hesitate to say that if any definite proof could have been produced that the letters were forgeries, Elizabeth's throne would not have been worth a month's purchase. " You cannot judge a question of this kind fairly without knowing the political relation of things. It vexes me to see so much pains taken, so much critical acuteness, so much high talent expended in the handling of particular points, and con- jecturing explanations of them, while the grounds on which the serious judgment must rest are never approached at all. " 111 arranged as this world is, I am happy to believe that mankind, in these western parts at least, are not idiots enough to allow a crime so enormous as the dethroning and imprison- ing ]\J"ary Stuart to be perpetrated with success, if she had not deserved it. Such secrets come out at last, and due punish- ment follows. — Ever yours, "J. A. F." Less than a year ago, the note of warning which I had ventured to sound — viz., that the apologists who maintain that Mary was absolutely blameless in the matter of Darnley, make the case against her hopelessly strong — was enforced with characteristic vehemence by Mr Swin- burne.^ Mr Swinburne admires Mary immensely ; but the gist of his argument is, that unless she committed murder and adultery she is unworthy of admiration. Folly and cowardice are more criminal than murder and adultery ; and if ]\Iary did not commit murder and adul- tery, she was a fool and a coward. To my own mind neither alternative is satisfactory, — the more I examine the evidence, the more firmly am I convinced tliat the true solution of the riddle is that which I have offered. ^ Fortnightlii Review, January 1882. Note on tlie character of Mary Queen of Scots. By A. C. Swinburne. xiv SOME LAST WORDS. A brave and brilliant woman was caught in tlie net which her own rashness as well as the malignity of her enemies had woven ; and, though her heart never failed her, though she struggled on with undaunted spirit to the end, she could never free herself from the toils. But (after all is said that can be said) the "Casket Letters" are the key to the situation. If the " Casket Letters " were letters addressed by Mary to Bothwell, she is undoubtedly guilty ; if the " Casket Letters " were an invention of the enemy, the indictment simply collapses. And the argument against the authenticity of these ex- traordinary documents is — so far as I can judge — unan- swerable and conclusive. It may be, and probably is, prejudice on my part ; but it certainly seems to me that Mr Swinburne's Mary Stuart is not one of the masterpieces of that facile and brilliant Muse. Our " youngest singer " has failed, whether in prose or poetry, to furnish us with a consist- ent and credible interpretation of her strange career. I sometimes fancy, on the other hand, that what may be called the modern conception of her character finds in the Medea of Mr Morris's Jason singularly close and faithful poetical expression. Poetry may sometimes be permitted to come to the aid of history ; and when deal- ing with such a complex creature as Mary undoubtedly was, any aid that it can give us is welcome. Medea's is a nature in which the sweet and bitter have been perversely mixed. A rare vein of soft seductive sweetness and mischief and treachery runs through a character which, in its union of intellectual coolness with devastating pas- sion, is curiously like that which an illustrious historian has ascribed to ]\Iary Stuart. She uses without a blush the stealthy arts with which nature arms the weaker auhnals ; but for Love she can heroically dare. Love apart, she might fitly, as her sorceress kinswoman told her — SOME LAST WORDS. xv ' ' have seen The fashion of the foolish world go by And drunk the cup of power and majesty." But even in possession she is hardly happy ; her love is touched by a subtle and prescient sadness ; from its birth she sees far oft' the fate that awaits it : — " Upon the day thou weariest of me, I wish that thou mayst somewhat think of this, And 'twixt thy new-found kisses, and the bliss Of something sweeter than the old delight, Remember thee a little of this night Of marvels, and this starlit, silent place, And these two lovers standing face to face." Swinburne and ]\Iorris ! It seems but the other day since their juvenile poems were sent me by — Dante Gabriel Eossetti ; and now Eossetti is gone — leaving his own work only half done. I was one of the two or three friends who were familiar with his poems before they were gathered together into a volume, — their publi- cation being partly owing, indeed, to my urgent entreaties that he would give to all what had so charmed a few. So he writes me in a letter now lying beside me, dated from thSt old Chelsea studio where the pleasantest of London days were spent. [But when I knew him first, the studio was somewhere about Blackfriars Bridge, hioh over the busy river ; and what a man of men he was then !] ^ ^ Rossetti was a lively letter-wTiter : and, now that he is gone, one or two of his letters — which I have chanced to preserve — may in- terest the readers of his poetry. " 10 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 13*^ March 1865. "My dear Skeltox, — I shall be very happy to see your friend whenever she is able to call. My best hour is towards dusk, when the day's work is over, or else at about 11 a.m. But then or not then I shall welcome her visit. " I fear I have given you reason to think me obtuse, and not sharp- sighted enough to see through a ' West Highland ' fog. But I did xvi SOME LAST WORDS. Wellnigh thirty years ago, when he was little known, I said of him in Thalatta that he was even then one of our greatest artists ; and in spite of obvious drawbacks, defects of drawing and the like, I retain the conviction which I then expressed. Save Millais only, he is our most superb colourist ; and for moral force and spiritual irapressiveness lie stands alone. The same may be said of his verse, — his poems are almost without exception pro- ducts of the liigh poetic faculty, in some of its highest and though, — indeed it was ' Isabel ' who tipped me a wink through the mist. Only I have been so busy lately that I have not had time to acknowledge your kind present of the little volume. "The said ' Isabel ' is among my favourites. I am not sure, but she almost seems shorter to me than when I last saw her, and, strangely enough, not to her detriment. ' Easter Bells ' is one of the most strik- ing pieces, and ' Whither ? ' one of the most sustained in measure and manner. ' My Dove-cot ' and ' Rosamond ' are, I think, equal to these ; .and I do not know that there is anything better in the gathering than (in their o^vn way) ' A Song for May ' and ' Soap Bubbles for Baby. ' I am glad you have collected all these, and am sure it is the way to do more. "Do ^vl■ite something concerning Swinburne. You will find his ' Atalanta ' a most noble thing, never surpassed, to my thinking. I hope you will be in town during Mailox Brown's admirable exhibition, and should like to visit it in your company. I am sure his Catalogue R(tp(onndf must interest you much. " My sister Christina will soon have a new volume out. — With kind remembrances, I am, yours ever truly, D. G. Rossetti. " " 16 Cheyse Walk, Chelsea, 7e sure, secured a wider influence and a larger audience ; and I sometimes fancy that the change of tone and feeling which, about 1858, was perceptible in the Thunderer himself, is to be traced to the fact that a comrade, who had been ra.shly admitted within the temple, was then ministering at his altars. [Poor 1) ! He has gone over to the majority in far from triumphal fashion. By no fault of his own, it may be ; for at best it is a hard life, and the rewards of letters are even more uncertain than those of politics or war. Spcs et prccmia in amhiguo ; ccrta, fiuicra et luctusJ] ]\Iy own share in this new crusade was of course but slight, yet it brought out to the full, in all sorts of pleas- ant and gracious ways, the generous nature of the man. As the years wore on, the scattered papers took shape and consistency; and at last, during 1862, in what was called a " political romance," much tliat had been said by us in glorification of our leader in Frascr and elsewhere, SOME LAST WORDS. xxi was presented iu concrete form to tlie public. " ]\Iow- bray " was the real hero of this "political romance ;" and Mowbray was Disraeli under a thin disguise. Some of the pages devoted to him are yet, I think, vitally recog- nisable, — whereas the rest of it, after brief popularity, has long since fallen dead. Originally published in Frasers Magazine during 18G2, the papers were collected towards the end of the year into a presentable volume, to which a preface was prefixed. Therein it was intimated by the author that the age of dedications, like the age of chivalry, had departed, " Had these pretty solemnities," it went on, " been still in fashion, I should have ventured to inscribe a political story to Mr Disraeli ; not merely because loyalty to one's k-ader is the lirst and most neglected of ])iilitical virtut'S ; not merely because that leader is to us in England what Tully was to his country- men in Home — optimum omnium jmtronus ; but because I recognise in him, when dealing witli social and religious controversies, a breadth of aim and generosity of sentiment which I do not find in his opponents, and whicli comprise the best and most sterling elements of Liberalism." We were informed at the time that Mr Disraeli was quite pleased with the devotional attitude which the book and the preface together exjjressed ; and certainly, in the graceful little note which accepted the dedication (if it was a dedication), there is no hint that any fault was found with the portrait that had been limned : — " ToHQi-AY, Dec. 2S, 1862. "Dear Sir, — I am honoured and I am gratified by the dedication of Thalutta. " I entirely sympathise with the object of the work, which gract;fully develops a tone of thouglit and sentiment on tlie prevalence of whicli the continued greatness of this country depends. — Lelieve me, Your obliged Servant, " 15. Disraeli." xxii SOME LAST WORDS. There are one or two other letters to which I may here witlioiit impropriety refer, — one, especially, which throws a cnriously direct lij^ht upon certain aniliij^uuu.s incidents of his life. In an article in Fntaer for May 1864, the controversy between Lord Macaulay and Karl Stanliope (when Lord Mahon) had furnished the text for a discourse on the historical antecedents of our political parties.^ This is the commentary by Mr Disraeli, — which, as I have said, is very curious and interesting : — " Grosvknor Gate, J/«y 16. 1864. "Dear Sih, — I tliank you for your article, which I received this niorniiii,'. I read your criticisms always witli interest, ' Lord SUiiihope afterwards pointed out to me tliat I haef(jre she left France she told Tlirogmorton that the religion which she professed she took to be upon the whole the most accejjtable to God, but that she meant to constrain none of her subjects, and hoped that none of them would be supjiorted to constrain her. Tlirogmorton saw her afterwards in Edinburgh. "Tlie (^)ueen," he wrote, "quietly tolerates the Reformed IJeligion, who is thought to be no more devout towards liome than for the contentation of her uncle." When a fanatical assemUy assured lier that the practice of idolatry could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, she toM them plainly tliat while no consideration would induce her to forsake the religion in which she had been brought up, yet she did not desire to force the conscience of any person, but would permit every one " to serve God in such manner as tliey are persuaded to be the best ; " and the Act passed iii 1567, when she was all-powerful in Parliament and in the country, was an Act to secure liberty of religion, and liberty only. It is quite possible that she designed ultimately to obtain the repeal of the laws which proscribed the exercise of her religion, and to recover for the Catholic clergy some portion of the ecclesiastical revenues which a rapacious nobility had appro- priated. But it did not enter into her head to ally herself with the intemperate zealots who were eager to drag every heretic to the stake. No word of hers can be quoted which will bear such construction. She was a dutiful daughter of the Church, in the courtly ecclesiastical language, and that was all. My friend says that she signed the Catholic League. The evidence 12 MA/^y STUART. (ivs I shall show) is ([uite the other way. She held herself resolutely aloof from the great consijiraey against the Reforma- tion which was being hatched by the kings and bishops of Catholic Europe. Later iu life Clary's religious convictions grew in force and intensity. She became a saint of the Church, a martyr for the faith. She had been bitterly persecuted, and persecution bore its usual fruit. Suiiering fanned her devotion to her Church into a fiercer glow. The even balauci; of her mind was upset The cruelly hunted victim turned ujwn the huntei-s. People against whom the shafts of intolerance have been constantly directed cease to believe in toleration. It is only a mind of the very finest temper that can resist the temptation to retali- ate. And at a time, moreover, when all the world had deserted her, the Catholic Church had remained true. She was driven into an ardour of piety alike by gratitude and by resentment. One fixed purpose Mary undoubtedly harboured. She was resolved that sooner or later she would be Queen of England. She Avas in any view the next heir to, and, in the view of many, the legitimate occupant of the throne Avhich Elizabeth — a l)astard — had usurped. To this conviction she clung through- out her life with invincible tenacity. Neither menace nor persuasion could induce her to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, by which her title to the English succession had been thought- lessly signed away.^ IJut she could bide her time, and she was willing to wait with patience. "Willing to wait, and to take life in the meantime, in that austere country which she had been born to rule, on the easiest available terms. She was, we know, endowed with all the gifts and graces which captivate the hearts of men. The most beautiful Avoman of the age must have found in her beauty alone a force of attraction and command. Then her conversation was lively — her intellect was keen and politic — her manners were winning — she loved letters and poetrj^, and ^ "The Scottish Queen," ]SIr Burton says, "by declining to accept of the Ti-eaty of Edmburgh, adhered to her claim on the English throne ; " but the words in the treaty to which Mary reasonably and prudently objected (words capable of bemg construed into an absolute renunciation of her right), were that she and her husband should "in all times commg" abstain from bearing the English title. — Burton's History of Scotland, iv. 289. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 13 the arts which soften and. adorn life. Yet though her vivacity was extreme, and the '' wantonness " of her deportment was rebuked by the Eeformers, jMary's character was not gay. She had not that deeply rooted equanimity which keeps people inwardly cheerful : she needed the excitement of action to pre- vent her from growing sad. For there was, after all, if not a deep vein of sadness, at least a poetic pensiveness — the pen- siveness of a doomed race — in her nature ; and when she Avas not brilliantly discursive she suffered from ennui, lassitude, and despondency. My learned friend has likened her to some wild animal of the forest — a panthercss, or tiger-cat — the soft lustrous fur hiding the sharp claws and the taste for blood. Iler tierceness and her vindictiveness, her stealthiness and her patience, were feline. Had he said that she was audaciously frank, and that she forgot and forgave far too readily, he would have come nearer to the mark. Mary was wonderfully successful as a ruler, — until the murder of Darnley she crushed every out- break in the bud, — but she did not win victory by deceit. She blazed out vehenu-ntly ; not in politic diplomacy, but in these sudden electrical bursts of passion, lay her power. Her magnificent force of indignant and angry energy shattered her enemies like a hurricane when it breaks. l>ut the storm quickly spent itself, and then her scattered foes recovered themselves, one by one, and she was only too read}'^ to forget the past, and to be pleasant and friendly again. She needed to be roused out of the dreamy imaginative indolent mood that was natural to her; but when once roused, woe to the man or woman in her way ! Once rouse her, and then this girl who, by nature, was inclined to trifle, to float with the stream, to put as far as possible from her what Avas grim and ugly and tragic in life, was transformed into such a beautiful destroying angel — haughty, defiant, inflexible — as poetry has created. Such was !Mary. Sedate and tranquil as a rule, yet daring in the presence of danger, and finding a bracing charm in manly exercise and the mountain air, — ready at any moment to quit the luxuries of her palace for a swift galloj) under the stars, — a true daughter of Scotland and the North ! Those writers, gentlemen, Avho have represented the Queen as the mere slave of a specific dly sensual nature, seem to me to 14 MAJ^V STUART. misunderstand her iitterly. Her enemies admit that she was true and constant in friendsliip. Friendship is a masculine virtue, and Mary's character was masculine in this respect, that friendship was more necessary to her than love. I shall have more to say on this matter directly : in the meantime I shall only add that, to assume that tlie gratilication of passion, lawful or unlawful, was, even in the most suljordinate sense, the busi- ness of Mary Stuart's life, is a complete delusion. She had a clear politic sense of the nt^cessities of her station. She was a person round whom world-wide interests converged, and to her a mere love-match was clearly out of the question. So, during the not unhappy years that preceded the Darnley marriage, she sought in art and letters that relaxation from the cares of state which she could not enjoy in domestic life ; and, when tlie work of the day was finished, amid a few choice associates, she gathered the wits and poets and scliolars — the Maitlands, the Chatelars, and the Buchanans — of the Court around her. It is impossible to deny that the j)Osition of this girl -queen was supremely difficult. She was a Queen, a Catholic, and the next in succession to the English throne. Here were three enormous disabilities. A chronic war had been maintained for centuries between the turbulent nobility of Scotland and their sovereign. The great vassals had rendered only a nominal allegiance to the Crown. They had latterly talcen the bit between their teeth, and had no mind to lose the ascendancy which they had acquired — especially when the reins were in a woman's hands. It must be admitted, moreover, that the Scotch nobles of that age were about the basest, the most un- scrupulous, the most corrupt aristocracy of wliich history con- tains any record. Treachery was their native air. The Pro- testant peer was even more disreputable than the Catholic. Some of the Catholic peers still retained a certain old-fashioned, old-world sense of honour; but to the Protestant peer, who had embraced the Eeformed doctrines for his own aggrandise- ment, and who adhered to them because he had great material interests bound up with Protestantism, the word was not in the dictionary. ]My friend has pronounced an eloquent eulogy upon the Earl of ]\Iurray. Murray's is a character which I do not care to scan too closely. When I am told, indeed, that the blameless Earl had no taint of self, I cannot help recalling THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 15 certain incidents of his career. Murray, Avith no taint of self, was a pensioner both of Enf^land and of France ; Murray, with no taint of self, warily kept out of the way of danger till the fruit of intrigue was ripe ; Murray, with no taint of self, left a princely inheritance to his daughter ; ^Murray, with no taint of self, and animated by chivalrous regard for his sister, was the mainspring of every treasonable conspiracy against her. Yet in Murray there may be detected, undoubtedly, those elements of greatness which, in spite of craft, cupidity, and selfishness, win, and deservedly win, the admiration of mankind. He was a man eminently capable of governing, and only a slight slip of a girl stood between him and his true work in the world ! I will not, therefore, enter into the controversy which ^lurray's career provokes. I am willing, when speaking of the Protestant nobility, to assume that his name does not figure on the list, — nay, to admit, that in some respects, the memorable words which a generous enemy applied to Brutus, might not improperly be addressed to the great Eegent, — *' This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Ca?sar ; He only in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and tlie elements So mix'd in him, that nature might stand up And say to all the world, ' This was a man I ' " The early Protestantism of Scotland, besides, was a political as well as a religious force. It was an outbreak of tlie demo- cratic spirit against the fat, sleek, avaricious, bloated churchman — the most obvious aristocrat of the day. Its ranks were mainly filled by the citizens of the burghs, and by the smaller gentry, both of whom were democratic in their ideas ; and the instinc- tive antipathy to monarchy was necessarily intensified when the monarch was a Catholic. The Scotch Queen, moreover, gentlemen, was the next heir to the English crown, and was as such a constant menace to Elizabeth. It thus became the policy of Elizabeth, and of the eminent statesmen who surroxindcd her, to blacken the charac- ter and to sap the authority of her rival. During the whole of Mary's short reign, the agents accredited to her Court by England were engaged in teaching disloyalty to her subjects. i6 MA/!V STUART. The English faction had long been unpopular in Scotland ; England was the ancient enemy, France was the ancient ally ; but the Keformation reversed the familiar traditions, and the Scotch Keformors were an English as well as a democnitic and Calvinistic i)arty. It is true that Elizaljetli did not like them, neither their Calvinism nor their democracy, and more than once it needed all the craft of Cecil to prevent an open rupture. She instinctively recoiled from a party which paid scant rever- ence to throne or altar, and the shame of an alliance with the " rascal multitude " must have been keenly resented by the hauglity Tudor. lUit she could not dispense with their sujv port; had she ceased to retain them in lier service, Mary would have grown dangerously strong ; so she continued to Vjribe them and to bully them, to wheedle them and to scold them, in her characteristic fashion. To these three forces, the ambition and the greed of tlie Confederate nobles, the fierce intolerance of Calvinism, the jealous susceptibilities of Elizabeth and the steady animosity of her great minister, all the troubles of Mary's life were due. The English Calvinistic democratic party rebelled against ^Mary's mother when the Reforming ideas first acquired strength, rel)elled against Mary herself when she married Darnley, again rebelled when liizzio was murdered, again rebelled after the liothwell marriage. Had she been left unmolested, she might have left the records of a happy and fortunate reign ; but she was pursued by an implacable animosity, parti)' political and partly theological, that never wearied till she was hunted down. It is obvious, gentlemen, that the Queen had little to hope for from any sense of justice or any sentiment of compassion that animated the party to which Knox and Morton and lUichanan belonged. To them this brilliant and bewitching girl Avas the incarnation of the very spirit of evil. Their writers and preachers wrote and preached about her exactly as they wrote and preached about Jezebel or the Witch of Endor. The hea^^y and lumbering caricature of Buchanan, for instance, is unworthy of a man of any literary or creative skill.^ "We must be cautious, therefore, in acceptmg what ^ The most striking passage in the Detfctio is the description of the Kirk o' Field, and it contains one really great piece of invective, viewed simply as such. But the motives assigned ai-e grossly, vilely, and THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 17 these bitter fanatics said about one Avhom they were utterly incapable of judgiug. Until her marriage with Darnley, Mary's reign was com- paratively peaceful, and there can be no doubt that she suc- ceeded in inspiring her subjects with a strong sentiment of attachment to her person. Elizabeth watched her progress with jealous eyes. Most of the Scotcli Protestant nobles were in the pay of England, and the English diplomatic agents maintained throughout the entire reign of Mary confidential relations with what would now be called her Majesty's Opposi- tion. It is clear that Mary resented this habitual and hostile espionage. But she was willing to keep on friendly terms witli England. Elizabeth was a dangerously near and formi- dable neighbour, and Elizabeth might exclude her from the succession. Nay, she professed herself ready to make such a marriage as would be agreeable to her cousin, and there is no reason to doubt her good faith. If she had waited, however, till Elizabetli found her a fit husband, she would have waited till doomsday. Elizabeth trilled al)0ut Mary's marriage much in the same way that she trilled about her own ; and when at last Mary insisted on entering into such a marriage as Elizabeth had indicated — a marriage with a native nobleman — she seized the opportunity with treacherous alacrity. .She induced Murray and the Protestant nobility to rebel, and she did her best to foster civil war throughout Scotland. Her rival had grown too great. The marriage with Darnley — strengthening and consolidat- ing Mary's claims to the English succession — was a higldy politic marriage. Elizabeth, of coui-se, did not like it ; an\xi, even supposing that my friend is righ't, surely the last man likely to evoke such a passion was the man whom slie had known all her life, whose mairiage she had pro- moted, who, if we are to believe contemporary writers, was singularly ill-favoured, and who had neither scholarly accom- plishment nor natural superiority of character to recommend him to a woman of brilliant capacity and polished tastes. Love at first sight is, in its unreasoning violence, a recognised phenomenon ; but the love Avhich is slowly matured burns with a calmer and steadier flame. The frantic passion which Mary is alleged to have conceived for Bothwell is, considering its ob- ject, and the intimacy Avhich for so many years had subsisted between them, wholly unnatural and unintelligible. How then, by wdiom, and from what motives, was the murder of Darnley brought about ? A good deal of informa- tion upon the subject has from first to last been obtained. Let us see clearly Avhat it amounts to. It may be said, generally, that the whole nobility of Scot- land were in league against him. Murray, Morton, Lethington, Argyle, Huntley, Bothwell — all the leaders of the various poli- tical parties — had come to be of opinion that it would be of advantage to the public service that he should be put out of the Avay. He had Avith singular infelicity contrived to make himself obnoxious to each of them. He had been rude to one, arrogant to another, base and fickle and treacherous to all. The ■■ Burton, iv. 324. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 25 report of the Craigmillar Conference proves that eariy in winter the plot had assumed definite shape, and that it Avas adopted by Murray and Lethington as well as by Bothwell, Huntley, and Argyle. The " band " drawn up by Sir James Balfour, and signed by Bothwell, Maitland, Argyle, Huntley, and others, was to the effect that " it was most profitable for the common- wealth that such a young fool and proud tyrant " should be " put off " one way or other. The execution of the deed appears to have been ultimately intrusted to Bothwell ; but it must ever be kept distinctly in view that, in the plot against Darnley, every prominent peer and politician was engaged. AVas Mary aware that such a plot existed % The evidence upon this point is not conclusive : but the conversation that took place between her and Lethington at Craigmillar accu- rately indicates, I think, her real attitude in the business. " Then Letliiiigton, taking the speech, said, ' Madam, fancy ye not that we are liere of the ]n-inci|)al of your (Irace's nobility and council that shall find tlie means, that your ^lajesty shall be quit of him without ])rejudice of your son. And albeit that my Lord of Murray here present be little less scru})ulous for a Protestant nor your Grace is for a Papist, I am assured that he will look tlirough his fingers thereto, and will behold our doings, saying nothing to the same.' The (^hieen's Majesty answered : ' I will that ye do notliing wherethrougli any spot may be laid to my honour or conscience, and therefore I pray you rather let the matter be in the estate as it is, abiding till God of His goodness put remeid thereto ; that you believing to do me service may possibly turn it to my hurt and dis- pleasure.' ' ^fadam,' said Lethington, * let us guide the matter among us, and your Grace shall see nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.' " And so on. It is in vain to contend, after this circumstantial testimony — and it is no part of my case — that !Mary was utterly ignorant of the dangers which threatened Darnley. !No statesman, how- ever influential, would have ventured to put such a proposal in words — a jtroposal which certainly pointed to a virtual sep- aration from her husband — unless he had had good reason to believe that it would not be unacceptable to his mistress. Mary neither said * Yea ' nor * Nay ' with sufficient emphasis. She halted between pity and aversion. Darnley had done her great and grievous wrong, and when Rizzio died at her feet, she 26 AfARV STUART. swore that lie w(juld bo aven^'i-il. It is clear that 8ho occasion- ally relented (slie had loved Henry .Stuart once, and he was the father of her boy) ; but it must be said that, knowing in a general way that the nobility of Scotland were leagued against him, she gave him no warning, and did not lift her hand to save him. There is no evidence to show that she was aware of the particiiliir manner in wliicli his removal was to l>e eH'ected, and it is dillicult to imagine (knowing what we know of her dexterous swiftness and readiness) that she took any part in the clumsy tragedy which followed. I am, for my own j)art, from various circumstances, rather inclined to hold tliat when the train Avas fired, she was in a melting mood. The otljer conspirators promised to send to Morton, who had just returned from England, a warrant from the (^>ueen to embark in the enterprise : but it never came, and we may fairly conclude that it could not be obtained. It is unnecessary, gentlemen, to linger over the incidents of the murder. Dandey, on (piitting .Stirling for (Ilasgow, after the baptism of the infant prince, was seized with what apixiiirs to have been small-pox. ^My learneil friend presumes that Mary had tried to poison him. In truth, gentlemen, his con- stitution had been impaired by his excesses, and the poison was in his blood. He lay at Cllasgow in a nerveless, shattered con- dition for some time. He knew that even Morton, the most bitter of his enemies, had been pardoned, and he feared the worst. Then he appears to have written to his wife, assuring her of his repentance, and asking her to forgive him. The Queen, moved, it might be, by his entreaties (for it seems probable that he had asked her to join him), went to Glasgow, and in the course of a few days returned to Edinburgh, bringing her husband Avitli her. The disease from which he was suffer- ing was understood to be infectious, and the invalid was taken, not to Holyrood, lying low among its marshes, but to the Kirk o' Field, a house Avhich had belonged to one of the monastic orders. Some rooms were prepared for him, and a bedroom was fitted up for the Queen, which she occasionally occupied during the ten days that intervened. On the evening of .Sunday, the 9th of February 1567, a large quantity of powder was conveyed into the house by Bothwell's retainers. It has been said that it was deposited in the Queen's sleeping-room ; but as the house was torn up from tlie foundations — " dung iii dross to THE SPEECH FOR THE (2UEEX. 27 the very ground-stone " — it appears more probable that the greater part of it at least had been placed in one of the cellai-s. As eminently characteristic of the parsimonious spirit of this penurious Queen, it has been asserted (only it is the assertion of an aiTant knave) that Mary showed extreme anxiety during supper about a cloak of marten-skins which she had directed a servant to remove from the Kirk o' Field. After supper she went to visit the King, and returned about eleven o'clock to the palace, where a masked ball was beinj; held. Neither in going nor in returning did she enter her Dwn room at the Kirk o' Field ; but if the pl>ablc, was placed elsewhere, little signiticance attaches to this fact. About two or three o'clock next morning the Kirk o' Field was blown into the air. The bodies of Darnley and of his page were found at a considerable distance with no marks of lire upon them. They liad l>een strangled, perhaps when attemjiting to escape; but as I*>otliwell clearly believed that they perished in the ex- plosiuii, it is pretty certain that more than his own retainers had been engaged in the affair. The manner in wldch the murder was committed, — so cal- culated to arre.'^t attention, ami to proclaim to all the world that ]>arnley had not die«l a natural death, — appears to suggest either an insane ferocity of hatred, or a feebleness of under- standing closely bonlering upon imbecility. My friend inclines to adojit the former view : " They were wrought up to the murder-j>oint by some personal j)assion, which was not con- tented with the death of its victim, ami required a fuller satis- faction in the pieturesiiueness of dnimatic revengt;." Is such an explanation admissible ? is there any evidence that either ^fary or liothwell regarded Darnley with this frantic and ir- rational animosity ] My friend's theory is that Mary and ]>othwell desired to be at liberty to marry, and that with this olyect they removed Daridey. ]5ut tliis being their object, they would have taken care, if they were not absolute idiots, to send him out of the world without unnecessary fuss ; and my friend does not maintain that Mary at least was an idiot. Does it not appear more prcjbable that this highly " dramatic " mode of ridding the world of Darnley had been suggested by some one who desired to attract attention to the murder, and who was interested in noising it abroad ? Now, gentlemen, we have followed the successive stages of 28 A/A/^V STUART. the plot against Dainlcy, and have seen that it was really a combination of the great Scotch houses against the " young fool and presumptuous tyrant " who had incurred their resentment. All at once — the moment the Kirk o' Field is bhnvn into the air — it changes its character, and becomes a domestic drama, — a private arrangement between ^fary and iJothwell \.^^ enable them to enter into matrimony. The transformation takes place suddenly, secretly, unaccountably. It was one thing in Decem- ber, it is another thing in February. What is the meaning of the change 1 From the day of his treachery to the Lords, Darnley was doomed : it was certain that poison, or powder, or cold steel would end his miserable life ; it was uncertain only which instrument would be used, and who would iise it. It was a masterly stroke of policy to secure his death and yet to throw the odium exclusively upon IJothwell and the Queen — thus, so to speak, killing two birds with one stone. The subtle wit of Lethington must have sketched at least the outline of the i)lot, " Kill him by all means," we can hear him suggesting ; " but what think you of this plan of mine \ He has grossly outraged the Queen : let us take her along with us, — a mere hint of connivance Avill compromise her. And there is that trusty watch-dog who will obey no voice but her own, — why, a Avhisper to Bothwell that Darnley has abused her, and I would not give a straw for the boy's life. Xay, hold ; can we not teach him to look for something more than gratitude % Why should he be satisfied with a smile ? The saint wdiom he wor- ships is a woman who may be won, and she will not press too hardly on the over-bold wooer. And behind this irrational brute violence — what % James the Sixth, by the grace of God and of Lethington, King of Scotland and — England ! " I do not mean to suggest that this design, as a whole, was formed at any one moment. Doubtless it was gradually ma- tured. It progressed with the progress of events. But I am rather inclined to believe that the notion of marrying the Queen to Bothwell did not occur to any one until after the death of Darnley, and until it was more or less clearly apparent that (implicated as the Queen had been made to appear in the con- spiracy of the nobility) a union Avith the most prominent and reckless of the conspirators would excite a storm of indignation. At this point, gentlemen, I must once more ask you to re- THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEX. 29 member that facts which may be presumed to show that Mary- was cognisant of, or assenting to, the design of the nobility to remove Darnley, do not necessarily imply that she had been for some time before Darnley's death under the influence of an in- fatuated passion for Botliwell, to which her participation in the murder, if she did participate, is to be attributed. It has been customary to mix up and confuse the charges against the Queen, and my learned friend has seen the advantage of the practice. Let me observe, moreover, that until guilt is established, inno- cence is to be presumed ; and that, in giving eifect to this maxim, it is your duty, as it is no doubt your inclination, to accept an explanation consistent with the innocence of !Mary, if that explanation be consistent also with the general purport and tenor of the evidence. Do not, however, misundei-stand me. I do not rely on a forensic plea, nor will I ask for a verdict of ac(|uittal, unless you can say on your consciences that you hold my explanation to be more credible, more consistent with the facts of history and of human nature, than that which has been submitted to you by my friend. I have pointed out that the l^)ueen of Scots was surrounded by enemies. Malignant eyes were upon lier. l>usy tongues were at work. It was inevitable, therefore, that the slightest indiscretion on her part would be coarsely magnified, and cruelly punished. My friend has commented at some length on the Queen's demeanour after the murder. She did not go into hysterics, nor indulge in noisy manifestations of regret. She was " sor- rowful and quiet." Her conduct appears to me, I confess, to have been perfectly becoming, — the horror and the suddenness of the catiistrophe seem to have taken her by surprise, but she did noi shed many teare in public over the fate of the man who had made her life bitter. But, beconiing or unbecoming, no one knows better than my friend that innocence often looks like guilt, and that guilt often assumes the likeness of innocence. The test which he applies is not merely worthless — it is dan- gerous and misleading. The demeanour of an acccused person is in general a question not of the conscience, but of the nerves. One piece of scandalous gossip, indeed, has l)een retailed by my learned friend. " The Queen and Bothwell," Urury, the English resident at Berwick, wrote, soon after the murder, " have been shooting at the butts against Huntley and Seton for a dinner at 30 A/AJ^y STUART. Tranent, wliich the latter had to pay." Drui y appears to have been the most credulous of old women, and his letters are full of the most preposterous absurdities. Archery in the middle of February, on the bleak coast of East Lothian, must have been dismal pastime. The truth is, that ten days after the murder, Mary, with a few attendants, went to 8eton for cliange of air, and left Huntley and Bothicell at Holyrood " to keep the prince unto her returning." ^ " The Queen's apologists," my friend continues, " are justified in holding tliat such a scene was nujch at variance with the usual decorum of her deportment, and the impartial will admit it to be inconsistent with her power of dissimulation : but there remains the consideration that she was then the victim of an infatuation which Ijroke through all the defences of her strong nature,"^ Victim of infatuation indeed ! Of course she was infatuated, if she behaved as she is alleged to have behaved. How does my friend reason 1 He has no difficulty in believing what he admits is a monstrous story, because the Queen was infatuated — her otherwise unac- countable and incomprehensible conduct being explained by her infatuation. lUit he cannot surely get the benefit of the in- fatuation until he proves that it existed ; and Avhen the proof is examined we find that it consists of these and similar inven- tions of the enemy. The sole proof of the infatuation are allegations which, except for the infatuation, would be incred- ible, and which are contradicted not only by their inherent incn>dil)ility, but by the real evidence that has been recovered. My learned friend is disposed to make much of what may be called the popular conviction of the time. " A passionate in- stinct," he says, " divined their double guilt." But the passion- ate instinct did not divine Clary's guilt at least, for some time : it was not till a month later that the Queen's name was gen- erally introduced.^ These passionate popular instincts, more- ^ The fact that Bothwell did not accompany the Queen to Seton, but remained in Edinburgh to take chai'ge of the infant i^rince, is as clearly made out to the historical mind as any fact which occurred three cen- turies ago can well be. ^Mr Bm'ton admits that the Diurnal of Occur- rents is the best authority with regard to these events, and the passage quoted in the text is taken from the Dim'nal. Yet Mr Bui-ton, disre- gai-ding the conclusive evidence of the Diurnal for Druiy's ridiculous gossip, calmly affirms that at Seton "she had for her coiu-t the ever- present Bothwell," &c. (iv. 355). - Bm-ton, iv. 35G. ^ Biu-ton, iv. 361. THE SPEECH FOR THE (lUEEX. 31 over, are in general sadly capricious and misdirected. If "we choose to admit the validity of this test, we must conclude that Queen Elizabeth was the mistress of the Earl of Leicester, and that she aided him in the murder of Amy liobsart. Cecil, Elizabeth's own minister, distinctly asserted, in a well-known letter, that the popular belief was well founded. Nobody, I presume, now supposes that EJizabeth was Leicester's mistress ; yet the allegation of Mary's guilty partiality for Bothwell rests upon testimony of a far less weighty kind. I have challenged my learned friends to produce a scrap of writing, dated before the murder of Darnley, tending to show that any man or woman in Scotland even so much as suspected that the Queen was enamoured of Bothwell. The occasional allusions to him that have been recovered refer exclusively to his }>olitical influence, — which was naturally distasteful to the English faction. The absence of any such reference is the more remarkable when we remember that Mary's most secret life wtis ex])0sed to a vigilant and severe espionage, conducted by persons paid by Elizabeth's ministers, and whose voluminous correspondence, still accessible, lias been eagerly ransacked by her accusers. Then, consider, gentlemen, how public oi»inion was formed in Edin>)urgh in the year 1567. The Queen, as we have seen, was surrounded^ by enemies who were incessantly defaming her. There Avere the Piu-itan fanatics, there were the Lords of the Congregation, there were tlie English jiartisans, inventing and circulating, day after day, calumnies against their sovereign, AVhy, gentlemen, is it not notorious that " the passionate instinct," in this case, was directed by men who were eager to divert suspicion from themselves, and who had joined the conspiracy Avith the delib- erate intention of turning it to the injury of the Queen ? ]5ut, asks my learned friend, returning to weightier argument, if Mary was not the accomplice of Bothwell, why did she fail to prosecute the murderers of her husband ? I may admit at once that no resolute efl'ort was made to secure their punish- ment ; but the reason is obvious. The greater part of the nobility were involved in the affair. ^lary was conscious that every Lord of the Council was more or less compromised. Even had she been anxious to bring the assassins to justice, it would have been sheer madness to make the attempt. The trial of Bothwell was reluctantly forced upon the Council by the importunities of Lennox, and the acijuittal was a matter of 32 MARY STUART. ionw} Still, ill all this — oljserve — there is no evidence of that criminal complicity with a lover whicli is the sting of the accu- sation against the C^)iieen. At what particular juncture liothwcll was induced to raise his eyes to Mary, it is not now possible to ascertain. The air was full of rumours of treachery, and more than once Mary was warned that the Earl intended to carry her off. She treated the warnings with cold and characteristic contempt, declining to l)clieve that the most faithful servant of the Crown could so readily forget his duty to his mistress.'^ There can be little doubt that even before the meeting of the Parliament in April the hardy mosstrooper had been in communication with several of the leading nobility on the subject of the Queen's marriage. It need not be doul)ted, for instance, that there were many dark secrets between iJothwell and his brother- in-law, Hunt ley. Had Huntley cared to tell all that he knew, 1 Mr liurtun says that Mary's correspondence witli Lennox " is among the most significant of all the tell-tale documents of that crisis " (iv. 356). But it only proves (wliat we may tiike for granteeiny come t»j hy whicli ]IoUi\vrll was ijcniiitted to return tu ])unljar/ and Mary gave herself into the hands of those wlio, liy their own aeeoiint, hud risen to release her from hor ravLsher. They took her back to Edinburgh — a banner Ijearing a i}icture of the mangled lx)dy of J)arnley, with the wonls, "Judge and avenge my cause, U Lord!" Ida/oned upon it, being borne in front — and kept her a close jjrisoner in tlie I'rovost's h(»use. It is alleged that during this time she succeeded in conveying a letter or message to lioth- well,'- and to prevent the possibility of any further intercourse, as well as for greater security, she was conveyed, on the morn- ing of tlie 17th, to the castle of Lochleven, near Kinross. My friend eontends that if Mary was not guilty, the languor and facility which she manifested after the murder, and again after the " ravishment," are utterly inconsistent with the mar- vellous ardour and energy of spirit which she had previously displayed. The argument, at a first glance, is extremely plaus- ible ; but I do not think that it is sound. For at least a year after the murder of \l\ri\o Mary was hardly hei-self, either in body or mind. Her liealth was seriously shaken. Her confinement took place in July ; in October or November she was for several days at the point of death ; the young prince was baptised in December, and on that occasion the French amb;issador found her " weeping sore," and complaining of " a grievous pain in her side : " in February the Marshal of Berwick informed Cecil that "she breaketh 1 Tlie industry of a Danish historian (Professor Frederick Schiem) has hitely thrown some light upon the life led by Bothwell after he waa separated from the Queen. I am not sure, indeed, that Professor Schiern's investigations are calculated to enliance the draniatic effects of the story. Bothwell's disappearance among the mists and storms of the Mare Tenebrosum always seemed to me to be an appropriate and artistic finish — like the finish of Don Giovanni. Thf-rc we should liave left him, — contending with such weird forces of sea and sky as Da\'id Scott summoned into shape out of the polar darkness. But though the mean detjiils of his imprisonment and death are not very picturesque, they are curious and interesting, and increase the conviction, which grows stronger day by day, that this rough and ignorant moss-trooper could not have been the favoured lover of the most polished and bril- liant woman of her age. - The story appeai-s to be universally discredited. — even Hume and the younger Tytler (both hostile to Marj-) admitting that if such a letter existed it must have been fabricated. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 37 much," and " is subject to frequent fainting fits." There can be no doubt, moreover, that the tragic events "which she had witnessed had to a certain extent unnerved her, and increased the constitutional melancholy from which she frequently suffered. " Peradventure it might be better for me to die than to live," she had exclaimud before she sailed for Scot- land ; and many other speeches are reconled, whicli indicate that ever and again Mary lost heart " I could wish to have died ! " she said to her friend De Croc, when recovering from the fever she had caught at Jetlburgh. On more than one occasion she expressed an anxious desire to (piit Scotland, and return to the pleasant land where lier hai)piest days had been spent, — once after the murder of Kizzio, again after the murder of Darnley. A deep despondency had taken possession of her. She began to comprehend the implacable character of the forces among which she was placed, — she felt the net closing round her, — she longed to escape from all this frauil ami violence? and intrigue. It is clear tliat a woman thus situated — uidiinged both in body and mind — could not be expected to show that bold front to danger which in happier days had become her so well. The sorrowful and enfeeliled woman who was seized by iJothwell at the Almond llritlge,^ was a very ditrerent creature from the high-spirited girl who, with Darnley at her side, had scattered the Lords of the Congregation. We might have supposctl, gentlemen, had my learned friend's theory been correct, that Mary would liave enjoyed at least one brief hour of happiness. She had stained her soul with mur- der. She had cast her good name to the winds. She had placed her crown in peril. For what? To enable her to gratify a frantic and absorl)ing passion. At length all ob- ' Mr Burton says that the ravishment took place at Foimtiiinbridge, a district which is nf)w within the boundaries of the city of Edinburgh, (iv. .S77). Robert Clianibei-s, in liis Donvatir AiinniA 0/ Srollnnd (i. 40), had, I fancied, conclusively sliown that it occurred at a spot between the Almond River and tlie (Jogar Burn, where the post-road from Lin- lithgow to Kdinburgh crosses the Almond by the lioat-house Bridge. See the authorities (pioted, more particularly the remission to Ajidrew Redpath for his being concerned " in besetting the Queen's way near the water of Awmond." "It is," s-ays Mr Chambers, "perhaps of all places on the road from Linlithgow to EdinVnngh, that which Bothwell might be expected to choose if he had been in no collusion with the Queen, and anxious to take her at advantage." 38 MARV STUART. stacles were removed, and the lovei-s were united. In such a union there would have hL-eii much to darken the lujrizon of love : hut if it had l)een a union of hearts, she woultl certainly luivo obtained one transitory gliinj)se of raptuiu Yet, on the very day of her marriage, she was found weeping disconsolately, and longing only for death ; and her demeanour throughout these melancholy nuptials was sad and sombre. It is clear that she had braced herself for the trial ; but she was very wretclied, and she wits unable to conceal her wretchedness. " ISuch incidents," says my lejirned friend, "are serviceable to those who hold that the unhappy woman was the mere hel])- less victim of fmud and force — a sort of realisation of the old stories about giants and enchanters, or of the romances with the tyrant lord, who, gifted with powers almost as preter- natural, seizes and imprisons the doomed princess. ]>ut there is another cause for such phenomena, with which the daily world is unfortunately more familiar — the woman with many gifts, and the one fatal weakness that induces her to throw them at the feet of an unworthy object; the victim of a blind imperious j)assion, giving herself over, body and soul, to one so thoroughly selfish and brutal, that no attachment or gratitude, no prudential restraint, will even for a brief space suspend the impulses of his sensual and tyrannical nature." ^ How is it possible to reason against such reasoning? At one moment the victim is impelled by infatuatetl devotion, at another by overpowering teiTor. Xay, at the very same mo- ment she is the slave of her lust and of her loathing. Her heart to-day is as hard as diamond, to-morrow as plastic as wax. How can we handle this Proteus of a woman who assumes such strange and intangible disguises, — who laughs in her dire distress, and whose salt tears are the expression of nuptial delight ] But even if Mary had been herself, it is difficult to see what she could have done to avert the marriage. Assuming that slie was ignorant of Bothwell's intention to capture her, and that she was carried to Dunbar against her will, what door of escape was open to her ? The " band " assured her that all the great houses approved of the marriage. The name of almost every peer of distinction was attached to it. And then the outrage was exactly of the kind which is calculated to paralyse 1 Burton, iv. 416. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 39 and render helpless the most high-spirited of women. "Let the offence be condoned — let the scandal be covered — let as little be said about it as may be," — that is what ninety-nine women out of every hundred would have urged. The instinct of the feminine heart in such cases counsels silence. Even if actual violence was not used, the honour of Mary had been cruelly compromised. " Leave me if you like," Bothwell might have said ; " but what will the world think of the Queen who has secluded herself for a week in the society of the most dis- solute of her subjects, who to gratify her passion has cast her good name and her fair reputation to the winds ] " To have accepted the alternative would have demanded an almost heroic amount of moral courage from the victim ; and Mary at the moment, as we have seen, w;\s sick bctth in body and soul. My learned friend attiniis that the fidelity with which Mary clung to Bothwell after the marriage supplies the best possible evidence that she was attached to him. The assertion that she clung to him in this tenacious way has not been proved, and rests at best ujwn very (juestionalile rumour. !Mary had told Lethington that she would follow Lothwell round the world in a white petticoat, — .so at least some one had heard somebody say.^ IJut the time at which the expression was used (if it was used — which I do not believe), deprives it of any importance. It was when Mary, thrilling with resentment at the indignities oflVred to her, was being ignoniinously carried into Edinburgh. There w:is a certain loyalty and faithfulness in her nature which prevented her from desi-rting tho.se who, to use a vulgar phrase, were in the same boat with her. The woman who had never loved Bothwell in his prosperous days, may have clung courageously to him in his adversity. And the perfidious hyjiocrisy which the Confederate Lords were then exhibiting must have been positively revolting to a nature like Mary's. These were the men who had truly murdered Darnley, and yet they dared to flaunt a banner in the face of heaven which called for vengeance on his murderers — "Judge and avenge my cause, Lord ! " "When she found that Bothwell's accomplices had turned upon him, like a pack of famished wolves, it is not difficult to understand how in utter tearless shame and indignation she might have told them that he was a better man than any of them. But, as I have said, there is ' This expression is alleged to have been used on a dififerent occasion. 40 MARY STUART. no ^()w\ oviilcnce to show tliat Mary parted from Bothwell reluctantly, and there is i)lenty of the best evidence to sliow tliat after they were parted she never manifested the slightest desire to rejoin hiiii.^ H(! ])a.s8ed away utterly cmt of her life. The delirium under wliieh she is alleged to have lal^oured must have been very transitory in its nature. Now, gentlemen, let me condense into one or two sentences the results at which we have arrived. We have seen that, constitutionally, Mary was not a jtci-sou likely to come under the sway of a violent and absorbing pa-ssinn. Her whole nature w.is masculine in its moderation, its firmness, its magnanimity. She was tolerant, uncapricious, capable of carrying out a pur- pose steadily, yet with Uict and policy. She was never hysteri- cal, never fanciful. With her, hjve was not an engrossing occupation ; on the contrary, to Mary, as to most nu-n, it wtus but tlio child and jilaything of unfrcijuent leisure. Ib-r lovers •went mad about her, but she never went mad aljout her lovers. She sent Chatelar to the scaffold. She saw Sir John Gordon beheaded. She admitted liizzio to a close intimacy. Kizzio was her intellectual mate, the depository of her state secrtfts, her politic guide antl confiy Mr Stuart certainly do not. — A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Queen 0/ Scots Recovered, p. 35-38. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 41 abound in pretty trifles : her business letters are clear, strong, rapid, brilliantly direct. By the fantastic irony of fate this masculine unsentimental career has been translated into an effemiiiate love-story, — the truth being, as I have had to say again and again, tliat no woman ever lived to whom love was less of a necessity. This was the strength of Mary's character as a queen — as a woman, its defect. A love-sick girl, when her castle in the air was sliattered, might have come to hato Darnley with a feverish feminine hatred ; but the sedate and politic intelligt'uce of tlie C^hieen cmild only hove been inciden- tally affected by such considerations. Slu- knew that, even at the worst, Darnley was a useful ally, and the motives which induced her to marry him nmst have restrained her from putting him forcibly away. Yet when tlie deed was done, it is not surprising that she shoidd have actjuiesced in tlie action of tlie noltility. iJothwfll, again, w;us in her estimation a loyal retainer, a trusted adviser of the Crown; but he was nothing more. Yet it need not surprise us tliat after her forcible de- tention at Dunbar, she should have resolved to sulimit ■with a good grace to the inevitable. Saving Argyle and Huntley, ]>f»thwt*ll was the most powerful of her j>eers. He was essen- tially a strong man ; lit, it seemed, to rule that turl)ulent nobility. He liad been recommended to her acceptance by the unanimous voice of the aristocracy, Protestant and Catholic. As the honest Craig observed, " the best part of the realm did approve it, either by flattery or by their silence." On a woman of ardent sentimentality these considerations would have had little effect : they were exactly the considerations which would appeal to Mary's masculine common-sense. Yet, though she made what seemed to her the best of a bad business, she was very wretched : apart from her own private grief and chagrin, she felt that the task in hand (marvellous as her jiowers of self-recovery had hitherto proved) was too great for her strength. A corrupt combination of treachery and ambition had wrecked the fair promise of her life. This, I venture to say, is a consistent and credible delinea- tifin ; what, on the other hand, gentlemen, does my learned friend require you to believe % The woman whom he has presented to you had led a highly successful, adroit, diplomatic life for five years, when suddenly she, gave way to a blind, irrational, and devastating passion for 42 MA/^V STL' ART. u mail whom she had known from childhood, wliich upset her reason, tore her fine-siJim web in jtieecs, traversed the splendid career which a hauj^'lity and resolute aniljition had marked out. She was borne away on a wave of furiuus and bmtal lust, which left her helplessly imbecile, for the first time and the last time in her life, during an interval of six weeks ! The astonishing pranks that human nature plays are known to all of us, antl the cold deliberate treachery of a woman on fire with passion has not been unrepresented in dramatic art : but any- thing so incredible as this story, or, when taken in connection with the admitted facts of Mary Stuart's character, anything so anomalous and incomprehensible, I have not met with in history. Gentlemen, in constructing the picture of ^fary Stuart which I have presented to you, I have availed myself of every legiti- mate source of information. But he who would arrive at tol- erably safe conclusions about this remarkable career, is called upon to appraise, with critical exactness and vigilance, an im- mense mass of documentary evidence. A good deal of that evidence is sufficiently reliable to be accepted without qualilica- tion by the cautious historian : a good deal of it can be accepted only after it has been sifted and winnowed and attested by independent authority : a good deal of it must be laid aside as unauthentic and worthless. I include in the first class what- ever evidence from neutral sources is extant (and of it I need say no more here): I include in the second the letters and despatches and histories which were prepared by the enemies of the Queen, for the information of the English Government, for their own vindication, or for other purposes : the third includes the depositions of Xicolas Hubert (French Paris), and a series of documents known as the Casket Letters. In dealing with the second class, I have endeavoured to proceed upon the ordinary principles which guide the critical interpreter of historical records. The source is to a certain extent tainted, and therefore, except when the witness records what he himself observed, or where the hearsay which he reports is otherwise corroborated, his narrative is to be received with critical watchfulness. For instance, in a letter from Ran- dolph to Cecd, dated February 7, 1566, the writer says that Mary had signed the Catholic League. But on Febniary 14, Bedford informs the English minister that she had not done THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 43 so. In Randolph's letter it is stated tliat France was a party to the League : in Bedford's letter there is no mention of France. In point of fact, France was at that time standing warily aloof from the combination ; and as Bedford's letter was subsequent in date, and as he appears to have written with Randoljih's latest despatches before him, it may fairly be con- cluded that Kandolph, in the one case as in the other, had been originally misinformed. It is nowhere else, in any contem- porary document, asserted or implied that Mary had joined the League : and history, therefore, is entitled to hold that she was not a member of the Catholic Confederacy. Or take another example. In a letter from Drury it is stated, that as Bothwell rode otf to the Tolbooth on the morning of his trial, the Queen gave him a friendly nod from the window of the palace. But in a previous letter, wliich contained the narrative given to Drury by an eyewitness of the scene (the Provost-Marshal of Berwick), no notice is taken of this incident. On the contrary, the Provost-Marshal was denied an audience on the ground that the Queen was asleej) ; and it is therefore highly improbalile that, had she been visible at the window of the palace, this flagrant evidence of discourtesy to the English envoy would have been omitted. In these circumstances the historical student cannot undertake to affirm that such an incident occurred. Sir "William Drury himself was, as I have said, the most credulous of gossips, and his letters are stuffed full (»f marvels that might satisfy the most voracious appetite for the supernatural. Randolph was an able diplomatist, but a harsh and unscrupulous partisan : and, in fact, the whole of this English correspondence, from the date of the Darnley marriage, was conceived in a spirit of bitter hostility to the Queen. The only documents produced by my learned friend which I absolutely refuse to entertain, are the second deposition of French Paris, and the Casket Letters.^ Oidy one word upon ^ Dr Robertson, who urges the arguments against Mary with con- spicuous force and dexterity, virtually abandons Hubert and his deposi- tions. He says: "It must be acknowledged that his depositions contain some improbable circumstances. He seems to have been a foolish talkative fellow : the fear of death, the violence of torture, and the desire of pleasing those in whose power he was, tempted him, per- haps, to feign some circumstances, and to exaggerate others. To say that some circumstances in an afiEadavit are improbable or false, is very 44 A/A/^y STUART. tin- former is needed. Hubert's depositions were emitted before J5ucli;iii;in, Imt liuchaiian never jiuljlicly n-ferrcd to them, did not use tlieiii either in the JMertio or in liis Histary, ami tlieir existence was unknown until one liundred and Jifty y<*ar8 hiter, when they were discovered in the Jiegister Ullice. JJuchanau was not ])iirticuhirly scrupulous ; and the fact that he abstainenrii, ami the (jenninmem of the Queen's Letters to BothwdL By William Roljertson, D.D.) Tytler has pointed out tliat Hume's note to his first edition, in which he alleged that Hubert's dying confession was "a regular judicial paper given in regularly and judicially," and that "it was in vain now to seek improl)abilities, and magnifj- the smallest difficulty into a contra- diction," was withdrawn from later editions, — from which it may l)e fairly infeiTed that he had changed his mind. (An hi'juiry, Historiral and Critira/. Third edition, p. 177). ^ Lesley alleges that it was well known at the time that, directly before his execution, Paris admitted that he had not conveyed any lettei-s from the Queen to Botliwell. Paris was executed at St Andrews on loth August 1569. "From that the Regent passed to Sainctan- drois, where a notable sorcerer, called Xic Neville, was condemnit to the death and brunt : and a Frenchman callit Paris, who was ane of the devisers of the king's death, was hanget in Sanctandrois, and with him THE SPEECH FOR THE QUE EX. 45 The authenticity of the Casket Letti'i-s is a ijuestion that must be more deliberately considered. l>ut, gentlemen, I shall somewhat shorten your labours by directing your attention almost exclusively to what is known as the Glasgow Letter or Letters. This is the letter which, if wholly written by ^fary, and addressed by her to Bothwell, can leave little doubt on any reasonable mind tliat she was a murderess and adulteress. On the other hand, if this letter be spurious, it follows, as a matter of course, that the letters whicli were produced at the same time, and which must stand or fall along with it, (and which are, besides, of tjuite secondary imixirtance), do not rei^uire to be separately examined. Prove that one of the documents is forged, and you discredit the rest : fur if it was possible to forge one, it was possible to forge all. It is in this liglit that the disappearance of the alleged AVar- rant from the (jUieen liecomes of such surpassing importance. There can bo no lir (.'onference Itecause they knew that the fraud would Ije immetliately iletected, and summarily ex- posed. We are thus driven to conclude that the Warnint was forged, and then the question recurs — If one, why not all ? I believe that I might i-est my case against the Casket Lettei-s on William Stewart, Lyon King of Arms, for divers jwints of witchcraft and necromancy." — H'uftorie 0/ Kiiuj Jamta the Stxt. 46 MARY STUART: this 8inj^'l(! fact — tlic niyBtcrious and otherwise unaccountable disaiij)caiaiic(! of tin; Warrant ; ^ but I confiont, j^'f-ntlemen, to me(!t my friend on his (jwn ^Tound, and I seh-ct, witli this view, the most (hima<,'in^' of i\w documents wliich th»i Lords actually ventured to lay before the luiglish Council. These letters, as my friend has told you, were said to liave been taken from a silver casket which had lielon;,'ed i(i Francis, Mary's lirst luisl)and, and whicli were flainly, nay dramatically, }t<»inted to the Queen. Iliere M'ere, besides the CJlasgow and Stirling letters, two contracts orary suit, all the usual rules ai)plicable to the admission of evidence ought to have been, and may now without unfairness be, applied to them. There are two et|uivocal events — and two only — in Mary's life, — her share in the murder of Darnley, and her consent to the l^othwell marriage. \>y e(iuivocal, I mean capable, in so far as ascertained facts are concerned, of being read in two ways. She might have been either the conspirator or the victim of the con- spiracy. Now the Casket Letters are devoted exclusively to these two events, and they remove all dubiety about their true cliaracter. Their brilliant light dispels the e — he would not bfl justitied in withdrawing these letters entirely from your consid- eration ; and it is tlierefore necessary that I should lay before you briefly tht> whole evidence, internal and external, which demonstrates beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt, that they were not Avritten by Mary. The observations which I have to offer on the internal evidence need not detain us for many minutes. If you will take the trouble to read any half-dozen of the genuine letters written by the Queen, and then compare them with the Gla.sgow letters, you will see that the two series must have been composed by different persons. Mary's letters, as a rule, are refined in tone, elegant in expression, harmonious in texture and compo- sition. The Glasgow letters are coarse, awkward, and the merest patchwork. Why, a rustic wench trying painfully to write a letter to her sweetheart would have succeeded better ! ^ly friend has discovered that among the numerous letters written by ^lary, which have been preserved, another coarse one exists — which is true ; but he forgets that it is less a letter than a piece of bitter invective meant to wound Elizabeth to the quick. Then he cannot deny that Mary possessed at least a singular felicity of expression of which there is no trace what- THE SPEECH FOR THE QUE EX. 51 ever in the Gltisgow letter. How uncouth and ungraceful it is ! It contains one or two impressive sentences ; hut these, if not transparently liistrionic, are clearly over-studied and over-vehe- ment, — tragic passages from some of the minor dramatists — not Shakespeare, surely ! " Have ye not de,sire to laugh to see me lie so well 1" is a sentiment which neither Mary nor Shake- speare would have uttered. A woman like Mary, taking such murderous work on hand, would have gone to the end with resolute sternly shut lips, feeling the degradation of her treach- ery too keenly to boast of it, even to her lover. My learned friend has artfully strung together the most striking passages ; let me .ask you to listen to one or two of the sentences which he has omittetl : " I am weary, and am jisleep ; and yet I cannot forbear scribbling as long as there is any pajMjr. Cursed be this pocky fellow that troubleth me thus much, for I had a plea.s- anter matter to discourse unto you but for him ! He is not much the worse, but he is mueh marked. I thought I should have been killed witli his breath, for it is worse than your uncle's breath ; and yet I wits set no nearer to him than in a chair by his bolster, and he lieth at the farther side of the bed. I had forgotten of the L of Livingston that he at sup- per said softly to the Lady Iteres that he drank to tlie jtersons I knew of, if I would jiledge them. And after supi>er he 8ai). It is simply incomprehensible to me how a man of taste and accomplisliment like the late lamented Canon Kingsley could bring himself to write about such foul rubbish in this fashion : — " The strongest evidence in favour of the letters and sonnets is to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would have made Mary wTite in some Semiramis or R<:)xana vein, utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious weakness, the imploring and most feminine trust, which makes the 52 MARY STUART. JJut the fraj^mentary cliaracter of this epistle is jKM-liaps its most curious feature. The difrereut ])aragraph8 of wliich it consists can hardly be said to be joined together in any real sense. The unity of organic life, which works from within outward, l^ringing each detail into orderly subjection to the whole, and which no forger could imitate, is entirely wanting. In the lirst place, we have a par.igr.ipli (jf plain Ijusinossdike description which might have been addressed to the ("cjuncil (as i)erhaps it was) — the description of the journey to Gla.sgow, and her reception there. In the second place, there is a para- graph devoted to a curiously and incomprehensibly minute relation (incomprehensible except in one view) of the conversa- tions wliich had taken place between herself ami Darnley. In the thinl place, there are some passionate ex})losions of love and letters to those who— as I do — believe in them, more pathetic than any fictitious sorrows which poets coukl invent. More than one touch, indeed, of utter self-abasement is so unexpected, so subtle, aneen commented on. If the letters are Mary's, and if they prove anything, it is tliat the writer stood in mortal terror of her correspondent. Where or how had Bothwell acquired this tremendous power over her ? Was it love or feai- that made her grovel before him ? Xot fear, certainly, even her enemies will admit ; and then of any overmastering passion for Bothwell on Mary Stuart's part, there is no trace anj-where else in her life. Is it possible that such a consuming flame could have been hidden out of sight ? Is it possible that Mary could have become the humble slave of Both- well's ambition without some indication of the state of matters being made more or less public ? without some remains of the ravage of this devour- ing lire being visible in her after-life ? Obsers'e, moreover, that the sentiment itself is common enough — the idea of the woman who is ready to yield up her soul and everything else to her lover, being as old as the oldest poetry — and the execution is not above commonplace, if we except one or two tinely simple sentences, which might have been extracted from some old popular romance, as perhaps they were. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUE EX. 53 remorse. In the fourth place, there is a table of contents. In the fifth place, there is the interjected paragraph about Lord Livingston — eminently nasty. In the sixth place, there are further explosions. In the seventh place, there is an apology for the peculiariti/ of the handAvriting (what does that suggest, gentlemen?) — "Excusez mon ignorance a escrier — excusez la brief uete des caract<^res." And in the last place, there is an- other table of contents apjilicable to the second part of the letter, applicable, at least, if one remarkable exception is made. For, in the abstract or index this unaccountable intimation (un- accountable on the assumption that the letter was addressed to Bothwell) appears — " Kemember me of the Lord Both- well ! " Tliis is a wonderful jumble, an incomprehensible muddle — han.lly to be accounted for on any rational hypotiiesis. It might almost appear as if the forgers had got hold of some half- hnished memoranda by Mary, and adding a beginning and an end, had transformed them into a letter to Bothwell. I tell you honestly, gentlemen, that it is the very singularity of this letter which embarnisses me, for it is difficult to suppose that an ordinarily clever forger would have jjroduced such an ex- traordinary piece of patchwork. But, of course, I am not bound to explain the reasons which induced Mary's enemies to act as they did in fabricating the letter, — it is enough for me to say that no fairly intelligent man — except upon external evidence of an absolutely irresistible kind — can be re([uire «iy, any man of letters), and he will tell you without lu-HiUilion that the two documents must have hatl a common literary origin, must have been coined in the same mint. Now, gi-ntk-men, what does this mean ? The Casket Letter wiw either taken from Craw- furd's deposition, or Crawfurd's dej>osition wa« Uiken from tho Casket Letter. liut it is certain that Crawfurtl's dejKisition, whieli is admittedly authentic, in the sense tliat it was made, l)y him, Wiis never .st-t-n by Mary : on the other liand, the persons for whom Crowfunl's (h'jM>sition wius prejMired were the ]>ersons who subsequently jjrodueed the Casket Letters, and tlicy were the only persons who had had access to it. llie in- feivnce that the (ilasgow letter alleged to have been written by the (^)ueen wius in point of fact copied from Cniwfurtl's de|K)8i- tion appears to be irresistible ; and if so, then there can bt? no diHiculty in understanding why the forgers did not hesitate to introduce into the letter all the details which the deposition contained. They could alford to be circumstantial with perfect safety.i ^ The deposition of Crawfnrd does not appear to have been textually eonijmreil with the Glasgow letter before the publication of Mr liurton'a History. Mr Bui-ton published eonsiderable extracts from it, Wing of opinion, apimrently, that its verbal resemblance to the Glasgow letter was a voucher for the genuineness of the latter. "They agi'ee," he says, "with overwhelming exactness."' I cannot help thinking that Mr Hosack's answer on this point is perfectly conclusive (p. 192 of the original edition of his admirable ant! elaborate work on Mar\i Qufiu of Scotx and h(r AccuM-ra). If it is, then the use I have made of the deposition in the text is legitimate and logicaL Mr Burton ultimately apprehends the dilemma, and tries to evade it, though the pleas stated by him are not verj- ob\-iously relevant. Be- fore the document is repudiated, he advises the enthusiast to "weigh the possible inlluence of that darkly suggestive conversation between PamleN" and lus domestic, in which they exchange their suspicions about the unexpected \isit — suspicions in which murder is an ele- ment,'' Well, Me weigh it, and what then? How does "the darkly suggestive conversation "' explain the verbal identity of the two docu- ments ? After complaining of the Old Bailey style in which the Queen's cause has been advocated, Mr Burton prr>ceeds to say that, to obtain a complete explanation, "we would require to place Craw- THE SPEECH FOR THE OUEEX. 57 The same observation applies to another argument on which my friend relies — viz., that there are references in the letter to facts and events which, at the time, were only known to Darn- ley and the Queen.^ Yes, — and to one other — to Crawfurd, to whom they had been communicated by Darnley. In point of fact, the very allusions on which the argument is maintained appear in the deposition which was in the possession of the parties who were engaged in fabricating the letters.- furd in the •witness-box and cross-examine him." But it is Mary's friends who are entitled to complain that Crawfurd was not cross- examined, — the deposition having Wen obtained by the Queen's enemies, and having l)een used in evidence against her. It is ilifii- cult to see, moreover, how any amount of cross-examination of Craw- furd could have thrown any light upon the een compelled to arl I/ij'idence would sers'e to convince us that they haoiin jitlr from his own original observa- tion, an English jury would sooner l>elieve the wlK)le piirty jwrjured than persuade themselves that so extraordinaiy a coincidence would have occurred." — Short Studien on ilnnt SttltJutM, i. '2')i>. ' Burton, iv. 4.'18. 2 I propose to print in the Appendix (if space can l>e found), a large portion of the famous <;iasgow letter — 15 consecutive pages without break or selection — witli the object of proving what I have asserted, viz. — that most of it relates to imlifferent subjects, and that with the exception of a few passages it en of ^lary Stuart, and which had been published as such by iJuchanan and Cecil, were courageously repudiated. Admitting that Goodall was right, they replied, — " True, the French versions appended to the Detectio are translations from the Scots; but these are not tlie letters which were produced at Westminster ; ^ Thus John Knox (quoted by Tytler, page 114) says : " In a cabinet, or box, Bothwell had kept the letters of privacy he had from the Quene. By the takimj of thin rahinet, many particulars betwixt the Quene and Bothwell wer clearly discovered. Thf-able that of a large part of the only letter which really impressed the Commis- sioners (the Glasgow letter), no French version had then been made. The firM time that the letter.^: vere .^een hij antj one except the LortU them- selves the;/ loere in Scot--<. I am bound to admit that no complete solu- tion of the mystery has yet l>een arrived at. My own impression is that, as the secret production would have ser\-ed their purpose, the Lords never intended that the letters should see the light in any formal investigation ; and they were obviously taken aback by Elizabeth's res- THE SPEECH FOR THE QUE EX. 63 assuming that the Scots were then stated to be translations only, there is abuntlant evidence to prove that the Scotch trans- lations even of the genuine letters (that is to say, of the letters which were undoubtedly composed in French, and which do not implicate the Queen) had been wilfully vitiated. Here is one notable specimen. In a letter jirosumably writtiMi by Mary to Darnley, she observed, " Comme lOyseau eschappe de la cage, on la tourtre qui est sans conipagne, ainsi je demureray seule, pour pleurer vostre absence, queliiue breve puisse estre." In the Scotch traTw^Iation prodticcd at York the pa.<5sage stands thus: "Mali giule witcK (J if the bird escape out of the cage," (fee. The object of the vitiation is obviou.s. The Queen was criminally eager to prevent ])amlt'y'8 escape, and she urged IJothwell to "mak gude watch." The fraudulent int^^-rpolation served its purpo.se. The Knglish Commissinners wrote to L«m- don to say, that a letter from tlie (^>ueen to liothwi-ll had lieen produced, in wliich she reut it is inijio.ssible to deny that improbalile tilings sometimes haitpt-n in this world ; olution and promptitude. When they were once committed, however, to what might prove (tliougli it did not prove) a searching in(|uiry, the absurdity of producing any Utter, or any part of any letter, written in Scots, as a letter written hy the Queen, l)ecame obvious, and the Scots version (with the famous " Warrant ") was sent home — to be afterwards published by Buchanan as an appendix to the Dctcctio. 64 AfARV STUART. and if it can Ije established by external evidence that the lettere were in point of fuel written by Mary, then the internal impro- babilities are of no moment, and must be disre^'arded. Well, gentlemen, is the external evidence sufficient to over- come the inherent improbability, and to enalde us to say that in this case, at least, the improbable did take place 1 No, gentlemen, — every step in tlie process Ijy wliich we endeavour to trace back the lettere to the (^ueen is beset with difficulties of the most insurmountable kind. The Lords alleged tiiat the incriminating letters were con- tained in a casket which had been left in the custody of the governor of Kdinburgh Castle, Sir James lialfour, by liothwell. ]>othwell sent a servant, George Dalglish, to recover them ; and Dalglish, on returning through Edinburgh on June 20, loGT, was captured by the retainers of the Earl of Morton with the cixsket and letters in his possession. Such was the story told in Septeml»er 1508, immediately befoiv the Confer- ence at York, — told then, for the first time, by Morton and his associates.^ My friend says, that from June 20, 15G7, the ruling power in Scotland took its stand upon the import of these documents.^ He is mistaken : these documents are not alluded to in any writing, even of the most confidential nature, that has l>een preserved, earlier than the 25th of the following July. It was not till that day that Throgmorton the English envoy was informed that the Confederate Lords " mean to charge her with the murder of her husband, whereof, they say, they have as apparent proof against her as may be, as well by the testimony * In his abstract of what he calls the third Glasgow letter, Mr Burton says : "It shows that Bothwell apprehended danger from her profuse ^^Titing and her many messages : and she craves forgiveness for disol>eying his injunction neither to write nor send " (iv. 4.30). The question must have often presented itself even to the mind of an un- friendly historian : ^^^lat tempted Bothwell to preserve these letters ? And the difficulty is increased if he believes in the genuineness of this third letter ; for it follows that these documents were carefully preserved by the verj* man who had enjoined his correspondent neither to write nor to send to him for fear of discover^' ! On the other hand, no letters addressed to Mary bj- Bothwell have been recovered — and yet we maj- be sure (assuming that the Casket letters were written by her) that every scrap w Inch came from her lover's pen would be kept by her with religious devotion. 2 Burton, iv. -423. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 65 of her own handwriting, whicli they have recoA'ereil, as also by sufficient witnesses." The fact is, that so far from taking its stand from June 20, upon letters the import of which was that Mary was the accom- plice of IJothwell, the ruling party in Scotland, in a state paper dated July 11 (and in another dated July 21), declared that Bothwell had made a prisoner of the Queen, and " by fear, force, and other extraordinary and more unlawful means, com- pelled her to become bedfellow to another wife's husband." How did it happen, if it is true tliat the letters were in their custody on June 20, that a montli later the Lords should have " taken their stand " upon a view of the case inconsistent with the " plain purport " of the lettei-s ? It is hard to believe that the letters, whether genuine or forged, could have been in their possession prior at least to July 21 ; and if they were not, the whole story about the letters being taken from l)alglish on -lune 20 (on which day he was undoubtedly captured) is cut away, and with it the inference or deduction that they had at one time been in Lord Bothwell's possession. Gentlemen, let me pause here for a moment to contrast the evidence produced by the Confederate Lurds to trace the letters into P)Othwcirs hands — the vital fact of i\w case^with the evidence which the law demands in the most trivial suit. The Earl of Morton declared on his honour that the letters had been obtained in the manner I have described. That was all. Morton's honour forsooth, — the honour of Mary's most ruthless and unscrupulous enemy ! In any court, of justice, on the other hand, what amount of evidence would have been required to establish the truth of such a story] Sir James Ealfour would have been called to prove that he got the casket from Bothwell, that it was not opened nor tampered with when in his hands, and that he delivered it to Dalglish. Dalglish would have been called to prove that he got a casket from Sir James Balfour, and that it was taken from him by some of Morton's retainers. These retainers would have been examined, as well as the persons in whose presence the casket was opened. Some sort of mark or docket would have been made upon the documents by those present to secure identification, and Morton himself, for many reasons, would have been subjected to a severe cross-examination. Then, subject to observations on the • redibility of the witnesses, it would have been legally estab- E 66 A/AA'V STUART. lisliLid UiiiL the casket with its contcuts had pa-sscd from Ijotli- well to Morton. But none of tliese reasonable precautions were taken by men who must liave been well acquaint(:fd with the rules which have always been observed in courts of justice. Balfour, though in England, was not called. His evidence alone might have been of vast importance. If, for instance, he liad been compelled to admit that Lethington had obtained access to the casket, and had removed certain of the documents (such as the " Ijand " for the murdur of Darnley entered into by tlu! nol)ility) Avhich it contained, it would probably have been dilHcult to convince a jury that the documents subsequently found in it (if any indeed were found) might not have been introduced by Maitland.^ Dalglish was not called. He had been hastily executed by the Lords before the Conference, and so, happily or unhapjtily, was .safely out of the way. But his deposition was taken, and — strange to say — not a single ques- tion was put to him with regard to the casket. If the story Avas true, here was certainly the most stupendous blunder that men with a grain of common-sense among them could have committed. The Lords must have knoAvn how momentous such evidence would be. They were noblemen who diil nothing rashly. Kecalling the precise and technical legal lan- guage in which the different " bands " to which they had been parties were drawn, we may say of them, as Charles II. said of certain cautious conspirators of his reign, that " they committed treason by advice of counsel" Is it not self-evident, gentle- men, that these prudent plotters would have carefully preserved some admission of the fact on which so much depended % If the story is true, the absence of any allusion to it in Dalglish's deposition is to me simply unaccountable. The omission of any allusion in Dalglish's deposition becomes still more suspicious when we consider the account which the Lords first publicly gaA'e with regard to the tirae at which the letters were discovered. In the Act of Council of December 4, 1567, issued by the Confederate Lords, it is impUed, if not expressly asserted, that the cause of their taking up arms against the Queen in the beginning of June was the discovery " by divers her privie letters, written and subscriAnt with her ain hand," that she was Bothwell's accomplice. This statement ^ There is really some evidence to this effect. THE SPEECH FOR THE QUEEN. 67 is of course directly at variance with the assertion on which they ultimately took their stand — viz., that the letters Avere not obtained till the 20th of June, by which time the Queen had been made prisoner and sent to Lochleven. 1 think, therefore, that I am entitled to maintain that the Confederate Lords failed to prove that the documents which they produced had been in Dothwell's possession. It can be shown, on the other hand, that the description of the alleged letters given by the Queen's enemies previous to their produc- tion at Westminster was neither uniform nor consistent. In the first place, an abstract or summary of the Glasgow letter was sent to ^lurray (who was then in London) about the end of July 1567. According to this account, the letter stated that the writer proposed io go and fetch her husband ; to administer poison to him at a house on the road ; if the attempt to poison did not succeed, to have him blown up on the night of the marriage of one of her servants ; and it con- cluded by entreating her lover cither to poison or to divorce his wife ! It is all very well to say that this rough draft (as I may call it) is in a general Avay an accurate precis of the Glas- gow letter; but even my friend, when he comes to compare them, must admit that it is far stronger and more circumstan- tial than that ultimately product-d.^ Murray adds, tliat he had been informed tliat the letter was " written in her own hand, and signed with her name."^ In tlie Act of Council to which I have alluded (4th December 1.^67) it is alleged that the letters were " written and subscrivit (signed) ■with her o\vn hand, and sent by her to James, Earl Bothwell." But in the Act of Parliament which was passed a few days later, the letters are simply described as lioiiig "hailly written with her ' I would have been disposed to say, lookmg at the documents with a critical eye, that they are as unlike each other as could well be ima- gined. The abstract sent to MuiTay is, moreover, open to the observation that it is impossible to believe tliat such an accurate and circumstantial anticipation of the actual course of events (e.f/., Damley to be blown up 07i the nir/ht of the marria^fe of one of the Queen's serv^ants) was or could have been written weeks heforf their occurrence. 2 It has not been noticed, I think, that this letter from Murray conclusively disposes of Hume's ingenious argument that the word "subscrivit" in the Act of Council, applied, not to the letters, but to the contracts of marriage. Murray says that he had been distinctly informed that the fatal letter was ".signed with her name." 68 J/^7A'l' STL/AR/: :i\vin hiiiitl." ^ 'I'li'^y nri; no loii^'cr all<'}j;eii to Ix- sig!i<;(J, anueen reached Glasgow next day. The Glasgow letters (three in one view, two in another) must have been \vritten on Friday and Saturday. Paris sa3's that lie and Beaton took them to Edinburgh, where they were delivered to Bothwell. But, according to ^lurray's Journal, which was produceil at Westminster, ISothwdl went to Liddes- dale on the 24th, and did not return to Kdinburgh till the 28th, on which day the (^)ueen also returned. If ^lurray's .Journal is to be relied on, it is simply impossible that the letters could have reached Bothwell at Edinburgh. It is obvious besides that ^lary, if she sent the letters, must have believed that Bothwell was in Edinburgh. Now he went to Liddesdale the day after he parted from her, and it is difficult to iinderstand (especially if they were so intimate as to be engaged in planning a murder which was to be sj)eedily ac- complished) why he should have left her in ignorance of his movements. The fair presumption certainly is, that she knew where he was, and this presumption is not ccjnsistent with the assertion that she wrote to him at Edinburgh. But, whether she Avrote or did not write, the letters, it is plain, could not have been received by him there during ht*r absence, as Paris falsely as.serted.^ To proceed. ' There is another curious tircunist;mce. In June l.">(>8, Lennox, who was in England, wTote to Crawfurd, who was in (Glasgow, " by all possible methods to search for more matters against her," and, inter nlia, to a,=!certain "if she used to sentl any messages to Kdinburgh, and by whom" — while she was with Darnley in Gla.'tgow. Crawfurd's de- position was the result of this commission. But there is not a word ^o MARY STUART. AN'liiii Miiry icarlieil i'liij^'lainl afkr the ilisastrous batth^ of Langside, Klizaljotli i)roi)OseJ tliat tlic nmtt«jr.s in disimtc be- tween her and lier subjects should be referred to a Commission. Mary at once, and ^furray after consideraljlc lie.sitation, agreed to the reference. ]\Iary'8 instructions to lier Commissioners contained tlie following article: "In <:ase' they allege tliey have any writings of mine which may infer jiresumjitions against me, yo shall desire that the princijials be i)roduced, and that / myself may luire inspcctiun thertuif and make answer tJiereto ; for ye shall ailirm in my name I never wrueen of murder by producing her letters, as in that event " she will deny them, and accuse the most of them of manifest consent to the murder, hardly to he denied, so as upon the trial on both sides her proofs will judicially fall best out, as it is thowjht." "And now touching my opinion of the matter," he continues, " I think surely no end can be made good for England except the pei-son of the Scotch Queen be detained by one means or other in England." To accomplish this object the Queen must be jiroved guilty of the murder. But " if this will not fall out sulluitntly {as I douht it will not) to determine judiciall}', if she denies her letters," another course Avhich he j)oints out, anil to which I will advert immediately, woidd require to be adopted. The sagacious and experienced Sussex, it is clear, had formed an extremely unfavouraltle opinion of the value of the documents which the Lords had i)rotluced at York. The Conference adjourned to AVestminster (wliere the whole of the Council were added to the Commission), and in the absence of ^Mary's Commissioners certain of the documents were again produced — this time in Frenck The Lords mani- fested the utmost reluctance to lay them before the Council ; but Cecil, by a clever move, succeeded in forcing their hand. Copies were taken, and these copies were left with the Council ; " which Avritings," says the minute, " being copied, were read in French, and a due collation made thereof as near as could be by reading and inspection, and made to accord with the originals which the said Earl INhirray required to be rede- livered." Ko examination of the letters (with the view of testing their genuineness) was made at Westminster : all that was done was to collate the copies with the originals, which were immediately returned to the Lords. A\Tien the letters had 72 .UylA'V STL' ART. l)C'cii duly coijicil and collutioiicd, tlu^ Council, along with six of the great nobles, were summoned to meet at Hamjjton Court, The results of the Conference were laid before them. The casket was again produced. Then, hut not till then, the k'tters W(!re comi)ared with genuine letters addressed to Elizabetlu AVhy tliis vitally imjiortant examination should liave been delayed till the last moment, and why, when it did take place, it should have been hastily slurred over, are facts which have not been explained. No ex])ert was cxdled in, and the exam- ination was of the most suspiciously cursory and unscientific kind. "It is to be noted," Cecil frankly admits, "that at the time of the producing, showing, and reading of all these fore- said writings, there was no special choice nur refjard had to the order of the jiroduciiKj thereof : but the whole writings lying altogether \\\)nn the council table, the same were one after another showed rather by hap, as the same did lie ujx)n the table, than with any choice made, as by the natures thereof, if time had so served, might have been." It is known that great pressure was brought to bear ujton the assembled Peers to induce them to return a verdict unfa- vourable to Mary ; but the utmost that could be extracted from them was a prudent recommendation that Elizabeth should not admit Mary to an audience, " as the case now did stand " — that is to say, upon the ex paiie evidence which bad been secretly laid before the Council by Clary's enemies in her absence. On hearing of what had taken place, Mary at once demanded that she should have access to the pretended letters; but after a good deal of fencing this was finallj' denied to her, and the Lords ■were hurriedly sent back to Scotland with the letters, being informed by Elizabeth before they left that "there had been nothing sufficiently produced nor shown by them against the Queen their sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil opinion of the Queen her good sister for anything yet seen." Such is a plain narrative of the proceedings and results of this famous Conference. One or two general obser^'ations must be added. ^ly friend asserts that Mary, throughout the Conference, manifested suspicious eagerness to prevent the production of the letters. The charge is so serious that it merits particular reply. The private Conference to which Elizabeth proposed and Mary THE SPEECH EOR THE QUE EX. -Ji agreed that lier cause should be referred, was purely political iu its constitution and objects. Mary was to table a charge pro forma against her insurgent subjects, and they were to defend themselves on public grounds. The Conference was intended to be the instrument by which an arrangement be- tween ^lary and the Lords should be carried through. But from the first ^lary declined to allow any matter aliecting her own honour to be introduced.^ If such matters were intro- duced, her Commissioners were instructed to protest and with- draw from the Conference. Elizabeth implicitly or explicitly was a party to tliis agreement. The bond Avas broken by the Earl of Murray. He went secretly to the English Commis- sioners at York, and showed them the Casket Letters.^ Mary's Commissioners were not permitted to be present — did not know, indeed, for some days that such a breach of faith hail been committed. But the moment that Mary heard of the plot, she took up a position from which .she never wavered. Her own Commissionei-s were scarcely so sagacious ; for Leslie was at bottom a shifty, voluble, elastic kind of creature, whoso faith in human virtue of any kind was small, and who wished above all things to save his mistress from the indignity of a public trial But Mary herself always said, " I consent to this private Conference with a view to an amicable adjustment of the difficulties between my subjects and myself. If, however, you bring against me any charge affecting my honour, accommo- dation is impossible. Tlienceforth it must be war to the knife. And to no secret conclave can I consent to refer such an accusa- tion. I must be heard in public before the Queen, the assem- ^ Thus on 12th October 1568, Xorfolk writes from York : — "They," the Confederate Lords, " play at no small game ; they stand for their lives, lands, and goods ; and they are not ignorant if tliey would, for it is every day told them that im loixj voceeAeA to exhibit the "matter" in (juestion, — the famous " warrant " "bearing date the 19th of April, signed with the Queen's liand," Ijeing tlie first produced. 74 MARY STUART. hied Peers of England, iiml the AnibasKJuloi-s of ("liriKk-ndoni. I will not trust such a tiucstion to the decision of any meaner trihunid. lUit I solemnly declare to the world that the accusa- tion is false, and that the jiretended letters are not mine, but have been fabricated by my accusers. Let them be jjroduced, and let mo bo furnished with copies. I pledge my word of honour to prove that they have been forged — no such letters having awcx been written by me." l>ut her reipiest w;ik disre- garded. No — a jmblic inijuiry would not be granted. The letters were produced in her absence. Then she said, " Show mo the letters — give mo copies — I will undertake, even before a tribunal which has disregarded the plainest rules of justice and fair dealing, to manifest that they are malicious inventions." r.ut again — No. The letters were always withheld from her (even though she got the French Andjiussiidor at last to take the matter up urgently), and she was never allowed an oi)iK)r- tunity to expose the deception. My friend says that she did not mean seriously to defend herself. 8he would go before the assembled Peers and on her honour as a sovereign Princess declare that the accusations were false. She desired only a great stage on which to dis- play her histrionic powers. But he forgets that the moment she heard of the charges she set herself to obtain the evidence that was available. She got Huntley and Argyle to declare in writing what they knew ; and had it not been for the " protestation " thus obUiined, we should never have learned some of the most important facts of the case as telling against her accusers. AVhy, gentlemen, this single diicument changed in one moment the whole asj^ect of the controversy. It was thenceforth impossible to maintain that the Scotch Protestant nobles were not privy to the mur- der of Darnley. How much more might have been obtained had an honest investigation been undertaken ? He forgets, besides, that rather than have the inquiry stifled, she ultimately consented to aUow the case to proceed before the same secret tribiuKxl. But her appeal was rejected. Elizabeth would neither hear her defence, nor would she permit her to see the letters. The Council, when hard pressed, declared that no case against Mary had been substantiated, and despatched Murray and his famous casket across the Border — with £5000 in his pocket to pay his expenses. THE SPEECH FOR THE (2UEEX. 75 Mary's conduct during the Conference thus appears to have been perfectly simple and straightforward, whereas Elizabetli's •was marked by extreme duplicity, there being abundant evi- dence to show that the investigation was conducted dishonestly. The Queen and her Council did not, as a rule, stick at triiies. The Earl of Lennox opportunely appeared at Westminster as one of !^^a^y's importunate accusere : years afterwards Lady Lennox admitted that her liusband had been induced to appear by the urgency of tlie Euglisli Council ! It is possible that at lirst Elizabeth, terrihed by what she regarded as a dangerous democratic outbreak, was willing to befriend the sister Queen whom rebellious subjects liad dejKised. But even at York the Conference had assumed a complexion decidedly hostile to Mary. The remarkable letter from Sussex to Cecil tlirows a clear light upon the spirit in which the intiuiry w;is thereafter conducted. " The object of the Council should be to retain Mary as a prisoner in England, and this could be efiected oidy by rendering the breach between her and the Lords in-e parable. If they could be induced to a.ssail her h(»nour, it was highly improbable that any truce, however hollow, could thenceforth be patched up between them. The pretended letters could not, indeed, be safely subjected to jtublic investigation and hostile criticism, but they might be privately produced and their tenor would be noised abroad. Tlie mere rumour that such letters had been produceil would cast a slur upon Mary's reputation, and lessen her influence in Enghuul, where she was growing dangerously powerful." Such was the substance of this re- markable communication ; and whoever examines the subse- (pient proceedings of the Conference — the anxiety of the English Council to ol)tain the letters, and their steady persist- ent resolution to prevent Mary and her friends from examining them — will hnd that the advice Avas acted upon to the letter. The Council, as we have seen, did not venture to condemn the Queen, nor to declare that the letters were genuine ; but even if such a declaration had been made, what would it have; been worth 1 There are certain jilain rules regarding the ad- mission of evidence which are invariably observed in courts of justice. That reasonable precautions shall be taken to prevent documents from being tampered with ; that in the event of challenge they shall be legally and competently authenticated ; that there shall be no break in the chain which connects them 76 AMA'V STUART. with the accused ; tliat the accused Bhall l»e duly infonued of their nature, and tlmt he or his advisers shall have free access to them, — it has been found that tiie observance of some such rules as these is essential to the exclusion of false testimony, and to the rij,'ht(*()us administration of justice. To call the perfunctory and unscientilic investij^'ation made by an assembly notoriously hostile to the Queen, ti fair trial, in this sense, or indeed in any sense, would be a mockery and an impertinence. This, gentlemen, is the external evidence which has been produced to authenticate the Casket Letters. It required, as you Mill recollect, to be amj)le, conclusive, overwhelming. Nothing short of absolute demonstration wouM suftice to con- vince any one acquainted with her other writings that these monstrous letters — so awkward, so uncouth, so patched and blotted — came from the practised and persuasive pen of Mary iStuart ! My learned friend contends that the external evi- dence is sulKcieiit. I maintain that it is ridiculously anite of the arrogant confidence of liberalism and science, it is diflicult to forecjist any decisive issue. Tlie Catholic Church, it must be kept constantly in mind, has many attractions. I>esides material and spir- itual attractions, besides gorgeous ceremonial and a visible biisis of authority, she has recently offered us, in Dr Xewman's writings, what assumes to be the strongest intellectual food. Xever was a Trotestant theok»g)' — a theology constructed on the basis of Christian experience and tlie human conscience — more urgently needed. Such a volume will be the Institute of the age, and it will be a Volume from which the mere arbitrary traditions — "the beggarly elements " — of Protestantism will be excluded. The Grammar of Assent — to me by reason of the logical splendour and intellectual havoc it discloses, one of the most interesting and distressing of books, — has been com- pleted and given to a perplexed and bewildered world ; WILLIAM THE SILEXT. 8i we wait now for the scientific and rational Protestant manifesto — The Grammar of Di&unt. Lord St Alde- gonde could not see tlie use of bishops ; but a bishop who could rise to the heij^ht of the great argument which justifies Luther, and Melanclithon, and Calvin, and -Tuhn Knox, and Burleigh, and Walsinghani, would be worth his salt. Tor it cannot be too often repeated that the Protestant apologists who deny the validity of conscious- ness and the veracity of conscience, cut the gr«auul from beneath their feet. Protestantism is the religion of reasonableness as opposed to the religion of authority ; and the Protestant who puts an infallible book in the place of an infallible chunh, is disloyal to the principles of the Pefonnation, if not to the practice of the Keformers. Meantime, in the career of William of Orange, most of tlie leading principles which this (Ininnnar must vindicate are set out with a simple persuasiveness, lieside which the most artful rhetoric, the most masterful logic, are comj)arativtly feeble. "When, in l.'i.'iG, (.'h:irl»'.H V. laiil a.>!i(lf his crtiwn, Knr<'j>*' was still tlu-ol»)>ing with the jmnj,'.'* of the Kefurniiition. That nio- mentou.s spiritiKil revolt w;i.s only half aoeoinplisluMl, and tin- combatant.s, with tlu-ir hand-s n-sting on their half-sheathed swords, awaited the signal which was to renew the strife. France was divided ; CJerninny was divided ; in En^^dand, while Henry had declared that the Pojte hatl no powt-r or authority within his realm, Mary continued to burn the heretics who denied the supremacy of lionje. Jlut the south of Europe was still loyal to the Papacy. The fervid Italian and Siwinish blood had not been warmed by "the fire of Almighty (iod." The new King of Castile and Arnigon buckled on his armour, and proclaimed himself the champion of the Catholic faith.' * In Mr Motley'H History of Thf li'iAe of thf Dutch lUpuhl'it^ a grwit theme is tnate.l with remarka)»le pictorial power, and truly dramatic iiuight. The revolt of tiie Netherlands i.s indeed a stirring drama, of V 82 WILLIAM THE SILEXT. P.y a fatal miscliaucc, to tin- niali^'naiit lii^'nt wljo now occuj>ioj)eror, to withdmw the Spaniards from the Netherlands, to tolerate Protestantism, and to restore the Prince of Orange to his possessions. The sullen and merciless tyrant was content to 1)0 bribed into humanity. To extirpate heresy was, as we say, Philiji's mission. Early in his reign ho hael concerted with the French king a " Sicilian VesjMirs " for the Huguenot leaders throughout their domin- ions. Henry's death, and the conveniences of jx^litical in- trigue, di«l not allow the design to be carried out at that time in France, and the dismal festivities of " the Paris wedding " wore postponed for a dozen years. Lut Philip was true to his troth, and the fertile and populous Netherland was the field which he selected. There, in lire and blood, he approved his inveterate devotion to the Church of Christ. How, in what manner, he did his work is branded in black letters on the page of history. " The Xetherland inquisition," he complacently confessed, " is more implacable than the Spanish ; " and in his industrious hands it more tlian justified its bitter renown. One hundi-ed thousand Xetherland heretics were murdered — not coarsely nor vulg-arly, but with the last refinements, the most delicate subtleties of torture — by this great religious organisation. Rigorous edicts were promulgated, which punished the unspoken thought as well as the visible act. !Men and women were strangled, beheaded, and burned WILLIAM THE SILENT. 85 alive in hundreds, because they had murmured against the rapacity of the priests, or could repeat a paraphrase by Clement Mafot. It was estimated tliat by 1565 more than hfty thou- sand persons suspected of heresy had been put to death. Thirty thousand skilled artisans had emigrated to England before the Duke of Alva was despatched from Spain ; and on the news of his coming a ]>erfect panic seized the populace, and the highways were blocked by the throngs that Hed from Philip's terrible lieutenant. Alva did his master's work in his master's spirit. Under his government these fair and fruitful places became a charnel-house. Tiie hands of the executioner were never idle. The best bloout it needed the consummate craft and the unselfish devotion of the Prince, to sublime a wild foray of " the sea-beggars " into a national deliverance. 88 WILLIAM THE SILENT. The iKiliility W(!rc' not to be trusted. They were selfisli, un- Itrincijilccl, uiul einharru«Heeople, in the forms which the jM)pular clisKitiwfaclion at first assumed. 'J'his may lie attril)Uted to the noliility. A splendid and turbulent aristocracy could relish the stinging satire of Simon Kenard, could stamp, with the sanction of fashion, fanciful synd>ols and rheterties, and butchered their countrymen. Yet the characters of many of these men are not without interest to us. Even Brederode, the wild masquerader, the reckless buffoon, who held that everj' political campaign must terminate with a debauch, and who hated " the water of the fountiiin " as he hated the Sjianiards and the Lishops, was at times brave, generous, and tender-hearted. Renneberg could be guilty of treason to his friend ; but as he stood in the grey ilawn on the square of the Groningen, men noticed that he was "ghastly as a corpse." He was at least no coward; it was no craven fear that blanched his cheek ; it was rather the antjixna pectoris, the mortal anguish, of the brave man, who knows that he has betrayed his honour. The moody Horn, who died on the same scatibld with Egmont, was no favourite with the people ; and when the crowd were washing the coffin of his companion with their tears, and kissing it as though it had WILLIAM THE SILENT. 89 been the shrine of a saint, the body of the Admiral was left, deserted and unwatched, in the chancel of St Gudule, But his surly honesty and truthfulness were perhaps of more sterling worth than any of his fellow-suflerer's more captivating qualities. Egmont was certainly a dashing soldier ; he had generous in- stincts, and the lofty character of Orange sometimes kindled him into momentary gn-atness; but he was fickle, vacillating, and vainglorious, and as a statesman he failed utterly. Art and poetry have touched his name with their shining lines ; his death no doubt mms heroic, and the last letter of Lamoral D'Egmont — " Ready to die " — to the sovereign who had doomed him to death, is that of a calm and magnanimous gentleman ; still, it canndt be denieuentin, or in the wild nu'h'r un the wet sands at Gravelines. It was on the nation, then, that Omnge was forced to rely; and the Netherhunlers, as a wlmle, were ban-ly more reliable than their ciiiefs. ("oleridge has vivitlly described the difii- culties which beset the leailer who (lejK'nds on tlie unorganisese, in aggravated forms, Orange had to submit. And the Nether- landers were jealous not only of the Sjtaniards, but of each other. The estates were constantly 8f the man who led tliem. Driven into this ccjrner of the earth, tlie hunted hur^liers turned, and di.sj»layt*>'etherlands he had never been Avorstetl ; on many a Pagan and Christian battle- field he had triumi>hed ; more than once his e<\gle eye and tiger- like heart had nerved his beaten soldiers, turned the tide of victory, and saved the monarchy. Vehement and bloodthirsty by nature, only on the battle-tield did he manifest perfect self- restraint. The ferocious executioner, who sent maidens and matrons to the stake, who spilt the blood of the tenderest and noblest like water, never threw away the life of a single trooper. His Fabian tactics not unfrequently exposed him to the re- proaches of the hot-headed among his own men ; but, as he himself said, he heeded not " the babble of soldiers " — the last and rarest virtue in a general But even Alva, everj'where else the victor, left the Netherlands a batiled man. Don Jolin of Austria, who followed him, did not fare better. The beautiful and fascinating sou of the Emperor, the hero of Lepanto, who had captured the sacred standard of the Prophet, and shaken the supremacy of the Crescent, was foiled and outwitted by the subtle brain of William. And even the splendid military WILLIAM THE SILEXT. 91 genius of Alexander of Parma, the most patient, temperate, fearless, and unscrupulous of men, could not turn the scale against the Netherlander. With a few forei<^u mercenaries who could not be relied on, and a few unarmed burghei-s who could, the Prince of Orange drove back the invincible legions of Spain, led by their most consummate captains. His military capacity was chietly shown in his power of com- bination. His keen eye detected at a glance that the ruinous tower, the unwalled city, the desolate sandbank, w:xs the key to the position, and before the enemy had discovered its value, his troops were ma.ssed around it ; it was strengthened, pro- visioned, manned. Then for months thf tide of battle surged around the devoted spot, whili- the Princt- and his little army lay in the rear, ready to aid, and able to retreat. And it was Orange who saw — pru])ably sooner, and certaiidy more clearly than any other man — the j>eculiar strength of his own position. He threw himself confidently njion tlie seii. This was the char- acteristic of the struggli', and fmni this its most picturesque features are derived. The war wa.s a war in which sea-boni men invoked the aid of the seju The wilil " sea-beggars," who never took or gave quarter, who proclaimed by the Crescents in their caps that they would rather serve the Turk than the Pope, were the most skilful sailors in the world, and kept the Spaniards imi»risoned on the shore. Across the wintry meres the Hollander on his swift skates glidetl noiselessly to assail his enemy. Amphibious kittles were fought, in which the rising tide sometimes dt-alt more death than the weapons of the combatants. At length, the estiit<*8, urged on and animated by Orange, resolved on a gnintl act of self-sacrifice. Leyden was beleaguered. If Leyden fell, Holland fell, and Leyden was at the point of death. It was determined that the great dykes, wliich had been raised with infinite labour to rejiel the storms of the ocean, should be broken down. They were levelled. The country was flooded. A fleet of two hundred vessels sailed over fruitful pastures, and fields yellow with corn. The besiegers found themselves besieged — fouml the water, day after day, rising about their feet — found the dry land, day after day, receding behind them. A great fear fell upon them. They were contending not only against man, but against the ocean. They raised the siege, and tied. Leyden was relieved. Holland was saved. 92 WILLIAM THE SILENT. Fiicnd and foe have owned tliat William, if not tlie ablest, was (jue of tlio ablest Ktatesnicn of his a^e. Granvellu was Oran^'e's most astute opponent; and (Jranvelle quickly pen- (itrated the character of his rival. " Tis a man of pmfound genius, vast ambition — dangerous, acute, politic " — the Canlinal told Philip at an early period. Cautious, subtle, and adroit, gifted with an even temper and a 8ui)erhunian restmint, the Prince was the model of a diplomatist. " 'J'hcy say he cannot sleep," some one once oliserved of him, and in a sense the saying was true. P'or he was " aye ready ; " no crisis ever t-e, intrig\ie by intrigue, the mines dug by the Cardinal and the Prince of Elxjli were countermined by William. Than his steady fencing ^vith Don John no better example of his masterly political tact could be selected. Don John had come to the Netherlands as the messenger of mercy. But Orange from the first saw through the hollow pretence. The Spaniard desired to strengthen his hands by peace only that he might the more securely prepare for war. " "War," the Prince at once said, " is preferable to a doubtful peace ; " but he had to wait until the eyes of his countrymen, dazzled by the youthful hero, were opened ; and the reserve in which he intrenched himself, the masterly art with which he " did nothing," were admirable and entirely successful Don John soon felt that he was ^vitllin the toils of a more expert fowler. His dread of that wily hunter, and the frantic struggles which the caged lion made to liberate himself from the net, broke the soldier's heart. The brilliant hero of WILLIAM THE SILENT. 93 Lepanto aged early, and died, like Pitt, " an old man," while yet in the prime of manhood. His deathbed, despite his weaknesses and insincerities, cannot be looked npon without a feeling of commiseration. " Tossing upon his uneasy couch, he again arranged, in imagination, the combinations of great battles ; again shouted his orders to rushing squadrons ; and listened with brightening eye to the trumpet of victory." He died ; whUe the serene and inexoraljle foe went on to finish his work. There is nothing more characteristic in Orange's career than his progressive development — his gradual advance in feeling and opinion. He is in his earlier years a magnificent and princely gentleman, a fitting representative of great historic houses, both in France and the Netherlands, a no])leman given to lios])itality, disposed to lead a secure and easy lift', and not feeling that he has any other duties in particular to attend to. Jiut the evil days of the persecution arrive, and stir the heai-t of the Nether- lander. The dispute does not interest him much ; whether a man be a (Jalviuist or a Catholic seems to him a matter of con- siderable inditi'erence ; i)erhaps upon tlie wholo he thinks a gentleman should die in the faith to which he is bred ; but ho detests tjTanny, and hates murder, and so he cannot but oppose the tyrannical and murderous policy of Philip. At last the moral problem of the Keformation forces itself upon him. What does it all mean ] Wlu-nce comes this wonderful con- stancy, Avhich nerves unlettered men and feeble women to die at the stake for an opinion f The spirit which is strangely stirring the nations touches the Prince also. He ceases to be a sul)ject of Philip and the Pope. He becomes a reliel and a Protestant — a great sutlerer, and a mighty leader. The mild and tran- quil temper has been exalted by torture into the heroic. But Orange, when he leagued himself with the Keformation, rose above the Iteformers. Of all the men of his age, he was the only one who rightly comprehended the princijile which the Reformation asserted, which gave it any permanent vitality, which made it anything more than a mere sanitary reform — a liill for whitewashing the monasteries, and scrubbing the men who dwelt in them. But this idea — the idea of spiritual free- dom and individual responsibility — was no sooner asserted than it was abandoned. The moment the Protestant ceased to be persecuted, he began to persecute. The apologists of the early 94 W I I.I.I AM THE SILENT. Reformers tell us that this was inevitaljh', that they were no woi-se tliiin th(ur lu'i^'lihourH, tlmt tlu' doctrine of reli^^ioua liberty was tlie slow ^'rowtli of u gentler and more ttjlerant age. l>ut they forget that there was at Iwist one man among the lieformers who understood that doctrine well, and who stn-n- uously strove to enforce it on his contemi>onirie^. AVilliam of Orange wius the earliest tfaclit-r rivate harm, or public scandal. We therefore expressly ordain that you desist from troubling the^ie Baptists, from olfering hindrance to their handicraft and daily trades by which they may earn bread for their wives and children ; and that you permit them henceforth to open their simps, and to do their work according to the custom of former days. lieware, therefore, of disobedience, and of resistance to the ordinance which we now establisL" In this, as in some other respecle, Orange absolutely tomers above any, the greatest of his contem- poraries. His friend, Sainte Aldegonde, was a man of the most versatile abilities — a poet, an orator, a theologian, a fine scholar, a subtle diplomatist — and yet the Prince's liberality vexed and irritated him. " The afi'air of the Anabaptist," he writes, " has been renewed. The Prince objects to exclude them from citizenship. He answered me sharply that their yea was equal to our oath, and that we should not press this matter unless we were willing to confess that it was just for the Papists to compel us to a di'S'ine service which was against our conscience. In short, I don't see how we can accomplish otu* wish in this matter. The Prince has uttered reproaches to me that our clergy are striving to obtain a mastery over consciences. He praised lately the saying of a monk who was not long ago here, that our pot had not gone to the fire as often as that of our WILLIAM THE SILENT. 95 antagonists, but that when the time came it would be black enough. In short, the Prince fears that after a few centuries the clerical tyranny on both sides will stiind in this respect on the same footing." It is impossible to read these sentences without surprise — surprise that such a noble temperance should have been possible in that age — but with double surprise that, when thus admirably enforced, the doctrine should have ap- peared strange and repulsive to the most accomplished gentle- man among the Protestant leaders. The Prince's etlorts to secure a religious peace, an Emancipation Act, were not un- successful ; and that " every man should remain free and un- questioned as to his religion," was the biisis on which the Dutch Constitution was framed.^ Nor was this singular temperance tlie fruit, as it sometimes is, of a spirit of scepticism. Tlie Prince was profoundly devout. In all his triumphs, in all his reverses, ho showed the most sincere and simple confidence in God's providence. He never doubted that his cause — tlie c^iuse of freedom and righteousness — would ultimately prevail. "That the desired end will l>e reached if you liold fiLst your resolution, and take U> heart tlio means that Clod presents to you, I feel to fte nlmilntfly certuin." He beheld, like all the early reformers and martyrs, in defwit, in victory, in the senate, on the battle-field, the innnediato working of a Divine hand. "Nevertheless," he wrote to his brother Louis,- after the disiistrous rout at Jemmingen, "since ' It has been said that Orange l»ecame a liberal in politics very much as he became a refomur in religion. Tolenition XKim/urrnl upon him. To a man in his position — the leader of a cause which embraced various religious factions — the policy of "civil and religious lilx-rty " was the only practicable or safe policy. I think that his life cannot be read in this way. Toleration to the Prince was never a fwditical necessity alone. He was constitutionally tolerant ; bigotry in l>eliuf, narrowness or absolutism in any shape, were hateful to his mild and liberal nature. He saw from the first that St Paul's scheme of Christian liberty was eternally true, as well as locally expedient. ^ Count Louis of Nassau, "the liiiyanl of the Netherlands," la the most chivalrous figure in the war. Tiie tire of the soldier, the sim- plicity of the child, the keen wit of the courtier, anr, are happily blended in his character. His heroism was as bright, and rapid, and sparkling as his wit. When the battle of .Jemmingen was h.st he swam across the Ems almost alone, and escaped intafiRd Guil, it is noccssary to have patience, and to losu not coiira^'t! ; conforming,' ourselves to His divine will — as for my part, I have det«'rniini'il to do in everything which nxay happen, still prl>(.•ee(lin^^ onward in our work with Hi« almighty aid." Tln' fall of Ziericksee was a source of deep regret to C)ranj,'o, " Had we receive*! the least succour in the world," he saitl, " the j)oor city should never have fallen. I couM get nothinj^ from Fninco or Knj;lan*Tote under the picture of the great proconsul in the council chamber at Calcutta, The motto would have fitted Orange ; but the one which the Hollantler delights to asscK-iate with the patriot prince — .Si^'ia tranijuU/ittt in uiidiji — is i>erha]»8 even more ehanicteristic. Across the stormy waters of tlmt bleak and weatlier-beateu shore, the beacon flashed its tranquil light, guiding the strong, and strengthening those who ■were ready to jterish. The value of a chanicter like this, not al(»ne to his own countrjnuen, but to us and to all time, it is ditlicult to over- rate. It is so Seldom that the hero of a religious revolution is not a bigot or a fanatic ! Some of the worst crimes, many of the most childish blunders, that history reconls, have been committed by these nun. They too fn-cjuently, moreover, excite our contempt and indignation by lln-ir conceited rejec- tion of what they are jtleased to call " the weajtons of the flesh." The nicurd of the Lord and of Uideim has sometimes been drawn with wisdom and cunning ; it is oftener, however, the watchword of men who, })y tlnir own fanatical folly and negli- gence, invite the defeat which tln-y merit and sutler. But here, at last, is a religious hero of (piite another stanij) — a man of God, and yet a man of the world ; a soldier of the Cross, and yet a sagacious captain ; a good Christian, and yet a great statesman ; profoundly devout, ami yet ]»rofoundly politic. "I do not," he exclaims emi>liatieally, "calumniate those who tell us to put our trust in God. That is my ojiinion also. But it is trusting (Jod to use the means which He places in our hands, and to ask that His blessing may come upon them." In his secular, as in his religious, politics, the Prince was at issue with his contemporaries. Distrust of " that vile and mis- chievous animal called the jKjople," was the jirevailing sentiment among the statesmen of the age. Orange, wlien he renounced Philip, did not raise a revolutionary standard : he did not desire o 98 IV II. LI AM THE SI LEST. to estalilish any new or democratic sclieme of government ; he was a Conservative leatler ; Je maintiendrai wjis tlie device of his ]H)licy as of his escutcheon, litft tliouj^'h an arintocrat by hirth, anil hreil in a df«j)otic camp, he wa« always anxious — un- allectc'dly, earnestly anxious — to refer his policy for ratification to the great body of the people. He never flattered them; he unsparinj^dy attacked tlieir viees ; liut, feeling that he |)erfectly trusted them, they trusletl him in return with an entire devotion. "Men in their utmost need," he writes, "daily come to me for refuge, as if 1 held power over all things in my hand." How far can the people be relied on 1 still remains the central ques tion of representative government. The answer seldom raises the true issue. With a real lemlir, like ( )r:inge, we may make reply, we need not fear the j)eojile, hut until we can find a few authen- tic leaders, wo had best keep our constituencies as manageable and select as possible. Not having many such men at this present, it remains to be seen whether the experiments we are now making can prove altogether satisfactory. Such was the pittr putriie, as portrayed in his most familiar letters. EkMjuent letters they are ; adminilily clear and simple, sometimes warmed to a line heat by earnestness and indignation, yet never violent nor intemperate. His public despatches are eloquent also ; the successive appeals which he adclressed to the Provinces, and to Euroj>e, are jierhaps the most memorable series of Public Papei-s ever written by a stiitesman. But are we to leave his faults, weaknesses, vices, unrecorded 1 His enemies have attempted to blacken his character, but with no considerable success. They have said that he was over- cautious, a coward, a man devoured by a selfish ambition. Cautious he was ; no man who is not so is entitled to be a leader ; but his caution was not the niggardly and ungenerous prudence of a cold - blooded or sluggish temperament. The caution which Orange manifested was the firmness to restrain premature sympathy and unavailing indignation, and to bide the time when action could become eti'ectiva This restraint is not " a careful vice ; " it is, on the contrary, a rare virtue, a high and powerful effort of the reason. For to leave the provocation unresented, and to hold back tOl the appointed hour is ripe, is infinitely harder than to obey the natural instinct, and to throw one's self, blindly, impulsively, with a Avild cry of hatred and despair, into the melee. Orange was " the Taciturn," until it was time to make his voice heard \ and his tongue, like his j)en, WILLI AM THE SILEXT. 99 was eloquent : then there was no lack of decision and plain- speaking. The charge of cowardice is still mere marvellous. If "William was by nature timid and sensitive, as some have affirmed, the constancy of his henjism becomes all the more memorable. There is no nobler spectacle in this world than that of the trembling and shrinking martyr, shivering with terror as the flames gather round the faint limbs, yet to the end constant to her God. Be sure that such an offering is not less acceptable to Him who holds up " the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees," than the conhdent and unfaltering witness of the strong man, who goes to tlie stake with a song of thanksgiving on his lips and a sense of triumph in his heart. And to assert that the Prince of Orange embarked in the revolutionarj' war to gratify his cupidity and his ambition, can only be credited by those who believe that to sacritice |)lace, powt-r, fortune, friends, for a country's freedom, is the token of covetousness, ami to refuse with even too constant pertinacity "a kingly crown," the headmark of {imbition. Such charges refute themselves, and may be left to the oblivion they bespeak. We are not, indeed, solicitous to show that "William was altogether blameles>;. Hajij>ily, few heroes, l»eyond the school- girl's imagination, are. There may have l>een a savour of world- liness and over-anxious policy in that simple disinterestedness, in that lofty patriotism. It may have been so ; yet when we know that a man is essentially heroic and vitally noble, an alloy of weakness, nay, of b;i.-;eness, does not lessen our regard. "Tlifij may sit," says Sir Thomas iJrowne, "in the orchestra and noblest seats of Heaven, who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory." In tine, the character of " Father "William " is one which, in all its aspects, it is pleasant and profitable to contemplate. The lofty and spacious dome of that forehead concealed a profound intelligence ; but the heart was meek and tender as a woman's. " There I mil mt adequately set forth the falseness of the impression produceil. For we are en rapport with the satirist. We know what the truth is, and we tone do\vn and fill in the picture accordingly. Our experience unconsciously disengages what is accurate from what is inaccurate in the artist's work. But po.sterity cannot do this. To them the limpid, elastic, and transparent stream which tiows past our feet will be petrified into stone. Punch will be an altogether different book to tliem than it is to us. The picture of our society that they will find in it wiU not be the same that we do. The attire will grow much more fantas- tic ; the slang infinitely more inveterate. "We say, — " How true the caricatiire of Doyle, or Leech, or Thackeray is ! " and, lim- ited to the speakers who sift with unsuspecting accuracy the light, and delicate, and masterly shades of exaggeration in which these artists indulge, the observation is perfectly just ; but if our children believe us, they will form a sadly erroneous notion of how their grandfathers and grandmothers looked in the year of grace 1858. » 1858. THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. 103 The histories of many of the great houses were written by humble retainers, the parish clerk or the castle chaplain, who devoted years of patient love and labour to marshalling the ancestry and burnishing the ensigns of their chiefs. Several of these have been recently published by the antiquarian societies ; others are in the course of publication ; and, illustrated as they are by old charters and records, they furnish most valuablt> material for historic investigation. Had Lord Macaulay availed liimself more frequently of their aid, had he relied less on the party squib, the scurrilous ballad, and the gossip of bewildered Cockneys, he would have communicated a more accurate, if not a more vivid, picture of the ]tiu>t. The l\oses of Kilnivock lived on the frontier of Badenoch, the famous stronghold of the clan Chattan, and were intimately connected with many of the great Highland families ; let us glance into the interior of their keep, and see what the old Scottish country life was really like. " Xothing extenuate, nor set down auglit in malice." The keep of Kilravock stands on tlie tliickly wooded bank that overhangs the valley of the Nairn. It is an imposing though somewhat heavy mass of masonry ; a clumsy manor-house in the architectural style of a later century having been tagged on to the square crenelated keep, built by Ilugli. the seventli baron, in the fifteenth century, and designed by that parvenu Earl of Mar who was hanged by the okl nobility in his own scarf over the Brig of Lauder. The castle was erected shortly after the passing, in 14 20, of the famous ordinance against ab- sentees, whereby it was enacted that the nobles should reside on their estates, " for tlie gracious governal of their landis by good poUsing, and to expend the fruit of the landis in the cuntre where the landis lie ; " an enactment that was probably neces- sitated by the passion for foreign service which animated the Scotch gentry. The Roses selected a plea.sant site for their habitation. The oak and the maple flourish luxuriantly ; the peaceful stream wanders quietly through tlie green stratli, and below the battered and blackened walls whose shadow it re- peats ; the terraced garden along the rocky bank is sweet with the fragrance of English violets, planted by fair Mistress Mu- riel or Eufame of the olden time. Until the advent of the Black Baron, who lived in the liefor- mation time, the individual Kilravocks are not very clearly to be distinguished. They grant charters, and settle marches, and I04 THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. stamp the Lions of Eoss or the three stars of Moravia on doc- uments which they cannot sign. Sometimes they " masterfuUie spulyie and away take " the goods of their neighbours ; at others they invoke a reluctant redress from the law for a " spulyie " or " hership " on their own. They inflict summary punishment on offenders who burn their heather or trespass on their forest rights. When devoutly inclined they put up their petitions in the castle chapel, where service is twice a-week performed by the Vicar of Dalcross. The ladies weave elaborate tapestries, and wear gowns and kirtles of damask ; their lords hunt, and hawk, and consume no small amount of " Muskatin, Allacant, and Caprick wine." They seldom leave home, except when one of the clan is being tried for murder or stouthrief before the Lord Justices in Edinburgh, when the Laird goes up with a score or two of retainers at his heels, " to advyse " with the accused. They marry and are given in marriage, and the nup- tial preliminaries are simple and expeditious. The Wolf of Badenoch — the younger Wolf — set the example of rough wooing. He laid hands on the now famous Isabel of !Mar in her own Castle of Kildrummie. Mural, the only child of the last Thane of Cawdor, and the greatest match of her day, was forcibly carried off from her guardian by Argyle, who mar- ried her to one of his sons. A family feud was commonly patched up by a family wedding. One of the many Hughs of the Eoses — they were all Hughs, indeed, father and son, for five hundred years — " spulyied the lands and biggins" of the famous laird of Cromarty ; and afterwards, when the matter grew serious, compromised it by marrying his son to one of Urquhart's daughters. Xor was liberty of selection en- tirely excluded. Another Hugh, for instance, was contracted when a boy ; the terms of the bond being that he was .to marry either Janet or Catherine Falconer, " whichever should appear most expedient or speedful ; " not a bad provision in a bargain of the kind. The chiefs of potent northern houses appear in the earlier pages whose very names are now forgotten \ others whose power has waned, whose fortunes have fallen into decay. The Comyns, the Keiths, the Earls of March, the Earls of Eoss, and many more, have either no representatives among our modern aristocracy, or on the shoulders of a parvenu peer the historic title sits badly. Most of them derived their descent THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. 105 from a Continental ancestry. Cheyne, Hay, and Gordon were of French extraction. The Macallum More came from Italy, — Campbell, or de Campo Bello. So did the Sinclairs. In a charter of 1391, relating to JSTewburgh on the Ythan, which at that time belonged to them, the granter is termed, " Henricus de Sancto Claro, Comes Orcadie, et Dominiis de Eoslyn," — a superb and chivalrous title. The Earl of Huntly, the cliief of the clan Gordon, was then the grand seigneur of the north ; and his possessions were immense, even before James II. granted him the whole district of Badenoch for his services against the rebels, or as the King phrased it, " for keeping the crown upon our head." These early Lairds of Kilravock were hard-headed, hard- handed gentry ; and not many of them merited the eulogium which the family historian pronounced on one of the clan, " as to that and many other troubles, God carrying him through, though in the way of suffering, he was iKitlendo victor,^' — the greater number being better skilled in the use of a different weapon* The Reformation age, however, raised a Rose of another type. " The Black Baron " was, like the Church of England, a compromise. He fought, indeed, at Pinkie, in his hot youth ; it was the only time he ever committed himself. He was trusted by both parties ; and when it is remembered that he lived through the reign of Mary and the regency of IMurray, it will be admitted that the art of "trimming" early attained maturity. He had numerous correspondents all over Scotland, Avhom he committed impartially to the keeping of the Almighty, no matter to what faction they belonged. These correspond- ents (his lady is not among them, for she cannot sign her name, and in her last will and testament her hand is guided by the clerk) write well and gracefully, — the clear idiomatic diction of our old legal authors, at once cautious and copious. The Baron's life was long as it was wary, and he had attained a great age before he deemed it expedient to " commit his soul to the eternal God, and his body to be buried within the chapel of Geddes." During the next century Kilravock presents the appearance of a great farm-steading. The Lairds begin to cultivate agri- cultural pursuits, and their inventories of stock are by no means contemptible. They write letters to learned counsel in Edinburgh, to country neighbours at Brodie or Lovat, to io6 THE ROSES OE KILRAVOCK. " dearest cousins," trustin<^ tliat they are not quite indifferent to the youn^ laird ; and tlio letters read wonderfully like those that continue to bo written by the well-fed, well-bred gentlo- inen-farmcrs of the present day. They are passionately fontl of music ; so they send their dauj^liters to school in Edinburgh, where the young ladies are taught " dancing, singing, playing, and virginalls," at an expense of £12 the (juarter. They affect literature, moreover — a taste acipiire*! at the (Jnimmar .School of Nairn, or at Dugald Dalgetty's Marischal Coll(;ge of Aber- deen, — and " J fori ice at £1, 128., Virijil £1, ICs., Juvenal and Persiuis 14s., BuchannaiikS Psaliim ISs. 4d., Cunfe^^ion of Faith £1," are added to the Castle libmry ; while the News Letter arrives periodically, with its gossip anent the army and the Parliament. The f;ushion of wooing has changed since the Wolf's time ; and Mary Rose meets young Duncan Forbes at the trysting-stone in the birch wood — as other Marys have done since. In public affairs, though constitutionally cjiutious, they incline to the Covenanting side. The fourteenth laird marries a daughter of Innes of Edingicht, who brings the Scriptural phraseology of that family into her husband's house, and has left a vast mass of clandestine correspondence, which she held with those of her o\vii persuasion in the " hard years " after the Kestoratiou ; letters with disguised adilresses, " For the Lady Park," with earnest directions " to read and bum," with initialled signatures only, as " L. D." — " L. D." repi-esenting, we are told, a certain Lilias Dunbar ; a charming devotee, we take the liberty to believe, who no doubt found, as other fair saints have found more recently, a pleasant outlet for her warm feelings in a little pretty fanaticism, rendered then all the more piquant and exciting by the danger, mystery, and intrigue it involved. Hugh the Seventeenth, who brings us down to the middle of the last century, married Miss Betsy Clephane, whose brother, the Doctor, was a man of science and letters, and an active Member of the Eoyal Society. Hugh's mother had been all her life delicate and sickly ; and her accounts with the village apothecary for " tussilago flowers, maiden-hair, mouse- ear, horse-tail, John's wort, penny-royal, Althea-root, white lily-root," and other forgotten simples, are still extant. His father combined the bon-vivant and the litterateur. He added in one year four hundred volumes to the library ; his house- THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. 107 hold accounts are scribbled over with scraps of Greek from the Odyssey ; he had a great respect for Mr Addison's opinions; and he corresponded with Professor Blackwell of Aberdeen, who wrote him in reply, hearty, lively, sagacious epistles, brist- ling with French, Latin, and Hellenic inscriptions. On the other hand, he was rebuketl Ijy the Synod for sitting over his wine at a county convivial meeting until two o'clock on Sundaj' morning ; and he and Colonel Kose, during a two days' carouse in the little tavern at the mouth of the Findhorn, drank " 2 gills of brandy, 8 pints of ale, and 57 bottles of claret." Clever Lord Lovat, writing a letter of condolence to the son, pronounces the father "an honour to mankind;" and to us, much meditating over the latter exploit, he looms large and portentous, a son of Anak, a giant before the Flood. Of Han- overian politics, the old laird contrived to stand well with both parties. Prince Charles dined witli him shortly before the battle of Culluden. " You have luul my am-fht with you," said Cumberland, who came next day. Hugh inherited his father's literary tastes at least. He was a good Grecian, and corresponded with Dr Moir about the great Scottish edition of Homer. When l)r Clephaue is at Kilravock, the itinerant iMistman, who arrives pn-tty n-gularly now, carries letters thitherward from all parts of the kingdom. From caustic Lord Karnes — from Fergusson of Glasgow, the self-taught astronomer — from Lord Sherard Manners, who humorously describes tlie hunting arniiigenients of his county, "my lady being huntsman, and Mrs Hunter whipper-in" — from Sir H. ^lann, David Hume, Harry Erskine, Gilbert Elliot — letters discoursing of love, war, literature, philosophy, the Eeview, the Royal Society, and Jolinson's Dictionary. Gilbert Ellii)t'.s, written in a tone of mock solemnity, are especially amusing. '• I write you," he says, unconsciously forecasting the style of a great modern critic, " like a man of genius, a few hints, the concise style bordering upon the abrupt, which at length may be whittled into obscurity;" and then he goes on to relate how Agis (as he calls the author of Douglas) has descended from the dignity of the drama, and figured on Church politics in the General Assembly ; and how David Hume wanders disconsolately about a huge library, and is resolved to let the world come to its senses before he honours it with another volume. For the rest, the laird encloses, builds, io8 THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. gardens, shoots, and fishes during the day ; dines at two or three ; and of an evening in tlje drawing-room — tlie drawing- room lias been built for a good many years now — there are his books, his music, his wife sewing and knitting and writing hstters (she writes intleed like a sensible woman, thougli she spells abominably), liis boy's lessons, and his little daughter Betsy, who jilays on the spinet, though her uncle, the doctor, pre- fers " the gutarrt!, or mandolino, <'is it is called by the London ladies," and is addicted to "cutting paper," a mysterious fi-male occupation of the past, which he considers innocent but trilling, and is especially fond of sliding with her brothers on the ice, but gives it up when he suggests that it may bring her into " unlucky falls and situations." The sedate doctor and his wild little niece form together a very pretty group in this quiet domestic picture. This little llftsy ultimately (her brothers dying without issue) becomes Lady uf Kilravock, and grows (juite grand and demure. She is a favourite with the Duke of Gordon and his famous Duchess Jean, who is still so well remembered in the North for her plain-speaking, her eccentric habits, and her kind heart ; and she gives, in a letter to a particular friend, a very graphic account of the life led at Gordon Castle by the worthy pair. Mistress Betsy, like the rest of her family, is addicted to litera- ture. Old Lord Kames, gallant and bewigged, fantastic, and yet sparkling with fine sense, vivacity, and bonhomie, visits her ladyship sometimes on his way to the Northern Circuit, and brings her the latest intelligence from Edinburgh about the literary men who live there, and the popular new burletta, Serva PaJrowi, in which the celebrated Italian singer, whom they ask to supper after the play and talk to in Latin, has made such a sensation. She reads Mr Hervey's Coiitemphxtions on Xight, The Whole Duty of Man, Walpole's Memoirs, Dr Johnson's Poem^, Spence's Sermons, and raves about The Man of Feeling, which Henry Mackenzie sends her in sheets as it goes through the press. The said Henry is her cousin and earliest correspondent, and his letters are the letters of the superbly polite gentleman, trained at the feet of Sir Charles, who bends benignly over his fair correspondent, and kisses the tips of her rosy lingers. "When he comes down to visit her at Kilravock, they dedicate walks to " melancholy," and write fan- tastic inscriptions, whereof Henry candidly owns that " they THE ROSES OF KILRAVOCK. 109 are little more than mere, poetry, after all." Besides this, her ladyship, being a literary lady, keeps a private Diary of her own, in which she discourses to herself as if she were walkin«^ on stilts. We wonder if in those charming niorocco-bound and silver-clasped volumes of the present day, into whicli it is " death for any male thing but to peep," the owners talk much about " the best of parents," " the responses of an agreeable conversation," and " the little circumstances which are of import to the bosom of tenderness," — as Mistress IJetsy was in the habit of doing about the year of grace 1770? And so Mistress Bftsy, and five centuries of the Roses, have passed away ; and the little chapel of Geddes where they lie is scarcely any longer to be distinguished. Yet we think we are entitled to say that this picture of an old Scottish " in- terior," though rutle and coarse enough in certain of its lines, is not nearly so repulsive as that which Lord Macaulay asks us to take as genuine. And in particular it proves that civilisa- tion in Scotland was gradually matured, that its progress was regular and coherent, and that there were none of the violent contrasts, the excessive lights and shadows and melodramatic surprises, which modern historians are so anxious to obtain. CHESTER IX 1488. THE clianges that have taken place in the aspect of this country since the close of tlie fifteenth century are sufficiently remarkaljle. A more coJui>lete metamorphosis has not been eilected in the character of the Enf,'lish people than in the character of the land which they inhabit. Great forests stretched across whole counties. The traveller might wander for days through the open glades by which they were traversed witliout encountering a single human hal)itation, except the wooden lodges of the keepers who protected the game. The Normans, in their passion for field-sports, laid waste entire dis- tricts which had been rescued from sterility by the industrious energy of the Saxon ; and though the later sovereigns had forced their nobles to adopt a more sagacious policy, so that large tracts in fertile situations had been and were being " dis- forested ; " yet, to the end of Henry's reign, the woods and marshes occupied a good half of the land of England- The fens were of even greater magnitude than the forests. Many of them extended continuously for more than thirty miles, and travelling was much impeded, as it was necessary to skirt their borders. The city of Elie stood in the midst of one upwards of sixty miles in length, and was, like the ancient capital of Mexico, approached by thxee great dykes thrown across the marshes. The rich meadow-pastures which, now surround the town were overflowed for months together ; the cormorant and other sea-birds haunted the lintels of the abbey and the pre- CHESTER IN 1488. 11 1 cipitous toAvers of the cathedral ; and from the walls the eye embraced a vast expanse of water, dotted with green wooded islands, and traversed by the narrow lines of the causeways which led to the mainland. It was here, on this inland sea, that King Canute and his knights lay on their oars, and listened to the even-song of the monks.^ Around the chief towns, and throughout several counties in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, the country was {olerably cultivated. It had been matter of complaint, however, that even under the most enterprising landowners the propor- tion of arable to pasture land Avas comparatively insignihcant. It is impossible to ascertain the total amount of grain then pro- duced in England ; but from the extraordinary variations in the price of wheat which generally took place during the year, and from the frequency with which we find the poorer classes reduced to bread made of " peasen, vetches, and fern-roots," we may infer that the quantity raised was hardly a(U'(|uate to meet the necessities of a not very dense population. For more than three hundred years these fluctuations are observable ; but as centuries elapse, and cultivation extends, they become less con- tinuous and extreme. In the year 1246 the price of the bushel of wheat was sixteen shillings ; three years before it had been as low as two. During 1254 it sold in the Northampton market at one pound ; in the Dunstaple at a fourth of that price. At Leicester, in the early part of ^larch 1317, it was fifty -four shillings ; four days later it fell to fourteen ; during the harv^est it reached eighty ; a fortnight afterwards, when the crop had been collected, it was under six.- * " Merie sungen the muneches binnen Elie, The Cnut Ching rew there by ; Roweth, cnihtes, near the land, And here we thes muneches saeng. " Harrison mentions the three causeways that led to Elie ; the coniio- rant, he adds, was called the "night raven." "There is no cause wherefore I should describe the cormorant among hawks, of which some be black, and many pied, chiefly about the Isle of Elie, where they are taken for the night raven." 2 State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, Bart., 1797. Appendix Table of Prices. Local Hhtory of Chestir in the Vale Royal. It is necessary to remember, however, that an acre never produced more than twelve bushels of wheat or "one good load of hay." Of course, this diHerence in the rate of production must be taken into account when estimating the total extent of cultivation. 112 CHESTER IX 1488. Dense masses of forest, irameixse breadths of moor and morass, narrow Htripits of arable and consideraljle tracts of pas- ture ;,'rounil — siicli was tlie aspect pn'sented l)y England in the fifteenth century. The f(jrests were stocked with the roe and the fallow, and the antlered red-deer, wlio has now retreated into the naked fiustnessea of Athol or liraemar, then " haunted the fens of Donciister, and the great meres thereabouts." Along the sluggisli banks ftf the inland rivers colonies of indus- trious beavers had erected their lodges, "wherein," says an old naturalist, " their bodies lie drie above the river, although they so provide most commonly that their tails may hang within the same ; " and no traveller could fail to notice " the fair warrens of conies," wliich met him wherever he went. Ilabljits were then a valuable article of commerce, as tht; fur, especially the black, was in great repute for various articles of dress, and the production of " conies " had consequently become a recognised branch of trade. Among the fens, and upon the unenclosed commons, numerous binls which are now seldom or never met with in this country, then bred regularly, and remained through- out the 3'ear. Flocks of the great bustard haunted the downs ; and from the meres, amid the cackling of an innumerable assemblage of the rarer wild-fowl, might be heard at times the boom of the bittern, or the trumpeted alarm of the wild swan. No human intruder disturbed their loneliness, save where the unfrequent cabin of a half-savage waterman nestled among the reeds, or the evening bell rang from the grey tower of an island monastery. For the missionary genius of the Church had pen- etrated these primitive seclusions, and men who slirank from the rough issues of common life, practised, upon the Marsh of Eomney or among the Lincoln Washes, the perilous virtues of the cloister.^ All over Britain the monastic bodies had secured for them- selves the goodly places of the land. The number of the monks was almost incredible. Even in particular districts, and attached to single houses, they were to be estimated not by tens or by 1 De-^cription of Emjland, by W. Harrison — prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle, 157-4. Leland's Itinerary, 15.3S (id edition, Oxford, 1744). Ranisey Abbey was on an island in the Lincoln Washes, and the Franciscans had, in 1264, a convent on Romney Marsh. — Mores Catholici, iii. 260. CHESTER L\ 148S. 113 humlreds, but hy thousands.^ Such a drain upon the energies of an industrious population could ill lie sustained, even under the most favourable circumstances ; and when this immense army turned its arms against the society it had been instituted to protect, we need not wonder that the burden should have quickly become intoleral)li'. Yet it cannot be disputed that, amid much tliat was gro- tesque and much that was ignoble, the life of a cathedral city in these days was a life thoroughly artistic. The ecclesiastical artist understood perfectly what was wanted, and every effect was characteristic and imj>ressive. The most minute detail had been anxiously studied, even down to the melancholy warning of the death-crier.- Ami what a scene it presents ! "Within the cathedral itself, among the noble forms of Catholic art, the augu.st liturgy of the Catholic (,'hurch is being continually repcivted. On the benches (jf the chapter-house, tlie policy of princes is freely canva.8sed by mitred ecclesiastics ; in the ad- jacent cloister, the clergy solemnly exorcise a baron possessed by the devil ; at the feet of a dirty devotee in rags the noblest damsel in the county seeks absolution on her knees ; soldiers who have laid aside the sword, and statesmen who have "retired" from the world, find shelter within the gates of the sanctuary. Outside the monastic buildings, the scenes, though ' In the Monasterj' of St Finian, in Ireland, there were at one time 3000 monks ; the Al)l)ey of liangor, near Carrickfcrgus, containetl 4000 ; and Bangor, in Wale.s, was divided into eight coiiipartinents, to each of which 800 monks were assigned.— J/&/vs Cat/iolU-i, iii. 22<». The " Ages of Faitli " is a curious hook, full of all manner of learning, Christian and Pagan, priestly and scholastic ; there is power, too, of a rambling and discursive kind, and many of the descriptions of local scenei-y are admirably picturesque ; but, on the whole, the book is painful, incomplete, illogical, and unsatisfactorj'. - In a statute passed towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII., it is ordered "that clarks are to ring no more than the passingdiell for poare people, unless for an honest liouseholder, and he a citizen ; nor for children, maydes, journeymen, apprentices, daydabourers, or any other poare person." In 1(562, the Bishop of Worcester asks, in his \'isitation charge: — "Doth the parish clerk or sexton take care to atlmonish the living, by tolling of a passing loHu of their sUilu clianiiH chciiply b) thi* lu-urest hiceeded to I^ondon for the transaction of jiuMic business; hut the hanlship of l>eing sent thei\' was considerei'ul for their attendance — that the (,'rown wa.s fivipu-ntly ohliged to compel the shires and burghs to elect ]tarlianientary representatives.^ Impa.ssal)le roads infest<.'d with highwaymen, wretchetl hostels infested with vennin, made it a matter of dilliculty and jx-ril to reach the metropolis from a dis- tant county. Nor were natural obstacles considered sufiiciiMit to protect the provincial centres of trade ; artificial restrictions wer<> added. The bye-laws of tlie county court.s and of the burgh magistrates were couceivetl in a peculiarly jealous and hostile spirit. The most common articles of consumption, as wheat ami butter, could not l»e transmitted front one count}' to another, except in small quantities and by sjx'cial licence. Numerous economic evils were no doubt produced by this rigorous surveillance — such, for instance, as the remarkable ditierence in the price of [irovisions which existed simultiineously in neighbouring markets — but, on the whole, it cannot well be questioned that the policy was dictated by sound and prudential considerations. It enabled, nay, indeed forced, each district of ' The burgh representatives were paid for their attendance on Parlia- ment at the rate of two sliilliugs a-day. — Sorial HiMortj of thf South rn Count'us!, In (ieoitre RoIkmIs : n work containing much curious infor- mation. CHESTER IX 14S8. 115 the kingdom to preservo within it-self \\w elements of an inde- pendent society. The position, too, iii which the landlord stood to his tenant, had long before ])een greatly modified, and villen- age, in its oppressive forms, had been converted into a more humane and honouraV)le relation. " Let no man, for the future," said a statute of the twelfth century,^ "presume to carry on the ^vicked trade of selling men in market, like brute beasts, which hitherto hath b(>en the common custom in Eng- land : " and from that time fnrward gi-adual modiJications of the common law had secured the emancijKxtion of the serf. To the working classes themselves, esfK-cially to those engaged in com- merce, the existence of the local guilds and of the great trading societies supplied, besides, an obvious basis of co-operation and defence. The effect of a system which conci'utrates in the capital the minute machinery of government is invariably to weaken and enervate the national life ; but, fortunat^-ly, the discharge of local duties, and the exercise of local government, had made the English civilian, the yeoman as well lus the gentle- man, tenacious of his rights and jealous of his lilxTties. We cannot now fonu any very definite notion rlaiit. I'.efdre the ('(jnetual (•(iiillicts hetween the Cyniry anil tln' Saxons. The tlicUitorial power conferre(l hy William on the (.'(mstable of Che8t<.'r wan justilied hy the unsettled haltits and the inccBsant hostility (if Ilia Welsh neii^hbours, who, even by E«lwanl I., were little more tlian nominally subtUied. Since that time it hiid formetl the u.sual rendezvovis for tmojis, whenever an e.xpeoke of a garrison dangerously exposed, frequently assailed, continually on the alert It is interesting to know that the curious termce, with the arched arcade, which ri.ses on either side of the street — " a singular praise or proj»erty to this city," as an old Chester-man has it, and which renders its thorouglifares as picturesque to the modern traveller as those of Berne or Bologna — was originally erecteurchiiso food and raiment, armour or weaj)ons, whatever they may require during the ne.\t twelve months ; others, of a more devout turn, to avail themselves of the "one thousiind days of l»ardon," granted liy Clement, llishop of Kome (not to mention the additional month guaranteetl by the " liushop of Chester" ) to whoever should resort " in jicacealjle manner with gooort. Along the broad wall where we are seated the monks themselves are arrayed, — stout, rudunisliing the wrong parties.^ Tlie AVhitson I'lays were acted at Chester, seven or eiglit on each day, during the ^Itjuday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of tlie Whitsuntide week, hy the various crafts in the city, to each of whom a separate mystery was allotted. The drapers, f(jr in- stance, exhibited the Fall of Lucifer ; the water-carriers of the ] )ee reproduced the Deluge ; the cooks had the Harrowing of I fell. The perf(mners were carried from one station to another by means of a movable scafFold, a huge and ponderous machine, mounteil on wheels, gaily decorated with Hags, and divided into two compartments, the ui)i>er of which formed the stage, and the lower, defended from vulgar curiosity by coarse canvas draperies, answered the i)urposes of the green-room. The per- formers began at the Abbey gates, where they were witnessed by the dignitaries of the Church ; they then proceeded to the High Cross, where the mayor and the civic magnates were assembled; and so on throughout the city, until this motley history of God and His dealings with man had been played out. The j)Voduction of these pageants must have Ijeen attended with considerable outlay ; " to all tlie city," says the old pro- clamation, " follows labour and cost." Probal)ly the expense of each Mystery was not less than fifteen or twenty pounds, estimated according to the present value of money. The dresses liad been originally obtained from tlie churches, but the ])rac- tice seems to have occasioned much scandal among the stricter clergy (William of Wykeham, Bishop of Wincheste5o-//)//0H, 1620. Archdeacon Rogers, 1581. King's Ta/c Ro;/al, 1056. The Life of the Glorious Virfjhi St H'erburij, London, 1521. Ornierod's Che^thire, 3 vols., 1819 ; the most magnificent of the local histories. Boi/al I'wV.« avrl Pro'ji'es.<,.v. old nmnkiKh littioiiK, and the medieval " lu'll-moiitlie " Iuih ^tuwii Ktmn^e and ineredililc. it had its drawliaeks, no r I'untan, — to tlieso cl:is.se.s the " 8cotti:ite of prudence, — as has been Siiid more recently of one in whose veins the same Idood flowed. The misiuiderstanding is tjuite a.s profound of James Graeme ius of Charles Xapier. Both were thorough captains, who calculated every hazard of the game before they moved a piece. But once begun, then no doubt there was what may be nicknamed raslmess, impetuosity ; the imjKituosity without which victory, however well planned, cannot be secured ; the rashness which is the last result of consummate jirudence. But Montrose w:is more than a soldier. To us, at least, he has always appeared one of the most complete, well-balanced, and far-seeing states- men nf his age, — with the exception of Cromwell, the only great practical man the rebellion-struggle gave birth to. Mr Mark Napier has tried t^> vin dust, — could gravely argue, that Montrose's " Address to his Mistress " contained, in the form of a sj)eech to his .sovereign, his political confession of faith ? The hypothesis is absurd and uncritical. It is absurd to suppose that Montrose could abuse liis king, — " Thou traitorous and untrue ; " and it is uncritical to imagine that these hearty and genuine love-verses could be meant, under any circumstances, to indicate a man's political preferences. " He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all. " The golden law-s of love shall he Upon this pillar hung, A simple heart, — a single eye, — A true and constant tongue, — Let no man for more love pretend Than he has hearts in store, — True love begun can never end ; Love one, and love no more." THE MAROUIS OF MONTROSE. 125 These verses would lose to us all their simplicity and authen- tic sweetness, were we forced to believe that they veiled a political parable. The virtue woidd depart out of them. They would become false, artificial, and rhetorical, — an in- ,L,'enious exercise of the intellect, not the expression of the heart. Ikit because they are sweet and simple, we hold that they are what they profess to be. Montmse, during his short life, his biographer adds, had no time to dangle about women. He married "Mistress Magdalene Carnegie" when he Avas a lad ; and it is not knoAvn that he engaged in a single intrigue. The argument is somewhat questionable. As he was free from impurity, he could not write one of the purest jxjems in the language ! Xo doubt there are in his vei-ses many ambiguous and somewhat fantiistic exi)ressions. Probably in a modern love-poem we might not talk of " synods," " committees," anil so forth ; but Montrose's age was euphuistic, and all that can be legitimately inferred from their use is, that liis jioetry did not quite escape the taint. Mr Xapier apologises for Montrose's early adliesion to the Covenant. Xo apology was needed. The fact is, on the con- trary, we think, strikuigly characteristic of the habitual honesty and moderation of his cliaracter. He is clearly one of those staid, clear-headed, unmanageable men who do wliat they con- sider their duty at all hazards. A moderate man ; a man well- balanced and sagacious ; not by any means a fit tool for the zealots of either party. Most of his brother royalists ai-e royalists by instinct and tradition. They throw themselves with blind fidelity into the gidf. Charles is their divinely commissioned master; were he cruel as Herod, and faithless as Xero, they would sacrifice themselves witli equal alacrity. Hut Montrose is an independent thinker who judges for himself. His king, his countrymen, his friends may look hardly upon him ; but with sword and pen and the blessing of heaven he will succour the righteous policy. The national faith has l)een attacked, and the national faith, whicli his conscience approves, must be defended. So he subscribes the first Covenant, and leads the Covenanting army against the Northern Prelatists. I5ut he will as little surrender his honest convictions, his intellectual freedom, the moral breadth of his nature, to the priest as to the king. For he is constitutionally tolerant; he; is really iittaclied to the wise liberty for wliicli he fights; aii.l he ad- 126 THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. heres to his traditions with the habitual tenacity and serious- ness of his cliavacter. Even when in their ranks the Presby- terian Inquisitors find him in this respect "very sair to be i^uided." And as soon as the suspicion crosses his mind that Argyle and the Confederates are playing the king false, that political change and not religious freedom is their aim, he quits them at once and finally. For it was no accident that made Montrose a royalist. His nature was essentially conservative. His classical culture, his serene and somewhat antique cast of character, the hal}itual sobriety of his opinions, separated him from men who were driven by an imperious passion, who obeyed irregular and visionary impulses, who raked up with inflexible harshness the embers of civil strife. His conscience was sensitive ; the old landmarks Avere sacred in his eyes ; his meditative intellect Avas adverse to change. Had the cause of the Parliament been clearly and obviously righteous, it is possible that he might have risen above his creed, and disengaged himself from its restraints. But he had no such persuasion. The struggle, as he viewed it, was a struggle between the national king and an ambitious soldierj^, who would ultimately enslave the state ; and he was not stirred by the hysteric passion, which was curiously blended in the character of CromAvell with wary coolness and common-sense, and which alternately found ex- pression in riotous ir©ny and fervent prayer. And Montrose recognised earlier and more clearly than most of his contemporaries the malign natui-e of the struggle on which the monarchy had embarked. He detected the utterly hostile nature of the elements that at length, after a century of com- promise, had come into direct collision ; and from the first he felt, with the Carthaginian, that it was an Inexpiable War. Among all the soldiers and statesmen Avho then fought and in- trigued, he was the only man, except one, and that one more profound and politic perhaps, but less transparently honest and truthful than himself, who distinctly comprehended the fatal issues involved. "While the king hesitated and procrastinated, while his adAdsers recommended compromise and delay, Mon- trose, like Cromwell, Avent straight to the mark. His ad^dce to Charles never varied. " Hold no terms with the rebels. Either you or they must go down. A truce, a compromise, is im- practicable; not to be desired if it were practicable." We THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 127 think in this light the most interesting letter the Marquis eA-er A^'ote is that indited from " Inverlochy in Lochaber," im- mediately after he had beaten Ai-gyle. Amid the debris of battle, and on the bleak shores of the ensanguined lake, he dictates a state paper to the king. Hot from fight, and flushed with victory, he reasons as a statesman might reason in his cabinet. Eumours have reached him that Charles is in treaty with the rebels ; but he cannot believe that the report is true. " Your majesty may remember," he continues, " how much you said you Avere convinced I was in the right in my opinion of them. The more your majesty grants, the more will be asked, and I have too much reason to know that they will not rest satisfied with less than making your majesty a king of straw." True and striking words ! The political sagacity and the statesmanlike discernment of the man were certainly quite as noteworthy as his genius for Avar, and it Avas morally impossible for such a man to remain in the army of the CoA'enant after a certain period of the struggle. The Marquis, when he raised the royal standard among the braes of Athol, Avas in the prime of life — thirty or thirty-three years of age — and, to judge from the many sketches of him that remain, no unworthy representative of the handsome house to Avhich he belonged. !N"ot largely made, but graceful and com- pact ; his grey eye piercing and brilliant ; his long light chest- nut hair, Avorn in the negligent cavalier fashion of the time ; his nose somewhat high, but firm and aquUine, " like the ancient sign of the magnanimity of the Persian kings," as his chaplain will have it. His enemies asserted that he Avas "stately to affectation ; " but though constitutionally grave and reserved, and of a stainless purity of life, his address is commended by those AA'ho knew him best, for its AA'inning and Avoman-like charm. A still, courteous, self-reliant, SAveet-tempered man; yet hard and tense as steel. Such men may sometimes be met with even yet, — men Avho encounter good and evil fortune Avith the same grave serenity; who are never rude, or loud-spoken, or insolent; but whose grip is vice-like and tenacious, and who adhere to their couAdctions, as was said of the Scottish Jaco- bites by their exiled king, with constant and singular fidelity. And it is this strenuous yet undemonstrative character Avhicli not unfretpiently secures the most passionate devotion, the most implicit obedience. OA^er all classes Montrose at least 1 28 77//:" MAR(2UIS OF MONTROSE. uxercised a special fascination. The savaj^e " rctl-sliank " loved with a fervour that has rarely been rivalled the light, wiry general, who could wade a torrent, or scale a mountain pass in tlie dead of winter, or win a hattle against desperate odds, with the same conlident ease. Nor couM learned and politic men — 8i)ottis\voode, ])e Ketz Parisian courtier and cardinal. Poet Drummond of Hawthornden — escape the charnL Spottis- woode laid aside his law hooks and his presidential gown, followed him to the field, preceded him to the scaffold, left his children a precious legacy to his charge. Tlie Cardinal, who had known some tolerahly distinguished soldiers in his tinn;, pronounced Graeme to be " the only man who has ever realised to me the idea of certain ancient heroes;" and Hawthornden welcomed in his friend's career " the return of the Golden Age." It is difficult to keep pace with Montrose through that brief and brilliant campaign, — Ins marches are so swift and silent, liis victories so rapid and dazzling. He has vowed to bring Scotland back to tlie king, and he begins the enterjtrise with a single follower. Beset on every side, he turns, and doubles, and beats back, and then, when least looked for, falls on his prey with a hawk -like swoop. He routs the puffy burghers of Perth at Ti})permuir; a day or two thereafter he enters the good town of Aberdeen ; then, having enticed Argyle to the Spey, he plunges amid the wilds of Badenoch into out^r dark- ness, as Mr Carlyle would say. He is gaining time, — time to marshal the forces of the royalists who are everywhere scat- tered and disheartened, and to make victory, though marvellous, not a miracle. So he reappears in Athol ; reappears in Aber- deen ; seats himself with consummate skill and coolness among the woods of Fyvie where the Covenanting armies surge against liim in vain. But the Gordons are sulky and will not rise ; it is hopeless to wait longer in Buchan ; so shaking his unwieldy enemy easily off, he once more, in the dead of -ndnter, startles ■with the tread of armed men the eyries of Badenoch, and the barren wilderness of the Spey. That autumn and winter were certainly not propitious to the Puritans. At no time was there greater need for the prayer Avliich Principal Baillie put up, that " the Almighty might be pleased to hlink in mercy upon Scotland." "\Miat between the papistical Highlanders of " James Graeme, sometime Marquis of Montrose," and the great storm of snow wliich then covered THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 129 the country, the members of the northern Presbyteries are sorely beset. But worse fortune is in store for their leaders. Argyle, much perplexed in mind by the unaccountable eccen- tricities of this Will-o'-the-wisp enemy, is on his way to Perth, when he learns that his rival is at his back. Seized with sudden panic, he disbands his army, and makes for the metro- polis. Even there he does not feel that he is safe ; so he renders up his commission to the rebel government and flies to his inaccessible stronghold on Loch Fyne. " It 's a far cry to Lochow ;" and Gillespie Grumach may at length breathe freely ; for his antagonist, wiry and virulent though he be, cannot follow him here. But he does not know his man. jNIontrose is inexorable : through the wildest passes in the bleak December storms — and it is a bitter winter — he forces his way ; and on the hillsides above his own castle Argyle again beholds the watch-fires of his foe. Craven always, and now utterly un- nerved, he flies shamefully, and leaves the rutliless hunter to harry his lair. Having sacked the country of the Campbells, jVIontrose plunges into Lochaber, and prepares to winter upon the deso- late shores of Loch Ness. This is the critical moment, the turning-point in the campaign. He is deserted by a large proportion of his men, and on all sides surrounded by the enemy. Seaforth is in the north at Inverness; Baillie at Perth ; Argyle, recovering from his panic, raises his clan, and %vrites to his friends in Edinburgh that he has " overtook the rogues at Lochaber." A daring blow is required. Montrose doubles back ; leads his men right across the precipitous spurs of Ben Nevis ; and, with startling suddenness, closes in on i\Iacallum More and his men, who are camped round their castle of Inver- lochy on the shore of Loch Eil. Argyle again, like a hunted stag, takes to the water, but he cannot take his army with him ; and Auchinleck, " a stout soldier, but a very vicious man," as his Covenanting allies describe him, is left in command. The winter morning dawns, still, clear, and frosty ; the Campbells can hear distinctly the flourish of trumpets that salutes the royal standard on the mountain, and the wild war-tune of the Camerons as they quit their cover, " Come to me, and I will give you flesh;" — a fierce challenge that day amply redeemed. It was a splendid charge — a handful upon a host ; it must have I I30 THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. como back, one may guess, on Charles Napier's memory, the morning of !Meeanee. Inverlocliy was the most terribly complete of Montrose's victories, — tlie Campltell.s hcin;,' litt? rally driven into the sea, — and its eflect was instantaneous. The prestige of Argyle la destroyed. The (Gordon cavalry, headed by the noblest gentle- man of tlieir race, join the royal standard. The army of the northern rebels melts away in a night. Montrose marches through Aberdccnslnre and Moray into the Mearns without seeing a foe. Neitlicr llaillie nor Hurry will light, and the (Jracnie with masterly rapidity puslies past them to sack Dundee, from which town he eliects a still more rapid and masterly retreat upon Glen Esk. The hills form a citadel where he knows that he is safe. These sterile regions are his arsenals. Tlie Lowland cavalry dare not follow him through tlie passes. Thenceforward for weeks and months he becomes obscure, impalpable, veiled in darkness, a sort of t^-rrible myth. Kumours may reach the Covenanting generals from Athol, from Loch Katrine, from Een Lomond ; not to be relied on, how- ever, for the Puritan spies are batlled and at faidt. So Hurry marclies towards Inverness to join the northmen, who are again in the held ; but ^lontrose is forthwith upon his trail, and at Alderne, in a stitt" and well-contested fight, the veteran army perishes. Baillie, advancing cautiously along the southern bank of the Spey, keeps the royal force in sight for several days, till the ^Marquis again eludes liim, and the scent is lost amid the woods of Abernethy. At length at Alford, in Strath- ♦don, the two generals finally encounter ; and although young Lord Gordon is slain, — a heavy and distressful blow, — Baillie is utterly routed. Of all the Covenanting armies only one now remains to be dealt with ; and among the thickets of Kilsyth, ^lontrose wins his last, perhaps his most memorable victory. He has fultilled his promise. From Inverness to the Border the royal authority is re-established, — he has brought Scotland back to the king. To do what Montrose did, to Avin successive victories over seven or eight trained armies, each of them superior in numbers, discipline, and organisation to that which he led, must be counted no small achievement; but the peculiar difficulty which he had to meet, and which none but a reaUy great man could have met with success, resulted from the peculiar consti- THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 131 tution of his own army. The Highlander was brave, and he liked fighting. But he liked plunder better, and he liked to secure his plunder. So that the general was placed in a sin- gular dilemma. Whenever he gained a battle, he lost his array. The victor, in the hour of victory, was left at the mercy of the vanquished. It is assuredly not the least remark- able fact in his career, that he contrived to secure permanent and enduring results ; in effect, to subdue and pacify the whole of Scotland ; with an army that continually melted away, and to which victory was, in truth, more fatal than defeat. Any energetic Celtic robber could issue from the passes, harry the plain, reive the black cattle of his Lowland neighbours, and then retire swiftly with tlie spoil into his mountain lair. He could do this ; it was all that he could do. Montrose, through the felicity and daring of his genius, contrived to make these fickle and inconstant instruments work out a great scheme of national liberation. For tliough the botly dissolved like the snow, the spirit, tliL^ man, remained, — a man who acted as a magnet, who drew soldiers out of every valley tlirough which he passed, at whose war-cry the red-shanks gathered together from their remotest hills. Such a man was a nucleus, a centre, a ral- lying-point ; and so long as tlieir dreaded enemy lived, the rt'V»el government felt that its supremacy in Scotland was not secure. Wlien, on his way to England, he is at last worsted, forced to quit his o^vn country, and take refuge at a foreign court, he is not cast down nor depressed. He is still fertile in expe- dients ; still pronqtt, resolute, and hopeful ; still gentle, true, and of a good conscience. The elastic vigour of his mind is jis noticeable in adversity as in victory. Charles's death in- deed stung him very sorely ; he felt it keenly ; perhaps he was never quite the old man after it; probably it prompted tliat wild descent from the Orkneys, when he came back with the king's standard in black, and nil medium upon his (iwn. One sometimes wishes that Montrose had died in battle — in victory — wrapt, it may be, in the flag he had kept so bravely. Hut it was better not. A stormy death on the battle-field was fitter for Dundee. "We have said that ^Montrose's was a well- balanced character; his life also was well-balanced. But it needed the last scene to perfect it. The death gives it a beau- 132 THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. tiful lyric completeness which most lives, however distinguished in their incidents, want. It is a noble jjoem from beginning to end ; bniaking into a solemn dirge and wail of funeral music at tlie close. 'I'hat which enables the martyr to endure is the conscious- ness that each indignity of his martynhjni represents a great princijjle. And so widely lias this been felt Ijy men and women, so nobly in consequence have they been able to l>ear, that the degrading instruments of torture and death have escaped from the executioner's hand. They have cea-s^ed to be the instruments of infamy ; and have become the synd)ols of hemic constancy and deathless honour. Christt;ndom bows humbly before the Cross. The crown of thorns has become a crown of liglit. No martyr ever met a meaner death more noldy than Moulrose. lie saw with wonderful clearness the dignity of the indignities that were heajted upon him. The halter, the scalfold, the dismembered liml), had each its noble side, on which it represented honour, loyalty, and unsjxttted faith. It is easy to write thus now : but it was thus, un- dou])tedly, that Montrose saw them, — spontaneously, not by resolute ellort of the will. The neat rellections, the epigram- matic sayings, which seem to critical men and artists (who pause over the scene fastidiously and at their leisure) best to befit the solemnity, remain on well-authenticated testimony as those which, in these forlorn hours, naturally occurred to his mind. " I think it," he exclaims, " a greater honour to have my head standing on the post of this town for this cause, than to have my picture in the king's bedchamber. I am beholden to you," he adds, referring to the terms of his sen- tence, " that lest my loyalty should be forgotten, ye have appointed five of your most eminent towns to bear witnass of it to posterity." Again, as they are tying his hands, " I felt not more honoured," he says, with perfect simplicity, " when his ]\[ajesty sent me the Garter." Montrose was a true poet ; the poetic form being used instinctively by him in moments of strong emotion ; and these his last verses were dictated by the same spontaneous feeling : — " Let them bestow on every airth a limb, Then open all my veins, that I may swim To Thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake, — Then place my pai'boil'd head upon a stake, THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 133 Scatter my ashes — strew them in the air ; — Lord ! since thou know'st where all these atoms are, I'm hopeful thoult recover once my dust, And confident thou'lt raise me with the just I" But in his demeanour there is no rudeness or bravado, — only grave courtesy and polished irony, — the sole weapons his enemies have left him. The greatest of saints, he blandly assures them, have their o\vn peculiar weaknesses. "When they apologise for the extremities to which their brethren have pro- ceeded in England, he answers only, " Error is intinite," — a reply involving endless philosophies as well as subtlest sar- casm. Nay, he can even aflbrd to jest with them, courtly and stately jesting as becomes the ^Marquis. For whatever happens, this at least is evident, that he will not allow these men to close with him ; they are to be held at arm's length ; they are to be kept away from tlie inner chambers of his soul. So he continues to converse with them, sea.^oniiig his discourse with quaint allusion and Latin apophthegm, — " very handsomely," as they admit ; yet somewhat " too airy and volage," grave- visaged Patrick Simson thinks, for the occasion. "When at lengtli his doom was read to him in the crowded house, "he lifted up his face without any word sjieaking." He lifted up his face. A gTand speech, — eluquent in its solemn simplicity. A silent protest: a silent api)eal. "Was it with liim as with an older martyr] " And looking upward, full of grace, He prayed, and from a happy place, God's glory smote him on the face." So died James Graeme, sometime Marquis of !^^ontrose. He went through "the trying scene," his biographer assures us, " with the grace and gallantry of a perfect gentleman," — as if he had engaged to dance a minuet with one of her Majesty's maids of honour, and did it, though he felt the duty rather irksome. Fancy a man entering the next world "with the grace and gallantry of a perfect gentleman." And yet, though the- expression is somewhat unhappy when applied to the grave serenity of Montrose, it does not inaptly describe the way in which men died in those times. They prided them- selves on doing it with perfect correctness and good breeding. 134 THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. Their lace ruffles stiff with starch ; their long locks elaborately curled; and tlie neat little speech, with its not over-liackneyed quotation from Horace or Catullus, to wind up with. Sir Thomas More set the fashion ; it was kept up hy all his suc- cessors during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth ; one of the last and most perfect specimens of an art that has died out is the speech of the Lord Grey of Wilton, who was tried with Ifaleigli in 1G03. "When asked if he had anything to say why death should not be pronounced, these only were his words : — " I have notliing to say ;" there he paused long; "and yet a word of Tacitus comes in my mind, — ' non eadem omni- bus decora;' the house of the "Wiltons have spent many lives in their prince's service, and (irey cannot beg his. God send the king a long and prosjjcrous reign, and to your Lordships all honour." Xeat and curt as an epigram, and surviving as such to the present day, while more words have been spent vainly, — a warning to Parliamentary orators. But Graeme's is unii|ue. *' He lifted up his face without any word speaking." CLAVERHOUSE. MAXY portraits of John Graham of Claverhouse have been preserved, and no physiognomist can study these portraits — more especially the Leven portrait by Sir Peter — beautiful and scornful as Antinous — without suspecting that there -was something greater in him than was manifested in his life. His life for the most part was uneventful ; only at the close was he brought face to face with a great crisis. How did he bear himself in the day of trial 1 I think we have suffi- cient evidence to satisfy us that in circumstances of peculiar difficulty he displayed surprising ability, sagacity, and aptitude for the conduct of great afiairs. His life, hitherto, had been tame. He had done the work assigned to him in a plain, sensible, matter-of-fact way, striving to do it thoroughly, and to make an end of it as quickly as possible. It never seems to have occurred to him that, in his dealings with the West Country "Whigs, he was making for himself an evil name ; that to future generations this military chief, executing without fear, or favour, or passion, the office committed to him by government, would be represented as a devil upon earth, — cruel, violent, rapacious, a lover of innocent blood. I do not think that he exceeded his commission, and the traditions of pitiless severity rest upon no historical basis. We know, on the contrary, that, when in command at Dundee, his government was mild and beneficent. He abolished the punishment of death for petty thefts, — a wonderfully enlight- ened measure for the age, and one which could never have 136 CLAVERHOUSE. occurred to a man of the temperament ascribed hy his defamers to Dundee. The truth is, that his character lias been painted by the zealots whom he tried to crush ; and pedlars and divines, the passion of the mol), and the animosity of the Church, have beirotten between them a monstrous caricature. Even his domes- tic virtues — his temperance and his chastity — liave been used to his disadvantage. One of his libellers complains that he was neither a debauchee nor a drunkard ; his insatiate thirst for the blood of the saints leaving him no time to cultivate the milder vices. lie waited long ; but his opportunity at last arrived. The Ke volution of 1G88 took place. Loyalty with Dundee could hardly be called a passion. Tt was rather an ineradicable instinct which prevented him from seeing for a moment that any road, other than that which lay by the throne, was open to him. " It is not in the power of love or any other folly," he had said long before, " to alter my loyalty." And when the hour of trial came, he never halted nor faltereil. The King was the King — that was the end of the whole matter. He stayed with James to the last; and when in a stupid panic and bewilderment the Prince left his kingdom, Dundee immediately hurried do\\Ti to Scotland, bear- ing with him the royal commission appointing him Commander- in-Chief of the royal forces in the North. But he was not a blind nor ignorant partisan. Many letters, written by him when a fugitive in tlie Highlands, have been preserved. Macaulay has said that Claverhouse spelt like a washerwoman. But these letters alone would suffice to prove that, if he spelt like a washerwoman, he reasoned like a states- man ; the fact which chiefly concerns us. The truth is, how- ever, that he spelt neither better nor worse — rather better, per- haps, upon the whole — than the majority of his noble contem- poraries ; and his style is excellent, — terse, luminous, directly and admirably to the point. There is complete absence of violence or passion in his correspondence ; he reasons quietly ; he is politic, moderate, deliberative, at times sarcastic and even humorous. He never scolds as liis biographer, Mr Xapier, scolds. " Brand," Mr Xapier observes in a characteristic pas- sage, " proved a scoundrel, and proceeded at once to the Prince of Orange, to whom he was introduced by another scoundrel, Gilbert Burnet." Dundee does not say that Burnet is a scoun- CLA VERHO USE. i yj drel, — simply and quietly, and with a pleasant air of contempt, he calls him "Gibby." "Even Cassillis is gone astray, misled Inj Gihhy." Melfort had enclosed a letter, addressed by James to the Scottish bishops, most of whom, however, were prudently keeping out of sight. Dundee, in his reply, cannot resist the temptation to jest. " The bishops 1 " he says, " I know not what they are ! They are now the Kirk invuihle ! I ^vill be forced to open the letter, and send copies attested to them, and keep the original till I can find out our primate." This com- posure, this superiority to impotent resentment, this capacity to jest, — at a time too when almost every Scottish nobleman had' proved disloyal, and when, among Highland wastes, with almost superhuman industry, he was striving to raise an army for the King, and for the great enterprise which he meditated, — are very noticeable traits in the man. There are other respects in which these letters are character- istic. Those who have hitherto regarded Claverhouse as the ignorant partisan or mere military cliief, will be surprised to make acquaintance with a statesman holding large views and solid conceptions of puljlic policy. The writer manifests, more- over, combined with the most perfect courtesy, a singular frank- ness of tone and independence of aim. There is a letter to Lord Strathnaver, who had advised him to renounce King James, and had offered his mediation with the government, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry. The peer had been entirely mistaken when he supposed that the royal cause was desjjerate. On the contrary, the rebel government liad not the shadow of stability. " However," continues the writer, " I am no less obliged to your lordship, seeing that you made an offer of your assistance at a time when you tliought I needed it." His letters to Lord Murray — Athole's eldest son — are models of diplomatic address. He calmly enumerates all the personal inducements which were likely to influence a man like Murray — believed by Dundee to be false, but whom he desired, if possible, to secure — and then he proceeds in a candid statesman- like tone to admit the justice of many of the popular com- plaints, and to show how the abuses which had irritated the nation might be most easily redressed. l>ut the most remarkable letters are those addressed to Melfort, the evil genius of King James. Melfort was one of Dundee's old friends ; and yet he had to tell him plainly that it was necessary for the King's 1 38 CLA VERHO USE. interest that he should ceaso to liold any office about the King's person. Ho dut-s this with pt-rfcct fninkncss, and yet in the way the least calculated to wound. " 1 thought in prudence for your own sake, as well as the King's, you would have thoufjht it hcst to seem to be out of business for a time, that the Kinj^'s Ijusiness mi^'ht go on smoother, and all pretext bo taken away for relx'lliuii ; and this only in ca.se the King find dillirulty in his alliiirs ; for I am obligetwithstand- ing of all the foreign aid, a long war. . . . You desire I may tell you your faults. / use to see none in vty friends, and, to tell you what othei-s find, when I do not l>elieve them, were to lose time. . . . It is the unjuste.st thing in the world, that not being popular must be an argument to be laid aside by the King. 1 do really think it were hard for the King to do it; but (jlorioiis for you — if once you be convinced that the necessity of the King's affairs requires it — to do it of yourself, and l»eg it of him." A few words, now, regarding the campaign on which he had embarked. Dundee, at the outset, acted with great caution. He was content to clear the Highlands of the enemy. He did not care to risk a decisive battle ; and his want of cavalry, and the pre- datory habits of the hillmen, made him slow to quit the natural fastnesses of the uortL These are the reasons for delay which he assigns in his letters to the secretary. " My Lord, I have given the King in general, account of things here ; but to you I will be more particular. As to myself, I have sent you it at large. You may by it a little understand the state of the country. You will see that, when I had a seen advantage, I endeavoured to profit on it : but, on the other hand, shimned to hazard anything for fear of a ruffle ; for the least of that would have discouraged alL I thought if I could gain time and keep up a figure of a party, without loss, it was my best till we got assistance : which the enemy get from England every day. . . . The only inconveniency of the delay is, that the honest suffer extremely in the Low Country in the time, and I dare not go down for want of horse — and, in part, for fear of plundering all, and so making enemies, having no pay." At last he was prepared. Amid these sterile and dismal CLAVERHOUSE. 139 defiles, as they were then deemed, — " an interminable chaos of mountain and of forest, and of the haunts of wild beasts," in the language of one of his followei-s, — he had gathered an army. His standard - bearer has described, in lines which, in IMr Napier's opinion, are not unworthy of the great poets of an- tiquity, the muster of the clans. Skye had sent forth its power. From her wild and wolfy forests aU Badenoch had flocked to the fight. Isla and lona's isles, Knapdale and Jura, Knoidart and ^loidart, Kachlin and Kasay, Barra and ^Mull, with every neighbouring tribe, had rushed to arms. The dauntless Glengarry, the great Glencoe, tlie youthful Lord of the Isles, the Captain of Clanranald, Keppoch, " flaming with gold," the heroic and kniglitly Lochiel, Macleod of Kassa, " from the crest of whose lielm a brazen serpent hisses defiance," Stewarts, Grants, Erasers, Macleans, ^lacneils, had joined Dundee in Locliaber, Avhen the royal standard was unfurled. They had cleared the hill-country, and now they were prepared to sweep the plain, — not, however, until Mackay, presuming on Dundee's forced inaction, had reached the gate of the High- lands. That July morning must have repaid Dundee for many dull and stagnant years. Life, hitherto, had gone somewliat tamely with him ; but to-day he has gathered tlie clans, and hangs like a hawk above the pass. The joy of the falcon, as its wings quiver in the sunlight before it falls upon its prey, is, perhaps, comparable to the thrill which Dundee felt that summer morning, ere he liurk-d his claymores at Mackay. The fair kingdom of Scotland — lying, as it were, at his feet — was the immediate prize of victory ; how many kingdoms, thereafter, who can tell ? ' ^ That Killiecrankie, had Dundee lived, would have made him master of all Scotland cannot be doul^ted. The day after the news of the battle had reached Edinburgh, Duke Hamilton wrote: — "We have got no notice of Dundee's motion since the action, and we fear all Perthshire and Angus will be in arms for him generally ; so what resolution the King takes should not be delayed, for if he carries Stirlinr/ he hm all Scotland. " Sir John Dalrymple, the lord advocate, writing on the previous day, calls tlie news "sorry, sad, and sur- prising. I think the other side of Tay is lost, and Fife is in very ill tune. The Lord help us, and send you good news of your son. " And Sir William Lockhart, the solicitor-general, writes : " All we can do is to entreat the Kuig will send force with all expedition here ; for we have nothing to hinder Dundee to overrun the whole country," 1 40 CLA VERHO USE. Tlio Presbyterian general, with 5000 men, liorso and foot soldiers, passed unmolested throuj^'li the piiss of Killieerankie on tho morning' of the 27th duly, and took up a jxjsition on the nortli bank of the Garry. Dundee, wliose head«^uarter8 were at ]ilair-of-Athol, around whicli the clans were encamiMid, waited until Mackay liad ])Ut tlie pass fairly between liis army and the Low Country. Leaving a small force in tho enemy's front to engage his attention, he crossed the Tilt with tho remainder of his men above JJlair, marched round the back of the Hill of Luile, and, cresting the heights of Kenroy, descended on Mackay's right Hank. This move not only obliged Mackay to change his front, but, in the event of tho day going against him, left him in a position of imminent I)eril, — the steep banks of the Hooded (Jarry lying directly in his rear. The hill-men, however, did not immediately attack, — Dundee holding them back " until the sun had left the hilL" Then — himself in the van — he threw them upon the enemy's line. He had barely 2000 men; liut the impetuous charge of the Highlanders was irresistible. They had to advance across a level plain of some extent, and many fell in the advance ; but Mackay's men, the moment the claymores were among them, wavered and gave way. Many fell on the field. Many were driven into the (larry. Mure than five hundred were captured and brought in i)risoners next day by the Athole men who luul taken no part in the tight. The rout of the Presly- terian army was complete. It was, in fact, utterly anniliilated, — or^ly a few fugitive horsemen reaching the Low Country in safety. There are one or two points in the conduct of this battle which deserve to be particularly noticed. Dundee allowed ^Mackay to take his army through the pass, and then threw himself between the Presbj-terian general and his line of retreat. He adopted this course to make defeat decisive. At the council of war held on the morning of the battle, it was suggested that Mackay should be attacked on his passage tlirough the pass. But Dundee refused to adept this suggestion. " Xo," he said, " it is not enough to drive them back : they must be destroyed. Give us a decisive victory, and Scotland is ours in a week. Let Mackay and his troopers enter this cul-de-sac, and not a man of them escapes." The move was at once daring and politic : and the issue of the CLAVERHOUSE. 141 day's fight fully vindicated the sagacious autl far-seeing hardi- hood of Dundee. It is noticeable, also, that thus early, Dundee had won the confidence of the clans. They had recognised at once the hand of a master. Nothing proves this more conclusively than the well-ascertained fact that the two armies faced each other in order of battle for more than three hours before the charge was made. It Avas difficult to restrain the hill-men at any time ; and it must have been doubly ditficult when they were being galled by the cannon which Muckuy had brought with him. But the declining sun shuue full in the faces of the clans ; and Dundee resulutely declined battle until it had sunk behind the hills. The battle of Killit-Lrankie was fought in the summer twilight. These wild mountaineers, had they had their will, would have drawn their claymores, whenever, emerging from the hazel woods of Lude, they caught sight of the foe ; but their chief had saitl that it was iifedful to wait, and without a murmur they obeyed. Daring and vigilant, cautious aud far-seeing, prompt and resolute, Dundee undoubtedly jiossessed the qualities of a great commander. Throughout the wliole of tlie campaign he appears to have committed only one Idunder. Lut it was a fatal one. lie led his men at Killucnin/de. Yet it was a calculated rashness. At the council of war, held on the morning of the battle, Lochiel had declared that lie would quit the camp if the general put himself in the front The life of Dundee was more valuable to the monarcliy than even a victory at Killie- crankie. liut Dundee had resisted. "Would the clans trust him thereafter, if tliey saw him seeking safety in the rear i For the future he would be prudent ; but — to win the con- fidence of his men — he must be permitted to give one harvest- day's work to the King his master. Lochiel yielded ; and when the charge was made, Dundee was in the van. "And if any of us shall fall upun tliis occasion," he had said to his men before the battle, " we shall have the honour of dying in our duty, and as becomes true men of valour and conscience." He himself fell early, pierced in the right side by a musket-ball. ]>ut he lived to know that he had Avon a great victory. As he fell from his horse, one of his officers, a Johnstone, caught him in his arms. " How goes the day t " asked the dying Viscount j and being answered, " It goes 142 CLAVERHOUSE. well for the King, but I am sorry for your lordship ; " he replied, " It the less matters for me, seeing that it goes well for my master." Dr Pitcairn wrote a classical epitaph on Claverhouse which Dryden translated, and which everybody knows ; but terser and more telling was the exclamation of the old chief, who remembered the charge at Killiecrankie, at the indecisive fight of Sheriff-muir, — " Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" JOHN DRYDEN. TOHX DRYDEN stands in the foremost rank of •^ English satirists. He is the most forcible and masculine of English poets. For sheer downright in- tellectual strength we must seek his fellow among the great philosophers and divines, — not among poets. His justice of judgment, variety of faculty, felicity of dic- tion, splendour of invective, have rarely been matched. It is true that the finer and more delicate forms of the imagination did not visit him ; his keen observant eye failed to detect their difficult beauty ; his ear was deaf to their haunting music. Yet even in his infirmities we have been used to regard him as a not unworthy repre- sentative of the English type of character, — unideal, yet manly, sagacious, afi'ectionate, and fairly if not scrupu- lously honest. To Lord Macaulay, however, John Dryden was a man many degrees worse than his fellow-men. The "Whig historian pursued the Tory poet with a peculiar energy of dislike. It cannot be said, perhaps, that this hostility is calculated to do its object much permanent injury. Lord Macaulay is immensely popular with the masses, 144 JOHN DRYDEN. and many able men are unable to resist the charm of his dili<,^ent rhetoric and fluent lof,ac ; but the violent contrasts of light and shade to which he habitually resorts are distasteful to the critical and somewhat col- ourless spirit of the time, and the writers who mould the opinion of the future are little, if at all, under his influence. These men — going, it may be, to the root of the matter, yet too often brusfjue, arrogant, and paradox- ical — are indisposed to surrender their independent judg- ments and their individual convictions to the guidance of any leader, and least of any to the guidance of one who sacrifices minute truthfulness to broad and striking elfects, who divides so sharply the tangled motives of men, who is so constantly clever, ingenious, luminous, animated, j)ictures(|ue, but who lacks, as they fancy, the subtle insight and curious cunning of tlie true inter- preters of human nature. The fame of John Dry den, — " that noble old Englisli lion," as Thackeray called him, — is probably safe enough : in the meantime, however, it may be worth our while to note how, and in what respects. Lord Macaulay's portrait of tlie great satirist is imperfect and misleading. The Drydens, who originally came from Cumberland, settled latterly at Canon Ashby in Xorthamptonshire. John Dryden's great - grandfather, by his last will and testament, solemnly bequeathed his soul to his Creator, " the Holy Ghost assuring my spirit that I am the elect of God." The poet — who thus came of a Calvinistic house — was born on the 6th of August, 1631. He was educated at "Westminster under Dr Bushby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. From the University he went to town ; and, as the only way by which a living could be earned by literature in those days, began to write for the stage. He continued to do so, more or less industriously, all his life. In 1668 he succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet- laureate. It was not, however, until the fierce contest on the JOHN DRY DEN. 145 Exclusion Bill had broken out that Dryden's magnificent fac- ulty as a satirist was manifested. Absalom and Achito2)hel was published in 1681. It was eagerly welcomed, and became at once amazingly popular. Dr Johnson's father, an old bookseller, told his son that the sale had never been equalled in his time, except by SacheverelVs Trial. Absalom and Achitoj)hel was followed by The Medal, in which the writer ridiculed Shaftes- bury ; and by Mac Flecknoe, in which he ridiculed Shadwell. In 1686 he became a convert to Roman Catholicism; and, at the desire of James, wrote The Hind and Panther, to explain and vindicate the arbitrary ecclesiastical measures which the King had been induced to adopt. After the Revolution he ceased to be laureate, and returned to his old trade of play- wright. The writing of plays, of prologues, and of translations, occupied the remainder of his life. To the last he retained his vigour. The celebrated Ode to St Cecilia was composed at " a heat " shortly before his death. He died on the 1st of May 1700, and Avas buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden was a man of an easy, indolent, and careless temper. Kone of his principles were deeply rooted. He never found leisure to mature his convictions. He had been a busy man from his youth upwards ; he had been forced to work hard and incessantly for daily bread ; and among the eager crowd of courtiers, and playwrights, and poets, he had found it difficult to keep his footing. A high sense of duty was not to be ex- pected from a man trained in such a school. And duty, in its highest acceptation, was a word unknown in Dryden's vocab- ulary. He was unfitted by nature to play the part of a martyr. He had scarcely an opinion, in his earlier years at least, for which he would have gone to the stake or the pillory. There is considerable resemblance between the character of Dryden in this respect and the character which the popular voice assigns to The Times newspaper. Like The Times, the great poet did not desire to form the opinion or to mould the policy of his contemporaries. He Avas content to reflect the age as in a mirror. His vigorous logic Avas ever eager to vindi- cate the fashion of the hour. His prefaces shoAV an admirable critical sagacity ; but they are often sophistical. For his plays, reflecting the popular taste, are Avhimsical and grotesque ; and K 146 JOHN DRY DEN. when a critic is ready to vindicate the wliimsical ami ^Totesque, lie must borrow the weapons of the Kojtliist, He liked to float with the stream : it seemed to him neitiier wige nor safe to swim against tiie tide. Thus he W!w often inconsistt*nt : his opinions wendent. He hud a sovereign intellect, liut a subject will. He needled sympathy. He liked to be liked. He leant upon others. His quick, active, generous sympathies eagerly sought for a return. He could not suffer in silence, — estranged from those who had charmed his imagin- ation, or captivated his all'ections. l)iscord hurt and worried biin : isolation was to him the keenest misery. Nor Wiis this the worst: opposition chilled his imagination as well as his heart Ere he could bring his faculties into highest working order, he required to be caught up, and hurried ahmg, by the passion of the moment. To the urhltriinn jyopulnrix aurce he was acutely sensitive. MiUon's soul wa-s like a star, and dwelt apart ; but Dryden could not work in solitude. He was in his element in the city, in the coffee-house, at court, in the theatre. It has been said that necessity forced the poet to prostitute to low present uses a sublime and noble genius. Put it may be doubted whether in happier circumstances he would have done so much, or so well, as he did. His faculties were naturally sluggish, and required to be spurred into activity. His tem- perament, moreover, was the temperament of the orator rather than of the poet. AVhen at his best, it is easy to see that he is €ii rapport with an imaginary audience. In the heat of an ex- cited imagination, he addresses a listening assembly. All his greatest works — his Absalom and Achitopthel, his Medal, bis Hind and Pantfier — were produced, in the hurry of battle, to serve a t-mporary end. Had he lived in the country, and farmed his father's aere^, it is more than probable that his •poetry would never have risen above mediocrity — would have wanted the elect r'c spark which is struck out when the imagina- tive reasoner is brought into instant contact ^vith those whom he desires to persuade. Dryden was thus all his life an inconsistent man. Acutely JOHN DRY DEN. 147 sensitive to the changes of the seasons, he lived in an age of sudden, severe, and violent change. It was difficult in that age for the steadiest man to maintain his constancy, and Dry- den scarcely made the effort. But, " if he changed " as l)r Johnson loftily observed), " he changed with the nation." You may go round with the globe — innocently enough : and incon- sistency is often only another name for the inevitable progress of opinion. An obstinate man shuts his eyes and closes his ears : but Dryden, as we have seen, was easily accessible to direct and popular impressions. He sometimes went wrong; but, generally speaking, his inconsistencies will be found to represent the stages of an intellectual growth. Dryden's was essentially a teachable nature. He was never insi)lently big- oted. "When experience had opened his eyes, he was able to lay aside pleasant vices, to renounce favourite errors, to acknow- ledge freely and frankly that he had been wrong. The very impressibility of his character was a point in his favour. His grasp of principle was not tenacious : but he could the more easily Hing prejudices away. His taste, which had been vitiated by evil example, imjjroved as he grew old. His enemies miglit tell him, indeed, that he who had once been the most vehement advocate of rhyme — " my long-loved mistress " — had become its most vehement assailant. But the rej)roach was in truth a compliment; for it showed that he could learn and unlearn, and that, though frequently led astray, the purity of his taste and his natural sagacity ultimately asserted their superiority. Dryden's convei-sion to the Church of Kome has been, indeed, eagerly seized upon by those who dislike his jiolitical persuasion. Lord Macaulay, echoing the language of many of his contem- poraries, designated him "an illustrious renegade," and attri- buted his change of faith to the meanest and most despicable motives. The sordid motives assigned by Lord Macaulay are inconsistent, as I have shown elsewhere, with the visible circum- stances of the case ; nor is it difficult — if we consider attentively the character of the man, and of the position in which he was placed — to arrive at the probable grounds of the poet's change of faith. The Roman Catholic was the religion of the royal family, — of a family to whom Dryden was attached by feelings of strong personal regard. Charles, if the worst of kings, was yet the pleasantest of companions. Perfectly uualTected, and perfectly 148 JOHN DRY DEN. fearless, he did not liesitiite to mix witli liis subjects in the most familiar manner. And he had a shrewd eye both for men and bucjks. ]Ie had accjuired his experience in a school, indeed, which had aged him Ijcfore his time. He was an old man at the Restoration. " I never till this day observed that the King was mighty grey," Pepys says, about 1662. In his careless brilliancies (and many of them are really, and not royally, brilliant only) we see a mind of great natural j)art8, that has been permitted to run to seed, (joml-humoured, if somewhat cynical, toleration was his liabitual mood. His courtiers might quiz him : he only laughed. "When he heard of Rochester's well-known epigram, he observed : " Quite true : my sayings are my own, but my doings are those of my min- isters." Shaftesbury, with his usual felicity, said that under King Charles the unfortunate fell lightly; ami, had Charles consulted his own inclinations, he would never have sent any- thing sharper than a jest or an epigram after his bitterest enemies. IJut though liabits of indulgence had weakened the spring of his mind, it still retained a Hue edge. His taste was good, and ho liked good books. If it be true that the fine lines of Shirley, — " The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things ; There is no ai-niour against fate ; Death lays his icy hands on kings. Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scj-the and spade," — were greatly admired by him, he must clearly have possessed a capacity for appreciating poetry of the highest class. Charles starved his poets ; but, so long as they did not weary him with importunities, he was pleased to meet them, and to have them about him. ' He was frankh^ intimate with "Waller and Dryden. He told the former, it is said, that his ode on Cromwell was superior to that on him-elf. "Poets, sire," was the witty apology, " succeed better in fiction than in truth." Xot unfre- quently, of a morning, the King might be seen with Dryden in St James's Park, conversing familiarly about the last rhyming play, or the new book of poems. Charles appears to have had JOHN DRYDEN. 149 a real regard for Dryden ; he was always ready to defend him when assailed, teUing those critics, for instance, who charged the laureate with tlieft, that he only wished they would steal him plays like Dryden's ; and Dryden, on his side, who loved the great, was intoxicated by this flattering intimacy with royalty. "While the King lived, his laureate was one of his stanchest friends ; at his death, one of his truest mourners. The attachment which he had felt for Charles was, on Charles's death, naturally transferred to James; and not only was James a Catholic, but some of the poet's nearest connections — his wife and his eldest son, among others — were already members of that Church. Such a relationship could not fail to exercise an important influence on the opinions of a man like Dryden. His tempera- ment, as we have seen, unfitted him for opposition. He could not put out his leaves in the shade. He liked to bask in the sunshine, not merely because it was fileasant, but because it was essential to the free and harmonious development of his poetical nature. Gracious, generous, tolerant, of a most loving and lovable disposition, he was yet entirely deficient in will. He covdd not separate himself from his friends ; rather than do so, even when his better judgment was unconvinced, he was ready to bear them comjrany. There is moral weakness, if not cowardice, here ; the character is not severely masculine : still there is a vast difference between the man Avho changes his religion because he is a base and sordid adventurer, and the man who does so because he cannot bear to be divided from those to whom he is attached. It must be remembered, also, that there was an ancient alliance between the High Tory party and Koman Catholicism. Both hated the Puritan, — the one because he had destroyed the monarchy, the other because he had carried Ids revolt against the Papacy to its logical conclusion — which the Church of England had wisely refused to do. The courtly gallants of that age oscillated between infidelity and Popery, — between the Papal nuncio and Hobbes, to whom, as Clarendon says, the doors of AMiitehall were open.^ Dryden did not love the priesthood of any church, but it is probable that he regarded - "After the king's return he came frequently to court, where he liiul too niany disciples, and once visited me," who do not by any I50 JOHN DRYDEN. the Puritan pastors, under whom he liad suffered in his youth, with peculiar dislike. For years he had been inclined to doubt ; but doubt was not the mood natural to his dependent temper. When, in later life, he began to experience the need of religion, the inducements which Eomanism holds out were those which appealed most directly to his mind. In the Reliyio Laid, his first serious poem, he ostensibly attacked the Papacy. But, even in this work, he showed that he was not insensible to the strength of the authority which it claimed. Such an omniscient infallible Church, he says in effect, were Avorth the whole canon of .Scripture " cast in the Creed ; " and — he continues — one cannot help wishing for such a guide, were it only possible to find him. In the interval between the publication of the Religio Laid and of The Hind and Panther, he persuaded him- self that he had found what he had so earnestly desired to find, — some cheap and secure spiritual footing : — " What weight of ancient witness can prevail, If private reason hold the public scale ? But, gracious God, liow well dost thou provide For erring judgments an unerring guide ! Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light, A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. teach me to believe Thee thus conceal'd. And search no farther than thj'self reveal'd 1 But her alone for my director take, Whom thou hast promised never to forsake." To Dryden's understanding the one position was the logical development of the other. It cannot be reasonably doubted that the writer of the Relirjio Laid was on the high road to Catholicism ; especially when we know that, in his case, the intellectual craving was urged on and reinforced by the affections. Criticism of this kind, involving, as it does, inquiry into the heart and the conscience, is always attended with a measure of uncertainty. But it appears to me that Dryden's subsequent career attests the sincerity of his change of faith. The internal evidence of The Hind and Panther cannot be disregarded. The Hind and Panther is the icork of an honest Roman Catholic. means approve of his political doctrines. — A brief View and Surrey of the danrjerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr Hobbes' book entitled 'Leviathan.' JOHN DRY DEN. 151 Whatever might have been the original and exciting cause of the change, there can be no doubt that, while engaged in the composition of that remarkable poem, the writer earnestly believed that he had done his duty. He educated his younger sons in the Catholic faith : spite of solicitation, spite of menace, he never wavered in his allegiance. He had made his choice, and he did not flinch. He was true to his religion and to his king. He declined to dedicate his Yirgil to A\'illiam (though Tonson partly succeeded in giving the Liberator's hooked nose to the Trojan hero), and he declined to tamper with his con- science, or to conceal his religious convictions. " I must follow the dictates of my reason and of my conscience, — do my duty and suffer for God's sake. I can never repent of my con- stancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer." These expressions are taken from a letter written shortly before his death, and he died in the com- munion of the Church wliich he had adopted. He had found the rest Avhich he coveted, and he did not care again to tempt the waves on which he had been storm-tossed. Lord Macaulay says that Dryden had during manj^ years earned his bread by grossly flattering rich and noble patrons ; and that self-respect and a fine sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a life of mendicancy and adulation.^ The florid dedications of that age are apt to startle a reader used to the simplicity and reserve of our own ; but we should arrive at a most erroneous conclusion if we inferred that an amount of adulation which would indicate at the present time a truly despicable spirit indicated meanness and servility in the reign of Charles XL These florid dedica- tions were the fashion of the day. They were one of the recognised forms of literary work, and were paid for accordingly. For more than a century scarcely a single work had been published by any author of note which did not carry on its title-page the name of some patron — more or less illustrious. Even Spenser condescended to pay the current tribute to Caesar. To his fine and mystical poem fifteen of these adula- tory pieces are prefixed. Some writers, no doubt, carried the practice to an extravagant and ludicrous excess. One author ' Hlatory of Etujlcmd, ii. 196. 152 JOHN DRYDEN. dedicated each book of his translation of Hippocrates's Aphorisms to one of his friends, and the index to another. Dryden, in like manner, inscribed the different books of his translation of Virgil to various individuals, — " an economy of flattery," in the words of Dr Johnson, " at once lavish and discreet, which did not pass without observation." But, apart from occasional excess, the custom was one to which men of high spirit and undoubted courage did not hesitate to conform. It ?jecame a contest of wit, an intellectual piece of gymnastics, — sanctioned by taste and present custom and ancient repute. Who can represent my lady's virtue and charity, or- piy lord's eloquence and learning, in the richest, most splendid, and most graceful colours ? Tlud is what is to be done, — Avho among you can do it most effectively ? To stand on your head, or to wear an outrageously coloured hat, may be very ridiculous and unbe- coming ; but the man who does so, in common with the rest of the world, cannot justly be charged with baseness. This curious and whimsical art formed in one sense the portrait- painting of the time. The artist did not essay, indeed, to represent his sitter to the life. He did not care to copy too closely the features of his patrons. They became, under his skilful manipulation, the Seasons, the Hours, the Graces. It was necessary, of course, to preserve a certain consistency ; but when the naked figure had once been lightly indicated, the artist might add at will the choicest flowers of speech, and the finest bloom of fancy. This was what Dryden did, — more skilfully, more lavishly, more superbly, than any of his rivals. Pope is a noble flatterer, but after an entirely different fashion. How quietly does he render his homage — Avith what a delicate hand, Avith Avhat refinement of tact, with AAdiat point and appositeness ! His flattery is never overdone ; he preserves a monumental conciseness, a terse Horatian simplicity ; he is occupied upon something quite apart, and merely makes his friends a courtly boAV by the way as he passes. Pope's homage is the involuntary admiration of an equal ; Dryden's is the pros- tration of a worshipper, the ardour of a devotee. Dryden had an admirable insight into character, as his sketches of Burnet and Shaftesbury and Biickingham show ; but in these triumphal processions and Olympian banquets we are not to look for nice discrimination. Lord Treasurer Clifford is a better Maecenas, Sir Charles Sedley a more elegant Tibullus, The nobleman JOHN DRYDEN. 153 who brought the poet to "Whitehall is that Pollio or that Varus " who introduced me to Augustus." ' " The Queen of Beauty " and the " Court of Love " are represented by the Duchess of York and her handmaids. This splendid homage, coming, iTdrpureo ore, from the master of English song, digni- fies adulation. It is the flattery of a Ealeigh, — he kneels and casts his cloak before the queen. " ^Alien factious rage to cruel exile drove The Queen of Beauty and the Court of Love, The Muses dropped with their forsaken arts. And the sad Cupids broke their useless darts : Our fruitful plains to wilds and deserts turned. Like Eden's face, when banished man it mourned. Love was no more, when loyalty was gone, The gi-eat supporter of his awful throne. Love could no longer after Beauty stay. But wandered northward to the verge of day, As if the sun and he had lost their way. But now the illustrious njnnph, returned again. Brings every grace triumphant in her train." A dedication by Dryden, therefore, is to be regarded solely as an intellectual tour de force, not necessarily involving ser- vility of feeling or lack of self-respect ; and it is in this light, I have no hesitation in saying, that whatever I otherwise know of the facts induces me to regard it. The spirit of the literary and political controversy of that age was savagely intemperate ; but it is eminently unfair to single out Dryden, as Lord Macaulay has done, to point the moral of his censure. " The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers were at this time animated against the Whigs, deserves to be called fiendish." ^ The converse of the proposition — so far at least as Dryden was concerned — would more nearly have represented the truth. Dryden Avas not a vindictive man. His robust and generous nature could not harbour petty malice. Congreve says that he was humane, compassionate, moderate in conversation, gentle in correction, ready to forgive. And probably no public man of that day had more to forgive, had been so coarsely and bitterly assailed. He had not only been ridiculed and caricatured ; he had been beaten by Rochester's hired ruffians, he had been accused ' History of Eiujland, i. 403. 154 JOHN DRY DEN. of gross and iiifaiuous crimes, his peculiarities of face and maiuKsr had been publicly exhibited on the stage. He was not the man to allow such assaults to pass with impunity. He felt them keenly, and at the moment (though his resent- ments were not long-lived) he resented them bitt(,'rly. AVe may believe that he partly knew and understood how im- mensely superior he was to the rivals who were pitted against him ; yet his tone of arrogant confidence and ostentatious supciiorily was clearly to some extent assumed. Thackeray justly lauded this " nol)le old English lion;" and we see in his character something of the lion's generosity, and of the lion's violence. With an air of intense disdain and con- tempt for the insects that buzz about his ears, he unites swift indignation and almost Itreathless anger. The kingly beast is persuaded that they are vermin ; yet — for the reptiles hurt him — he roars and winces and lashes his tail fiercely. And he could not afford to be serene. His position was a false one : he had ([uitted the cool poetic woodside, and descended into the heated and dusty arena ; for bare life he haut when ])ryden Lcf^un to write, the echoes of the old school were growinj,' faint. Evil tendencies, which, though in the bud, could be discerned even in the greatest of the Elizabethan dramatists, had ex- panded and developed. The euphuistic ]»(^ets j)layed upon words, the metaj)hysical ni)on ideas. Truth and melody were sacriticeil — the oni; to mental, the other to verbal dexterity. The tone of this school was comjianitively pure ; but the cour- tier poets of the Kestonition, who brought Ereiich manners as well as Ereneh idioms across the Channel, added a xoUj>ron of false and heartless wit. The ver-e of Dorset, — " Love is a cahner, gentler joy, Smootli are his locks, and soft his pace ; y/( /• Cupiil is a lilackgiianl Ixty, That runs his link full in your face," — might be used to indicate the difference between the older and the later poets of the Stuarts. Ilerrick, indeed, still lived, and Herrick, who had talked with the old ma-sters, had caught their glow, — some of their light had fallen upon him. Except Her- rick, there was not a man living in England in IGGO who could have written The Siced Ncjlcct, or the Ode^ to Celiu. In The Hesperides; with a vast mass of indecent rubbish, we find poems that breathe a true simplicity, others that preserve a tender solemnity, like that of the failing light or of the autumn leaves : — " Fair daffodils, we Meep to see You haste away so soon ; As yet the early rising sun Has not attain'd his noon. Stay, stay. Until the hastening day Has run But to the even-song ; And haA-iug prayed together, mc Will go with you along I Eut Herrick stood almost aloue, and it was to the poetical society I have described that Dryden was introduced. Here he at once became a power, and his weapons were simplicity and directness. There was little resemblance, indeed, between the moral and somewhat sullen intensity of Jonson, and Dryden's keen and trenchant faculty. Xor did he escape unharmed JOHN DRY DEN. 159 from the taint of the prevailing poetical taste. Passages of false magniticence and gaudy ornament ahoiind in his plays ; and his earlier poems are disfigured by the mental and verbal conceits which were then so popular. But the drama, for which he had really no vocation — " to the stage," he confesses, " my genius never much inclining me " — is to be regarded only as the workshop where he polished his arms ; and his great natural sagacity always kept him mure or less true to nature, and gave even to his most whimsical conceits the air of prob- ability which a logical and powerful intellect stamps upon its creations. His contemporaries and immediate predecessors had lost directness as well as simi)licity. They curveted round their subject; they were allusive, illustrative, anecdotical, anti- tlietical, but never straightforward. ])ryden went stniight to the mark. He hit liard. He was a sturdy thinker, an ener- getic controversialist. He reasoned closely, — vigorously, at letist, if not always accurately. His wit was keen and incisive. His illustrations were compact, — splendid as th<; garb of a ( 'avalier, yet titling with Puritanic jirecision. A man possessed of such a fiwulty could not fail, coming at the time he came, to work a revolution in our literature, and the change in modern, poetical taste is largely due to the influence of I)ryden. To this vigorous directness were added wonderful fertility of conception, and extraordinary splendour of language. He con- tracted to supply the theatre with four jilays a-year, — in one year he produced no less than six. They may not intrinsically be worth much ; but when we consider that they are ingenious and elaltorite, that they abound in amusing incidents and strik- ing situations, and that nearly all of them are written in rliynie, we obtain some idea of his copious resources and of his amazing inventiveness. l)ryden's " mighty line " is a household word. It is needless to dwell upon that incomparable conmiand of the stateliest music of our mother-tongue, to which the author of Ahsitlom (iml Achitojthel and of The Hind and Panther at- tained. Such lines as the lines that close his great satiiical poem, — " HL'iKtforth a series of new time began, Tlie mighty years in long procession ran ; Once more the god-like David was restored, And willing nations knew their lawful lord," — are full of life, and fire, and strength, and kingly dignity. i6o JOHN DRYDEN. Though Dryden was unquestionaljly the most accomplished reasoner in verse that we have had in England — reasoning even more freely and accurately in verse than in prose, — a rare, if not aduiiraljle gift — yet it is as a satirist that his fame endures. The form of our hunutrous literature has undergone a great cliange since the lievuluti(jn. Charles II., witli keen mother- wit, is reported to have said of certain cautious consjjjrators, that they committed treason Ijy advice of counsel ; and our humorists, in an age when, according to high authority, " truth is a libel," virtually write after the same fashion. In this way all our popular iron}-- is inferential, and, wlu.'ther in the speeches of Mr iJisraeli, the romances of Mr Thackeray, the criticisms of Pandi, or tiie poems of I>on Gaultier, derives its force from the subtle reserve and sarcastic delicacy of a weapon that wounds with the stealthy stroke of the stiletto. liut Dryden, in his satirical as in his other poems, is eminently direct and eni])hatic. He tells us wliat he thinks of his victim in a per- fectly unmistakable manner. Thus, in an exhaustive couplet, he crucifies his unwieldy rival : — " With all his bulk, there's nothing lost in Og, For eveiy inch that is not fool is rogue." But we will fail to do justice to Dryden unless we regard him as a truh' imaginative satirist. AVe see little of the imag- ination in his other works ; he does not deal effectively with the simple and elemental passions to which most great poets appeal ; he is never pathetic, and seldom sublime. But in his satire he rises to a high imaginative altitude. The difference between the satire of Dryden and the satire of Pope is the difference between a rebuke by Ezekiel and the prettiness of an epigram. There is an artful suddenness in Pope's attack. He is a master of surprise. He seems to pause, and turn • in- differently away, when in the very act of raising his hand to strike the meditated blow, — " Yet tlien did Gildon draw his venal quill, — I wished the man a dinner, and sat still ; Yet then did Dennis rave with furious fret, I never answered, — / was not in debt.'' Xone of this artifice is observable in Dryden. He plays his JOHN DRYDEN. i6i hand boldly and openly, — he does not condescend to finesse. Yet there is an imaginative amplitude in his sarcasm to which Pope could not rise. Xot sharp and stinging words only, but rich and vigorous intellectual conceptions, does he hurl at the heads of his adversaries. Contrast, for instance, the Shadwell of Mac Fleclcnoe with the Goddess of Xight and Chaos in the Dun- ciad. Mac Flecknoe reveals the energy, cohesion, organisation, and perfect unity of a high imaginative conception. The man who wrote it was for the time heated by the fire of the imagina- tion as truly as Shakespeare was wlien he wrote Macbeth, as truly as Milton was when he raised Pandemonium out of Chaos. But the picture of the Goddess of Dulness, though immensely clever, ingenious, and pointed, does not present any one distinct conception. It is a series of epigrams, elaborately worked out, and nicely tied together, with the view of producing a striking effect, but from wliich any one could be removed without in- jury to the rest. Dry den's lines, on the contrary, have been fused in the crucible of the imagination, and we could neither add nor take away without doing violence to the whole. And how magnificent the satire is ! The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, but — Shadwell never deviated ; and her husband, unspeakably afllicted, laid her in the remote village church of Breague, in the parish of Godolphin in Corn- wall, where the Godolphins had lived since the Conquest. He had since her death worked hard for a quarter of a century ; not very desirous apparently to be released from the entangle- ments of office; and was now Lord High Treasurer and a Knight of the Garter. The reputation which he had won was not exactly the reputation which ^fargaret Blagge would have coveted. Sidney Godolphin was a favourite subject with the wits and poets of his day. Swift, in airy and graceful hadinafje, compared the white rod of the High Treasurer to the rod of Moses which became a devouring serpent, to the broomstick on which the witch rides to her midnight revel (" but with the morning dawn resumes the peaceful state of common brooms"), to the rod of Hermes, and to a Newmarket switch. The sceptre of Achilles, " down from ancestors divine, transmitted to the hero's line," was a sapless tAvig; but the rod of the charmer, Avho could count upon the votes of the English Commons, was full of juice, shooting in golden boughs and golden fruit, — ' ' And he, the Dragon never sleeping, Guarded each fair Hesperian pippin." And Pope, when discoursing upon the inconsistencies of human nature, expressed his surprise that the man whose com- 1 Tlifi Life of Mrx Godolphin, by .John Evelj-n of Wooton, Esq. Edited by Samuel, Lord Bishop of Oxford : ISIS. THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 171 preliensive head and uncorrupted heart had saved Europe, yet had left Enghind unbetrayed, should pride himself more highly upon his skill at piquet, or upon his tact at a bet, than upon his career as a minister. Marlborough, though he still affected to coquet witli St Germains, had succeeded in obtaining the confidence of "William, and held a chief, if not the chief place, in the Godolphin Cabinet. Henry St John was among the members who, in 1701, entered the House of Commons for the first time. He was descended from a patrician house, and the blood of his family had mingled with the Tudors. He could laugh at Harley, when Ilarley, " in vain discourses over his claret," boasted of the renown of his ancestry ; yet St John was proud of his descent ; and, on this score, even Swift sometimes condescended to flatter him. " My birth, although from a family not undis- tinguished in its time, is many degrees inferior to yours." In the civil wars, though both Cavalier and Puritan soldiers had issued from the house, the St Jolms liad inclined to side Avith the Parliament ; and tlie loyal Clarendon declared that they were "a mutinous family." Henry St John was now in his twenty-third year. He had been at Eton with Eobert Walpole, and at Christ Church when the Phalaris controversy was flut- tering the dons of tliat aristocratic seat of letters. He had after- wards travelled on the Continent, residing for some time in Paris, where he became acquainted with Matthew Prior. He had sat at the feet of Dryden, and heard the old man, trembling with nervous excitement, repeat the famous Ode to St Cecilia, the morning after it was composed. As a boy, he had been for- ward and reckless ; he was now renowned for his " frantic l>acchanals." At length the House of Commons was open to him, and he carried into that famous assembly tlie Avit and the passion which had delighted, and sometimes subdued, these fevered revellers. He might now become, as he aspired to be, the Petronius of his age. St John quickly acquired the favour of the House, for he possessed in a high degree the peculiar talents which are iitted to charm an assembly at once popular and patrician. He was tall, well-made, of a handsome and gallant presence. The aquiline nose, the dark - brown hair, the winning smile, the lofty forehead, the eager and piercing expression of the eyes, are alluded to by many of his contemporaries. Wigs, powdered 172 THE GREAT LORD BOUNGDROKE. or unpnwderc'd, were then <,'cn('rallY worn ; but St John never ado])t(;(l tlie fasliion, and continued, even in cadvanced life, to wear his unpowdered hair in nej^ligent curls, tied back with a long streaming ribbon. His manners were frank and cordial, and his wit was ready, But he was pre-eminently an orator. Possessing the instinct whicli enables a speaker to bring himself into sympathy with his audience, skilful in detecting the weak points of an adversary's argument, skilful in concealing the weak points of his own, ready, adroit, intrepid, 8t John was, by his constitution, a parliamentary debater. And to these gifts he added others scarcely less essential — a finished delivery, a fervid logic, a curious felicity of expression ; above all, a capacity for jirolonged and trenchant invective. He could rebuke and he could ridicule. He was passionate and he was ironical. His scorn tempered his passion, and his passion gave a glow to his scorn. He became a power in St Stephen's be- fore he had been a year within its walls. He assailed Mon- tague, he assailed AVharton, he assailed Somers ; and the country S(pures listened with open ears, cheered him lustily, and ranged themselves under his banner. Such a master of invective had never before sat in the House of Commons ; and it may be doubted whether any one, with the single exception of Mr Disraeli, ec^ually renowned in the fine but dangerous science of parliamentary fence, has sat there since. During the four years that elapsed between St John's elec- tion and liis appointment to office, the Commons and the army were busily engaged, — the army attacking the French, the Commons assailing "\Miig Ministers and Presbyterian Dis- senters. William was dead ; Anne had succeeded to the throne, and ^larlborough was at the head of the Allies, — sor- didly parsimonious while lavishing the lives of men and the ■wealth, of a nation. Somers and Halifax had been impeached and acquitted, and the Occasional Conformity Bill continued to be vigorously passed by the Commons and vigorously rejected by the Lords. The Occasional Conformity Bill, which occupies so large a space in the history of these years, wa.'; intended to restrain a practice which had become habitual with the opulent Dissenters who aspired to civic office. They could not become Sheriffs or Lord Mayors until they had partaken of the sacra- ment of the Supper according to the rites of the Church of England; and this many of them had been in the habit of THE GREAT LORD BOLINCBROKE. 173 doing, as matter of form, when elected. The bill provided that these evasions of the law should be punished by heavy fines. If a Dissenter went to church once, he might continue to do so, and keep his place ; but he must take the consequences if he chose to return to the conventicle. The controversy occasioned by this bill led to the publication of Defoe's most famous pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Defoe was a Dissenter, but he was not a Dissenter of the opulent school ; and he could consistently hold that to receive the sacrament merely as a qualification for civic honours was a scandalous practice, and " a playing at bo-peep with God Almighty." Thus the peculiar irony of this jeu d'esprit is to be ascribed to its author's peculiar and rather isolated position. He kilk'd two birds with one stone. He disapproved of the persecuting policy of the Church ; he disapproved of the dishonourable tactics of Dissent ; and he rebuked both. The spirit of mar- tyrdom, he said, was over. Men who would go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors, would go to forty churches rather than be hanged. If one severe law were passed and punctually executed, that whoever was found at a conventicle should be banished the nation, and the preacher be hanged, the unity desired would be speedily secured. But the light and foolish handling of Dissenters by fines of Is. a-week or .5s. a-montli, was an offence against God and the Commonwealtli, " This is such a shame to a Christian government, that 'tis with regret I transmit it to posterity." Nothing can be more felicitous than the gravity and earnestness Avith which the pro- position is supported. The irony, in fact, was not altogether ironical. The main object, no doubt, was the defence of religious liberty ; but this object was reached by a serious attack on those who were threatened with persecution, as well as by a sarcastic defence of those who were anxious to persecute. I shall do what I can, the writer in effect observed, to save the citadel, thougli I liave doubts whether the garrison are worth the trouble of saving, or whether, in fact, it would not be better for tliem, and for everybody else, that they fell into the hands of the enemy. The genuine scorn which he felt gave that edge to his pen, and that seriousness to his air, which deceived friends and foes alike. For a long time the Sachev- erells of the Cluirch rejoiced over this vigorous defender of the faith. When they found him out, they put him in the pillory. 174 THE GREAT LORD DOUNGBROKE. St Johu's name is to be found on tlie back of this, and on several other bills of doubtful fame. His position was already determined. He had become the brilliant mouthpiece of a violent faction before Godolphin and Marlborough found a place for him in the administration. At twenty-five he was made Secretary at AVar. He forthwith devoted himself to the duties of his office ; and it is admitted on all hands, that when in office he worked assiduously. Both at this time, and after- wards when Secretary of State, he transacted an immense amount of business. He performed, in fact, nearly the whole Avork of the Harley Administration ; he corresjjonded with foreign ambassadors ; he wrote leaders for The Examiner ; he directed the tactics of the party ; he bore the burden of debate. His nature was extremely elastic : his temper was cheerful ; he had a quick apprehension, and saw at once what was material in any business which he had on hand. " Lord Peterborough," Pope remarked, " would say very pretty and lively things in his letters, but they Avould be rather too gay and Avandering ; Avhereas were Lord Bolingbroke to write to an emperor or to a statesman, he would fix on that point Avhich Avas the most material, Avould place it in the strongest and finest light, and manage it so as to make it most serA'iceable for his purpose." He held the office of Secretary during a stirring time, — when the conquering French army Avas being beaten back upon its frontier ; Avhen Blenheim and Ramillies were being Avon ; when captured standards Avere being carried, amid the acclamations of the people, from "Westminster to St Paul's. It was a time to test the capacity of a Secretary at War ; and St John's administra- tiA'e tact, his luminous expositions in Parliament, the ease with Avhich he dealt Avith votes, and figures, and estimates, more than satisfied the expectations which had been raised. Even Marlborough, Avith uuAvonted generosity, admitted that he had been zealously aided by his useful colleague. He left office a perfect man of business. He left office because the Godolphin Cabinet had become a AVhig Cabinet. The policy of the administration had been essentially a war policy ; and the Tories had never heartily liked the war. Godolphin found himself more eagerly sup- ported by his political foes than by his political friends ; and an alliance between the minister and the chiefs of the Opposition Avas gradually formed. "When it had been consum- THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 175 mated, Harley and St John — the leaders of the pure Tories — withdrew from the Government. But they had so^ni the seeds of discord before they left. St John had always disliked the imperious Duchess of Marlborough. " Now, thanks be to God," he exclaimed, when the final rupture between the Queen and her friend took place, " that fury who broke loose to execute the vengence of Heaven on a sinful people is restrained, and the royal hand is reached out to chain up that plague." Harley had taken care to conciliate the new favourite, Mrs ]\rashani — and Mrs ^lasham zealously exerted her intlueuce with her royal mistress in Harley's behalf. The consequence was, that when the Tories, in 1708, seceded from the Government, the Queen was ready to dismiss Godolphin, and to put the white staff into the hands of his rival, at the earliest possible opportunity. The opportunity was found in 1711. A foolish parson had preached a foolish discourse on the doctrine of non-resistance. The logical consequences of the doctrine of non-resistance were that the glorious devolution was a rebellion, and that the crown of James II. had transmitted, jure divino, to his son. The "Whig majority in the Commons determined to impeach the offender ; ^ and articles of impeachment were accordingly prepared and carried up to the Lords. The trial lasted for many days. The Queen attended ; and the Duchess of Marl- borough has left an amusing account of " a scene " which occurred behind the curtain Avhich divided the royal party from the House. The populace were roused. One assemblage proclaimed that the Church was in danger. Another assem- blage denounced the tp-anny of the Commons. Dr Johnson's father, who was an old bookseller, told his son that the books which had been most eagerly read in his time were i\iQ Absalom and Achitopliel of Dryden, and the account of the Trial of Dr Saclieverell. Even to-day the trial may be read with inter- est. The prolonged discussions between the counsel for the accused and the managers of the impeachment are curiously characteristic. The one side essayed to prove, the other to disprove, that the doctrine of non-resistance was the doctrine ^ Swift, in Tlie HiMory of the Four Last Yearn of the Queen, says, that the prosecution was urged by Godolphin, "who took fire at a nickname (Volpone) delivered by Dr Sacheverell, with great indiscre- tion, from the pulpit, which he applied to himself." 1/6 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGDROKE. of the Church of England. Tlie proceedings are as full of extracts from the writings of divines, and from the decrees of Synods, as is Mr Stephens's speech on behalf of Dr Kowland Williams. The authority of the Oxford decrees, the wretched scandal on Monmouth's scaffold, the opinions of the great dignitaries of the Church, Avere successively invoked. At length the House of Lords solemnly condemned l)r Sachev- erell. But the majority was small, and the punishment was light. The result was hailed as a great Church triumph. It was also a great Tory triumph. Bolingbroke, indeed, expressed profound contempt for the " vain, froward, and turbulent preacher," whose frothy declamation had roused the passions of the nation ; yet it was Sacheverell Avho brought St John into office. " You had a sermon to condemn," he wrote to Walpole, years afterwards, " and a parson to roast ; for that, I think, was the decent language of the time, but — to carry on the allegory — you roasted him at so fierce a fire that you burnt yourselves." The Whigs in the Commons were pro- foundly chagrined. When the message from the Lords, stating that they were prepared to give judgment in the case of Dr Sacheverell, was brought down, many members spoke against demanding judgment ; and the Tories, who had consistently opposed the proceedings, were on this occasion joined by several who had hitherto been most forward in the prosecution. These members held that the judgment which the Peers pro- posed to pronounce, and the purport of which had been allowed to escape, was ridiculously and scandalously lenient, and they thought that the Commons would best consult their dignity and evince their displeasure by declining to attend. The vote of thanks to the managers was not carried without strong opposition. A member, whose name has not been recorded, probably gave expression to the Tory exultation when he ironically remarked, that though he was against giving the managers thanks, he thought one reason in favour of doing so had not been stated. The managers should be thanked by the Commons, because it was certain that they would have thanks nowhere else. The motion Avas carried by a majority of fifty only; and the whole of the managers, Mr Dolben excepted, voted in the majority. The expression of popular feeling was too strong to be misconstrued. It Avas obvious that the Tory and Chui'ch party had the nation behind them, and Avould THE GREAT LORD BOLIXGBROKE. 177 carry the elections. Anne at once dismissed Godolphin, and called Harley and St John to office.^ St John was the real chief of the Harley Administration. Upon the sagacity and energy which he displayed as Secre- tary of State between 1711 and 1714, his reputation as an administrator, as the efficient leader of a party, must mainly depend. I am of opinion that an impartial inquiry into his conduct during those years must terminate favourably. He is entitled to a " good deliverance." If after all, indeed, we must come to the conclusion that whilst manifesting tact, skill, resolution, patience, intrepidity, he was sometimes rash, some- times passionate, and sometimes intemperate, it may be right to remember, at the same time, that, when intrusted with the government of a great nation, St John was only thirty-two. The policy of the Harley Administration may be easily de- fined. The ministers desired to terminate the war, and to organise and consolidate the party which supported them. The war had lasted for ten years. It was called the Avar of the Spanish Succession ; but, in so far as tliis country was con- cerned, it was a war occasioned by the impolitic courtesy which Louis the Great had, on the death of James II., paid to his son. It may be that the English nation were right to resent an act partly dictated ])y caprice and partly by chivalry ; but ten years of blood, of desolation, and of triumph, were enough to cool the smart of a verbal impertinence. It had become clear, moreover, that the ostensible objects for which the war was entered upon could not be attained. The war had ceased to be a war of dynasties — a simple question between the eagles of Hapsburg and tlie lilies of France. The Spaniards, long indifi"erent, had at last been roused, and had identified them- selves with the Bourbons. Philip was no longer an alien ; he was their ovnx king ; and the reverses which they had sustained together had endeared him to them. The settlement of Spain, according to tire diplomatic programme, was become a dream ; and it had become so mainly by reason of the early victories which the allies had achieved on Spanish soil. But the riding party in England would listen to no compromise. William was dead ; but his energetic hatred of France had been be- queathed to the Whigs. The chief magistrate of the Dutch ^ The best edition of the Trial of Dr Sacheverell is that published by Tonson in 171 1 — " printed by order of the House of Lords." 178 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. (V)mnionweulth might well believe that animosity to the Graml Monarch was a religious duty. French armies had desolated these fertile plains ; French armies had sacked these populous cities. The Dutch had never been subdued ; but more than once they had been driven back into the sea. English states- men, however, were in a different position, and an alliance be- tween the Western powers had long been a favourite idea with the Tories. St John felt the force of these considerations, and of others not less urgent to a party leader. The war was a Whig war. It was Marlborough's war. So long as the war continued, Churchill was the virtual chief of the grand alliance, and the most powerful subject in Europe. It was hard to say to what he might not aspire. He had once, indeed, in terms somewhat too peremptory, required Anne to make him Captain- General for life. Addison's Cato was produced upon the stage soon after the great soldier's dismissal. Its political allusions were received by both parties with tumults of applause ; but Bolingbroke adroitly turned its edge against the friends of its author. At the end of the performance he called Booth into the stage-box, and presenting him with a purse containing fifty guineas, publicly thanked him for so well defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator. It was not to be Avondered at, therefore, that IVIarlborough should not be unduly anxious to conclude a peace. But, in truth, had he not shown undue anxiety to protract the warl Had not Louis offered liberal terms of accommodation — terms which reasonable men would have willingly accepted % And had not the area of the war been recklessly extended by the A^-liigs, when they declared in a parliamentary resolution, that neither Spain nor the Indies should ever belong to a Bourbon % Bolingbroke had no desire to see France dismembered. On the contrary, he was anxious to be on good terms with our nearest neighbour ; to eradicate national animosities ; and by a commercial union, " undertaken more in the character of statesmen than of merchants," to bind the two nations firmly together. Moreover, he detested Aus- tria. Austria was the evil genius of England. He never thought of the conduct of that family, he said, without recol- lecting the image of the man braiding a rope of haj^, which his ass bites off at the other end. England had only a subordin- ate interest in the contest ; England was fighting the Emperor's battles : yet England voluntarily bore the heat and burden of THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 179 the day. Entertaining these views, it cannot be matter of sur- prise that St John should have resolved to terminate the war. He had many obstacles to overcome. The war was popular. The thirst for blood, long gratified, had not been slaked. It was difficult to content allies who, after Marlborough's trium- phant progress, anticipated the flight of Louis and the sack of Paris. But St John's invincible resolve triumphed over every difficulty. The French envoy wrote to his master, that, in a timid and wavering council, St John was the one decisive man. His colleagues were unnerved by the delicacy of the position and the magnitude of the stake ; but the Secretary did not hesitate. His intrepid spirit never quailed. The House of Lords pronounced against the peace. For some days it seemed probable that the ministry would be impeached. Swift thought that the game was up. He told Harley with grim humour that he would have the advantage of the minister ; for whereas the Lord Treasurer would lose his head, he would only be hanged, and so take his body entire to the grave. St John alone pre- served his composure. He assured the Dean that there was no cause for alarm. The Duke of Ormond, who commanded in Flanders, was ordered on no pretence to risk an engagement. A batch of Tory peers was created. The Whig majority was overawed. After many delays the peace of Utrecht was signed. St John's courageous pertinacity was rewarded by a great, if not quite untarnished, success. " It is the Lord's Avork," he exclaimed, echoing the words of Elizabeth, when she heard that her sister was dead ; " it is the Lord's work, and it is mar- vellous in our eyes." " I never look back," he said long after- Avards, " on this great event, past as it is, Avithout a secret emotion of mind." The peace was not perhaps the peace which an ambitious soldier or an implacable partisan would have concluded. It did not provide for various remote event- ualities. Nor did it protect the Catalans, — an ungenerous omission, for which St John, however, does not appear to haA'e been responsible.^ It Avas bitterly denounced. Its author aams ^ Bolingbroke, in fact, was urgent and pertinacious upon the point. Throughout the negotiations he had insisted on the introduction of an article as to the position of the Catalans, and near their close he wrote to Strafford, "Your Lordship will continue to insist on those terms, that the Catalans be restored to their ancient privileges, and we will carry the point." i8o THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. attainted. Ikit St John was firmly persuaded tliat the work was one of which any statesman might be proud. " I tell you without any gasconade," he wrote to Peterborough, " that I would rather be banished for my whole life because I helped to make the peace, than be raised to the highest honours for having obstructed it," His judgment has been signally ap- proved. Even Lord Macaulay allows that the peace was a just and necessary peace. " We are therefore for the peace of Utrecht," he says emphatically. St John's next object was to consolidate his party. It need not be denied that he Avas a thorough - going partisan. He tried hard to make Toryism supreme in the State. He left Marlborough when Marlborough became a Whig. He quarrelled with Harley when Harley's trifling imperilled the safety of his party. The violent measures of the Government against the Dissenters and the Opposition were dictated by similar motives. Anne was a Tory, but the Successor (as the Elector used to be called in the political pamphlets of the day) was attached to the opposite party. It was known that whenever he succeeded to the throne he was prepared, if permitted, to place the government of the country in the hands of " the Kevolution families." It was Bolingbroke's object to deprive him of this power. It was necessary, therefore, before the accession of the Hanover dynasty, that the Tories should be made all-poAverful They must command the Church, the Parliament, and the Army. The Church had long been a hotbed of Toryism : the party had an effective majority in the Commons ; the Whig majorit)^ in the Lords had been diminished by the creation of Tory peers : and at the time of Anne's death the Army Avas commanded by a Tory Captain-General, and extensive changes had been effected among the subordinate officials. This is the true explanation of the policy which Bolingbroke so unsparingly pursued. He was never a Jaco- bite at heart ; but the bulk of the party Avliich he led were obstinately disloyal. The Church contained many Sacheverells ; the great Tory magnates, like Ormond and INIar, correspond- ed with St Germains ; the county squires talked treason in their cups. St John's position, consequently, was one of peculiar nicety. He felt instinctively that the Stuarts could not be restored. Their day of grace was past. The Kevolu- tion was an accomplished fact. He desired his party to accept THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. iSi it as such, and to take their stand upon principles -which were consistent with success. He tried to wean them from the Stuart, and to reconcile them to the Hanoverian dynasty, by the tempting baubles of office. What Peel and Disraeli have done for the territorial party in the nineteenth century, was attempted by Bolingbroke at the beginning of the eighteenth. Had Anne lived six months longer, it is possible that his design might have succeeded. But she died, or rather ate herself to death, before the plot was ripe. The Whigs took advantage of the suspicion of disloyalty which attached to the Tory party and to its chiefs, to bring the Elector to the kingdom " in a storm," and to disable and attaint their opponents. The result might have been foreseen. The disloyal were strengthened ; the loyal and neutral were dis- heartened. The Tories, to a man, went over to the Chevalier. Bolingbroke was forced to acquiesce. Tlie party had escaped from his control, and, fired with anger, and thirsting for revenge, had adopted a policy of which he had always disapproved, and from which he hoped little. He himself became the minister of the Pretender. But the soundness of the instinct which had led him to despair of Jacobitism was quickly vindicated. He found that the madness with Avliich the gods afflict those who are ready to perish, had fallen upon the ill-starred son of an ill-starred house. Bolingbroke was a Jacobite for about six months. The whole of his after-life was devoted to teaching his party the lesson which he had striven, but had failed, to teach them in the earlier part of his career, and the wisdom of which experience and suffering had so bitterly brought home to himself. " Men of the best sense," he said of the Pretender, with all the energy of conviction, " find it hard to overcome religious prejudices, which are all of the strongest ; but lie is a slave to the weakest. The rod hangs like the sword .of Damocles over his head, and he trembles before his mother and his priest. What, in the name of God, can any member of the Church of England l)romise himself from such a character % " »Such were the tactics of the Harley Administration — tactics wliich could only have been carried to a successful issue by adroit and not over-scrupulous men. But most of the jjoliticians of that age were adroit and unscrupvdous. It must be added, likewise, that they were violent and cruel. The ferocity which 1 82 THE GREAT LORD BULINGBROKE. characterised the public life of England at the beginning of last century can scarcely be realised in these tamer times. It was not enough to dismiss a minister from office — it was necessary to impeach and attaint him. The Commons had impeached Somers and Halifax for the partition treaties. They impeached Oxford and Bolingbroke for the treaty of Utrecht. They brought Sacheverell to the bar of the Lords for preaching against rebellion ; they sent Walpole to the Tower for fraud and embezzlement ; even Marlborough did not feel that he was safe from their displeasure. Party feeling never ran higher in the metropolis than during the years when St John was in office. The faction which had been displaced were furious ; the faction Avhich had triumphed were implac- able. The great nobles who frequented the Kit-cat bitterly resented tlie intrigues which had driven them from power ; the country squires who met at the October clamoured for the heads of the men who had ruined the country by French wars and Dutch finance, and who had tried to ruin the Church. The spirit of faction penetrated into every society. The Tory wits and poets assailed the wits and poets of the AVhigs. The Tory great ladies wore their patches in one fashion ; the AVhig great ladies wore theirs in another. The Tories occupied one side of the opera-house ; the other was occupied by the 'V\Tiigs. The Churchills and the Somersets belonged to the Opposition, and could be distinguished from the beauties who adorned the Court by their mufts, their fans, and their furbelows. The Tory Eosalind looked coldly on her gallant if he went into the wrong lobby. The Whig Juliet threw Eomeo over, if Romeo persisted in attending the Treasurer's levees, or in dining with Mr Secretary St John.^ The city was divided into two hostile camps, and quarter was neither asked nor given. Xo where was the antagonism keener than in the 1 See The Examiner (by Swift), No. 32. Addison, in No. 81 of the Spectator, has a charming paper on the patching question. The one party patched on the right side of the forehead, the other on the left. The censorious affirm, he says, that in some cases, the patches turn to the right or to the left, according to the principles of the man who is most in favour. " But whatever may be the motives of a few fan- tastical coquettes, who do not patch for the public good so much as for their own private advantage, it is certain that there are several women of honour who patch out of principle, and with an eye to the interest of their country." — June 2, 1711. THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 183 coffee-houses which the wits frequented. Nor was this to be wondered at ; for the pen of every wit who could write his name had been hired by the Government or by the Opposition. Steele, Addison, and Defoe were arrayed on the left ; St John, Swift, and Prior on the right of the chair. A year or two previously, when St John was living in retirement at Buklers- bury, the whole town had been thrown into convulsions of laughter by Mr Isaac Bickerstaff's whimsical assaults upon Partridge, the almanac- maker. Mr Bickerstatf was an astrol- oger himself, but he did not believe in Partridge's astrology. Mr Bickerstatf had recently made certain astral observations, and a few of these — predictions for the ensuing year — he would now venture to communicate to the public. The first was but a trifle, he said, yet he would mention it to show how ignorant these sottish pretenders to astrology were in their oAvn concerns. It was that Partridge should die on the 29th of March next, about eleven o'clock at night, of a raging fever. " Therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time." Then came an account, in a letter to a person of honour, of the death of Mr Partridge, the almanac- maker, on the 29th instant. -"^ This was followed by a pamphlet, in which Partridge explicitly denied that he Avas dead, and complained of the inconvenience to which he had been j)ut by the announcement. The subject was closed by a philosophical rejoinder from Mr Bickerstaff', in which he demonstrated that 1 The Elegii on Partrvl'jp, — " Who to the stars in pure good-will Does to his best look upward still," — is an admirable fragment of poetic hadincKje. ' ' Strange an astrologer should die Without one wonder in the sky ! Not one of all his crony stars To pay their duty at his hearse ! No meteor, no eclipse appeared ; No comet with a flaming beard ! The sun has rose and gone to lied •Just as if Partridge were not dead ; Nor hid himself liehind the moon, To make a dreadful night at noon. He at fit periods walks tliro' Aries, Tlowe'er our earthly motion varies ; And twice a-year he'll cut the equator. As if there had been no such matter."' iS4 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. it was morally impossible that Partridge could be alive. " He hath been indeed so wise to make no objection against the truth of my predictions, except in one single point relating to himself ; and to demonstrate how much men are blinded by • their own partiality, I do solemnly assure the reader that he is the only person from whom I have heard that objection offered ; which consideration alone, I think, Avill take off all its weight." Swift's admirable wit never shone brighter than in these famous pleasantries. In them it is utterly without acidity — arch, cheery, and frolicsome. Yet the logic is as exact, as sinewy, as concise, as is the logic of his most elaborate treatises. He breaks Partridge upon a wheel which might move a mountain. Seldom, indeed, do we see Swift with so bright a smile on his face ; the wit and the logic, indeed, are always present ; but the later wit grows moody, and the ferocious energy of the logic indicates a mind that is ill at ease. Here, too, as in his other writings, his supreme simplicity is very noticeable. He wears no ornament ; he is as naked as when he came from his mother's womb ; simple wit and simple reason are his only weapons. But how the colourless diamond blade flashes when he wields it ! Both Defoe and Swift — the two great controversialists of the time — wrote an extraordinarily homely style. But their homeli- ness was more persuasive than the most artful and spark- ling rhetoric could have been. The one has persuaded us to believe in Eobinson Crusoe ; the other has persuaded us to believe in Lilliput and Brobdignag. And the choice of sub- ject marks the difference between the men. The one created Robinson Crusoe by his hearty sympathy ; the other created living Lilliputians and living Brobdignagians by his amazing logic. Both are admirably real ; but the one is as true to nature as any man we meet in the street, the other is as true to nature as a mathematical figure. St John told Swift — who, about the date of the Partridge controversy, had been accounted a Whig — that the Tories were determined to have him, as he was the only man of whom they were afraid. They did well to secure him. St John's florid and fervid rhetoric for the senate. Swift's plain, direct, and homely discoui-se for the people, worked wonders. They persuaded the nation that the Allies Avere dangerous friends ; that the French did not wear wooden shoes ; that taxes were unpleasant ; and that it was THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 1S5 right at all events to end the war. This was Swift's golden age. He liked to mix with the great ; he liked to befriend his friends ; he liked political controversy. All these good things he got during the last years of the Queen's reign. During these years, as Dr Johnson says, it must be confessed that Swift formed the political opinions of the English nation. "WTien Anne died, the Dean was forced to quit the chosen land that flowed with milk and honey. He crossed the Channel as if he were crossing the Styx. But that wonderful weapon which he carried about with him proved as resistless in Ireland as elsewhere. Soon he came to be its foremost man. " When people ask me how I governed Ireland," Lord Car- taret wrote, " I say that I pleased Dr Swift. ' Qua?sitam meritis sume siiperbiam. ' " But all his triumphs in Ireland would have been willingly exchanged for a single year of the reign of good Queen Anne, — "that real nursing-mother of her people," as he called her in his last wiU, — for a smile from Lady Masham, or a nod from Bolingbroke. At the time wlien St John was raised to the peerage as Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St John, he Avas probably the most conspicuous man in Europe. His popidarity was un- bounded. He was the hero of the October Club, and mighty flagons were quaffed in his honour. When a new masque was to be produced at the Palace, tlie ladies-in-waiting (of whom the youngest of " Churchill's race," the beautiful Lady Mary, Duchess of Montagu, Avas one) contended for the honour of dressing the handsome Secretary. He went to Paris, and in Paris he vv^as followed by crowds, feted by princes, and caressed by the most charming women. When he entered the theatre during the performance of one of Corneille's tragedies, the play was interrupted, and the Avhole house rose to receive a statesman who was only five-and- thirty, but whose fame Avas European. There never was a more intoxicating position ; himself a wit, a minister, a scholar, a man in every way of eminent capacity ; Avits, ministers, poets, beauties, princes, at his feet. It seemed, too, that he Avas only at the beginning of his career. The chances Avere, that stiU more splendid, still more durable fortunes aAvaited him. For by this time he had i86 THE GREAT LORD BOLh\GBROKE. ■ luariicd to hate and to dosinse llarlcy. It is a mystery, indeed, how two men, so differently constituted, could have continu(jd to he friends and colleagues for so many years. 'J'hti Secnjtary was clear-headed, decisive, energetic, intrepid, lirilliant ; the Treasurer was the idlest and iciest, the most reserved, most distrustful, and most confused of men. These Avhisperings on the staircase, these intrigues in the lohby, these vague hints of hidden intelligence, the utter want of decision, and the dilatori- ness which per])etually eml)an-assed the delicate game which was being i)layed, and which could not Ite j)layed without tact, finesse, readiness, and the most fearless daring, must have mad- dened Bolinghroke. But though their rivalries were for long (as Swift complains) the entertainment of every coffee-house, the Secretary did not finally break Avith his chief until he had supplanted him. The struggle was ]jrotracted. Oxford died hanl. lie was passionate and he was abject by turns. He clung to the hem of his mistress's robe. At the last council Avhere the colleagues met, angry recriminations passed between them. But tears and reproaches were unavailing. That very night Oxford was dismissed. For twenty-four hours Bolingbroke w;is Prime Minister of England. But his triumph was short-lived. The Queen had l)een present at the Council Avhere these amenities had passed, and had been much shaken and agitated l)y the violence of her ministers. She declared that she could not recover the shock which she had received, and she was not mistaken. On the 1st of August 1714, Anne breathed her last. Bolingbroke felt instinctively that his career was A\Tecked. " The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday ; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us !" Yet he did not give way to craven anticipations, nor to unmanly depression. He told Swift, ten days after the event, that the blow had not stunned him. " Adieu ! love me, and love me better ; because, after a greater blow than most men ever felt, I keep up my spirit — am neither dejected at what is past, nor apprehensive at Avhat is to come. Mea virtute me invoho." In the course of a few months, Bolingbroke, an attainted fugitive, was the minister of a mimic Court.^ It would be ' Bolingbroke's flight to France was perhaps a blunder. It is prob- able, however, that, even had he remained and defended himself, the Attainder Bill would have been carried. A number of motives induced THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 187 unprofitable to follow him to Commercy; I have already alluded to the motives which induced him to enter the Pre- tender's service. The alliance was short-lived ; and it would have been well for Bolingbroke had it never been formed. His public career, in fact, was closed. The play had been played out. He had made one fatal blunder, and he was to eat the bitter fruit during the remainder of his life. His fall was great, and, spite of his gallant bearing, never wholly repaired. The great orator never again entered the famous assembly where Somers, and Halifax, and Shrewsbury guided the fortunes of the Conmion wealth. Though Bolingbroke was not vitally injured by his fall, and though he did not become gloomy or morose, yet the position Avas a trying one, especially to a man of his lofty and ardent temper. The lion was chained ; the wings of the eagle had l)een clipped. "We need not wonder, therefore, that his heart should sometimes have failed him ; that hope should sometimes have deserted him ; that he should have restlessly paced his narrow cell, and with folded hands mused moodily ui)on his wrecked career. But St John's was an untameable nature. He accepted his fate with cheerfulness, if not Avitli alacrity. He engaged in new pursuits. He busied himself Avith country pleasures. He read, he studied, he wrote. The statesman became a philosopher and a historian. The politician became the friend of scholars and the companion of poets. 8t John had always loved the country. He had voluntarily retired from public affairs during the busiest period of his life. At that time he remained in retirement for two years, — prun- ing his peaches, watering his melons, hunting with the country .squires, reading his Horace and his Tacitus, musing over the perplexing proljlems of human nature. His genius, he said, had wooed him to study and to reflect ; but he had not heard the Avhispered invitation, " in the hurry of those passions by which I was transported." " Some calmer hours there were ; him to fly, — the violence of the faction in power, the determination of the gieat body of the Tories to adopt the cause of the Pretender ; Imt perhaps a reason assigned afterwards ])y himself had as much weight with a man of his passionate temperament as any of the others. " I couhl not bear," he said, referring to tlie proceedings which had been taken against his old colleague and liimself, " to be joined with Oxford in any case." 1 88 THE GREAT EURO BOLINGDROKE. ui iliciu I hearkened to him. liullection hud of leu its turn, and the love of study and tlie desire of knowledge liave never (^uite abandoned me." And now he was again at liberty to listen to tlie solicitation. Lord Bolingbroke's writings may be divided into two classes — the speculative and the practical. They are of very unequal value. His nature was emotional ; but he had neither the mechanic nor the creative faculties of the poet. Phillips regretted that the English Memmius's duties as Secretary at War left lum no leisure to cultivate the muse. That eminently bad poet and his brethren might sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Nefcra's hair ; but the politician was otlierwise engaged. " St John, intent, So Anna's will ordain.s, to expedite ^ His military charge no leisme finds To string his charming shell." But posterity will hardly share the poetaster's regret. St John was no poet ; and he had not even the mimetic power which men who are not poets sometimes have. The Vision of Cauielick is stupid and tedious. There is all the difference in the world between that clumsy caricature and the brilliant sketches of Walpole which occur in his controversial writings. An eminent rhetorician can seldom, indeed, be converted into an effective dramatist : his nature is too intent, too absorbed, too vehement, to enable him to examine tlie heart and exhibit the motives of the " many-headed beast." Xor was Boling- broke a great moralist or a great pliilosopher. A thinker, like Isaac NeAvton, is at his best in his closet. He cannot think clearly or accurately in the senate. The bustle of the streets distracts him. But Bolingbroke was cast m a different mould. Active life steadied his mind. His fall, though it Avas not fatal, did hiin in one way grievous harm. It turned the states- man into a recluse ; and Bolingbroke was an honester man at the Foreign Office than in his hermitage. The minister did not practise histrionic tricks ; he was eminently frank, simple, and luiaffected. But the author had leisure to think of pos- terity ; he put himself into becoming attitudes, and wore the player's buskin. He became — shut out from active life as he was — a historical figure before he died. This accounts for a good deal of the tawdry finery that is found in his specidative THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 189 writings, and for the character of these writings themselves. He was not an atheist ; " Xo man," he said, quite sincerely I think, " has higher notions of the Divine omnipotence, or cari'ies them farther than I ; " but the political High-Chiirch- man had inherited from Dryden a hatred of the priesthood. lie was not a sceptic ; but the philosophy of Hobbes had been popular at Court when he was a boy. Had Ids career not been prematurely interrupted, these early influences would have had no permanently evil effect. His mind, otherwise occupied, would have righted itself. But, in his enforced idle- ness, he took to studying Biblical criticism and the utilitarian philosQphy ; and the result was, that he assailed the outworks of Christianity and the outworks of morals. In these circum- stances, it is fairer to judge Bolingbroke by his political than by his philosophical writings. lie had laboured hard to be unambitious, but he had not entirely succeeded. He had once joined in the great game, and the poison was in liis veins. He averted his eyes from the senate ; but he could not forget that he was an English- man. At length he returned to the meUe. He was not per- mitted to address his peers ; but he might address his country- men. It may be said, quite truly, that posterity is better ac([uainted with his character as an orator, because his lips were closed. His speeches have been preserved, because he was not allowed to deliver them. His political writings are, in fact, written orations. The orator reports himself, and instead of the dead words of our parliamentary histories, we have the words as they came from his lips — trembling with passion and stinging with scorn. They have tlie glow, tlie animation, the vehemence of consummate oratory. On this field Bolingbroke is himself again. The manly and nervous, if somewhat florid, style of these writings, contrasts favourably with the little artifices and the tawdry tricks which cling to the theologian and the moralist. Here there is no flightiness of view ; but, on the contrary, a direct and eminent sagacity. All his works manifest an admirable picturesqueness and pro- priety of expression ; but it is only when he is relating the great passages which had occurred in his own experience — only when he is dealing with war, or finance, or parliamentary corruption — oidy Avhen he is threading the intricacies of Con- tinental politics — that he ceases to be capricious and visionary. igo THE GREAT LORD /iOUNGHROh'E. and becomes i\w most ])raetical of rcasoners — enforcing his vit!\vs with himinous ease and a masterly intelligence. His papers on the jxjlitics of contiiK'ntal Eunjpe are Hi»ecially able. Ho had studied the subject thoroughly; and he manifiistB, in these remarkable dissertations, the capacity of an administrator and the sjjirit of a statesman. His invcetive is j)Owerful and sul)dued — most powerful when most subdued. But he docjj not ejigage many antagonists. John Trot could sarcastically exiiort the polemical Hoadley — a prelate who wrote a j»eak ill, except those who are hired to speak well." Junius must have read these ^mtLngs atten- tively. St John's invective is more florid and copious, that of Junius more concise and measured ; but the art with which Junius works a period up to its epigram — the sting in the wasp's tail — and his air of haughty reserve and arrogant humility, were undoubtedly borrowed from Bolingbroke. "Walpole had "a long run of luck." It is difficult to describe that eminently successful career by a phrase more suited to the dignity of history. He played his hand care- fully, no doubt ; but even caution was hardly required, for his cards were all trumps. " AMiat a star has our minister ! " his THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 193 rival could not help exclaiming, as, one by one, the gartered commoner threw the honours which fortune had so bountifully dealt him. "What was the secret of this success ? " Honest Eobin," with his rosy complexion, with his bull-neck, with his burly figure, who blushed painfully when spoken to, who stammered when he spoke, and wlio broke down entirely when he first attempted to address the House, was liker the son of a yeoman than the son of a gentleman. His intellectual gifts and acquirements were mediocre. He was probably the most ignorant Prime Minister who ever governed England. He was no scholar : he never opened a volume of history ; he knew nothing of Continentixl politics. It was said that, in his hours of leisure or of pleasure, he could " smUe without art, and win without a bribe ; " but even in private his manners were bois- terous and his tastes rude. Xor can it be alleged that his pub- lic course was guided by lofty or generous motives ; his most eloquent apologist can only venture to suggest that he some- times served his country, when it was no longer possible to serve himself. But he was sturdy, dogged ; he did not know what fear meant ; he had an absolute contempt for danger, and an un<|uencha})le thirst f(jr power, which he was resolved to gratify. The Kevolution did not merely substitute William for James : it dethroned the King of England. The Tudors and the Stuarts had been real rulers. Even Charles II., though weak and vicious, had been in this sense "every inch a king." He exercised his own will ; during the contests upon the Exclu- sion Bill he was his own minister ; li^s su])jects liked him because he was profuse and forgiving ; and they obeyed him because he had been " anointed " to rule over them. But there was nothing to love about the Dutchman. The veneration that had attended, the divinity that had hedged, the successors of the Confessor, did not survive the Hight of James II. The new men were chief magi.strates, who exercised their power through ministers. Bursts of popular passion temporarily drove these ministers out of office, but for sixty or seventy years the heads of the families who had changed the succession governed England. This oligarchy adopted Walpole. He was the nominee of the Eevolution families ; he became their master. !Xever was there a more absolute tyrant. "With the rank and file acting steadily behind his bench, he dismissed, he dis- graced, he ostracised the leaders of the party. "Whenever a N 194 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGDROKE. Wliif,' showed that he was able, or zealous, or amhitious, the minister made a present of liim to the Oitposition. The Opposi- tion coni])rised the elo(pience, the adniiiiistrutive capacity, the constitutional Icarnin*^ of I'arliaiiicnt ; the nieiiiber for ('astle Ivising was the Governnu'iit. Hi; Wiu* idtiniatcly ill(try, and .Swift had been condemned by the Lords : — "St Jolin, as wlH as I'ulteney, knows Th;it I had some repute for prose ; And, till tliey drove me out of date, Could maul a Minister of State." AVal|)(ile, so long as he colinghroke denounced corruption. The oligarchy governed the electoral body ; Bolingbroke advo- cated parliamentary freedom. The oligarchy made the king a cipher; liolingbroke essayed to unite the people and the king. His modern critics admit the extent and virulence of the di-sea-se, but they ridicule the remedies which he proposed. " Bolingl>roke," Lord Macaulay observed, "who was the ablest and the most vehement of those who raised the clamour against corruption, had no better remedy to propose than that the royal prerogative should be strengthened." This is scarcely a powerfully enforces the ditficulty wliich at the outset meets Walpole's detractors. "There must surely have been something very extra- ordinarj" in the character and powers of tliat man, who, being the son of a private gentleman, without any advantage from a distinguished name, or senices of illustrious ancestors, was Prime Minister of Kng- lanest i)erhai)s to be explained when we recollect that at the time few eminent AVhig speakers sjit in the House of Commons. The field was, consearatively ojien ; and the man who offered his services to the party possessed moral fpialities which, in the circum- stances of the Whigs, were even more desirable than high intellectual accomplishments — unwcJiried patience and a tlauntless courage. AVhen he had once la'come their accepted leader, and acquired the right to direct as he willed the complex machinery which a powerful connection Iiad organiseil, his way wiis cleare — a man cautious, moderate, politic, merciful, who, so long as he heKl the seals, was content to leave the smouldering embers of civil strife to die out undisturl)ed, and in a spirit of indolent good-humour " let Ijygones be bygones." Earl Stanhope's little volume of M'tMillinilf:* contains a few scraps of great interest, and throws not a little light on two men of very diti'ereut temper — Sir Robert Peel and Lord Miicaulay. 196 THE GREAT LORD BO LING BROKE. fair statement of tlie case. The Patriot King is perliaps the least sincerc of ]>olin;^1)roke's political writings. It was in- teiidccl as a compliment to ]*rince Frederick, and it is un- doubtedly a very line and courtly compliment. But a man's everyday manners are not to be learned from the bow which he makes to his prince. We must look elsewhere for the remedies approved and sanctioned by the jjractical statesman ; and, curiously enough, the language u.sed by Bolingbroke in many passages is identical with that used by his critic. Lord Macaulay thought that j>arliamentary publicity and parlia- mentary emancipation were needed ; and Lord Bolingbroke declared that, until the independency of the Parliament and i\w uninfluenced and uninlluenceable freedom of elections were eU'eclively secured, there could b<^ no ch<'ck upon a corrupt and profligate minister. It is. of course, (juite true, at the same time, that he desired to diminish the influence of the oligarchy, and to increase the influence of the Crown ; and that he pro- posed to effect this object Ijy uniting the people and the king. The idea was not a very Vise idea, i)t'rhaj)s ; Ijut it was not an impracticable one, and cannot be ridicuh-d as such. It was realised many years later, when Pitt, the minister of the Crown and the minister of the middle classes — the representative of royalty and the representative of commerce and finance — defeated the Coalition. Xor was Bolingbroke's domestic life, in these later years, without its consolations. He had married, when abroad, a woman who loved him with a pure love, and to whom he was tenderly devoted. A circle of great friends gathered about hinL So long as the English language lasts, the names of the men who composed that society will be remembered with pride and with gratitude. Prior, indeed, had been laid in "Westminster Abbey. Swift was an exile, — "remote from St John, Pope, and Gay." . The Dean had won for himself wide fame, an im- mense love, across the Channel ; but he always regarded Ireland as his place of banishment, and he continued to look back to England, as Ovid from the shores of the Euxine looked back to Eome. Letters arrived at times from the moody satirist ; and occasionally he came himself — cuui Zephy'ris et hirundine prima. Bolingbroke could venture to say that his fall had not broken his h'eart. "I am sometimes gay, but I am never sad," But the Dean was soured. Pope, when he thought of the world, THE GREAT LORD BOLIXGBROKE. 197 was to give it one more lash at his request. He was daily losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. He could not even write to St John without a twinge of pain. " My lord, I hate and love to write to you ; it gives me pleasure and kills me with melancholy." But though Swift and Prior were absent, there was no lack of good companj'. The friendship Avhich had been begun at La Source was re- newed at Dawley. Voltaire visited the eminent Englishman, in whom he had found all the learning of England and all the politeness of France, — the eminent statesman who, though all his life immersed in pleasure and in business, had found time for learning everything and for retaining everything. Pope at Twickenham, and Lord IJerkeley at Cranford, were his near neighbours. Swift had introduced Pope to St John during the great days of (^>ueen Anne, and the love of the Tory jioet for the Tory peer never aljated nor grew slack. Sir AVilliam AVyndham, his faithful follower and his truest friend, the " dear Willie " of a correspondence which lasted for thirty years ; the wise and generous Marclimount ; Gay, helpless and innocent and charming as a chiM ; Murray, as yet better known as a jester than as a jurist ; the tender and pure-nunded Arbuthnot ; the lean, l)rilliant, and vagrant Peterborough, " who goes to every climate, and never stiiys in any," — were among his intimates. At a later period came the youthful William Pitt, barely out of his teens, but even in his teens haughty, arrogant, and imperious. Lord ^Macaulay, who was captivated by Addison, did not love the Dawley and Twickenham society. Bolingbroke was "a brilliant knave;" Pope "a malignant elf." It must be admitted tliat few of these men were quite sound " in wind and limb." There were cracks in the mirror. Pope was diseased. Swift went mad, Bolingbroke was insanely ambitious, Peter- borough was a knight-errant, and Gay a child. Against Pope, in particular, many evil things may be, and have been, said. The deformed and decrepit poet had a grudge against the world. The feelings of this " Homer in a nutshell " were easily hurt, and easily fired. He was keenly alive to his own infirmities. He resented his malformation. He once or twice tries to allude lightly, and by the by, to " the libelled person and the pictured shape ; " but the hand winces and the flesh quivers as he writes. There is a smile on the shrunken face, 198 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. but the pain is intense. There is mockery in the voice, but the excessive bitterness is fitter for tears than for laughter. " Go on, obliging creatures ! make me see All that disgraced my betters met in me. Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, ' Just 30 immortal Maro held his head ; ' And wlien I die, Ije sure you let me know Great Homer died three thousand years ago." He affects to put aside the comparison, and to ny'ect the balm ; yet it is obvious that he is not sorry to remind his readers that he is not the first great man to whom nature has proved un- kind. In the heart of such a man many jealous and angry passions must have lodged. Sometimes he was bowed down by anguish ; sometimes he was fiercely excited. And, undoubtedly, there was a twist in his mind as in his Ijody. Pope's was, in many aspects, a lofty and generous nature. He was of an in- trepid disposition. He could brave power. Let the cowards bully him if they dared ! He loved his friends. Yet he was sometimes base. He was familiar with the stealthy and secret arts Avith Avliich nature arms the weaker animals. Sometimes he practised these arts without excuse, necessity, or provocation. A purposeless fraud turned the love of Bolingbroke into hatred. It was natural, besides, that such a man should be jealous of his rivals. !Not that he wanted generosity. If he hated furiously, he Avorshipped passionatelj'. He required an idol before which he could bow down and offer up incense — the incense of immortal adulation. For many years Bolingbroke was the idol before which this devotee prostrated himself. The restless, resolute, intriguing, proscribed Jacobite peer was a man in the perfection of manly beauty and vigour; yet in some respects, mental and physical, he bore a curious resemblance to the sickly poet. Such a man attracted and subjugated Pope ; but Bolingbroke was one in a thousand, and the poet Avas more often repelled than attracted by men of letters. The Dunciad is the imperishable monument of his animosities. In all the literature of that age " no whiter page than Addison's remains ; " yet even Addison he cruelly maltreated. It may be doubted whether a subse(iuent generation will recognise the great humane humorist, except as he appears in Pope's cruelly skilful lines. Already the ' Spectator's ' mild features begin to grow indistinct, and THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 199 the formidable shade of Atticus usurps his place. The copy, of course, bears a likeness to the original ; and though the wrinkles and crows'-feet obtain malicious prominence, yet are they drawn with exquisite delicacy, and a touch of surprismg lightness and dexterous reserve. !Nor need we wonder that Pope and Addison could not continue friends. The temper- ance of Addison's character would not exercise a soothing influence over Pope's vehement temper. We can fancy that the exquisite urbanity Avhich no provocation could disturb must have often exasperated the " formidable cripple " past endurance. "Whatever their dispositions were, these men undoubtedly spoke to and of each other, and of the world, nobly. It is possible that they were actors, and that ordinary men and women do not use the language they used ; but then we do not require the Kerables and Siddonses of the stage to be en- tirely natural even in private, and a certain high-bred and stately politeness attaches to the gentlemen of the old school. This is a slovenly generation ; but our grandfathers were punc- tilious about the niceties of dress and manners. Of all these courtly friends, Pope best understood the rhetoric of flattery. His happy adulation has never been matched. The names, so aptly, so artfully introduced into his verse, sparkle like gems in a translucent stream. The poem adorns the name, and the name adds a lustre to the poem. Godolphin, "Wyndham, Pul- teney, Marchmount, AValpole, Somers, Halifax, Chesterfield, Argyle, ]\Iurray, Atterbury, Addison, Gay, Swift, Harley, St John, — there is hardly a wit, or poet, or statesman of the age, who has not a niche in that Pantheon. Among the brilliant group, however, two names are dwelt upon with peculiar and recurring fondness. The first of these was that of a briefless barrister, very witty, very idle, and very needy when Pope first singled him out. At that time the penniless Scotchman was little known in "Westminster Hall, and the grave sergeants who stunned the Rolls or lulled the Exchequer " shook their heads at ^lurray as a wit." He became a great lawyer, he led the House of Commons, he is rightly regarded as the most eminent jurist who ever adorned the English bench ; but Lord Mansfield's forensic and judicial triumphs are not his surest titles to immortality. He lives in imperishable poetry, and almost as imperishable prose. He is embalmed in the eulogy of Pope, and in the invective of Junius. All the resources of 200 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. our language have been employed to brighten and blacken his fame. The Great Unknown closed a famous ejiistle by im- ploring Lord Camden to save his country, and to impeach a wicked judge, " Thus far I have done my duty in endeavour- ing to bring him to punishment. ]>ut mine is an inferior ministerial office in tlie t(;mple of Justice ; I have bound the victim and dragged him to the altar." What a contrast be- tween these fiery epigrams and the dulcet notes which liad welcomed the young and sprightly lawyer — the musical strains whicli remind us of the vanity of life in words rich Avith the hues and blazoned with the j)omp of earth — the suljtle homage Avhich borrowed its finest plume from the ignominy of death and the perishableness of mortal honours : — " Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, Moie silent far, where kings and poets lie ; Where Murray — long enough iiis country's pride — Shall be no more than Tally or than Hyde ! " The one name was ^lurray's, the other was 8t John's, ilurray was his pupil ; St John was his master. Pope never wearied of worshipping his "guide, philosoiihor, and friend." They had commmied together, apart from "low ambition and the pride of kings," of the noblest subjects which can employ and exalt the intellect. St John had taught him to fall with dig- nity, to rise with temper. He had taught him, by his converse, happily to steer from grave to gay, from lively to severe. He had taught him to despise the caprices of fortune, and truly to estimate the baubles of greatness. He had taught him that love, and honour, and virtue, and troops of friends, are inde- pendent of the frowns or of the caresses of the court : — " Great \vithoi\t title ; without fortune, bless'd ; Rich, even when plundered ; honoured, while oppress "d ; Loved without youth, and followed without power ; At home, though exiled ; free, though in the Tower. " He looked back with pardonable complacency on the hours which they had spent together ; and the quaint little grotto at Twickenham, where he had entertained statesmen, and poets, and Avarriors ; where Peterborough had trimmed his vines, and St John mingled with the friendly bowl the feast of reason and the flow of soul, became a sacred place. " Lo ! the Egerian THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. 201 grot." And he looked forward with ardent confidence to the day when the name of Bolingbroke would be a cherished pos- session among Englishmen, when the sons of those Avho had assailed the patriot statesman " would blush to think their fathers were thy foes," and when his little bark, in the wake of that high admiral, might " Pursue the triumph and partake the gale." Such was " the even of a tempestuous day." But as the shadows lengthened, St John grew very lonely. " I go into my own country," he said sadly, but the style is still vivid and richly pictorial, " as if I went into a strange co\intry, and shall inhabit my own house as if I lodged in an inn." He was crippled l)y gout. His wife was dying. Swift had died in the '45 ; Pope during the spring of the immediately preceding year. Bolingbroke had stood by the deathbed of the great English poet, and had pressed the hand of his dearest friend as he died. " I have known him these thirty years," he said to Spence, as they stood together at the bedside. " and value myself more for that man's love than " here the narrator interposes, " St John sank his head, and lost his voice in tears." " The sob which finishes the epitaph," !Mr Thackeray observes, " is finer than words. It is the cloak tlirown over the father's face in the famous Greek picture, wliich hides the grief and lieightons it." So St John was left alone to drink the bitter dregs of the cup. The solitary was not always ser- ene. Trifles irritated him — as they are apt to irritate men of a sensitive and highly refined organisation. He had always, as Chesterfield says, resented the little inadvertencies of human nature ; an over-roasted leg of mutton " Avould strangely disturb and rufHe his temper ; " and Pope had comi)lained tliat, though his friend never rebuked him for his follies and vanities, he " would hang his head to see a seam awry." AVe might wish that one or two incidents in those closing years could be blotted out ; but one has not the heart to be angry Avith the lonely old giant, who had been so long chained to his rock, so sorely afflicted by the gods, so often scarred by the thunder and beaten by the waves, but who yet persevered in his hauglity defiance, and whose heart had not died within him. The end, however, was at hand. An old cancerous humour in 202 THE GREAT LORD BOLINGBROKE. the jaw spread rapidly. A quack undertook to remove it ; but the operation gave tlie sufferer intense pain, and only quick- ened the progress of the malady. Chesterfield, his warmest friend in tliese last days, paid him a farewell visit. " God," said the dying man, " who placed me here, will do what He pleases with me hereafter; and He knows best what to do. ^Fay he bless you!" He died on the 12th of December ITol. FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 1735 TO 1S27. TO many of us liistory is mainly interesting in so far as it brings the lessons of the past to bear upon the problems of the present ; and it is difficult to look through the annals of the English Parliament with- out feeling that party government becomes well nigh impossible when burning questions and heroic measures are made the order of the day. The Constitution cannot stand the strain of a profound antipathy. There is not room within the limits of our parliamentary system for the conflict of lioundliead and Cavalier. There are some vital and fundamental questions on which, if the minority are beaten, they must try other weapons tlian those of argument. The wise party leader is always unwilling to raise these grave issues. He knows l>y instinct how far he can safely go without risk of civil war. " That is an act," said the sagacious Horace Walpole on one occasion, " of deeper dye timn I like in 2'>olitics." The keen distrust with which our political Idealists are regarded, is mainly due to tlie feeling that they do not sufficiently recognise 204 FROM CHArilAM TO CANNING. tlie force of such prudential restraints. No one can tell wlicn tliat fine frenzy, tliat ecstatic entlnisiasm, tliat imperious cajtrice, tliat fanatical ar Munoirn there is an anecdote which I do not remember to have seen elseM'here : — " (Jnce in tlie House of Ix)rds, on a debate during tlie American War, he said he lioped the King might be awakened from his slumbers. 2o8 FROM CHATHAM TO CAA'NIXG. Yot Lord Cliatliaiii's caruer, jud^^'ed of by the ordinary crik-rion of Miiiisttrial Buccess, may be Kaid to have coiiijara- tivi'ly failed. He was far ofteiuT in opixtsition tlian in office: Lis own Ministry wa.s feeldo : on many of the most imjxjrtant (juestions of tlie day tlie Kinj^ and the iiution refused to Bunction his piilic y. Jlut Chatham, ilurin;^ the four years l>etween 1757 and i7<)l, when with hitlt-ndid lirmneK.s and saj^aeity he con- ducted tlie great war against France, did wliat no other 8tute»- man of his age did, or couhl have done. For seventy years Flnghind l»ad been u nation divided against itself. The affec- tions of one-half of the jx-ople were fixctl upon an exiled house — xiHvn I't-lo/dii dimiUM. The sjiirit of active rebidlion had been at Icngtii extinguisht'd. but the old animosities still bunit on ; and the winning party itscdf did not feel very proud of the throne it had gained for an alien and uuijopular dynasty. It was Chatham who revived the old national feeling. lie made the Knglishnian again proud of his country. He recalled tlio sense of jiatriotism, of national union, of a comljined corjionite life. The restoration of that spirit of loyal olx'dience and dutiful attachment to the State, without which, as Burke elo- quently saiil, " Your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber," was directly due to the genius and character of Lord Cliatham. He was a strong man, and he communicated his strong manhood to the nation. The pic- ture of the Great Minister wielding the thunderlxjlts of war, and again, as in the old times, vindicating the authority of the English name, tired the imagination of the people, and welded them together as one man. He found England divided and dispirited ; he left it united and exultant. As the veteran gladiator was borne from the arena, two youtliful athletes appeared upon it — Charles James Fox and AVilliam Pitt. Lady Holland writes to her husband in 1767, — " I have been this morning with Lady Hester Pitt, and there is little "William Pitt, now eight years old, and really There was a cry of ' Order ! Order I ' ' Order, my Lords I ' burst out Chatham ; ' I have not been disorderly, but I will be disorderly. I repeat again, I hope that his Majesty may be awakened from his slumbei-s, but that he may be awakened by such an awful appari- tion as that which drew King Priam's curtains in the dead of the night, and told him of the contiagration of his empire. ' " — VoL liL PL 13-2. FROM CHATHAM TO CAXXIXG. 209 the cleverest child I ever saw, and brought up so strictly and so proper in his behaviour, that — mark my words — that little boy will be a thorn in Charles's side as long as he lives." A curious womanly intuition fulfilled to the letter ! WUliam Pitt was indeed a thorn in Fox's side as long as he lived. It has of late become customary with certain writers to depreciate the services and the wisdom of Pitt ; tliey admit, indeed, that he was a stately Minister, gifted with coi)ious and weighty elotjuence ; but they assert tliut he cannot be regarded as a sound or sagacious leader, and they see in his unrivalled I'arliamentary success only an accumulation of fortunate acci- dents. On the other hand, it is asserted, in the same quarter, that Fox, in this very caitacity, was eminently distinguished ; and that the reason wliy his labours were so seldom crowned witli otlicial recognition, is to be traced to a combination of ilisQstrous fatalities, over which the most forecasting prudence could have exercised no control This estimate appears to me singularly unhappy. Pitt was "a thorn" in Fox's side, no doubt : but he was so becaujie the Whig leader recklessly left liis advances open and unguarded. Fox's attacks upon Pitt always recoiled without effect : the Whig leader's impulsive and desultory genius was no match for the cool and prescient sagacity of the Minister. Fox's cjireer was a failure: Pitt's, from the very beginning, a splendid success. The proloiij^'ed authority of the son of Chatham was nut it had contidence in the other. It is the triumph of character. A brief survey will make this clear. Neither the public nor the private character of Fox was calculated to insi>ire the i)eople with confidence. His private life wjis against him. He po.sse6sed, indeed, many amialile social qualities — warm affections, a placable antl forgiving di-sposition, a sweet and winning temper which nothing coultl sfiur. He was thus immensely jiopular among his asso- ciates. ]jut his reputation with the country was bad ; and the reputation was not unjustilied. His early career was profligate; and even his connection with Mrs Armistead^ — which probably did much to steady him — was foreign to the feelings of a strictly * Mrs Anniatead aftijnvards became Mrs Fox. o 2IO FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. moral pcoitln. Ilis father introducf'lcs. Many men who were very famous then, and some who will be very famous for ever, attarty, approved him- self equal to the conduct of an empire." The words were written towards the close of the liistorian's life, and when ample materials for judgment were beside him. But surely no man can be regarded a.s a great chief whose tactics alieiiate his jKirty and the peiiple ; and at the time when (.libbon wrote, the nation had lost all Cdnfidi-nce in the wisdom and cajiacity of the Whig leaders, ami the Whig party was divided against itself. Fox was looked upon as a reckless (h'baucJu' who spent his days and nights in drinking and gambling with the Prince of Wale.s. Sht-ridan's want of apjilication antl steadiness was univt-rsallv acknowledged, and had been piquanlly illustrated. " No applic^itions " — a notice, it was said, .stuck on the door of liis office dtiring the time he was .Secretary to the Treasury, announced — " no applications can be received here on Wed- ne.sdays, nor any busine.ss done during the remainder of the week." And when the party, with its tmilitinnal exclusive- ness, c(»uld find no place for Burke in his own Administnition, it seemed tiicitly to sanction the popular intpression that his vast outlines of domestic and imperial reform could not bo filled in. Its recent manieuvres, moreover, had created an impression that the men were not only incompetent but un- prineipled. Office was regardeil as the sole object of tlieir mercenary ambition. The tactics of the Opposition — from a Whig point of view especially — were certairdy for many years particularly infelicitous. The junction with Lord North, the conflict of 1784, the question of the Regency, and the French lievohition, were the jirinripal events that took place between 1782 and 1792. What was Fox's conduct in relation to these events 1 Was it consistent with the constitutional prin- ciples which ho advocatetl, or with his position as the leader of the Whig party — the jtarty calling itself the popular? The junction with an ultra-Tory like I.onl North was censured by his personal friends as " an unnatural alliance," and he himself admitted that it was "a measure which only success could 212 J- ROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. justify." Ill 17Hi the conflict was one substantially between tho Parliiunent and the people. The right to an ultimate verdict vested in the people wjis surely a doctrine which no AVliig sh(»ultl have coiitruverted. l>ut this ri^'lit Fox passion- ately denied. Aj,'ain, in 17H8, on the (jUeHti(jn of the Ife-^'ency, he maintained that th<' Prince (if Wahs was invested with an iidit.'Pent authority which did not recjuire the sanction or recog- nition of either House of Parliament. "NVas the j»atrinionial title which he claimed for the Prince a claim which a sound Whiu', nourished on tin; traditions of the Pevolution settlement, woidd have voluntarily recognised? Finally, his conduct in regard to tho French lievolution and the French war wa« characterised by u reckless disregard of the responsibilities that ofKco imposes on a leader. I do not mean to question Ids sincerity — in so far as sincerity is jxissible to a man without any deeply grounded root of jtriiicii»le. There is abundant evidence to the contrary in the letters which have been pul>- lished by YjaxI Kussell and others. liut was it cautiouB or far-seeing in a party leader? He must have known that the Pevolution was an event hostile to the sentiments of the great body of the nation, and repugnant to the oj)inion8 of the most important members of his own i>arty. There was no necessity, to say the least, why he should have assumed the uncompro- mising position which he thought fit to maintain, or voluntarily allied himself with those who were reganled with suspicion and loathing by the most powerful classes of English soci<'ty. Thia Avas an enormous blunder; it decimated the ranks of the Oppo- sition, and made a AVhig Government impossible for fifty years. But he clung to it with fatal obstinacy almost to the end ; for at the very end he was forced hj the inexorable logic of facta to admit that resistance to the national will was no longer possible. The tirst act of the lievolution was consummatt'd in 1789; but it was not until the 6th of ^lay 1792, that the schism in the Opposition became publicly known. The Revolution abso- lutely exasperated Burke. He took it in the light of a personal insult. There was unquestionably a tinge of insiinity in the angry vehemence with which he assailed it. During the last session, upon this very subject, bitter recriminations had passed between him and Sheridan, which might have been spared, " if only for the ghost of a departed friendship." And a yet earlier FROM CHATHAM TO CAXXING. 213 and dearer fellowship was now to be sacrificed. Fox had ris^en during tlie evening, had denounced the enemies of liberty, and lauded in eloquent words the regenerated society of France. Uurke found it impossible to remain silent any longer, lie was, he said, no friend to tyranny. He hated tyranny, but he liated it most where most were concerned ; for he knew that the tyranny of a multitude was a midtii»lied tyranny. Nor Wiis ho an enemy to liberty; but the liberty tliat lie loved was a liberty associated with order and honesty, that not only existed along with virtue and justice, but that could not exist without tliem. This wjis not the liberty that had l)een asserted by the French Kepuldicans ; on the contrary, they had been urgetl on by a ferocious indocility, that seemed to have de- stroyecfnate tenderness, lie ajipealed to his revererness of death." Thus the result of Fox's leadership wa.s to extinguish the ^^^lig, as the leading power in the State, for wellnigh fifty years. From 1784 until the era of the Iteform Hill the party was politically extinct. No doulit unlucky accidents did occur, who^^e bitter fruit must some time have come to maturity of evil ; but the Whigs were banished from office because Fox, alike as a man and as a politician, had failed to conciliate the confidence of the peoj)le. As a man he was pronounced ]»rofligate — as a ])olitician unsafe; and neither magnanimity nor eloquence could retrieve the position which want of character had forfeited. 214 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. Pitt, in either respect, stands out in striking contrast to his rival. His domestic life Avas blameless. The tone of his mind was singularly pure and elevated. Like the Arthur of romance, AVilliam Pitt was " a blameless gentleman." Nor was his purity, as his enemies asserted, exclusively due to the reserve and cold- ness of his temperament. It is said that he was at one time deeply attached to Lady Eleanor Eden, and tliat the conviction that the ties of domestic life were inconsistent with the en- grossing claims of public duty alone prevented him from making her his wife — a sacrifice dictated by a keen sense of duty, perhaps, but still in many respects to be lamented. Lady Eleanor's noble and thouglitful beauty would have associated, not unfitly, with the austere memory of the incorruptible states- man. Such a union, too, would probably have proved beneficial to Pitt himself. His integrity was somewhat icy. His incor- ruptibility was somewhat austere. There was a certain hard- ness in his character which a happy marriage might have cured. But when lie had once decided he seldom repented.-^ And so his life went on, cast in the same mould, till its close, — cold, simple, incorruptible, wanting in the finer lights and subtler perceptions of the affections, but fascinating by its grand, im- posing, and sombre masses. The last scene — the dead minister lying alone and unwatched in the deserted house — is very sad, but not out of keeping with the rest of the incidents, and Avith the cheerless burden of ambition he had voluntarily undertaken to bear.^ Pitt's public no less than his private career compelled con- fidence. He undoubtedly enjoyed many natural advantages. The House of Commons could not behold unmoved the son of the Great Commoner. A noble opportunity, moreover, opened to him on the very threshold of his parliamentary career \ but ^ Pitt liad few friends or intimates. Dundas, and subsequently Canning, were the only men he thoroughly trusted. Even his own Chancellor intrigued against him. Thurlow, indeed, with ponderous hypocrisy denied the charge — "When I forget my King, maj' God forget me!" "He'll see you d — d first!" retorted Wilkes. "The best thing that can happen to you," said Burke. 2 Earl Stanhope in his recent Life, of Pitt has published a selection of letters from Pitt to his mother — in which kindliness of heart, and a solicitude about trifles that concerned her happiness, are manifested, and which somewhat soften the harder lines in the picture. FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 215 even his enemies admitted tliat he turned it to account Avith infinite skill and tact. It needed, indeed, marvellous nerve and moral hardihood to enter deliberately into a life and death con- flict with the turbulent and despotic Commons of England. Had he then fallen he would have fallen irretrievably ; but he never faltered, never wavered, never laid aside his arms, until the enemy was routed and victory won. The conflict between the youthful Premier and the combined opposition of North and Fox, is one of the most bitter recorded in the annals of parliamentary warfare. That Pitt asserted the doctrine of the Constitution cannot now be questioned. That the ministers of the Crown are entitled to appeal to the con- stituencies against the verdict of an adverse Parliament, has been admitted and enforced by Lord John Russell himself.^ But in 1784 the Opposition, secure in the support of a majority of the House of Commons, determined to guard against a dissolu- tion, and in the attempt did not hesitate to use the most violent and arbitrary weapons. To withstand this powerfid and un- scrupidous confederacy must have required, as I have said, a force of moral courage with which few men are gifted. Against the minister were arrayed the genius and the authority of the most accomplished statesmen, the parliamentary influence of Lord Xorth and the philosophical sagacity of Edmund Eurke, Fox's vehement invective and Sheridan's bitter pleasantry, which, as old Robert Boyle found the toothache, " though it be not mortal, it is very troublesome." The ministers were at one time denounced as a set of desperate miscreants, who persisted in holding office against the confidence of the Commons; at another ridiculed as arrogant young gentlemen, who required to be taught that Government was too serious a business to be made the toy of the school-room. The Premier was " The Virgin Minister — the Heaven-bom youth ; " and the charge of precocious and profligate ambition was hurled against the "new Octavius." But Pitt's courageous pertinacity proved equal to the crisis. Animated especially by the resolute support of the King and the Duke of Richmond, he continued to maintain his difficult position with a proud humility, that is not without its charm. To the arguments of the Opposition he ^ Lift and Times of Charles James Fox. Vol. ii. p. 06. London : 1859. 2i6 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. replied in slvilful and eloiiucnt spceclies, wliicli diKplaycd a l)r(ifouny those who knew him as a marked feature in his character. When the contest had lasted fur nearly four months, when the Govornment had undergone a succession of igno- minious defeats, when invective and argument had heen alike exhausted, the majority was at length forced to admit that the House of Commons had heen di8comliteut England was by no means unwilling to participate in the contest. " The coalesced kings threaten us," shouted Danton, " and we cast at their feet, as our gage of battle, the head of a king." The English people eagerly accepted the challenge. The atrocities of the Revolution had horrified them ; its successes had scared them ; and, horror- stricken and panic-stricken, they threw themselves blindly into the battle, and dragged the ISIinister along with them. The revolutionary war has been called a war of principle ; it was rather, in so far as England Avas involved, a war of sentiment and passion. The moral sense of the country had been out- raged by the indecent and ferocious excesses of the Republic, and it protested accordingly, and in the aggressive shape an Englishman's moral protest generally takes. The war was indeed protracted and disastrous ; before it was finished Fox and Pitt were in their graves, and a new genera- tion had arisen. But to attribute these disasters to the policy FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 219 of the Minister is surely most unjust. The fate of battles was against liini ; the genius of Xapoleon was against him ; but he did his part with a lavish hand and a stout heart. He did not starve the war; he addressed the undivided energies of the country to the conflict ; he strained .them to the utmost. And in tlie end the indomitable resolution which that " proud and stoical soul " had imparted to the people, did not fail, — •* We fought right on, with conquering banners o'er us. From Torres VeJras to the Pyrenees." The laurels reaped during that triumphant march were reserved for other brows ; but it was Pitt's policy that made it possible. Nor must we forget that, from first to last, England remained Mistress of the Sea. The Opposition alleged that after he had once embarked in the war, Pitt would never listen to any overture for peace ; but the charge, though no doubt to some extent correct, can hardly be made matter of rei)roach to the ^linister. Pitt accurately estimated the malign nature of the conflict. He was opposed to a great captain for whose insatiable ambition war was an inexorable necessity. Napoleon's power rested upon a military basis ; and such a power was in its very nature a perpetual menace to Europe. To make peace with this foe was, as Pitt felt, virtually impracticable. A truce was more unsafe than a war, even though the war might be Inirdensome and disastrous. The Opposition thundered against the bloody and ambitious Minister ; but when the Opposition itself succeeded to power, it was forced to acknowledge that Pitt was right ; and that, as long as Xapoleon and the Erench army lay like a thundercloud over P'urope, it was impossible to patch up even a provisional peace.^ Such were the two men who for twenty eventful years divided the admiration of the House of Commons — who still on either hand salute the stranger as, with uncovered head, he enters the temple of the State. Pitt — the superb Commoner, who has refused the blue ribbon, and will never accept of any reward for his great services, either from his king or his ' The whole question really resolves itself into this, — Who in his estimate of Napoleon was nearest the mark, Pitt or Fox? And the terrible indictment of M. Laufrey furnishes a conclusive reply. 220 FROM CHATHAM TO CAXNING. cduiitry — from cliildhood su|i('rior to jtlfasure, temperate, alj.sloinidiis, and witli a re[)Utatioii for uiiblemishcMl integrity — fluent, clear, correct, and commanding as an orator — witli arguments that appeal rather to the reason tlian to the imagina- tion — severely just and coldly inllexihle, — we recognise in him a great Constitutional Minister, a haughty (h-ft-nder of the ancient order, a lilting reprt-sentative of the most august and powerful Monarchy in Europe ! Fox, on the other hand, with the light-heartedness of a boy — passionately enamoured of life — loving pleiisure intensely, and ([uitting it with dilliculty and regret — wanting, indci-d, in the ]>atiiMit courage, fore-sight, and energy of the disciplined intellect, liut wiehling with matchless skill a hurning elo(iuence, searchingly argumentitive even when most impetuous — to us he recalls the simple and courageous tribune of a degraded populace — the old orator, ■who coulil weep for very shame that they will not be stirred, as high above the crowd he thumlers against the insolent dictator, and c;xsts down his fiery words, like liailstones, upon the upturned faces of the people ! The lines of opposition between the two statesmen are for the most part strongly marked ; })ut at length, as the end ajtproaches, as the curtain drops, they aj»proximate and unite. Tlie lifelong rivals are reconciled. Each is exhausteeer ; On that day too eonunenced his connuhial career : On tliat day lie received and lie issued his hills ; On that day he cleared out all the casli from his tills ; On that day he died, having finished his summing. And the Angels all cried, ' Here's old Whithread a-coming ! ' So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh For his lieer with an K, and his hier with an I ; And still on that day in tlie hottest of weather, The whole Whithread family dine all together. So long as the beams of this house shall support The roof which o'ershades this respectable court, Where Hastings was tried f(jr oppressing the Hindoos ; So long as the sun shall shine in at those windows. My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines, Mine recorded in journals, //m blazoned on signs I " Canning's early associations were 'svitli the Whig party. At the house of his uncle, Mr Stratford Canning, lie became acquainted with its most eminent members. The beautiful and vivacious ^Irs Crew, who, with the Duchess of Devonshire, adorned and inspired the "WHiig society of the metropolis, was one of his personal friends. ]jefore he had left Oxford, he was looked upon as " one of themselves," and Slieridan, on the occasion of Mr Jenkinson's first speech, announced his coming to the House of Commons. When, therefore, he entered Parliament as a supporter of the ^Minister, the resentment and enemies, and the ruin of our allies — the costly purchase of so much blood and treasure ! Iramortal in the afflictions of England, and the humiliation of her friends, through the whole results of his twenty years' reign, from the tii-st rajs of favour with which a delighted court gilded his early apostasy, to the deadly glare which is at this instant cast upon his name by the burning metropolis of our last ally ! But may no such immortalitj' ever fall to my lot ; let me rather live innocent and inglorious : and when at last I cease to serve you, and to feel for your wrongs, may I have a humble monument in some nameless stone, to tell that beneath it there rests from his labours in your service, '■an enemy of the immortal state-^man — a friend of peace and oj the people. ' " Lord Brougham has criticised Mr Canning ; Mr Stapleton tells us Mr Canning's opinion of ilr Brougham. ' ' I recollect one day, when riding on the grounds near Brighton, telling him that I had received a letter from London, stating that !Mr Brougham was dangerously ill. ' Poor fellow, ' said Mr Canning, ' I am verj- sorry to hear it ; ' and then after a minute's pause he added, ' If he should be taken from the House of Commons, there will be no one left to pound and mash. ' " FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 223 mortification of the connection Avere angrily manifested. He was called a traitor and an apostate, a Judas who for the loaves and fishes had sold his faith. For many years, when- ever he rose to speak, Grey and Tierney left the House. Such conduct was absurd. To make a boy responsible for the immature opinions which family tradition or youthful vanity may lead him to adopt is ridiculous and offensive. Jsor is there any proof that Cannin<^ liad expressed the sentiments imputed to him. He originally sympathised with the French reformers, Imt their excesses quickly alienated his moderate temper and his refined tastes, and the commanding genius of Pitt at an early period attracted his admiration. " Were I in Parliament," he writes to one of his Oxford friends — " where I some time hence hope to be — my support and opinion would go with Mr Pitt." In 1793 he entered the House of Commons! and in the following session made his first speech, which was subdued but effective. The narrative of his feelings on this occasion is very graphic : — " I intended to have told you, at full length, what were my feelings at getting up, and being pointed at by the Speaker, and hearing my name callcil from all sides of the House ; how I trembled lest I should hesitate, or misplace a word in the two or three first sentences; while all was dead silence around me, and my own voice sounded to my ears quite like some other gentleman's ; how, in about ten minutes or less, I got warmed in collision with Fox's arguments, and did not even care twopence for anybody or anything ; how I was roused, in about half an hour, from this pleasing state of self- sufficiency, by accidentally casting my eyes towards the Oppo- sition bench, for the purpose of paying compliments to Fox, and assuring him of my respect antl admiration, and there seeing certain members of Opposition laughing (as I thought), and quizzing me ; how this accident abashed me, and, together with my being out of breath, rendered me incapable of uttering ; how those who sat below me on the Treasury bench, seeing what it was that distressed me, cheered loudly, and the House joined them ; and how, in less than a minute, straining every nerve in my body, and jjlucking up every bit of resolution in my heart, I went on more boldly than ever, and getting into a part of my subject that I liked, and, having the House with me, got happily and triumphantly to the end." 224 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. Canning had almost every quality fitted to make him a favourite with the House of Commons. His manner was always indeed somewhat haughty and authoritative ; lie was an unsparing antagonist ; he exhausted himself at all times — these are his own words — " in endeavours to give vigour and sharpness to political hostility." The Whigs, moreover, as we have seen, regarded him at first with bitter aversion ; but they constituted at that time a small minority in the House, and their influence was not sufficient to make their hostility very prejudicial to its object. Canning's presence was singularly graceful His figure was slight and wiry ; his features, finely cut and decisive, were at the same time very mobile, and capable of a subtle play and variety of expression, — a union seldom met witlu " There is a lighting up of his features, and a cumic play about the mouth," Wilberforce said, " when the full force of the approach- ing witticism strikes his own mind, which prepares you for the burst which is to follow." His head, altogether, was one of great intellectual power and beauty; the kind of head that is more frequently found on Greek statues than on English mem- bers of Parliament. His voice Avas low, but so rich, and clear, and perfectly modulated, that it was heard distinctly in every part of the House. There was an air of high-breeding and aristocratic distinction in every gesture, which those who dubbed him an " adventurer " did not always possess. His eloquence was calm, serene, and luminous. He was seldom passionate; rarely yielded to excitement or emotion — but when he did, the effect was electrical. The vehemence ■struck all the more keenly, from the contrast it presented to his passionless demeanour, his sarcastic temper, and his habit- ual reserve. AVith the lighter artillery of parliamentary defence and attack he was completely furnished. His irony was swift and stealthy, — it stabbed like the stiletto. " I can excuse him," he said, when Mr Windham's military measures were supported by his colleagues on grounds which he himself had repudiated, "for having disdained to answer the attacks of his opponents, but I am surprised that he should not have vindicated himself from the support of his friends." He par- ticularly excelled in that refined pleasantry — that indirect and gentlemanly quizzing — which is so much relished by the House of Commons. The heaA'y Falmouth coach " conveying the FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 225 succour of Lord K'ugent's person to Spain " — the Government discovering that there really was something like a war between France and Prussia, " by the trifling circumstance that the Prussian army was annihilated" — the accoimt of Mr Wind- ham's expeditions ^ — are capital specimens of this vein of grave and good-humoured banter. Mr Stapleton gives some very interesting details of the manner in which he prepared for a great speech. " His whole mind was absorbed in it for two or perhaps three days before- hand. He spared no labour in obtaining and in arranging his materials. He always drew up a paper (which he used in the House) with the heads, in their order, of the several topics on which he meant to touch, and these heads were numbered, and the numbers sometimes extended to four or even live hundred." Some of these " headings " have been preserved, and they are very curious. We have only room for one — the unused notes of a speech in reply to ^Ir Hobhouse, who, !Mr Canning be- lieved, had, in an anonymous pampldet, suggested his assas- sination. 391. But in or out of office. 392. The Constitution is my object of worship. 393. And in this her temple. 304. For that obloquy. 395. For that demonstration. 396. For that designation, and I pretty well know by what pen, to the dagger of the assassin. 397. But it is past — the danger and the scorn. 398. Let them rail, or let them repent. 399. My course is the same. 400. And while I have the strength, I desire no other duty than that of doing my best in defence of a form of Government which, if destroyed, could not be replaced, and which may yet afibrd shelter and glory to generations who will know how to value and preserve it. Not only were these external characteristics in his favour; the temper of his mind was peculiarly fitted to win the con- fidence of the House of Commons. He was brave, intrepid, and honourable; no stain of baseness ever soiled his reputa- tion. To such an one an assembly of English gentlemen can ^ " A fire- work before Boulogne and — yet that wanted confirmation — an embarkation on the Paddiugton Canal. But for the uncommon openness of the weather, it is probable that his army would have been frozen up at Uxbridge. " P 226 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. forgive much. And the moderation of his character attuned Avith tlieir own. This moderation was intimately allied with his fastidiousness. His severe and dainty taste, the extreme care with which ho lingered over the structure of a sentence, or the exact etymological significance of a word — sometimes, perhaps, degenerated into prudery. He scanned a royal speech till the faintest tinge of colour was bleached out of it. The King's message upon the afHiirs of Portugal was discovered at the eleventh hour to contain a slight grammatical error : Mr Canning would not present it to the House until the inaccu- racy had been carefully erased. Some people may be disposed to resent this jealous attention to verl)al niceties ; we are not. ^rental slovenliness is as obnoxious as bodily ; and scrupulous neatness, both in dress and language, is a virtue of the first magnitude. Confusion in speech is commonly the index of confused thinking ; aiul the philosopher and the statesman should weigh the precise import of words as rigorously as the lawyer. A man so constitutionally fastidious as Canning was, could not help being temperate. He had a horror of excess in every shape ; whatever shocked good taste was repugnant to him; the extravagances of enthusiasm were regarded with critical dislike by his fair and unimpassioned intellect. A shade of meditative irony runs perhaps through his mind ; but he had no very deep convictions, nor the stuff of Avhich bigots and mart}TS are made. Yet, with all his Epicurean delicacy and meteor-like brilliancy, he possessed a remarkably sound understanding, and a rare fund of common -sense. His great speech upon the bullion question showed the most perfect acquaintance with the intricacies of practical finance. "He flayed" says Horner, "with its most knotty subtleties." This moderation was the key-note of Canning's character, and determined his political career. He was liberal and yet a Tory, the adversary of reform and yet the ardent advocate of toleration. "Wherever a tangible grievance existed, he devoted his energies to its redress ; but he opposed every scheme of theoretical amelioration. He was the lifelong advocate of Catholic emancipation : he was the lifelong opponent of con- stitutional change. During the time he was in office, the question of Greek independence arose. The attitude he as- sumed towards it strikingly illustrates the habitual temperance of his disposition. "When all Europe had gone crazy about FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 227 the "degenerate offspring of tlie free," Canning maintained the even tenor of his mind. He was a fine scholar, and was not insensible to the classical associations wliich the struggle suggested; but he would not allow his imagination to take his judgment captive, or divert him from prudent and tem- perate counsels ; and he expressed the keenest contempt for those who, to reconstruct the baseless fabric of a vision, blindly- perilled the practical wellbeing of Europe. " I have traced Chateaubriand's agents," he writes, scornfully, " perplexing the unhappy Greeks ^vith I know not what absurd fancies of elec- tive monarchies, and crusades against the infidel, with new knighthoods of ^falta, at three shillings and sixpence a head." He himself tried to accommodate the dispute between the Greeks and their Mussulman masters by a reasonable com- promise. He negotiated a treaty which provided that, on the payment of a moderate fixed duty to the Porte, the Turkish army should be removed from Greece. But this wise and politic middle course was of course unacceptable to the imagina* live politicians who, for the dream of a Republic, were content to abet the ambitious designs of Russia. On his foreign policy the fame of Mr Canning must ulti- mately depend. He was the ablest foreign minister that England has had for a century. The principles on which his policy rested were admirably conceived, and most skilfully executed. From the beginning to the end of his career they are evolved with dramatic consistency. I must briefly justify this assertion. Canning entered heart and soul into Mr Pitt's contest with France. He held that the conflict was unavoidable, and that it had been forced upon a minister " whose fame as well as power rested upon the basis of the financial prosperity of the country." The indecent excesses of the French Republicans, moreover, shocked his taste; and when the Republic was at length destroyed by one of its own off"spring, he bursts into a shout of triumph. " Huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! " (he exclaims, in 1799), "Buonaparte, an apostate from the cause of liberty, — Buonaparte, the avowed tyrant of his country, is an object to be contemplated with enthusiasm — to be held up to the admiration and gratitude of mankind. Tell me not that he \d\\ make France more powerful — that he Avill make war with more vigour, or peace with more dexterity, than the exploded 228 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. Directory have done ; I care not. ^o ! no ! It is the thorough destruction of the principles of exaggerated liberty — it is the lasting ridicule thrown upon all systems of democratic equality — it is this that makes the name of Buonaparte dear to me — this his one act has done, let him conduct himself as he may hereafter ; let him be a general, or a legislator, or a monarch, or a captive, crowned or beheaded, it is all the same for this purpose. Buonaparte may flourish, but the idol of Jacobinism is no more." Like Pitt, he did not believe in the possibility of peace. The conflict, ho held, was unappeasable until its cause was removed. The military despotism of Napoleon was a volcanic i)ower which, even when at rest, perfxitually threat- ened the tranquillity of Europe. The peace of AmieiLS — " the never, never to be excused or atoned for, this most disgraceful and calamitous treaty of peace " — he bitterly condemned. " I would never have signed it," he wrote ; " I would have cut off my right hand rather." Both the great leaders of the great English parties died in 1806 — Fox with his last breath urging the vigorous prosecution of the war he had so often denounced ; and towards the close of that year the Portland Administration was formed, in which, for the first time. Canning occupied the post of Foreign Secretary. The times were times of peril and disaster. Napoleon was at the climax of his power. The whole Continent lay at his feet, and the Imperial dictator had remodelled the xnap of Europe. The only Government, except the English, which had hitherto opposed an obstinate resistance to his ambition had at length succumbed ; and the French and liussian auto- crats were now, to all appearance, firmly united. England alone remained ; and the secret article of the Treaty of Tilsit — by which Napoleon and Alexander agreed that the fleets of the neutral Powers should be taken possession of by them — aimed a bloAv at her naval supremacy which, had it taken eff"ect, would have irretrievably crippled her resources. Fortunately the ambitious intrigue was disclosed to the English Government. The situation was one of instant peril. Whatever was to be done must be done at once. jVIr Canning did not hesitate. The Danish fleet was the object of the confederates ; an Eng- lish force was instantly despatched to Copenhagen, the fleet was captured, and conveyed to Portsmouth. This was a daring blow ; one which a fearless and audacious FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 229 genius alone could have dictated ; one, therefore, "which the timid and the sanctimonious have not been sIoav to condemn. Heavy sermons have been preached upon the violation of the law of nations which it involved ; ponderous speeches have denounced the man who sanctioned this profligate attack upon a friendly, or at least a neutral Power. The world has declined to indorse these vapid platitudes and weak sentimentalisms. Emergencies unquestionably arise, alike in the life of men and of nations, for the solution of which tlie ordinary rules of moral judgment do not serve. The conduct of the men who have to encounter these crises must be estimated by another standard, and by a different code. That code has justified Mr Canning. It is possible to kill without being guilty of murder ; it is pos- sible to rob without being a thief ; and a man may break the law of nations without becoming a buccaneer. The great man sees through the thin sophistries and fictions which society has erected for its protection. The Danish fleet was the property of the Danish Government, with whom we were at peace ; but it was practically in the possession of the Allies, with wliom we were at war. If it was not used hy ti^s, it would certainly be used against us. Strength imposes certain obligations ; but so does weakness; and if a feeble Government neglect to observe these obligations, it must take the consequences. Den- mark was unable to resist the coercion of the Continental powers ; and if she chose to retain a weapon of offence Avhich she could not herself use, but which could be used by others, we were, for our own protection, entitled to take it out of her hands. England was in great and imminent peril ; to the supreme moral fearlessness of Mr Canning we owe, in no small measure, her deliverance. The efiect of the blow was great. It " stunned " the Rus- sian autocrat into his senses. The French Emperor was ex- asperated beyond measure. "Since the death of Paul," says Fouche, " I never saw Napoleon abandon himself to such violent transports of passion." While the issue hung in the balance. Canning remained in a state of keen anxiety. " It is a most wearying suspense," he writes in one letter. In another — " Nothing yet. It is very extraordinary ; and very, very anxious." At length, after an interval of intense disquietude, the news of complete victory arrived. The Foreign Secretary had effectually deranged the aggressive policy of Tilsit. 230 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. Canning felt keenly that either England or the Emperor must (JO down ; and so, disregarding all subordinate friend- ships and enmities, he bent the whtde force of his mind to defeat the ambition of Napoleon, and deliver Europe from the incubus which smothered her. " It is evident his liead is turned ; it is fur us to cure the vertigo ; " " "Whoever is the enemy of Napoleon is the friend of England," were the mottoes of his policy. The capture of the JJanish Heet had saved England ; the revolt of the Spanish people saved Europe. Tiie whole significance of that outburst was immediately appre- hended by Canning. " A nation like that," he said, " may be exterminated, but cannot be subdued;" and he confidently backed the sluggii^h and tenacious patriotism of the Spaniard against the rapid sweep and brilliant genius of the Corsican. ^loney and troops were forwarded to the Penin.sula ; and Sir Arthur Wellesley, whose pre-eminent military capacity Canning was among the first to recognise, was despatched to take the command. No disasters could shake the minister's conlidence. " AVhile Cadiz is safe, Spain is not lost ; and while all is not lost, all is ultimately retrievable." A noble confidence nobly redeemed. But tliougli Canning organised the policy which ultimately proveil fatal to the Empire, he did not remain to complete it. After his unlucky duel with Lord Castlereagh he resigned the Foreign Secretaryship, and did not until 1822 again hold the office. The interregnum was unfortunate, alike for his own fame and for England. For himself, because the years between were years crowded with brilliant military achievements, and important diplomatic transactions, which would have crowned the minister's reputation. For England, because on his retire- ment Castlereagh assumed the conduct of our foreign relations. Had Canning remained in office, we may rest assured that he would not have sanctioned the settlement of 1815. Had he remained in office the " Holy Alliance " would have been nipped in the bud, and the struggle we have lately witnessed — a struggle to readjust on a better defined and more natural basis the distribution of power in Europe — might have been averted. On Lord Castlereagh's death Canning returned to the Foreign Office. Great changes had taken place since he quitted it. " The mighty deluge by which the Continent was overwhelmed had subsided ; the limits of nations were again visible, and the FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 231 spires and turrets of ancient establishments had reappeared above the subsiding wave." But a new peril now threatened Europe. Three of the Allied Sovereigns had been frightened out of their wits by the monstrous progeny of the Revolution, and they entered at Paris into an offensive and defensive alli- ance. The programme of the " Holy Alliance " was suspiciously vague and fantastic, but its real motives were quickly pene- trated. Its authors elected themselves the constitutional police of Europe. Whenever a popular insurrection agamst a tyran- nical ruler broke out, whenever a free government was de- manded, whenever a liberal institution was established, the Alliance was up and domg. Tliese and similar movements were pregnant with danger to the peace of the world ; and it was the duty of the constitutional police to secure order and to preserve trani|uillity. Such was the specious scheme which " the craft of the Bohemian," " the ferocity of the Tartar," and " the obstinacy of the Vandal," ^ had devised, and which for many yeai-s arrested the expression of independent thought and national life over the continunt of Europe. Castlereagh had tacitly acquiesced in the policy of the Alliance. The prestige and authority of the ancient monarchies represented in the association liad produced their natural effect upon a mind obstinately hostile to liberal institutions. But to Canning the .Vlliance was uttc-rly repugnant — repugnant to his English feelings, and to his liberal inclinations. Gradually, imperceptibly, with tine skill, he detached England from the connection- He thwarted its policy, he ridiculed its anger, he defied its threats. He won, but it was a hard fight. The king was against him ; the Duke of ^Wellington was against him. Metternich, the great chamjjion of legitimacy, employed all his vast induence, and all the arts of courtly intrigue, to procure the Eoreign Secretary's dismissal, and raised in Can- ning's breast a feeling of bitter but contemptuous suspicion. " I am quite clear," he says to Lord Liverpool, " that there is no honesty in Metternich, and that we cannot enter into joint concert with him without a certainty of being betrayed. It is not only his practice, but in our case it will be his pride and pleasure." Again, writing to Lord Granville, he expresses his ' The complimentary epithets used by Mr Brougham to describe the members of the Alliance — the King of Prussia, and the Emperors of Austria and Russia. 232 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. opinion in even stronger language, " You ask me what you shall say to Metternich. In the first place you shall hear what I think of him — that he is tlio greatest rogue and liar on the Contment, perha])S in the civilised world." iJut Canning's perseverance, caution, and will triumphed over every obstacle ; and the foreign policy of England has ever since retained the impress of the principles he then stamped upon it. During the years between 1822 and 1827 — when he held the seals of the Foreign Office — he withdrew the English plenipotentiary from tlie Congress of Verona, he recognised the independence of the Spanish colonies, and he despatched a force to the Tagus to aid the Portuguese. Each of these acts was intended to disengage England from the Alliance, and to manifest how radically we were opposed to the principles it promulgated. The Congress of Verona sanctioned the occupation of Spain by France. Spain had tried the experiment of liberal institu- tions, and the Alliance naturally resented the experiment So the French King was deputed to bring his refractory neighbour back to reason, and to riglit ways of thinking and governing. AVhon, however, this resolution was arrived at, the Duke of "Wellington, who represented England in the Congress, pro- tested and withdrew. Canning was satisfied with a dignified protest; we were not bound by any specific treaties to assist Spain; and until a question of national faith or national honour should arise, he was resolved that England should neither originate nor participate in a war, the limits of which, as he said, no mortal sagacity could determine. The French occupation was no doubt keenly resented by the Foreign Secretary ; and, though he did not allow his feelings to hurry him into war, he speedily and effectually retaliated. In the following year England recognised the independence of the Spanish American colonies. Mr Canning eagerly pressed the recognition. Various motives impelled him to do so. By recognising the independence of the colonies he disavowed in the face of the world the prin- ciples of the Alliance ; and he deprived France of the moral weight which it might otherwise have derived from the posses- sion of the Spanish kingdom. It was obviously a heavy blow and great discouragement to the Alliance. The Alliance had been instituted to aid dis- FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 233 tressed kings in reducing refractory populations, and now, on the first opportunity, England proclaimed, not merely that the populations were entitled to please themselves, but that she would officially recognise any institution, Monarchical or Ke- publican, under which they chose to live. Moreover, the recognition prevented France from reaping any disproportionate influence from the possession of Spain. France might keep Spain if she liked, but at least it should not be " SpaLa with the Indies." This was the argument !Mr Canning urged, and which, in his great speech on Portugal, he illustrated with sur- passing eloquence. " I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old ! " The argument appears simple and obvious, but it was at- tacked, shortly before Mr Canning's death, Avith peculiar acri- mony, by Earl Grey, who, with all the narrow sectarianism of the AMiig aristocrat, disliked the " ambitious adventurer " under whose colours his party was then proud to serve. ^\v Canning intended to answer the speech, but the opportunity never came ; and indeed, except in regard to one or two subordinate accusations, any answer would have been quite superfluous. The Earl asserted tliat the recognition of the colonies had not been made with the view of redressing tlie balance of power by diminishing the influence of France. This was the gravamen of the charge, — the sting of the speech. It was ungenerously but distinctly insinuated that Canning's striking vindication of his American policy was an after-thought. The documents pub- lished by Mr Stapleton completely refute the insinuation ; ^ for they prove conclusively that the French occupation materially influenced the decision of the English Cabinet. In the report, for instance, which the Foreign Secretary submitted to the King on the subject, it is expressly stated that the argument had been already fully discussed. " That, consistently with the situation in which Spain is placed by the indefinite occupation of her strong places by the arms of a foreign Power, she cannot be considered as a free agent, and that of course Spain is essentially French in her foreign policy, it becomes our duty to prevent Spaniiih America from being brought icithin the same subjection, are points which appear to your servants to be so ^ George Canning and his Times, by Augustus Granville Stapleton — 1859. 234 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. conclusively argued in Lord Liverpool's papcjr, that it would be uiipurdonablo to trouble your Majesty witli any further discus- sion of them." 8(j tbat tlie Foreign Secretary's eloijuent vindi- cation was no trick of artful rhetoric, no piece of idle bravado, but a literal and uneinbellished recital of tlie fact. All Mr Canning's anticipations of the effects of the measure have not indeed been realised. " Spanish America is free," he exclaims, " and, if we do not mismanage our matters sadly, she is English, and Novus sfeclorum iiascitur ordo." Liberated America, alike to her own citizens and her allies, has proved rather a wortldess possession. Its decay probably waa too inveterate to admit under any circumstances of hwilthy re- organisation ; and Mr Canning at luast is not responsible for the failure of the experiment. " The responsibility rests not with me. Liberavi aiihiiam meam." Mr Canning's Portuguese policy was the corner-stone of the wise and sagacious system he inaugurated. It elicited, more- over, in the most marked manner, the enthusiasm of his con- temporaries. The Emperor of Brazil, in resigning the Crown of Portugal, had accompanied his abdication with the grant of a constitutional charter. The much-suffering Alliance angrily protested ; and as its protest remained unheeded, recurred to its old Aveapons. An army of Portuguese deserters, secretly organised and disciplined in Spain, were invited to invade their native country. Eut Mr Canning was prepared for the emer- gency. He had perceived at an early period that "Portugal was the ground on which the Holy Alliance meant to fight England," and he was ready to lift the glove. Portugal was our most ancient ally, and many treaties bound us to defend the integrity of her dominions. "We had not interfered when Spain was occupied ; but the time had come when the policy of non-intervention could no longer be persevered in, and when it was necessary to show that, though moderate, we were not pusillanimous. Hitherto we had diplomatically and passively resisted the Alliance ; now the faith of treaties, the dictates of national honour, and the principles of the independent policy we had adopted, demanded an active and armed intervention. An English army was instantly despatched to the Tagus, where it was received " with frantic joy " by the population. FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 235 But the ovation which the army received from the people of Lisbon was equalled by that which awaited the Minister in the House of Commons. The King's Message respecting Portugal was taken into consideration on the 12th December 1826. Mr Canning, in a most luminous and statesmanlike speech — " extra- ordinary and unprecedented in this house," was Mr Brougham's testimony, " unprecedented (and I can give it no higher praise) even in the eloquence of the right honourable gentleman " — described the circumstances which rendered it, in the opinion of Ministers, imperative that Portugal should not be left un- aided. " "We go to Portugal," he concluded, " not to rule, not to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to preserve and defend the independence of an ally. We go to plant tlie standard of England on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted, foreign dominion shall not come." The speech is a model of calm and elevated argument, tersely and vigorously expressed. Certain passages, — that, fur instance, in which he likens England to the ruler of the winds — CelsA sedet /Eolua arce Sceptra tenens ; inollitut I deny that, (juestionaltle or cen- sura])le as the act might be, it was one which necessarily called for our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing, then, to be done ? Was there no other mode of resistance, than by a direct attack upon France — or by a war to be undertaken on the soil of Spain ? What, if the position of Spain might }»e rendered harndess in rival hands — harndess as reganled us — and value- less to the possessors? Might not C()mj)ensati(jn for disparage- ment be obtained, and the policy of our ancestors vindicated, by means better adapted to the present time ? If France occu- pied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz ? Xo. I looked another way — I sought materials of C(jmpensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our an- cestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it sliould not be Spain ' with the Indies.' I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." The effect which this memorable speech produced on the House of Commons is admitted, both by friends and foes, to have been quite unprecedented. " It was an epoch in a man's life to have heard him," writes a member who was present. " A\nien, in the style and manner of Chatham, he exclaimed, ' I looked to Spain in the Indies; I called a New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old ; ' the effect was actually terrific. It was as if every man in the House had been electrified. Mr Canning seemed actually to have in- creased in stature, his attitude was so majestic. I remarked his flourishes Avere made with his left arm : the effect was new and beautiful ; his chest heaved and expanded ; his nostril dilated ; a noble pride slightly curled his lip ; and age and sickness were dissolved and forgotten in the ardour of youthful genius." " The whole House were moved," says Mr Stapleton, " as if an electric shock had passed through them : they all rose for a moment to look at him ! This effect I witnessed from under the gallery." And Mr Canning himself, writing two days afterwards to Lord Granville, says, " If I know anything FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 237 of the House of Commons from thirty-thi-ee years' experience, or if I may trust to what reaches me in report of feelings out- of-doors, the declaration of the obvious but unsuspected truth, that *I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old,' has been more grateful to English ears and to English feelings ten thousand times, than would have been the most satisfactory announcement of the intention of the French Government to withdraw its army from Spain." We have described the general principles of a foreign policy which proved eminently successful : one or two minor jioints remain to be noticed. Canning w;is })ersonally a very skilful diplomatist. His tact, penetration, and judgment were con- spicuous; and he played his antagonists with the ease of a master. His apparent frankness and unreserve disarmed the most astute ; whUo he delighted to tease and perplex the dull and the pretentious with knotty problems and puzzling com- plications. But when in earnest his tone was at once maidy and moderate. Ho never bullied, or threatened, or stormed. " I abhor menace till one means action," he said. A thorough Englishman both in taste and temper, he was the fii*st Foreign Secretary who insisted that English, not French, should be used in our di{«lomatic correspondence. " Whatever we may have to say hereafter, be it high or humble, soothing or threatening, warlike or pacific, I trust we shall never again submit to speak any language but our own." When he came to the Foreign (Office in 1822, he wrote to the ambassador at St Petersburg, " You knijw my politics well enough to know what I mean when I say, that for Europe I shall be desirous now and then to read England." This is indeed one of the most characteristic features of his official life. In whatever he said, or did, there is the magnanimity of the English statesman, the moderation of the English gentleman. The last months of Mr Canning's life, though the most brilliant, are also the most painful. His elevation to the Premiei-ship on the death of Lord Liverpool was not effected without great opposition. The Duke of Newcastle called on the Sovereign, and threatened to withdraw the support of the Tory aristocracy from the Government, if Mr Canning were placed at its head. The Duke of Wellington, !Mr Peel, Lord Eldon, and several members of the Cabinet, simultaneously resigned, on the ground that on the question of Catholic 238 FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. Emancipation they differed from the Premier. It was con- fidently expected that, under these discouragements, Mr Can- ning would be forced to abandon the task, liut his enemies had misunderstood their man. He quickly succeeded in forming an Administration, composed of the more tolerant section of the Whigs, and of the representatives of that great moderate middle party, which his genius had created alike in the country and in the Legislature. The resentment of the defeated Tories knew no bounds. The language which they employed to denounce the Minister would have disgraced Bil- lingsgate. Night after night he was attacked with an acrimony which recalled the more discreditable features of the conflict of the Coalition with Pitt. Canning maintained his position with simplicity, with manliness, Avith a Pitt-like hauteur. At length, after having answered, fully and temperately, all the charges directed against him, he declined to protract the con- troversy. Until a direct vote of censure was moved, no threats, no expostulations, no entreaties, would induce him, he declared, to open his lips. The subordinate members of " the pack who bayed him to death " are now forgotten ; but the conduct of Sir Robert Peel to his old colleague still invokes the justification of his friends. These have been numerous and elaborate ; successful they have not been. Upon the whole, it is better, we fancy, to admit that Sir Eobert's treatment of Mr Canning was the fruit of a very natural jealousy, than to trace it to the influence of high- toned and scrupulous motives. Even great statesmen are not exempted from the vindictive feelings that afflict ordinary mortals. Peel disliked Canning, and under Canning it was virtually impossible that he could serve. This is the plain explanation of the whole matter, and posterity will not con- strue too hardly an inevitable antipathy. The contest killed Canning. That virulent and unscrupu- lous hostility proved too much for a constitution already shattered by disease. During the whole session he had been miserably ill; he rose from a sick-bed to deliver his great speeches on Portugal; a cold caught at the Duke of York's funeral, in the Chapel of St George at Windsor, aggravated his disorder. He continued, however, to fight the enemy with indomitable resolution to the end. But it was plain that his exhausted system could not for any long time sustain the FROM CHATHAM TO CANNING. 239 strain. On the 3d of August he was declared to be in imminent danger ; on the morning of the 8th he died. " Sir M. Tierney felt his pulse, thought for a second that he was gone, but he still breathed. In a few seconds there ceased to be any sign of breathing. He passed away so quietly that the exact moment could not be ascertained, but it was between twelve and ten minutes before four." Almost the last in- telligible words he uttered were, — "This may be hard upon me, but it is harder upon the King." And so he died — the last of a dynasty of statesmen. D I S R A ]•: L I. IT must be now more tlian a quarter of a century since, in an article in Frascr's Magazine, I applied to Mr Disraeli the tine lint'S which are to be found in the finest of our memorial poems : — " Who bri'aka his birth's inviilious l»ar, Ami grasjis the skirta of happy cliance, And breasts the bluws of circunistance, Aud grapples with his evil star ; Who makes by force his merit known. And lives to clutch the goKlen keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne ; And, moving up from high to higher. Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope. The centre of a world's desire."' The closing lines are descriptive of a commanding posi- tion which ^Ir Disraeli had certainly not attained at the time ; yet the last quarter of a century has seen them come true to the letter. The brilliant leader of a forlorn -hope has been, for the past ten years at least, one of the most potent forces of the Monarchy. Years before his death, indeed, his fame had ceased to be DISRAELI. 241 insular. Out of England he was the most famous of our statesmen ; one of the two great figures of contem- porary politics. In England we had Beaconsfield and Gladstone ; in Europe they had Beaconsfield and Bis- marck. And now, that potent personality has been withdrawn from the arena ; and it is no longer the words of Tennyson, but of Tope, that return instinctively to the mind : — " Conspicuous scene I another yet is nigh, More silent far, where kingH and j^oeta lie ; Where Murray — long enou>;h his country's pride — Sluill be no more tlian TuUy or tlian Hyde ! " Tliere lia-s been a surprising imanimity of opinion about Lord licaconstield in the j»ul)lic journals since his death. It is felt by all classes that a Prince and a great man has fallen in Israel. But it seems to me that the apologetic tone in wliich many uf tlje must characteristic incidents of his life have been detdt with shows that the writ^irs have failed to grasp the governing principle, the determining force, the vital idiosyncrasies of his career. We have apologies for his early Badicalism ; we have apologies for his comluct to Sir Kobert I'eel ; we have apologies for his economical heresies ; we have apologies for his IJeform Bill ; we have apologies for his foreign policy. Thai is the tone, for instance, which his eulogist in the leading journal adoi)ts. If all these apologies are necessary, it is dirticult to understand what is meant by the universal sorrow and sympathy that have been ex- pressed, not only in England, Imt over P^urope. Treated in this spirit, the character of Disraeli loses its ])ictures(iue identity — any credible likeness of the man in his habit as he lived becomes impossible — wliat we get is a mere cajtut mortuum. I believe (and I have enjoyed some rather unusual facilities for forming an opinion) that there is, throughout that remarkable career, from the Q 242 DISRAELI. point of view of the man liiniself, an essential consistency. I say, from his point of view ; and that is the main matter ; it is not necessary to maintain tliat the opinions which he lield were wise or just, but only that they were sincere and liis (jwii. One would luirdly have fancied, after a fmssin^ glimpse of ^fr Disraeli in the House of Conunons thirty years ago, that this was a man of (juite unusual ener^'y and resource. Tho face was massive indeed, Imt iuiiMissive ; and the habitual maiim-r spoke of indolence and lauj^uor. He wjis as cwiselessly vigilant as a weasel or a fox ; nothing escaped tliat ex«iuisit<.dy sensitive perception ; yet he looked all the time as if he were asleep. It was said long ago — it would be alx)ut the year *54, I think — that Sir Edwin Liin«lseer had sent two pictures to the Kxhibitiun which the Hanging Committt-e, in conipli- anco with the rule of the Academy jtrohibiting the introduc- tion of political topics, had been compelled to reject The pictures represented " Free Trade " and " Protection." I forget what animal was selected to represent the genius of unrestricted competition, — possibly a group of Chiwigo pigs suirering from trichinosis (only the trichina was a later invention); but in a forlorn and emaciated donkey — and the venerable quadruped bore a curious resemblance to Mr Disraeli — the principle of restriction received appropriate? recognition. It is a pity, perha{>s, that the Academy were so scrui)ulous ; for in no other form could the remarkably hanging aijd drooping expression of his face and figure have been more aptly rendered. It was from this peculiarity, I fancy, that he always conveyed to the onlooker the notion of a man utterly bored. It is possible, of course, that these dramatic contrasts added to the ultimate eflect. At all events there was some- thing cui-iously calculated to arrest attention in hearing this man utter, in the presence of an august historical assembly, and in a manner languid and insipid beyond belief, the most felicitous subtleties of a critical inteDect — the plainest and most lucid expositions of public law ami national policy — the coldest, most bitter, direct, searching, and contemptuous irony that our mother-tongue is capable of conveying. DISRAELI. 243 There can be no reasonable doubt now that Mr Disraeli was a bom leader. He belonged to the select class who are really capable of ruUmj. There are not many, in any age, to whom that supreme faculty has been accorded ; and day by day their number is diminishing. "We may call such a man Machiavelli or Mephistopheles ; we may say that his aims are sellish, and that his instruments are base ; but, at all events, his leadership is a real thing and nut a sham. The magnetism which charms men into obedience is one of the rarest of gifts — too tino and impalpable for scientific analysis. And yet without it, in any real crisis, the worlil would be badly otf. For it is better to have a bad governnifnt than no government at all — the existence of any government proving that the sense of order, at least, is not dead in the nation ; and sheer anarchy being the most hoi)elcs8 of conditions. And this was the feeling which was growing among the masses in this country when they s;iw how jMjliticians failed to settle the question of Keform. The tlealiiigs of the House of Commons with the question of the franchise were bringing the Monarchy into disrepute. At length, Mr Disraeli sjiid "This question tnnM 1)6 settled;" and quietly, steadily, — watchful and imper- turbable as the 8jihin.\ in Tenniel's woiHlirful cartoon — he settled it. I don't inquire now whether it vcas a good or bad settlement ; but a settlement of any sort was an argument in favour of the Monarchy. After all, this Constitutional Ooveniment of ours was able to do something, not merely to talk about doing it. And as any CJovemment is better than none, so it is better, I take it, to be governed by a real governor (though indifferently honest) who understands his work, than by a sham governor — however eloquent and exemplar}*, in other respects, the sham may be, \f[\o has not felt, of late years, that most of our so-called rulers were accidental fixtures only — that there was no true congruity between them and tho business which they had undertaken] Lord Palmerston, no doubt, had some of the superficial elements in his nature which go to form a ruler; and with calm seas and fair skies, he reiilly was great in his own light, dexterous way ; but to a man like Di.^raeli, of sedate yet daring tenijier and boundless resource, not to be compared for a day. "NVe liave plenty of Huent orators left ; but put them side by side with Disraeli, and we find that it is the Tory chief who bears a family likeness to 244 DISRAELI. those great practical politic kings (jf men (as distinguished from the mere tallcers) on whom, in Eiithen's words, " the strong vertical light of Homer's poetry fulls." That a real leader must l)e mi»re or less of a poet is a proljosition that Mr Carl vie wmild jtossiljly have controverted. I5ut it is true, nevertheless. Mr Disraeli was a poet, in the sense that ho possessed a powerful imaginative faculty ; — not the imagination, it may be, which Idossoms into poetry — into rhythm and ordered music ; but the imagination which fires and kindles the intellect. A fantiustic, ill-n-gulated imagina- tion leads men astray ; but true imagination, exalting and exciting yet disciplining the mind, strengthens all its faculties. There is a visionary asceticism, no doubt, which reaches deep down into the life, and touches with its grotesque and whimsi- cal colours every mood of the mind. Mr Disraeli's romance, on the contrary, wa-s the mere ]jy-j»lay of his intellect, and did not disturb his working jiowers — his shrewdness, his sound sense, his knowledge of men. The grosser sort of mortals will not believe that a really practical politician can be a dreamer or a visionary. But thi.s astutest of politicians was on one side of his mind an idealist ; and lience no small measure of his power. Hence a certain loftiness of temper, which those who knew him best instinctively recognise with- out being able exactly to define ; hence that decisive insight into character which sent a simple colonel of engineers to lead the English army in its brilliant dash upon the remote strong- hold of King Theodore ; hence that felicity of ejiithet, that choice use of words, that " distinction " of style, in which he excelled all contemporary speakers. Speaking generally, an imaginative man is a magnanimous man ; for the larger vision of the poet is incompatible with parochial pettiness. This was eminently the case with Disraeli ; his temper was sweet, and he was neither spiteful nor malignant. Yet, men who were too dense and stupid to meet him in fair fight were always harping, parrot-like, on his viudictiveness. The fine edge of his intellect scared them, and they ran away exclaiming that the blow which they could not turn was fouL But what candid friend, with the best intentions, has succeeded in producing any specific act of meanness or baseness 1 He hit hard ; there were times when he asked no quarter and gave none ; but still, upon the whole, DISRAELI. 245 he was a magnanimous foe, who fought above-board, who looked his enemy in the face, who was not treacherous. " He never feared the face of man ;" and there are no traces in any part of his career of the irickii to which the coward resorts. For, after all is said, one of the most noticeable qualities of Mr Disraeli's intellect was its fairness. He was unfanatical. This neutrality of his seems to me to have sprung directly or indirectly from the ideality of which I have spoken. But whatever was the cause, the fact, I think, will not be disputed, except by the partisans who cannot see that the fine shafts of his irony were never dipped in the gall of nialioe or passion. At the head of a hot-tempered party stood a great neutral figure, supremely fair, tolerant, and impartial — it might be, as his enemies said, suprumt-ly indifferent. But was tlie insinuation true — was it the fact that he wore his principles lightly? Most of us have what we call our principles, the sort of spiritual habit into which we were born ; which we wear as we wear our clothes ; and the continued re- ception of which does not imply any serious intellectual assent. That is one class of principles, — Mr Disraeli's unselfish loyalty to his race, for instance, was a j»rinciple Indonging to a very different class. For the princiide of Jewish enfranchisement he encountered much unmerited ridicule and invective ; for it he was content deliberately to relimiuish tlie highest object of his ambition. Surely that was a principle tenaciously adhered to and strenuously vimlicatetl — bearing a much more direct and intimate relation to his life than " principles " commonly do. Mr Disraeli, it is true, was not so oppressively serious as the modem Radical is. But the modern Radical would be a greater man if he could laugh at a joke — especially at a joke against himself. Holding that political and financial arrangements are very mucii matter of time and cliance, ^Ir Disraeli, on the other hand, could not elevate a tax into an article of faith, or the tax-gatherer into a minister of religion. And hence his " levity " was the cause of much very virtuous reprobation. That there was an immense fund of gaiety in ^Ir Disraeli's nature is true. Like old James Carlyle of Ecclefechan, he " never looked back." He did not indulge in unavailing re- grets. He accepted the inevitable with unshaken composure. He would not allow blunders and miscarriages and misfortunes 246 DISRAELI. to touch liini over keenly. He kept tlu-iii at ana's length — his spirit was not to be clouded and stilled by the too close pressure of calamity. The gaiety was i^uito spontaneous ; at times it had to be held iu clieck ; though even in solemn l)ul)lic assemlilies, the mocking spirit of I'uck (as in the assault on Lord Sli;iftes])ury and his broad iihylacteries) would some- times break htose. When in Edinburgh during 18G7, he had a great and enthusiiibtic reception from the democracy. " We did not go to bed till quite late," he said next morning. " Mrs Disraeli and I were so delighted with our me<'ling, that we danced a Scutch reel" (or was it an Iri.sh jig?) "over it in our bedri>om," Of the dauntless courage of the man it is unnecessary to speak. He did not know what timidity or weakness meant, — the careless audacities and surprises of his policy, indeed, ini- j)lyiiig the possession of a temper that was above fear. The speculative intrepidity which gives a peculiar chann to his books was thus the native language of a character which in the most absolute sense was self-reliant. A great critic has said that Byron was a pure elemental force in English poetry ; in the same sense, we may say that I)israeli was a pure ele- mental force in English politics. No man was less under the sway of current influences. The authority of contemporary opinion did not enslave him as it does most of us. Of all our ]Hiliticians he was the only one who dared to be eccentric. He never quailed from first to last. His earlier works and speeches were chai-acterised by a spirit of serene audacity which, even when most wildly inconsistent, was not wanting in a certain reckless fidelity. Coningshy, Sybil, and Tancred are the finished and artistic elaborations of a mature intellect : but they are con- ceived in a spirit as daring and intrepid. In the earlier, an ardent imagination ran riot ; in the later, the imagination gives animation to the narrative and brilliancy to the invective, but Pegasus is no longer permitted to take the bit between his teeth and bolt with his rider. The last scene of all was equally characteristic. On the night of his death, after a violent spasm of breathlessness, he lay back murmuring in a low voice, " I am overwhelmed." Yet, a little later, "he raised himself from the pillows which supported him, tlirew back his arms, expanded his chest, and his lips were seen to move as if he was about to speak," To the friends who were at his side, the gesture was DISRAELI. 247 familiar — it was thus that lie rose in the House of Commons to reply to Gladstone, to Bright, to Eussell, to Palmerston, to PeeL He was not beaten — he would not give in — he was still eager for the fray. And it is to be noted that while he was not moved by the jeers and taunts of his foes, he was always able to resist — what is far more difficult to resist — the re]iroaches of his friends. He had to "educate" his party up to his own level, and full- grown men do not take their education easily. There can be no doubt, for instance, that a large majority of the Tory squires shared the opinion of Mr Gladstone — that Jefferson I)avis had created a people. liut Mr Disraeli remained incredulous : he had no belief in the creative force of anarchy ; the unity of America was an idea that appealed directly to his imagination ; and, when the secret history of these years is written, it will be found that his firmness mainly contributed to the preserva- tion of friendly relations with our kinsmen across the sea.* It was impossible that the literary expression of a man so gifted, whether in the senate or in the closet, whether with tongue or pen, could be othen^'ise than fine. It has been the fashion, all along, to speak slightingly of Mr Disraeli's novels. I cannot agree with tlie verdict, which seems to me essentially 8ui)erHcial. There can, I think, be no doubt that the later novels — not Lothair and Etuhpiiion, which were written when the pen had been laid aside too long to be resumed with perfect freedom and mastery, but Coiiiiif/sbi/, Syfnl, and Tancred — dis- close a supreme litemry faculty of its kind. There are often, no doubt, curiously immature ])assages in ^Ir Disraeli's writings — passages of labovn-ed and tawdry rhetoric, which are brought into unfortunate and undesirable i>rominence by the airy finish and eminent exactness of the setting. But such passages are rare in Cuningshy ; and in Si/hU and Tnncred^ there is all the 1 The critics said at the time that in Tnnn-fd a failure of power was manifest. It has, I think, less Pi«irkle, hut more humour. Upon the whole, it is to my mind — especially throughout its Eastern scenes (vivid and splendid as an Arabian sky)— the most enjoyable of the series. There is a sort of spiritual riot about that eccentric pilgrimage, and a soft breezy laughter is evolved by the incongniities of Ea-stem life, which with infinite zest, picturesqueness, and colour, it depicts — its splendour and its 8r, its eternal memories and its petty intrig\ics, Eva cherish- ing in solitude the lofty traditions of her race, and Fakradeen living upon the excitement or (perhaps one might say) the interest of his debts. 248 DISRAELI. mellowness of consummate work. Mr Arnold complains (not unjustly) of " tlie hard metallic movement" of Macaulay. But there is no hard metallic movement, but only the soft play of life, in that gay dialogue of Disraeli's — which indeed is finer than Coiigreve's. Then, the irony of the novels is as delicate and incisive as the irony of the sjM'eches — the imjilied and constructive irony which is the la-st refinenient of hanter, of which we see no sign in the emphatic satire of l)ryest work (looked at merely from a critical and literary point of view) is to be found in his speeches or iu his IxHjks — wliether lie is a writer who has accidentally turned speaker, or a speaker who Iuls accidentally turne«l writer. I have never greatlj' admired the early I'rotectioniHt speeches in which he assailed Sir RoWrt : they are splendidly imj)ertinent ami aue gleaned from the speeches delivered by the leale, ardent pcjliticians ; and it is difficult to persuaile the puhlic that a man who writes a novel which is avowedly politicjil, can be at once witty and wise, liut the truth is that (aj^art altogether from the political philosophy which they projxjund) Coniii'jMfn/, Si/f>il, Tancrn/, and the others, abound in passages that are worthy of Congreve or Sheridan, and that have as foir a claim to immortality aa the best passages in Tfie Doufile DeaUr or Thf School for Srniulal. It was not to be expected, indeed, that such novels could attain a popularity equal to, or of the kind enjoyed by, the writings of Mr Dickens, Mr Tiiackeray, or Sir Walter Scott. Dickens and Thackeray are essentially social writers, whereas the interest which ilr Disraeli excites is to a great extent aii intellectual interest only, y/c.v deal with men as such — he deals with men chiefly on the political side. Their compass is as wide as the reach of human joy or human miserj* ; his are to a certain extent class-novels — the l>ook8 of the privileged caste who minister before the ark of the Constitution, and which re- quire a glossaiy for the uninitiated. Henrietta TtmjiU, indeed, is the finest of love-stories, and will be read by those who are in love, and by those who have been in love, with endless enjoyment. But the three great novels — Coh/h;/s''.>/, S>/hiJ, Tancnd — are mainly political ; the social sketches, though inimitable as sketches, being kept in strict subordination to the delineations of political life and political character and thought. Reganling these novels in a more closely critical spirit, I should be disposed to say that they display marked intellectual intrepiditj-, and an unusually tine insight into character — daring speculation and Dutch- like observation — presented in apt, delicate, and felicitous language. Li such terms a critic would be inclined to characterise certain of Boliugbroke's wi-itings — such as his description of the Pretender's Court at Commercy — and in truth there is considerable resemblance between Mr Disraeli and the "all-accomplished" St John. Some of Boliug- broke's sketches of character are almost as incisive as Mr Disraelis ; and the declamatory invective of both has seldom been rivalled — an invective which never degenerates into the language of scolding, but is tranquil and discriminating even in its passion. St John's speculative DISRAELI. 251 habits and the false opinions which by sapping and enfeebling the national character, produce cowardice, corruption, and eftem- inacy. But the statesman's functions do not end here, — it is necessary, moreover, that a high conception of national duties and national responsibilities should be maintained among the people. In short, the preservation of our position as one of the governing races of mankind was — from tirst to last — the motive of his political career. It was, he considered, the vice of the time that these cardinal principles of statesmanship had been lost sight of by our rulers. The extension of education was the i>anacea of one set of poli- ticians ; the extension of the suJiVagc of another set ; the dis- establishment of the Church of a third ; the adoption of the ballot of a fourth ; and so on. Now, in Mr Disraeli's view, all this was W-side the mark. Mr Lowe had said that an un- educated people wa.s until to govern itself, — wliich was true in certain technical senses ; but, after all, character was greater than culture. Education was immensi-ly imjKirtant, no doubt ; but education would never make a i>eople great, if tlie national character was weak and unstable. The caiKicity for greatness must run in the blood of the pcoj)le, as it had run in the Greek, tlie Hebrew, the Koiuan, and the Teutonic races. !Mr XHsraeli liad confidence in the chanicti-r of the Engli.^h jHiople, to whatever station they belonged. We had been a great, reasonable, moderate, moral j)eople for a good many humlred years past; and the weight, and gravity, and deliberate justice of our national cliaracter had always and would always control our legislation. The itlea of fche delirious levities of a French Kevolution ])eing transacted among ourselves, was one which he could not realise. If we did come to revolution, we would faculty was a.s Iwlil as Disraeli's ; both of tliem deligliting in tliose men- tal fejits which are tlie amusement of men who are partly i)oets and partly logicians. I'erfectly fearless ami perfectly frank, they try conclusions without being a bit afraitl of breaking their necks. All this is due to a certain large and tolerant habit of mind — the imperial as distinct from the parochial temper. Mr Disraeli was too fond of epigi-am to make an abs(jlutely philosophical writer ; but there is an immense deal lain of Troy, in tlie Desert — he had wurked out the puzzles of life acconling to his own lights, and had rehearsed a career. He was intoxicated with youth, with genius, with the memories of the past that were round about him, with his own vivid sense of the future that was in store for him. What a life ! — passion and poetry tempered by ejdgram ; but scarcely a tit preparation for a seat on a back bench of the House of Commons, "or for a steady-going hack in official harness. 2. liut, if he naturally gravitated to the Tories, as the only possible party to which he could ally himself, it must have been clear from the first that any cordial alliance between Sir Robert Peel and this brilliant dreamer wiis out of the question. It has been said that he was willing enough to serve umler Peel, — which is probably true enough. He knew the conditions of public life in England, and would have worked with Peel as with others. But it would have been against the grain ; for the antagonism between the two men was vital. Disraeli was, * See the Preface to this volume. 254 DISRAELI. in certain moods, as much a Bohemian aa Heine ; and Peel waa a IMiilistiiu! of the I'hilistines. The rupture l>etween the timid llarley and tlie daring Holin^^dtroke was, in tlie nature of thin^is, not more in(!vilahlc. .S(joni'r or hiter, it must have been war to the knife. How was aj^'reement posHihle between the pure naked intellectual force of Disraeli and the timid empiricism of Sir Koberf? And Disraeli had his special grievance — Sir IJobcrt had infected the jiarty which he led with his own timidity. Tliat party, as wt; have Keen, was identified with the high spirit and the masterful traditions of England ; but, under the manipulation of Peel, it had come to be only a weak rellec- tion of the faction which it opjjosed. It resisted cliange ; but only in a deprecatory half-hearted way. It could not deny that (Catholic Emancipation, Keform, Irish Disestalilishment, were all good things in their way — though not to be had just yet, or until the pressure was a little more severe. It was thus a negation of policy — "a sort of humdrum hocus-pocus in which the Order of the Day was moved to take in a nation." The merciless severity of the attack on Sir liobert has }>een often reprobated ; but, after all, it proceeded on intellectual and not on personal lines. It was the intellectual poverty of the policy which roused his scorn. A statesman 1 — why, a states- man was a man who connected himself with some great idea, not a man who trimmed his course according to the weather. Such a man was as much a great statesman a.^ the man who got up behind a carriage was a great whip. In all the dreary pages of Sir Robert's interminable talk reported in " Hansard," there was not a single happy expression, nor a single original thought — his whole life, indeed, had been one great Appropriation Clause, And now, he had found the "Whigs bathing, and had run away w*ith their clothes ! But his parliamentary tactics were even more paltry. "Whenever he had a big measure to introduce, he was sure to rest it on the smallest precedents ; he ■was always tracing the steam-engine back to the tea-kettle ; in fact, all his precedents were " tea-kettle " precedents. Of course the charge of betraying his friends was urged more than once ; but even Sir Robert's warmest admirers could not deny that he had deserted his party. Like the Turkish Admiral, who aft^er being embraced by the Sultan and prayed for by the muftis, he had steered his fleet straight into the enemy's port. The Turkish admiral, to be sure, had been much misunderstood and DISRAELI. 255 misrepresenkd. He, too, had been called a traitor. But he vindicated his conduct. He said — " True it is, I did place myself at the head of this valiant armada — true that my sov- ereign embraced me, and that all the muftis in the kingdom prayed for the success of the expedition. iJut I had an objec- tion to war; I saw no use in prolonging the struggle; and the only reason for my accepting the leadership was, that I might terminate the contest by betraying my master." This is pun- gent and incisive criticism no doulit : but does it exceed the licence of fair parliamentary invective ? Sir IJobert was wounded to the quick : he winced visibly under the attacks, and sj)uke of tliem " in moments too testy for so great a man to imlulge in." But the scorn was perfectly genuine; the satire, though direct and cutting, was entirely impersonal ; and the mute re- proach of a party which felt that it had been betrayed was sure to tind exi)ression sooner or later. *S'* tu oliUtus e.i, at Dii rnemiiu'ruut, meminit Fide^. But it was certainly unlucky for Sir liobert that the greatest master of irony in our tongue should have been in Parliament at the time. 3. "What has ])een already said will explain the attitude of Mr Pisraeli to the doctrines of tlie Manchesti-r economists. Free trade might or might not ha in accordance with the im- mutable laws which govern the universe ; but it was quite clear to his mind that a school whicli ostentatiously aspired to make England the market-place of the world, and nothing more, liad misread the lessons of historj'. Nations do not live on bread alone ; and the politicians who proclaimed that material prosperity was better worth living fiir than lieroic ideas, were sapping the springs of national greatness. " I see no reason why you, too, should not fade like the Tyrian dye, and moulder like the Venetian palaces," 4. That Mr Disraeli should, by the Beform Bill of 18G7, have introduced household sutlrage, is sometimes considered the crowning proof of his want of jirinciple. "We have seen that thefo was no particular reason why Beform should be consid- ered the exclusive preserve of the "Whigs. Xor was there any reason why the Tory party in 1867 should have been anxious to altide liy the tentative settlement of 1832. That settlement had given the government to their rivals ; during the thirty-five years that had elapsed they had not been in office for seven. Many of the ablest of the party, moreover, had objected to 256 DISRAELI. Ifciform, not on <,'rounil.s of principle, but because they lield that a continual tiiiheriinj, an annual disturbance of the Con- stitution, was inconvenient antl dangerous. These men liad maintained that, in the meantime, the suflrage should be left untouched, but that when a change became inevitable, it was for the interest of the nation that a permanent settlement should be eflected ; and at any figure below household BufTrage they found no principle of permanence. Nor can it be denied that throughout his whole j)()litical career Mr Disraeli had held this view. He held that the settlement of 1832 was a AVhig settlement; that it had swept away the early popular fran- chises ; that the old alliance between the country party and the people should, if i)ossible, be restored. " If the Tory ]»arty is not a national party, it is nothing." All this is on record ; and the reader who will turn to the debates on the tirst Keform liill will find that Sir Kobert Peel, in somewhat different words, had even then said the same thing. Neither the leaders nor the party they led can, in this view, he fairly accused of immorality when, in 1867, perceiving that IJeftrm had become a State necessity, they boldly determined to settle the question — for a generation at least. The time had come when a calculated rashness, an intrepid and generous confidence, constituted the truest prudence. P>ut to ]Mr Disraeli such a change was acceptable on other grounds. The stolid Ten-Pounder, in whom the franchise had been vested, was of all classes in the country the least accessible to ideas. There might be danger in the " leap in the dark ; " but, to leave the future of the country in the hands of men who present (in ]\Ir .Vrnold's words) " a defective type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, and a low standard of manners," was certain death. If it be true that political institutions rest on national character, an institution resting on a character like that was obviously in a very hopeless condition. It is possible that !Mr Disraeli, with his immense conviction of the importance of character to a nation, may have entertained an undue contempt for the work- ing machinery of the constitution. Political arrangements and contrivances were valuable in his ej-es only in so far as they enabled the classes which were most accessible to the idea of national greatness to wield political power. In this sense he was the most radical of our statesman: a £10 franchise, a £5 DISRAELI. 2j7 franchise, household suffrage, manhood suffrage — what did it matter, so long as the end was attained ? 5. It has been said, indeed, that his policy towards Ireland was exceptionally feeble and colo\irless. On the contrary, it seems to me to have been the only policy that of late years has had any cliance of success. AVe have been governing Ireland for some time according to " Irish ideas," and we are beginning to reap what we have sown. A very plentiful harvest of " Irisli ideas " is now in the market. But according to Mr Disraeli's view, Ireland was an imperfectly civilised country, in which every germ of civilisation needed to be vigilantly guarded. " What always strikes me as a general principle with regard to Ireland is, thit nun nhould create (tiid not d^^stroij." The logic of Lord Macaulay on the Irish Church ([uestion, for instance, might bo absolutely unanswerable ; but there were deeper issues involved than logic would solve. If we destroyed the Irish Church, wo destroyed an organisiition which not only restrained the fanaticism, but stimulated the culture, of an imperfectly developed society. " Religious equality " was a jilausible, if ambiguous, watchword ; but religious eciuality in Ireland meant religious intemperance, religious anarchy, religious riot. The Irish Church, from the peculiarities of its ])osition, had become in many districts simidy a lay institution devoted to charitable and unsectarian purposes. The paison in such communities was nothing more than an Irish or English gentleman — better educated, less fanatical, more liberal-handed than his neigh- bours ; and " Protestant ascendancy " meant only the natu- ral ascendancy of skill and energy and intelligence over igno- rance and indolence and superstition — the inevitable ascen- dancy of strong, sensible, God-fearing men. At the same time the Catholic Church itself was another bulwark against the anarchy of barbarism ; and its ministers should have been attached to the State by the ties of interest and gratitude. " So, also, I looked then, as I look now, to a reconciliation between the Tory party and the Roman Catholic sul)jects of the Queen. I have never relinquished my purpose, and have now, I hope, nearly accomplished it." It is a thousand pities that he failed. For the rest, he would have sent a " Lord High Deputy " across the Channel with " full powers," and instruc- ti(jns to give every man justice, and justice only, — ^justice meted out witli inexorable impartiality, — ^justice that cordially en- R 258 DISRAELI. couraged virtue, sol)riety, industry, thrift, — justice tliat sternly repressed iiieiulacity, anarchy, self-indulgence. 6. The foreign policy of Lord Beaconslield hetween 1876 and 1880 was, in point of fact, the realisation on a great scale of all his previous teaching. England had been eflaced in Continental Europe ; she was again to speak with the voice of Chatham and of Pitt. The stimulating insi)iration of Imperial duties and Imperial responsibilities was again to ajipeal to the conscience of the people. That ^Ir Disraeli was " un-English " was the monotonous refrain of Mr Grant Duff's vacation soliloquies. " Mr Disraeli is an Englishman because he will, not because he must. His outer life is identified with ours, but his inner life belongs to another race and to another history. All English politics are to him only a game." iJut, seriously speaking, the kind of talk which made Mr Disraeli a sort of Bedouin sheik who had just stepped out of the desert into our drawing-rooms, scarcely deserves the name of criticism. The critic who fancies that a man whose father and grandfather were English citizens cannot be an Englishman because he has a dash of alien blood in his veins, must know little of ethnology. It is possible, indeed, that such a man may not be so insular in his prejudices as a Cumberland squire. He is by race, perhaps, more a citizen of the world. But it is clear, looking to his Avhole career, that Mr Disraeli was inspired throughout by a sense of the greatness of England ; that the spectacle of this famous, historical, world- Avide dominion fascinated his imagination ; and that, in his foreign as in his domestic policy, he was animated by no mean or unworthy ambition, but by the profound conviction that he was adding to her security and her renoAvn. The Imperial and the Parochial types of character have always been sharply opposed ; and, in the meantime, the former is under a cloud. The policy of " brag and bluster " has been succeeded by one which is supposed to be better adapted to the necessities of commerce. "Whether the one or the other will best secure the ultimate wellbeing of the empire is a question that need not now be discussed. The opinion of E\irope, in- deed, has been already expressed in no measured terms. " Brag and bluster ! " said the Eegierungsrath of Sauerkraut to me a year ago,^ as we were sailing up the Konigsee: ''Brag and 1 Autumn of 1879. DISRAELI. 25^ bluster ! And why not ? "What is the good of appealing to a polar bear in honeyed accents ? Brag and bluster, indeed ! Don't you see, mein guter freund, that these were the only arguments the barbarians could understand % If the clamour of vindictive philanthropy had not drowned and discredited the l)laLn speaking of your Prime ^Minister, the Czar would have thought once, twice, and thrice before he started for Constanti- nople. To philander with philanthropy may be a cheap amuse- ment in quiet times ; but when a hundred thousand lives are sacrificed to its cultivation, it becomes a costly and poisonous luxury. The sinister forces with which he had to contend may have proved too strong for Lord Beaconsfield ; foreign foes and domestic faction may have prevented him from doing all that he designed ; but in a great world-crisis he bore himself stead- fastly, patiently, streiniously, heroically ; and he imparted his own spirit to England. And more than that, mein herr, much more if your people had but known it, your patriot minister, in his struggle Avith the barbarian, had all free Europe at his back." So far the Kegierungsrath of Sauerkraut ; but the Regierungs- rath is only a German Liberal, and not an English Ladical. The British Railical knows better; his animosity to Imperialism is unappeased and unappeasalde ; and even in the grave his victims are not safe. At all events, the proposal to erect a monument to Benjamin Disraeli in that historic temple of our race, " where kings and poets lie," ought not to have been enter- tained. The nice suscejitibilities of the gentlemen below the gangway should have been consulted. AVell, it does not much matter to us, or to — Inm. He has a more lasting monument in the heart of England ; and the memory of a great career will outlive the bronze and marble of the Abbey. " His voice is silent in your council hall For ever ; and, whatever tempests lour. For ever silent ; even if tliey Vjroke In thunder, silent ; yet remember all He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke. " V I G X E T T E S. MOSTLY FROM LIFK. WILLIAM BLAKE. Born, 1757. Died, 1S27. THE hivoluntariness of poetic genius is its final and most rudimentary characteristic ; and hence we speak of inspiration — when the writer is taken possession of by a pow(;r above and superior to him ; when he becomes the mere mouth- piece of thoughts which liave been poured into him as water into a fountain — as a divine gift. Xow the eager, feverish, inquiring attitude of the modern imagination is inconsistent and irreconcilable with the state of mind in which the whispers of the still small voice may be heard. AVordsworth complains of our untiring inquisitiveness, " as if nothing of itself will come, but we must still be seeking ; " and recommends those who would be truly wise, who desire to retain undisturbed and unbroken the reflections which nature casts upon their minds, to cultivate "a ■wise passiveness." "William Blake suggests a similar lesson when he says, — " He who bends to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy : But he who kisses the joj- as it flies. Lives in Eternity's sunrise." The toys of the imagination, the playthings of the fancy, are very brittle. You cannot trap them any more than you can WILLIAM BLAKE. 261 trap a sunbeam. They will not submit to be analysed or systematised, to be experimented upon and dissected. Do not seek to grasp them, therefore ; let them hide among the thick- leaved flowers, or flit through the solemn twilight. Then, per- chance, they may leave a scent of their fragrance, a ripple of their glory, behind them — in the vision and on the page of the poet. And what is true of the poetic is true also of the religious life. I love the writings of the English mystics — meaning thereby such men as Henry More, and Lord Herbert of Cher- bury, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. There are times when I cannot smile at Lord Herbert's vision when he had finished his De Veritate ; — " Being thus doubtful in my chamber, one fine day in the summer, my casement being ojiened towards the south, the sun sliining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book De Veritate in my hand, and kneeling on my knees devoutly, said these words : — ' thou Eternal God, author of the lights which now shine upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech Thee, of Thy infinite goodness, lo jiardon a greater request than a sinner ouglit to make : I am not satisfied enougli whether I ought to publish this book De Veritate : if it be for Thy glory I beseech Thee give me some sign from heaven : if not I shall suppress it.' I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud, thougli yet gentle noise, came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth), which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded, Avhereupon also I resolved to print my book;" — when I feel that what Sir Thomas Browne says (Coleridge liked the passage so much that he prefixed it to a lay-sermon) is quaintly true — " Metliinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith ; the deepest mysteries ours contain have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O Altitiulo! It is my solitary recreation to pose my reason witli those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned of TertuUian, Certuni est quia imjjossihile e.d." In the day-time we may maintain a sceptical complacency ; but in the twilight of the spirit, when we stand among the ruins 262 WILLIAM BLAKE. of our hopes, when visionary shapes flit past us, when the voices of our dearest dead faintly call to us out of the darkness, we must cast ourselves upon our faces, and raise clasped, imploring hands to the invisihle and incomprehensiljle God. The mystic or the idealist properly belongs to a primitive age ; yet he is not unknown even in the nineteenth century. Perhaps at the present moment the recoil from scientific materialism and the tyranny of prigs, is bringing imagination back to its early natural attitude. In the British Museum, and in the collections of a few artist amateurs (able men many of them, but somewhat eccentric, the world says) may yet be discovered by the curious, certain illustrated poems, " invented and engraved by William Blake." The poetry and the art which illustrates the poetry, are alike remarkable. Bemarkable also is the life (it has recently been narrated with quaint force and fire) of this poet- designer. William Blake was among the last of the mystics. The mystical poems are hard to interpret ; but sometimes nothing can excel his crystalline simplicity and transparent naturalness. The shorter compositions are specially excellent. There are several as homely and studiously truthful as Words- Avorth's Lyrical Ballads. Others are splendidly coloured, — rich, quaint, and aromatic, — artfully artless, coyly and reluc- tantly charming, as Elizabethan song. A snatch like this, though obviously unborroAved, has the ring and tone — most particularly, perhaps, in a certain fanciful and playful incon- sequence, an inconsequence, however, which is only apparent, for there is a true imaginative connection, however slight, between its several parts — of the snatches of song in the old English Drama. " The look of love alanns Because 'tis filled with fire ; But the look of soft deceit Shall win the lover's hire. Soft deceit and idleness, These are beauty's sweetest dress." This also is out of the Elizabethan mint : — " My silks and fine array. My smiles and languished air, By love are driven away ; And mournful, lean Despair WILLIAM BLAKE. 263 Brings me yew to deck my grave : Such end true lovers have. His face is fair as heaven When springing buds unfold ; Oh, why to him was 't given, Whose heart is wintry cold ? His breast is Love's all-worshipped tomb, Where all Love's pilgrims come. Bring me an axe and spade. Bring me a winding-sheet : When I my grave have made. Let winds and tempests beat : Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay True love doth pass away ! " The little poem on "The Prince of Love," — written by a boy twelve years old, — is astonishingly graceful : — " How sweet I roamed from field to field. And tasted all the summer's pride, Till I the Prince of Love beheld. Who in the sunny beams did glide ! He show'd me lilies for my hair. And blushing roses for my brow ; He led me through his gardens fair, Where all his golden treasures grow. With sweet May dews my wings were wet, And Phcebus fired my vocal rage ; He caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage. He loves to sit and hear me sing. Then, laughing, sports and plays with me ; Then stretches out my golden wing. And mocks my loss of liberty." The ripest and most matured taste could not have finished this dainty cabinet picture more perfectly. The Prince of Love entraps the warbler, — "Then stretches out the golden wing, and mocks the loss of liberty." The playful wantonness of love coxild not have been indicated with more entire felicity. This graceful modish conception might have occurred to a finished artist ; but a boy's touch is seldom so light, restrained, 264 WILLIAM BLAKE. and suggestive. Kor was the poet unequal to the more direct and sustained treatment of a subject. Charles Lamb said that his Tiger Song was " glorious." It is so, indeed. It discloses, in its very ])hrasoology even, in its conciseness and its fire, the highest exercise of the imagination. What Titanic hand could have framed, what Titanic Ijrain could have designed, that terrible strength ? There are two sides of the picture — the Tiger and its ^laker; and while the writer is as it were speculating exclusively on the nature of that "dread grasp which dared tliy deadly talons clasp," he contrives to cast a reflected but lurid light on the fierce savage of the jungle, which brings its knitted limbs and awful strength before us with a clearne.ss and definiteness which any direct presentment would have failed to secure. Then, as an artist, he displays the same imaginative energy and conciseness. There is a union of the highest and most primitive elements in his work. His mere drawing was often archaic and imperfect, — as if, like a child, he had been unac- (piainted with perspective and the outline of natural objects ; but there was a spiritual intensity of expression — " a look as if coming straight from another world," — which has seldom been put upon any other canvas. Not that there was any affected vagueness or mistiness in his work : well or ill in body, he worked on with singular admirable patience ; " grandeur of ideas," he said, " is founded on precision of ideas ; " and he held tenaciously to the critical canon which he announced, and which was more novel in his day than in ours. Yet the conflict between the spiritual and the material was sometimes too strong for him ; though he strove to render himself intelligible, the form of his ideas is often perplexing and enigmatical ; he may be called in some respects the Thomas Carlyle of art. He took the loftiest and least sordid views of his profession. " The man who on examining his ovnx mind finds nothing of inspira- tion, ought not to dare to be an artist ; he is a fool and a cun- ning knave suited to the purposes of evil demons." The Sir Joshuas and the Gainsboroughs, who had made fortunes out of fair faces, had bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage ; he would be true to his calling — though he starved. And he did starve — in a fashion. He was essentially a gentleman ; but his ill success had been such that he was often reduced to his last shilling. His two small rooms were like WILLIAM BLAKE. 265 those of an artisan : his clothes were "vvorn and shaLh)', — " his grey trousers shining in front like a mechanic's." Yet he never rebelled. He had been true to what he esteemed his calling ; he was as willing as any martyr to suffer for the truth, as he understood it ; but his life could not be called unhappy. In his last years, the Avorn, tried, neglected man, out of whose eyes, however, the bright Divine light had never faded, could say to a young girl, glorious in her youth and loveliness — " May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me." A blessing had rested upon him. Elake's inner spiritual life is a strange problem. Soutbey got over the difficulty, in the rough-and-ready English fashion, by discovering that he was mad. " This great but insane genius," he calls him. Yet there was consistency in his in- sanity, method in his madness. His queerest, most out-of-the- way notions were somehow connected with the central principles of his life. He Avould never study from models, — models "smelt of mortality," — and the artist was concerned Avitli the spiritual alone. This depreciation of the natural Avas often expressed by liim with vehement and exaggerated emphasis. " Whoever believes in nature disbelieves in God ; for nature is the work of the deviL" This passage may be compared with not a few in the writings of St Paul. In the view of ])otli, the animal nature of man, "the carnal mind," Avas disloyal to its Creator. Blake too, like Paid, like Punyan, had at times joined in fierce spiritual conflicts. Such lines as these might have have been taken from Punyan's account of his conversion : " For that I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treas- ures in heaven is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my mind. And why this should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness, gluttony, and even idleness itself, does not hurt other men, let Satan himself explain. The thing I have most at heart — more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortal)le without, — is the interest of true religion and science. And Avhenever anything appears to affect that interest (especially if I myself omit any duty to my station as a soldier of Christ), it gives me the greatest of torments. I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told — that I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly. Put the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care. Temptations 266 WILLIAM BLAKE. are on the riglit liand and on tlie Ic^ft. Jiehind, the sea of time and sjiace roars and follows swiftly. He who keeps not right onwards is lost : and if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear and tremble ? . . . And now let me finish by assuring you that though I have been very unhappy I am so no longer. I am again emerged into the light of day : I still, and shall to eternity, embrace Christianity, and adore Him who is the express image of God ; but I have travelled through perils and darkness not unlike a champion. I have conquered and shall go on conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury of my course among the stars of God and in the abysses of the accuser. My enthusiasm is still what it was, only eidarged and confirmed." That there was a taint of mad- ness in lilake's excitement may be true, as it is true that there is a taint of madness in most forms of excitement. His lofty enthusiasm led him across the border - land. He lived in a visionary world ; he was visited by spiritual forms ; even in his boyhood they had been made visible to him. He had seen them among the trees at even-tide, — their bright wings spark- ling, star-like, through the boughs; at morn he had beheld them walking among the reapers. Then by the sea-shore, among the pauses of the waves, he had conversed with majestic shadows, — "grey but luminous, and superior to the common height of men." And they had told him of things which justified his patient bearing, which reconciled the bright-eyed enthusiast, the gentle, fiery-hearted mystic, to penury and neglect. " I am more famed in heaven for my works." he tells a correspondent, quite gravely, " than I could weU conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life : and those works are the delight and study of archangels. ^Miy then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality 1 The Lord our Father ^vill do with us and for us according to His Divine Will for our good." The spiritual world, in however distorted and fantastic a shape, had come very close to this man. One cannot wonder that with such a temperament, he could never think of death as more than the going out from one room into another. Yet his mono- mania — if we may so call it — was quite under control, and perfectly reasonable. He could scientifically describe the genesis of his visions. " You have only to work up imagination to the WILLIAM BLAKE. 267 state of vision, and the thing is done." Imagination worked up to the state of vision may be said to be the condition of genius, — that capacity of seeing, and consequently of recording, Avhich makes the poet different from otlier men. "When " the visions " left him he was powerless, the virtue Avent out of him, the faculty of invention deserted him. " What do we do then, Kate 1 " he said, turning to his wife. " "We kneel down and pray, ^h iJlake." This habitual joining together of the poetic and the theological, of the artist and of the devotee, is the key perhaps to what appear to us the singularities of his character. He recalls the old Spanish painter who over an ill- painted crucifix would prayerfully exclaim, — "Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do." He was partly a Turner and partly a Simeon Stylites. He was a painter who had experienced the spii-itual troubles of a Luther or of a Dunyan. The reformation of the religious life was the product of Luther's struggles, and we do not laugh at that : it is because we do not really believe that art is more than an ornament or a plaything, that P)lake's " visionary " conceptions of the responsible dignity of his calling are apt to provoke a smile. L A C O R D A 1 R E. BoKN, iSo2. I)ii-:i), I So I. 11) UT tlio mystic, thou^'h a visionary, need not — tlu-rcin ■*-^ (lill'iiing from IJlake — Ir- dcstitutf of tliose (jualitics •\vhicli form the man of the worlil. "We have a striking example of tliis moral and intellectual union in the Abl>e I-.acordaire, whose life — all things considered — is surely one of the strangest ever ^^Titten. Lacordaire, in many respects, was jK'Culiarly a man of the present century, lie had sat at the feet of its teachers; he was a student of those forms of thought which we c<.»nsider charac- teristically our own. His temper was hold and politic — native shrewdness and a fine sagacity being enwrought with the imaginative texture of his mind. He was a great orator : had he cultivated the gift he might have become a great satirist. IJeady, rajud, a master of repartee, his imagination vivid and available — the imagination of the rhetorician rather than of the poet — he would, I fancy, have made a brilliant parliamentary debater. His writings are full of " good things " — whereof here are a few selected almost at random. An attempt was made when Lacordaire was a young man to compel the French clergy to perform the burial rites over those Avho had died outside their communion. The youtliful priest vehemently resented the aggression. " Are we," he asked, " the grave-diggers of the human race 1 Have we entered into a compact with it to bury its remains 1 " One of the Crown lawyers, during Lacordaire's first prosecution, termed the Catho- LACORDAIRE. 269 lie clergy, "the ministers of a foreign power." ""We are the ministers of one who is a foreigner nowhere — of God," was the instant reply. His bold antithetical style — slightly tainted as it is with that striving after surprise, that exaggerated emphasis, and love for verbal paradox which characterises the style of many modern French writers — is yet at times extremely elective. " Some day," he writes to his biographer, " when ]\lontalem])ert shall have grown grey in the midst of ingratitude and celebrity, he will come and contemplate on my brow the remains of a youth passed together." Of Xapoleon he said — " Liberty had forsaken my country, because after great misfortunes God had given France a man greater even than those misfortunes them- selves." " When God crushes us under the rod, is it not," he asks in one of his sermons, " with a view that our blood may mingle with his — with his shed long ago under harder and more humiliating strokes ] " Of his irony these are average specimens : " (ientlemen," he remarked to certain scofi'ers at religion, " God has made you witty, very witty indeed, to show you how little he cares for the wit of man." On one occasion, when apologising for having broken one of the severe educa- tional rescripts, he exclaimed bitterly: "AMien Leonidas died, his epitaph was this — Fasser-hij, ijo and tell Sparta that we died in obedience to her sacred laws. I should be unwilling, gentle- men, to have this inscription written on my grave ; I should be very loath to die for the sacred laws of my country." '* If we get a Kepublic," were his words shortly before 1848, "it would make us die either of laughter or of fright." Yet this man — brilliant, ready, supple, adroit, meteor-like, diamond-like — has supplied his countrymen with a career on which they may exhaust their vocabulary of antithesis. He combined two types — the rigid medijevalist and the modern demagogue. He was an orator and an ascetic. He was a haughty i)riest and a chain]>ion of the democracy. He Avas a confessor of nuns and a writer in Liberal journals. He was a brilliant, polished, cultivated Parisian in a shaven head and a white habit. He practised the austerities of the monastic life ; but "Brother Henri Domenic Lacordaire of the Friars' Preach- ers," was the friend of Montalembert, and the correspondent of Guizot. He instinctively recognised these contrasted aspects of his character. " I hope to live and die," he said, " a penitent Catholic and an impenitent Liberal." 270 LACORDAJRE. There must have been a visionary or transcendental element in till* cliaratter of such a man. A keenly jtractical and natu- rally scciitictal intellect was, in his case, united with a mood of vague melancholy and aspiration. Non est magnum ingenium sine melancholia. JUit he had more than the ordinary melan- choly of genius. There is a lofty though restrained pathos ahout his greatest discourses. " I too hope to marry some day," he writes. " I have a betrotiied, lovely, chaste imniortid ; and our marriage celebrated on earth will be consummated in heaven. I shall never say, Linquenda do/uus et placens uxor." And again : " I am sad betimes, but who is there who is not so 1 It is a dart which we must always carry in the soul ; we must try not to lean on the side where it is, nor ever drwim of taking it out. It is the javelin of Mantinea in the heart of Epaminondas ; it is extracted only by death and entrance into eternity." Then with this mood of melancholy he united the passion of the orator. "When he was speaking he lost self-control ; then, in his own words, " accents are snatched from me which surprise and trouble even myself." In one sense also I>;\cordaire was a fatalist. His intellect, when dealing with a sharp crisis or an involved issue, was languid and uninventive. He dared not trust himself to cut the knot. " Every man has his day," he would say, " if he only knows how to wait, and not thwart the designs of Providence." "Writing to an intimate friend, he confesses — " The questions of this world are so knotty, they present themselves so diversely and contradictorily to different minds, that I consider it a great blessing when they are solved by events independent of the will of man, I have always passionately wished for this sort of solution." These words are obviously used in perfect sincerity, and a man to whom sucli feelings could become habitual, was undoul>tedly in some measure prepared by nature for the career which he selected. He was a Democrat ; but his desire for some secure spiritual footing divided him from the brilliant but unbelieving democ- racy of Paris. " They think themselves the leaders of civilisa- tion, and they are but a horde of Scythians," ho said bitterly. He was a Democrat before he was a priest ; and he could never have become a priest had he not persuaded himself that the Church was the guardian of liberty and the champion of human rights. His transcendental view of the functions of the Church and the office of the priesthood was thus highly characteristic LACORDAIRE. 271 and consistent. The priest was the liberator of humanity — the enemy of political tyranny as well as spiritual corruption — a divine and consecrated Reformer. " Others," said the great priest, standing among the victims of the pestilence, " are in a dying state, sightless and dumb. I lay my hands on their brow, and, contiding in the Divine mercy, I utter the words of absolution." It was thus, too, that the Papacy fascinated him. She was desolate and humanly degraded ; but that obvious material weakness invested her with a higher imaginative sanctity. " O Rome," he exclaimed, " I did not despise thee, although I saw no kings j)rostrate at thy gates." This halntual reference to the unseen, this customary appeal to the invisible, is an impressive feature in Lacordaire's life. To that tribunal he sends his cause. " Well — since my friend is so unjust, I must expect justice from God alone." Again, with pathetic reticence, " It will be known in heaven whetlu-r I have broken vows." The appeal was not entirely rhetorical ; for the in- visible world was to him a positive and ever-present reality. Death only quickened this habitual impression into intenser expression. His last wurds were, "My God! open to me, open to me 1 '' CHARLES JAMES XAPIER. Born, 17S0. Died, 1853. ' I "0 do justice to Sir Charles Xapior's merits as a soldier, -*- and to tlie various campaigns in whicli he was engaged, from Corunna to the Sutlej, does not lie within the scope of my present purpose. All that I am now concerned to show is, that imaginative power stamped his military no less than his civil career. He fought, as he wrote and governed — like a man of genius. It was an accident that made young Xapier a soldier; and he entertained a strong natural antipathy to the military pro- fession. The strictness of its discipline was repugnant to the affluent sympathies of the man, to the liberal instincts of the citizen. And this great master of the art detested bloodshed. He Avas never at rest except in action ; and yet, with his whole heart, he yearned for peace. " Peace, blessed Peace ! " is his constant aspiration. When in command of the northern dis- trict of England, during the Chartist disturbances in 1840, he could not repress his bitter indignation at the rash levity with Avhich the magistrates were disposed on all occasions to bring the people and the troops face to face ; forgetting, as he said, that there was a civil authority between the two, and that the soldier should be appealed to only as an ultimate tribunal, when the police had been tried and failed. All war was hateful to him ; but a servile war, a war of classes, would have been misery. " Battle ! Victory ! " he exclaims, " Oh, spirit-stirring words in the bosom of society ! but to me, God, how my CHARLES JAMES NAPIER. 273 heart rejects them ! That tlreadful work of blood, sickening even to look on ; no one feeling of joy or exaltation entered my head at Dubba or Meeanee : all was agony, I can use no better word. A longing never to have quitted Celbridge, to have passed my life in the round field, and the ' devil's acre,' and under the dear yew-trees on the terrace among the sparrows : these were the feelings which Hashed in my head after the battles. But away with these feelings ! let me go to work, let me sink in harness if so God pleases : he who flinches from work, in battle or out of it, is a coward." Xoble old man ! Yet war was his true vocation. If ever any one was born for war, Charles Xapier was the man. He studied its theory from boyhood. He followed Alexander from the Granicus to the Indus, and critically analy.sed the structure of his cam- paigns. He had meilitated profoundly upon the large principles and strategic laws of war liefore he was required to put them in practice. The maxims which he evolved in the study were the principles which he afterwards illustmtetl in the field. And in this, as in everything else — but in this pre-eminently — he went at once, with direct decisive insight, to the root of the matter. To the professional student his disquisitions on strategy must prove invaluable : even to the general reader — the laws which regulate a military campaign being not remotely derived from those which rule the still larger campaign of life — they are full of interest. " A commander should concentrate his own forces, divide his enemies, and never think liimself strong enough when he can be stronger. Yet he .sljould remember that additional numbers do not always give strength. Always attack if yu cannot avoid an action. If your enemy is strongest, fall on his weakest points, and avoitl his stiong ones. If y<»u are more powerful, fiisUm on his vitals, and destroy him. If he is strong, provoke him to separate ; if he is weak, drive him into a corner." These maxims were penned many years before he went to the Ea.st : his .Scindian campaign was their ai)plication. Another fact illustrates this natural aptitude for the military jirofession. His enthusia.'Jtic love for natural beauty is very noticeable ; he had a line eye for the picturesque in a country, and many of his descriptions of scenery are admirable ; but after a deep-drawn breath of admiration, he turned instinctively to its military character. The pass is not only grand and striking ; it is the place where a handful might resist a host. 274 CHARLES JAMES AAPIER. The plain is not merely a fertile and richly wooded amphi- theatre ; it is the field which opposing armies select for battle. It is very interesting in this light to accompany him to Greece, and follow him step by step from one Hellenic battle-field to another. A singular spectacle ! The science of the new world testing, by reference to the unchangeable facts of nature, the prudence, the heroism, and the capacity of the old. It is indeed no common treat to be present while one of "Wellington's captains estimates, from the modern soldier's point of view, the military capaljilities of Marathon and Thermopylae. We say that, as a soldier, Napier was a man of genius, and his military acts are poetic, — masterly as a thorough soldier's, and yet imaginative. Very good generals there have been, steady, prosaic, commonplace men, who have done their work prudently and effectively; but the great captains, Alexander, Hannil al, Cffisar, iSTapoleon, Wellington, Napier, were made of different stuff. One or two incidents from the career of the latter Avill illustrate this brilliant originality. In 1818 we were at war with America: a war which we conducted by making desultory descents upon the eastern sea- board, — sacking a village here, burning a homestead there. Out of this petty contention, Napier's plan of war rises large and portentous. He asked to be landed on the coast of Caro- lina with a single regiment of English soldiers. At its head he undertook in six months to raise the whole slave popu- lation ; and, in the shape of the Southern States, exact a " material guarantee" which might bring the Eepublic to reason. His information led him to believe that his scheme was feasible, and we hesitate to say that it was not. Considering the con- dition of society, the imperfect communication, and the great extent of waste land, depopulated, or peopled only by the slave- owner and his hostile dependants, in these States, — this, in any defensive war, is evidently even to-day the weak point of the Eepublic. The fi'ee activities of the North oppose to foreign aggression an impenetrable front ; can as much be confi- dently predicted of the liolkiw and decayed societies of the South % 1 The general conception of tlie first Scindian campaign was masterly. Napier, indeed, underrated the prowess of the Beloo- ^ This, of course, was wiitten before the American civil war. CHARLES JAMES KAPJER. 275 chee chivalrj' ; but this was an error that only experience could rectify, and it was an error, besides, which has secured him imperishable fame ; for had he been undeceived in time, the splendid spectacle of a handful of English troopers rushing at Meeanee and Dubba upon twenty times their own number of fierce, Avell-trained, and courageous warriors, would never have been witnessed. But in every other respect the strategy was consummate. The situation was difficult. The time was limited. The hot months were approaching, and before they arrived the campaign must be won. j^Tapier was therefore obliged to bring his quarrel with the Ameers to an immediate issue. But it was in their power to scatter their retainers with- out coming to an actual engagement ; make for the Eastern desert on the one hand, or, crossing the Indus on the other, gain the mountains of Beloochistan ; and then reunite and attack his little force when the heat had set in, and it was impossible for Europeans to keep the field. All these possi- bilities he foiled. He destroyed their desert retreat j he cut them off from the river ; and before the ramparts of Hydera- bad, their capital, and the only place where — it had struck him from the first — he could with any certainty bring this Arab-like race to bay, he fought the battle of Meeanee. But the most striking and original incident in the campaign, and the one which most rivets and fascinates the imagination, is the march upon the desert sanctuary of Emaun Ghur. Along the eastern border of Scinde lies a barren desert — Eegeestan, or the Land of Sand, the natives call it. According to the notion they entertained before Napier came, the desert pre- sented an impenetrable barrier to European troops, who could not live among its thirsty and barren steppes. Consequently, whenever they wished to evade an engagement or baffle a foe, the Arab race struck their tents and disappeared amid the dust of the wilderness. Emaun Ghur — the stronghold of the northern, as Omercote was of the southern Ameers — lay one hundred miles from the fertile Indus valley, in the heart of this desert ; and so long as the princes could retreat with im- punity to their lion-like lair, Xapier felt that it was impos- sible to attack them with success. He determined to destroy this security, and with it the prestige of the desert; prove to his foes that tliere was no mountain however rugged, no desert however inhospitable, where the English soldier could 276 CHARLES JAMES NAPIER. not track them out. He keenly appreciated, indeed, the danger of a military march across the wilderness; amid its waves of loose sand, which a breath of wind could stir into swift and terrible hostility ; where there was neither food for his camels nor water for his men, " I am fully aware of the danger of these marches into the desert," he says, ''but the thing may be done; what one man does, another may d(j. I ought to have quiet thoughts," he goes on, " and cannot ; fur I am throwing my- self into a desert, and must not think of John " (his nephew, who had been wounded), " or I may involve all under me in disaster and disgrace. This is a hard trial for an old man of sixty : it shakes me to the foundation. Yet what signifies these troubles % I feel a spring in me that dehes all difficul- ties. The time of life is short, but to spend that shortness vainly 'twere too long. This thought must urge me to res- olution, and resolution is half the battle." So, mounting on camels a hundred of his troopers, he cast himself boldly upon the wilderness ; and after a three days' march amid waste sand- hills skirted with the scanty desert vegetation, and clothed Avith loose sea-shells, " mussels, cockles, and the spiral unicorn," iU'hris of some primeval tlood, he reached the great fortress, which he found evacuated, and which he utterly destroyed. It Avas a perilous and intrepid exploit; his biographer compares it with Marius's descent on Jugurtha's toAvn of Capsa : to our- selves, in its silence and rapidity it recalls Montrose's winter march across the Grampians to the country of Argyle. In either case the effect was decisive : the sense of confident security was destroyed. Montrose — oSTapier's most renowned ancestor — was the last of the courtly Cavaliers. Yet his descendant contrived to pre- serve in his wars a dash of the antique chivahy. The Plutar- chian hero, however, and not the fine gentleman of the heau monde, was the model after which he had been cast ; and his wilful humour, his rugged eccentricity, his impracticable hon- esty, prevented the society to which he belonged from recog- nising the essentially chivalrous nobleness of his disposition. In no respect Avas this more conspicuously manifested than in the estimate it induced him to form of his military opponents. He acknowledged Avith enthusiasm the imperial genius of Xapo- kon, and bitterly resented the shame of his captivity. During the Scindian Avar, he invariably restored their swords to the CHARLES JAMES XAPIER. 277 beaten chieftains ; and lie rendered generous justice to the soldierly qualities of the " Lion," — the noblest and most war- like of his warlike race. He delighted to recognise and reward deeds of genuine valour, by whomsoever performed. "At Dubba, also, as at ^leeanee," he exclaims, " a leader, the same at both, and worthy of all praise, animated the fight — Hoche Mohamed Seedee, an Abyssinian slave ! Heroic in strength of body and mind, this brave man and his brother slaves, Avho formed the domestic guard of the Ameers, forced their dastard lords to fight at Meeanee ; then, having vainly opposed their final surrender, sought the Lion ; and at Dubba, fighting with unbounded fury, fell to the last man under the bayonets of the 2 2d Regiment." There is in these words the generous glow, the eloquent enthusiasm of the born gentleman, who detects the hero in the slave. Sir Charles's career was peculiar in many ways — most pecu- liar perhaps in this, that it began when the majority of those who started along with him were in their graves. He was past sixty before he held any great command. When sent to Scinde lie was an old man. " It will be sorrowful," he says on that occasion, " to leave you all, for it is late in life, and I am much worn. I am now past fifty -nine, and for this command should 1)6 thirty -nine. Oh for forty, as at Cephalonia, where I laughed at eighteen hours' hard work on foot, under a burning sun ! now, at sixty, how far will my carcass carrj' me ? — no great distance ; well, to try is glorious." This feeling in his later years often came uppermost — how much he had to do, and how short the time in which to do it. It oppressed him to know that he was sixty — an old man, Avith a great empire to conquer and consolidate. liemembering the things he did, and the memorable name he secured, after the elastic vigour of man- hood was departed, — what would he not have achieved had he been earlier intrusted with the conduct of great affaii-s ? In this resolute spirit did the old man toil on till his death, — honourably, intelligently, conscientiously. Such an exami)le invests mature life with a finer charm than commonly attaches to it. Disguise it as we may, the grey hairs to which we hasten are too often a crown, not of glor}', but of sorrow and scorn. The great lawj^er, the great general, and the great poet, sink into dotage and decay. They may bequeath great names and great books ; but Avliat do these avail them ? To the man 278 CHARLES JAMES NAPIER. who feels how infinitely more valuiil)le a complete life is than even the l)est and comijletest of deeds and writings, this phe- nomenon of mental destruction — the crash of the system — must remain a perplexing prohlem. Is this the end of all % — " the blackness of thick darkness," — or, at best, childishness, weak- ness, oblivion 1 Very other was the old age of Napier. He fought great battles, go veined great provinces, achieved a great name, long after that period had i)assed when, according to an anti(|ue morality not quite exploded, it behoves men to lay aside the things of the present life, and to prepare their "souls" for the next. Sir Charles, Avho knew of no special preparation for the other world better than doing his W(jrk well in this — and that kind of religion he had practised all liis life — worked on early and late, in season and out of season, till the day of his death. His eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force abated. But at length the battered body could not keep pace any longer with the keen, undaunted, untiring spirit, — " The fiery soul, wliicli, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy l>0(ly to decay, Aiid o'er-informed the tenement of claj. " So the campaign has ended, and the veteran, after his hard work, rests well, — uhi saeva indlgnatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit. Yet the epitaph is inappropriate, — it is diflficult to imagine a Napier taking his rest even in the grave. For that inquisitive and ardent spirit there must be other, nobler work to do — elsewhere. If he sleep, he sleeps lightly, — ready to awake at the first breath of morning, — like Heine's grenadier, with his bare sword at his side : — " So will ich liegen und horchen still, Wie eine Schildwach' im Grabe, Bis einst ich hore Kanonen Gebridl Und wiehernder Rosse Getrabe : Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl iiber mein Grab, Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen ; Dann steig' ich gewaffiiet hervor aus dem Grab, Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schutzen. " LORD MACAULAY Born, iSoo. Died, 1S59. TT can hardly be said that ]\[acaulay belonged to the -^ very highest order of minds. I do not think that he did. In no department except the historical did he show pre-eminent capacity, and even his History is open to the charge of being only a splendid and ornate panorama. His was not a creative intellect. It could not have fashioned A Midsummer Ni'ihVs Dream, a Faust, or The Cenci. He wrote spirited lyrics in which the traditions and associations of a historic people are handled with consummate judgment ; but we miss the spontaneous and unsystematic music, the inartificial and childlike grace of the true ballad.^ The lyrist is the creature of impulse, and Macaulay was never impulsive. Lofty, unimpassioned, self-restrained, he never confesses to any of the frailties of genius. He had great natural powers, no doubt ; ^ There is a very graceful little song written by Lord Macaulay in 1827, and included in his Misir/laiifous Writings (ii. 417). But comparing it with any of the Laureate's, we detect at a glance the great gulf between true poetry and the most effective and finished copy. " stay. Madonna ! stay ; 'Tis not the dawn of day That marks the skies with yonder opal streak ; The stars in silence shine ; Then press thy lips to mine, And rest upon my neck thy fervid cheek." 28o LORD MACAU LAY. lii.s memory was prodigious and exact; liis undertstanding just and masculine ; still it seems to me that he was in everything indebted more to art than to nature. He is the highest jtmduct of a ])rof(iunil and exijuisitc culture. This of course ill-tracts from the ([uality of his handiwork. Only the work of authentic genius is imi)erishalile. The work of the artificer, huwt'Vcr elahorate, liowever curiously finished, does not survive. 15ut Macaulay unfjuestionahly had genius of a kind : the genius wliich moulds the results (»f immense inlant of a slow, laborious, and difhcult growtii. Lord Macaulay was no fanatic. He was nc'ithtT a mond nor an intellectual Ingot. A rhetorician by temperament, lie was saved from the sins of the rhetoricians by his vigorous manliness, his justice of juer and unimi)assioned intellect. His critical creed was marked by the same narrowness. He considered Samuel liogers a greater singer than Samuel Coleridge. He relished the polish and culture of the Italij, and he respected a writer who was at once a finished gentleman and a fastidious poet. The uncouthness, the slovenliness, the eccentricities, the want of taste and jmlgment of the Windermere bretliren, were sins that he could not tolerate. Nay, ])erhaps he was altogetlier incapable of understanding the vague and fitful feelings which they tried to render, and which give a peculiar charm to the muse of Shelley and Tennyson. He insisted that whatever 282 LORD MACAU LAY. was said sliould be said clearly — should be written in words which men could read as they ran. *' Tlu3 song was made to he sung at night, An]uti.siii, it made him, on the contrary, regard witli liearty admiration tlie rougli adjust- ments, the intricate comjiromises, tlie bahmeeil incut the Whig is thoroughly practical. He is satisfied with things as they are : having no blind attachments, however, he does not object to reforms, especially if they effect no change. But he does not expect much from them — as he does not venerate the venerableness of the Constitution, so neither does lie hail the approach of the cicitas Dei. A tem- l>L'rate respect is about the warmest political emotion of which he is capable. Even his prejudices are not immoderate. Lord Macaulay was a great man, but he was a Whig great man. The subtleties of the imagination did not perplex him, nor did the contradictions of the moral life. "Wordsworth's description of a creature " moving about in worlds not realised," would have been singularly inapplicable to that compact, serene, and luminous mind. It was not agitated by " the obstinate ques- tionings of sense and outward things " which have troubled the sagest men ; nor by those high instincts " before which our mortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised. " Xone of these dim and perilous tracks of the spirit were trodden by Lord ^facaulay. That Lord Macaulay's just and well-balanced intelligence did good service to us, we have admitted ; but that it is sufficient LORD MACAU LAY. 285 for the Whig to continue to be what Lord ^Macaulay was, or that he can contrive to Jo good service of any kind by a servile imitation of his model, it is difficult to admit. The present condition of the Whigs shows, on the contrary, that a party which appropriates none of the elements of the current life and thought must perish. The Whig in 1860 is intellectually, if not politically, dead. A party whose notions of !N"ational Keformation are exhausted by a six-pound franchise, betrays a poverty of thouglit that cannot be tolerated even in our gover- nors. On Lord Macaulay himself the traditions of his party exercised a questionable influence. In his History, English political life becomes an affair of the Senate rather than of the people. We lose sight of the nation in the constitution. Those slowly matured national convictions Avhich alone work out great national changes, are disregarded, or, at least, are made to play a less important part in the development of society than a wordy debate in the Commons, or a conflict between the two Houses on a question of privilege. It has Vjeen said that Lord ^Macaulay wanted "heart." A certiiin coldnt'ss of manner and temperament undoubtedly char- acterised him. He luul the reserve of the English gentleman — which, be it remembered, represents the self-respect and restraint, as well as the shyness of the islander. Of his private life (though those l)est qualified to judge have spoken very warmly of unaH'ecteil kindness and wide charities^) I cannot speak; and of his writings it is enough to say tliat, wlienever right or truth is menaced, his vindication glows with manly fervour, and that his love for liberty is expressed in passages as full of fire as the poet's, — " O ye louil waves! and ye forests high ! And O ye clouds that far above me soar'd ! Thou rising sun I thou Vilue rejoicing sky ! Yea, everything that is and will be free ! Bear witness for me wiieresoe'er ye be With what deep worship I have still ador'd The spirit of divinest liberty." The truth appears to be that ^lacaulay had keen feelings united with a tran([uil loftiness of disposition. Fashioned in a heroic ' This was written, of course, before the publication of Mr Trevel- yan'd very ii.teresting and brilliant life of his uncle. 2.S6 LORD MACAU LAV. iiKiiild, lif seldom lirokc down or seomed to break down. It is well that wo should fail soiiietiines; failiini teaclies us huiuility, and our own wc^akness. Jjut Macaulay never failed — his life from its be^'innin^ to its close Wius a ra]>id success. 'J'hus there is an air of iinpassivencss about him w'hich men of liarder lives and more vehement passions cannot long sustaiiu He is not arroffant exactly, but he shows no sense of frailty. The repose Avhich marks him is not the repose which has lieen earned by desperate and hard-won victory; it is the natural repose of those simple antii^ue beings who dwelt amid the Etrurian woods, " while Italy was yet guiltless of liome." They have not sinned, and they have not conquered sin ; nor is the un- rulUed brow "entrenched" by tlie "deep swirs of thunder," wliich mental anguish and conllict leave behintl them. That calm and stoical soul had, indeed, little in common with men Avho, in the words of (leorgo Kliot, surrentler themselves without restraint to the seductive "uidance of illimitable needs. J O H N W I L S O N. Born, 17S5. Died, 1S54. JOHN WnLSOX liad the eaglo beak, the lion-like mane, of the Xapiers. Mrs Barrett Browning has said of Ilomer — " Homer, with tlie broad suspense Of tluindVous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous (tod-inuocenee," — and -wlu-nevor I read the lines, tlie miglity presence of Chris- topher Xorth rises before me. John AVilson was an immense man, physically and mentally, and yet his nature was essentially incomplete. He needed concentration. Had the tree been thoroughly pruned, the fruit would have been larger and richer. As it wtis, he seldom contrived to sustain the insjnration unim- ])aired for any time ; it ran away into shallows, and spread aimlessly over the sand. In many respects one of the truest, soundest, honestest men who ever lived, he used to grow merely declamatory at times. Amazingly humorous as the Shepherd of the Nodes is (there are scenes such as the opening of the haggis, and the swimming match with Tickler, while the London packet comes uj) the Forth, which manifest the humour of con- ception as well as the humour of character, in a measure that has seldom been surpassed l)y the greatest masters), his fun is often awkward, and his enthusiasm is apt to tire. Yet, had Shakspeare written about Falstaff once a month for twenty yeai-s, would we not possibly have said the same even of him ? And if the Shepherd at his best could be taken out of the 288 JOHN WILSON. Nodes, and compressed into a conii)act duodecimo volume, we sliould have an ori«^inal piece of inia<,finative liuniour which niif^dit fitly stand for all time by the side of the j)ortly Knight.^ ]'>ut the world is too crowded and too busy to preserve a crea- tion which is not uniformly at its best, which, on the contrary, is diluted ami watered through forty volumes of a magazine ; and so it is possiljle that, not quite unwillingly, j)osterity will let the Shepherd die. The same in a way holds true of Chris- topher's own fame. The moralist has told us from of old that only the mortal part of genius returns to the dust. Hut then this mortal part was so large a part of Wilson. He was such a magnificent man ! No literary man of our time has had such muscles and sinews, such an ample chest, such perfect lungs, such a stalwart frame, such an expansive and Jove like l)row. Had he lived in the classic ages tliey would have made a god of him, — not because he wrote good verses, or possessed the divine gift of eloquence, but because his presence was goddike. There was a ruddy glow of health about him too, — such as the people of no nation have possessed as a nation, since the culture of the body, as an art of the national life, has been neglected. The critic, therefore, who never saw Wilson, cannot rightly estimate the sources of his influence. We, on the contrary, who looked upon him, who heard him speak, know that we can never listen to his like again ; can never again look upon one who, while so intellectually noble, so elo(|uent, so flushed with poetic life, did so nearly approach, in strength and comeliness, the type of bodily perfection. The picture of that old man eloquent in his college class-room — the old man who had breasted the flooded Awe, and cast his fly across the bleakest tarns of Lochaber — pacing restlessly to and fro like a lion in his confined cage, his grand face working with emotion while he turns to the window, through which are obscurely visible the spires and smoky gables of the ancient city, his dilated nostril yet " full of youth," his small grey eye alight with visionary fire, as he discourses (some- what discursively, it must be owned), of truth, and beauty, and goodness — is one not to be forgotten. Had he talked the merest twaddle, the effect would have been quite the same ; he was a living poem where the austere grandeur of the old drama ^ Such concise vohime I have tried my hand on iji The Comedy of the Xoctes Ambrosiance. JOHN WILSON. 289 ■was united with the humour and tenderness of modern story- tellers ; and some such feeling it was that attracted and riveted his hearers. It has been said by unfriendly critics that "Wilson was an egotist. ]\rontaigne and Charles Lamb were egotists ; but we do not complain of an egotism to Avhich not the least charm of their writings is to be attributed. The truth is, that the charge against Wilson rests on a misconception. Cliristopher North was egotistical; but Christopher North was a creation of the imagination. He represented to the world the invincible Tory champion, before whose crutch the whole breed of Radicals, and Wliiglings, and Cockneys fled, as mists before the sun. It was impossible to endow this gouty Apollo with the fradties of mortal combatants. Haughty scorn, immaculate wisdom, un- assailable virtue, were the characteristics of the potent tyrant. We have as little right to say tliat Wilson was an egotist because Christopher North was egotistical (though, no doubt, he could have looked the part admirably), as to say that IMilton was a fallen angel because he drew the devil. Men (wliiggish and priggish) may continue to resent, indeed, as indelicate and unbecoming, the licence of his fancy, and the airy extravagance of his rhetoric ; but a juster and more catholic criticism con- fesses that, in the wide realms of literature, there is roimi for the grotes(pie gambols of Puck, for Ariel's moordight flittings, for the imaginative riot of Wilson and Heine and Jean Paul. JAMES PRRDHRICK FERRIHR, Born, 1808. Died, 1864. "C*ERRIER was a philosopliical Quixote, — a man wlio loved •*- " divine pliilosopliy " for its own sake. The student of pure metaphysics is now rarely met with, — the age of mechanical invention — of the steam-engine and the telegraph — being dis- posed to regard the proverbially barren fields of psychology with disrelish and disrespect. Against this materialising tendency, Professor Ferrier's life Avas an uninterrupted and essentially noble protest. No truer, simpler, or more unselfish student ever lived. Seated in his pleasant rustic library, amid its stores of curious and antiquated erudition, he differed as much from the ordinary men one meets in the law courts or on 'Change, as the quaint academic city where he resided differs from Salford or Birmingham. It was here — in his library — that Ferrier spent the best of his days ; here that he commented on the Greek psychologists, or explored the intricacies of the Hegelian logic ; and for Hegel (be it said in passing) he entertained an intense, and, considering the character of his own mind — its clearness, directness, and love of terseness and epigram — some- what inexplicable admiration. At the same time he was no mere bookworm. He did not succeed, and did not try to succeed, at the Scottish Bar, to which he was called ; but he had many of the qualities — subtlety of thought, lucidity of expression, power of arrangement — which ought to have secured success. He took a keen interest in the letters and p(jlitics of yAMES FREDERICK FERRIER. 291 the day. His own style was brilliant and trencliant, and it was probably the slovenliness and inelegance of lieid (which even the studied art and succinct power of Hamilton have been unable to conceal or repair), which drove him into the camp of the enemy. He was considered, in orthodox pliilosophical circles, somewhat of a Free Lance. He had a sharp scorn for laborious dulness and consecratetl feebleness, — a scorn which he took no pains to disguise. "When he descended into the controversial arena, this Quixote of the schools was sure to be in the thickest of the meUe. He hit right and left, quietly, deftly, for the most part, it is true, yet with a force and precision which it was unpleasant to provoke, and diffi- cult to resist. If his life should \w written hereafter, let his biographer take for its motto the live words from the Faery Queen, wliich the biographer of the Napiers has so happilj'- chosen, — "Fierce tcarres and faitliful lores." For, though com- bative over his books and his theories, his nature was singularly pure, afl'ectiunate, and tolerant. He loved his friends even better than he hated his foes. His prejudices were invincible; but apart from his prejudices, his mind was open and receptive, — prepared to welcome truth from whatever quarter it came. Ferrier, other than a liigh Tory, is an impossible conception to his friends ; yet had he been the most j>ronounced of Kadicals, he could not have returned more constantly to first i)rinciples, nor showed more speculative fearlessness. He was, in fact, an intrepid and daring reasoner, who allowed few formulas, polit- ical, ecclesiastical, or ethical, to cramp his mind, or restrain the free play of his intellectual faculties. This contrast, no doubt, presents an air of jiaradox : but Ferrier's character, as well as his logic, was sometimes paradoxical. He was a man of infinite subtlety, and he liked to play with his fancies — to place them under strong lights, and in unusual attitudes ; but he possessed a fund of humour and common-sense which made him on the whole a sound and discerning student of human nature. He was content to spend his days in contemplative retirement ; but every one who has seen him must have remarked a certain eager look — an eagerness of gesture and of speech — which indi- cated quite other than a sluggish repose. He united with a peculiar sensitiveness of constitution and fineness of critical faculty, a sturdy and indomitable soul. His slight frame was like a girl's ; but he was one of the manliest of men. !No man 292 JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER. was more thoroughly independent ; no man resented more warmly, or resisted more courageously, tlie dictation of clitiues and the tyranny of sects. Like all these tinely tibred, sensitive, fastidious men, he was capable of becoming on occasion, as I have indicated, hotly, and it may be unreasonably, indignant. Perhaps to this original lire and fnu-ness of nature, his early decline is to be attributed. The fiery soul " fretted the pigmy body to decay." Taken from us in the prime of life and in the vigour of his powers, the death of such a man is a loss to our pliilosophical schools not quickly to be repaired ; to his rela- tives, to his disciples, to his students — to all who knew him in the easy intercourse of social life — Ww loss is irrei»arable. Apart altogether from those qualiti<'S of heart and intellect, of which the world knows, or may yet know, his friends will not soon forget his refined simplicity of manner, — a manner perfectly unaffected, peculiar to himself, and indicating a remarkable delicacy of organisation, yet smacking somehow of the high breeding and chivalrous courtesy of that old-fashioned school of Scottish gentlemen whom he had known in his youth, and of which he remained the representative. Mourning over the death of so simple and so true a student — so kind, so chivalrous, and so brave a man — one turns in- stinctively to that fine, if rugged and uncouth, poem in which Eobert Browning has celebrated 'A Grammarian's Funeral' " Thither our path lies — Wind we up the heights — Wait ye the warning ? Our low life was the level's and the night's ; He's for the morning ! Step to a tune, square chests, erect the head, 'Wai-e the beholders ! This is our master, famous, calm, and dead. Borne on our shoulders. Here's the top-peak ! the multitude below Live, for thej- can there. This man decided not to Live but Know — Bury this man there ? Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened. Stars come and go ! let joy break with the storm — Peace let the dew send ! Lofty designs must close in like effects ; Loftily lying, Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying." W. M. THACKERAY. Born, iSii. Died, 1S63. 'T'O-PAY — this Christmas-day — a shadow has fallen upon -*- our liappiness. We are sad because a great man has })een taken from us suddenly — because " that good white liead, which all men knew," has been laid low. When our old postman, Sandy, brought me my letters this forenoon he said to me, " Ye'll have heard, sir, that Mr Thackeray is awa'*." Sandy is a bit of a scholar ; he is, moreover, a High Churchman and a High Tory; not unfamiliar with the litera- ture in wliich the distinction between tlie king de jure and the king de facto is drawn with such quaint precision ; not un- familiar with the controversies about transubstantiation, con- substantiation, and the like. Yet even Sandy, sublimely elevated above popular excitement, as a postman and antiquary should be, was affected when he told us that the great man was gone. Some of us had known him well, and had loved — as who could help loving % — that noble simple gentleman, I recalled the last time I had seen him, a year or two previously, when I found him sitting in his den at the top of his house in Onslow SnnVii Mut/nzint: " The wiiUjr," says Charlotte, solemnly, in a paper writU-n at tin- time, " Ib Mr Christopher North, an old man, seventy-fiiur years of aj^e ; the first of April is his birthday : his company are Timothy Tickler, Mor<;an O'Doherty, Macralnn Mordecai, and Janibs Ho^'^', a man of most extraordinary j^eniuK, a Scottish shep- herd." One of their plays is entitled T/n' Inlnm/frn. In it each of the children takes po-ssession of a favourite island, and selects " chief men " to carry on the government. '* iJramwell," is Charlotte's contemporary account, " chose John I*ull, Astley Coo]>('r, anil Lei^di Hunt; Kniilv, Walter Scott, Mr lyockhart, .lohnny Lockliart ; Anni-, Mirhael Sadler. Lonl iientinck, and Sir Henry Halfonl. I chose the Duke of Wellingt^m and two sons, Christopher North and Co., and Mr Ahernethy." Little sister Annie, who is seven, and ha.s to Ite lifted ujKjn her cliair, chooses Sir Henry Halford antl Mr SatUer ! A strange chiKlhood ! — out of which, through various schools anil other harsh experiences, the lironte.s grew up to man and woman's estate, and which explains a good deal in their sub- seijuent history. They are the ofTspring of the moors; and after the sea — whose authority is supreme — tlie moorland has perhaps the strongest influence in forming and determining the character. All their lives the Brontes love the^e moors in- tensely. They look down from their bleak " hills of Judea," and wonder how the dwellers contrive to exist in the " Philis- tine flats " beneath. The turbid waters of their " beck " are more sacred than the Jordan's. In dreams, at Brus-sels, they hear the Haworth harebells rustle in the wind. Emily can- not live away from them. She pines and sickens, and would die if she were not brought back and restored to their wild companionship. Everything they say or write is consecrated by this bleak communion. Their honey has the taste of the heath. The scent of the heather is as clearly traceable in their works — especiiUly in the wild and plaintive music of Emily's songs — as the salt of the sea in the palaces of the lagoons. After passing through much \incongenial drudgery as teachers, both at home and on the Continent, the sisters, in 1844, find themselves once more united in the quiet home among the hills. CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 299 Tliroughout the intervening period, Charlotte has been silently amassing materials fur future work. Nothing comes amiss to that observant and inventive brain. She notices every one with' wliom .she is brought into contact — dissects and analyses. The result is, that when she begins to write, her life is transcribed into her novels. The one is a photograph of the other. The .scenes reviewers condemn as exaggerated, the characters they pronounce unnatural, are taken from jiersonal experience. AVhen you read her life, you reail Jann Kijre, tihirley, Villette. in frag- nient.s. The sejKirate parts have simply to ])e taken out, arranged, riveted together, and you have the romance. l>ut what in the life is fragmentary and incomplete — for we live I'it Ity bit, and never contrive to act out our play uninter- ruptedly at one sitting — is by the artist's insight cast into tlnimatic .seenmun, she remains till her death. Very small of stature — when ordering any ]»iece of dress she has to give special in- structions, " the full woman's size not suiting me ; " very (juiet, shy, and ditbdcnt ; very resolute when a duty luus to be j)er- formed ; very tiniiil wht-n happiness has to be encountered, or success enjoyed. Her physical constitution is miserably weak and sensitive, but her will is perfect. 8he is never exacting, never sanguine, never disappointed when peojile fail her. From her earlie.st years .she has schooled herself not to expect or demand much — scarcely, indeed, to hope at all. Yet the spell of the imagination is very potent upon her: sometimes she invitt!S it, .sometimes she dreads it ; but it may not be dis- obeyed, even when it torments her. One might expect such a woman to hold extreme, exaggerated, unhealthy views; on the contrary, she is always moderate. Vagueness, inaccuracy, 300 CHARLOTTE BRONTlt. slovenliness whether in mind or j>erfion, slie cannot tolerate. Sentiment and sentimental inKincerity are repuj^'nant to the siiiii)lc directness of her character. She was naturally and by education superstitious, and her mental conHic.ts would have driven many a man into the cloister. ]>ut it is not so with her. She is deejjly religious, but never fanatical. She has the old Puritans' perfect confklence in God's government; to her, as to them, the trials of life are divinely appointed, and "at the end of all exists the Great Hope;" liut there is no narrow- ness in her creed. The character altogether is very comi»lex, — cool yet vivid, afiluent yet ascetic, vehement yet sedate. In 1844 the sistera, aa we have said, are again united, and recommence the interruj)ted occupations. The stock of the rustic stationer is exhausted Ijy the reams of pa]»er the girls consume; letters to famous men — Wordsworth, (,'oleridge, Southey, publishers in London, editors in Eilinburgh — pass incessantly through the village post-office ; and an occasional epistle returns for " Mr Currer Ikdl," though " no such gentle- man," ;Mr lironte assures the carrier, " lives in the parish." The first fruit of this suppressed agitation is the advent from the metropolis of a diminutive volume, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. That modest little volume lias an old charm for us, in its rude typography, plain binding, peculiar punctuation, and the date, 1846, on the title-page — ^just the year Sir iJobert repealed the Corn Laws. For it was when the country was in the last throes of that great conflict, Avhen Peel was winning victory for the people and defeat for himself, and the barbed shafts of Disraeli quivered every field-night under the Minister's spotless shirt-front, that the poems of the three sisters were given to the Avorld, and permitted to pass unnoticed, — as was indeed to be looked for. Yet the book is one that might have riveted attention even then, and must not now be forgotten. For the poems are perfectly genuine — veritable utterances of the women who wrote them. There is no poetic exaggeration, no false sentiment, nor study of theatrical eff'ect. They do not wanton with the flowers of rhetoric. I do not believe that more than half-a-dozen metaphors occur throughout the volume. A Puritan could not be more conscientious in his intercourse Avith his stifl'-necked brethren than these girls are in their poetic talk. The imagination is taken to task. The estimate of life CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 301 is strictly subdued. Tliey have worked out an experience for themselves, and witlx God's help they will stick to it. Their gravity of thought and chasteness of language contrast strikingly with the florid and exuberant ornamentation of our voun^er poets — the poets of the Rennixsmice. And because of this entire genuineness they never imitate. There is- no f(jreign music in their melody. One does not detect the influence of any other writer. Young poets are habitual plagiarists : but with this volume neither Lyron, nor Scott, nor Tennyson, nor Browning has anything to do. The writers sjieak out )>lainly and calmly what tliey have felt them- selves, and their thoughts assuiuf without effort tlie poetic form to which they are most adapted. They speak calmly; yet we feel sometimes that this composure is enforced. There are deeps of passion underneath the pas- sionless face. The estimato of life is studiously grave and somljre : but at times an intoxicating sense of liberty thrills their blood. There is the martyr's spirit, but there is the hero's too. They will not love mtr hate over-much: but the throbbing of the wounded heart cannot be always restrained, and at times they are intensely bitter : — "They nametl him mail ami laiil his Ijones Where liolier a.slie.s lie, But doubt not that liis spirit groans In hell's eternity." There are indications in Currer's contributions of that amazing intellf'tual force which a year afterwards was to move painfully every English heart : but as yet she has not learnt her strength. Her stops are restrained and embarrassed. She does not move freely. She touches life with tlie tips of her fingers, so to speak : lier whole heart and soul have not j-et Ijeen cast into lier work. Yet in some of them much sympalliy with natural beauty is manifested. The wealth of afl'ection which was so jealously watched in her intercourse with men and women was permitted in the lonely presence of the hills to lavish itself unchecked. Most of the subjects are strangely chosen for girls, and are such as a very marked and decided idiosyncrasy alone would have selected. In Acton's, indeed, there is more of the ordinary woman, mild, patient, devout, loving ; and her poetry has little 302 CHARLOTTE BROXTJL to distinguish it from the poetry of many women wlio acquire " the faculty of verse." But those of tlie other two are very (liU'erent. In them there is none of the ordinary romance of girlhood. Their heroes are nut the heroes of the hall -room, hut of the Covenant and the stake, — the warrior-jtriest who can die for his faith ; the patriot who, if it he for his country's gain, will steadfastly allow his Injuour to he soiled, and " wait securely For tlie atoning liour to come ; " the worker who in his l(;nelin(?ss acliieves the redemption of his people ; the martyr with the thorny crown upon his hrow, hut with the peace of God and the hope of immortality in his heart. Success, the usual gauge applied hy y•, and our original judgnu-nt undergoes modilication, not hecause any new or incoiLsistent element haa been introduceil, but because, the conditions remaining the same, we see furtlu-r. I>eaf after leaf ha« been unfolded with a colli and imjiartial hand, until we have Ikm-ii let down into the innermost hearts of the men, and taught by the scrutiny a new sense of their relative worthiness. And I'aul Kmmanuel is surely a very rich and genuine concejttion. " The Professor " will ever be associatetl in our memory with a certain soft and breezy laughter ; for though tlie love he inspires in the lieroine is very deep and even j>athetic after its kind, yet the whole idea of the man is wrought ami workeoyle — made about the year '48 — which is still to be found in the col- lections of those Avho are interested in the curious felicities of caricature. It represents Punch telling the mendx?rs of the House of Commons " to go about their business." The leaders — Kussell, Palmerston, Joseph Hume, Cobden, upon the Liberal ; Peel, Sir James Graham, l)israeli, Lord George Ben- tinck, Sibthorpe, upon the Opposition benches — regard their vivacious ^Mentor "with an expression of amused but languid interest. The little gentleman is stamping upon the floor, and gesticulating vehemently. "With a slight change of circum- stance, the sketch might be taken to represent the General Assembly of the Kirk during one of Professor Robertson's characteristic harangues. Of his figure, the figxire of Puncli could hardly be called a caricature. Hugh Miller said that ships of tlie line were sometimes cut down to frigates, and that the minister of Ellon was a very large man cut do^vn to less than the middle size. His head was too large for his body ; his body was too large for his legs. His limbs, indeed, were as ludicrously out of shape and proportion as the limbs of the Elack Dwarf, whom, in fact, he rather resembled. He was as ROBERTSON OF ELLON. 313 short, as swarthy, as sinewy, as slirewd, as sarcastic, as the recluse of Muckk-stane Moor, and his voice was as prodigiously shrill and powerful. Altogether, the man was one not easily to be forgotten. The coarse white hair, which stood bolt up- right ; the round red face, with its capacious forehead ; the bullet head ; the fat swollen hands, clenched, and working unconsciously as he proceeded with his argument ; the strong north-country accent ; the harsh voice, which grated on the ear like the cry of a land-rail, sometimes sinking into a muffled whisper, and sometinu-s rising into a shriek as startling as the scream of a railway-whistle, — produced a most singular impres- sion. The onitor, so far as externals wt-nt, might have been readily mistaken for a IJuchan farmer, or a Highland drover. "While in repose, the drooping umltT lip indicated weariness or pain, but the eye was bright and jwnetrating, and watchful. Fr»»ni the eye alone, indeed, \\'i\s it possible for a stranger to learn that this misshapi'U l)Mdy harbDurfd a dauntk-ss soul, and a peculiarly subtle and inipiisitive inti-llfct. Perhaps it was still more ilillicult fur those who did not know him to believe that this tortuous reasoner, this brusque, intricately ingenious, sharply ironical, hard-hitting controversialist was warmed by a love strung as Melancthnn's, was animated ])y a faith fervent as Luther's, was at hciirt one of the meekest, most tender, gentle, and long-sulfering of men. When Robertson wrote of "the quickening and burning spirit of light and love struggling to unearth itself," he as nearly as possible descrilted the conditions uuiler which he endeavoun'd to accomplish the work wliicli had been allotted to him, ami which he cheerfully and steadfastly undertook. The character of this parish minister was one that could not fail to interest those who had the opportunity of studying it. Ilobertson's was a singularly open, ingenuous, teacliable mind ; ardent, busy, and iiupiisitive. He could not well lielp being a Calvinist, but he was no bigot. He was profoundly religious, but never fanatical. There was no narrowness in his creed. "When in Aberdeen, he drew up a scries of remarkable "resolu- tions." A certain place is paved with good intentions, but Ilobertson's resolutions were worked into his life, and form a truthful commentary on his career. " Although I consider it a sacred tluty," he says in the twelfth, " which I owe to God, to allow no consideration of authority, however high, which does 314 ROBERTSON OF ELLOX. not altiT my fonvictions, to interfere witli opinions wliicli I hiivt) coolly and € h/mestly pro- fessi'd hi) the pcojile hi/ tchom theij are ailrocjited." Humble, and yet thoroughly iinlfpi'iidciit, lovin;^ truth intensely, and yet never speaking an evil W(u-d, nor thinking a bitter thought of an advereary, Kobertson stands almost alone on tlie field of theological controversy. And this combination of elements selilom found in union, is characteristic of his m^nUil structure throughout. He loved the jieople, and identified himself with their interests, yet he could not become an ecclesiiustical dema- gogue. His temper was characteristically shrewd and wary, yet. in certain aspects, he might be called a mystic. Crabbe and Coleridge were his favourite poets ; and in his own char- acter he united hi>mely sagacity with vague, obscure, and some- what Utopian aspirations. " Life is more than logic," he used to say, " and the understanding but deals with the surface of the human being." He united, moreover, an ardent zeal with a rare and admirable temperance. His faith was fervent, yet his views were moderate and liberal. He once rose in the Assembly, and assured his astonished l)rethren that he approved of the grant to Maynooth. " I am not prepared." he said, " to admit that the consequences of the Catholic Emancipation Bill have been pernicious. I know that there are disturbances in Ireland ; but when I look back to the progress of Protestantism and civilisation, I see that the vessel of our own Protestant Church was rocked amid many storms. I know that when men come forward, keenly maintaining political rights, they are necessarily learning something ; and when in addition to polit- ical power we give them education, we do all that, in present circumstances, under Providence, we are permitted to do to bring them forward in the scale of intelligence and civilisation," ROBERTSON OF ELLOX. 315 Those only who are familiar with the intense repugnance to Popery which prevails among the lower classes and the reli- gious bodies in Scotland, will be able to estimate aright the intrepidity wliicli avowed, and the intellectual fairness and honesty of judgment which, in spite of hostile associations, con- trived to arrive at such an opinion. It was freijuently said that Kobertson was inconsist^jnt ; that he could not be trusted. The accusation in one sense was deserved : the bigots ami zealots of ecclesiastical politics could not depend upon him. His intelh-ct was too subtle, too inquis- itive, too cautious to enable him to become an efiective parti- san. He would not wilfully blind his eyes — he saw on every side of a question — and he refused to believe that black was wliite, or that white Wiis black, at tlu^ bidding of any party. Hugh Miller said that lJol»ertson of Kllon migiit have led a mob ; ])ut the renuirk showed an imperfect ccjmprehension of his character, ^^o man was ever less suited to lead a mob, either of jHjople or of priestfi. He had indeed a great anil noble zeal for truth, and jnirity, and honesty, and uprightness, — a zeal which, like Jackson's, might have animated an army; Itut the subtlety of his intellect disipialilied him for pnpidar rule. His subjects W(»uld have deposed him in a week. Even his warmest admirers must admit that, while the frankest and most transparent lionesty characterised his moral nature, his mental i)rucesses were involved and intricate, not unfrecpiently ]>erplexing and enigmatical. H cannot l>o denied, however, that, when at his liest, he Wius a gn.'at and solid reasoner. " I have observed," lienjamin Franklin says, " that men of good sense seldom fall into a disputatious turn of conversation, except lawyers, university men, and, generally, men of all sorts \rho hare Imwu hrcil uf Ee. He was among the earliest agricultural reformers who, ajtpropriating the scientific labours of Lieliig, ajiplied dis.solved bones to the soil of (Ireat r.ritain. A few months before his death he a.sked his colleague, Professor Kelland, to organi.«e a chiss for the prose- cution of the higher branches of mathematics, the study of which he wjis anxious to resume. In one of his latest letters, written from the banks of Lochleven, he sjteaks like a school- boy of "the elevation of feeling 1 have more than once enjoyed in finding a wild duck's )icsf." JSuch a career, though not perhaps the career of a man of first-rat« powers, deserves to be recorded. For there was un- doubtedly sometliing eminently true and heroic in this man — so unselfish, so simple, so zealous, so pure-hearted. And the ungainliness of his presence, the quaintness of his gestures, the involutions and perplexities of his h)gic, though they might be ridiculed, could only be ridiculed in a spirit of love, — like Miss llronte's ridicule of Paul Emmanuel, wliich is very tender, and at times closely akin to tears. Xay, his tortuous mental pro- cesses, his intellectual hesitations, and compromises, and re- ' treats, served only to bring into clearer relief the steadfast purity, the untarnished rectitude, the supreme honesty and intrepidity of his moral nature. His enemies, if he has any, may say perhaps that he sometimes reasoned like a Jesuit ; but no stain of meanness nor of baseness rests anywhere upon that pure and blameless life. R O B i: R T L E i: Born, 1S04. Died, 1868. AGAINST the spirit of intolerance in its ditlerent forms — democratic excitement, Puritanic rigour, Ciilvinistic dojijraa — Dr Lee. both as minister of Greyfriars, and as Pro- fessor of liihlical Criticism in the University, waged a constant war, antl it is tliis warfare whidi gives to the kst twenty or tliirty years of liis life an almost poetic unity and comi)letenes3. So far as I can gather from his l)iograi)hy, Kohert Lee when he entered the Cliurch had not studied very closely its theoretic or speculative side. He was a soldier in the Church militant, who regarded doctors ami philosophers, visionaries and dream- ers, with a somewhat scurnful eye. iJut as he lived on, there gradually grew upon him the conviction that there was some- tliing greater than good works. The severe majesty of Truth surprised him at his evangelistic laboui-s, as she has surprised so many of the finest natures. Trutii, simple, absolute, uncon- ditioned, was to Ije thenceforth the sole mistress whom he served. He had to emancipate his own mind, he had to emancipate the minds of the clergy and laity around him, from whatever restraints, devised by ignorance, error, or superstition, ])revented him ami them from attaining the trutli. A perilous service ! For such service how was he armed — what were his moral and intellectual (jualilications ? Though he tlelighteil in the intellectual excitenient of con- flict, Dr Lee was not naturally a combative man. He kept away from the Church courts as long as he decently could. P>ut circumstances were too strong for him, and he was forced latterly to occupy a prominent position in the controversial 3i8 ROBERT LEE. arena. Tlicro ran In- noint in the enemy's argument in an instantaneous instinctive sort of way. Other men lose their heads entirely when they find themselves in presence of hostile listeners; Imt I>r L»'e's fjurulties were all in linest working order when with a few brief notes before him, hastil}' scriblded on the back of a letter, he rose to reply to the arguments of a triumphant majority. This logical rapidity was probably connected with his delicate sensitive- ness. Any blunder or blemish in an argument jnrred upon him, — grated against some tine, critical nerve in his nature whicli (so far as its owner's comfort was involved) had been left rather too much exposed to the keen air. Yet, ardent and sensitive as Dr Lee's nature was, he dis- played in jiublic great intellectual coolness and resource. He held himself well in hand. The ineifable contempt which he entertained for many of his adversaries may have partly accounted for his composure, yet it implied something more than scorn. The truth is that, though his temper was sanguine, his intellect w;vs sedate, contemplative, speculative. The winds and the waves of controversy could not reach the innermost sanctuary of his soul. The language in which his speeches were composed was eminently felicitous. His command of words was inex- haustible, yet in their use he was dainty and fastidious, and if not satisfied with the sentence as originally turned, he did not hesitate (as his hearers must recollect) to repeat it in a form ROBERT LEE. 319 more to his mind. The written words of such a man — diaries, sermons, letters, even reported speeches — must of course very imperfectly represent him. His influence was in a great degree personal, and incapable of being transmitted to those at a distance. He was a really witty speaker ; but his wit vanishes in the reiM.trts. The most impressive passages in his sermons (which were never violent nor rhetorical) were the unwritten passages. Dr Lee was .'symjtathftic and catholic in most of his tastes; yet at times he maniff-sted a markid impatience of discussion which did not dinctly interest him. He did not care much fur works of imagination or humour : though brilliantly witty himself, he loveil grave books ; light amusing literature rather teased hiu). " I am evermore convinced," he remarks, "of the soundness of Aristotle's ma.\im. that the only subjects worthy of the serious considenitittn of a rational being are jiolitics and religion : all else is secondary.'' Politics and religion ! — whatever lay outside the.se high, serious objects of thought failed to attract him, whereas the dullest treatise on govern- ment could be keenly relished. I)r Lee, it is almost needless to add, was aniniateerant vitality of Lord Neaves's mind overllowed in many channels. He believed that the intellect of the lawyer was aided and not embarrassed by the cultivation of art and letters, of science and scientific intercourse. The fellows of the Ivcjyal Society of Edinburgh, the members of the J>riti.sh iVssociation and of the •Social Science Association, were familiar with the spare and attenuated figure — with the keen face and the keener sense of the versatile Scottish judge. Lord Neaves was a fluent pen- man, and he wrote with admirable directness and true literary grace. His humorous songs are among the best in the language. A few of them have been collected and published — many of the most racy, however, live only in manuscript copies and the memories of his friends. He loved the classics, and his ac- quaintance -with some of the more obscure writers in classical literature was extensive and unusual. His little volume on the Greek Anthology — published the other day by his friend Mr IJIackwood — is widely known, and hius l>een warmly commended by critics, Avho are inclined to believe that, since the days of George Buclianan, no Scotsman has mastered the Latin grammar. Lord Neaves was to the last delightful in society. He had line musical taste, and he sang his own songs and the songs of his friends with capital effect. He was a first-rate talker — his stock of anecdote was inexhaustible, and his good -humour invincible. No one ever saw him moody, querulous, or " out of sorts." He was always pleasant, always conversible, always interested. He never varied — he was as courteous to a young lad from the country as to the greatest big-wig in law, or art, or literature; and his hospitality was unbounded All this was the fruit of an immense kindliness of heart and geniality of temper. He Avas a " Liberal " in the right sense of that much-abused word — liberal from true culture and wide S}-m- pathy. There was nothing of the ascetic about Charles Xeaves ; but, on the other hand, for whatever was really noble and worthy in religion and life he had heartfelt admiration — an almost chivalrous reverence. He could look forward to the future A\-ith the equauiniity of the good man who is not miduly depressed nor unduly elated ; and he met death with the same simplicity of unassuming piety and Christian confidence. JOHN HILL BURTON. Burn, 1S09. Dikd, iSSi. THE preceding article^ is the last which our old and dear friend Mr IJurton wrote. It had not been revised by him when lie tlied ; and it is in consequence more or less |»atchy and untini.shed. Yet to us it is not without a distinct interest and charm of its own, for it proves that the " old tramp," as he delighted to call himself, retained to the end much of the sprightly sense and vigour and unwearied interest in men and books and outdoor life which made him the de- lightful cumpaniun that he was. He may be said, indeed, with almust literal exactness, to have died pen in hand. His death took place on the Wednesday afternoon, and tliis is the record of his last days. " Both on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning lie insisted on having writing things given him in bed, and on Tuesday morning he wrote half a page of large paper on the connecliun between the Greek war and the revival of the culture of Greek literature ; he meant it as a liook on which to hang a dissertation in the ' Ellice-book.' ^ On Wednesday morning he wrote but half a line, when he grew * too tired ' to write. The few words might either belong to the * Ellice- book ' or to prisun matters. Six hours later he was gone." * The article entitled "Hints for an Autumnal Ramble,'" from the pen of Mr Burton, appeared in JJ /ark wood' ti Maijazinc, September 1881. ' At the time of his death Mr Burton was engaged in editing the correspondence of the late Edward Ellice. 328 JOHN HILL BURTON. John Hill Burton was born at Aberdeen on 2 2d August 1809. He died at Edinburgh on 10th August 1881. He came of gentlefolk; — liis fatlier was an officer in the 94th Eegiment, his mother one of the Patons of Grandhome — a good Aberdeenshire stock. He was educated at Marischal College — the famous college of the Keiths, to which Dugald Dalgetty was proud to belong. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1831. From 1831 to 1881 — a period of half a century — he worked probably as hard as any man of his time. Even when " on the tramp " his pen was never idle for a day. Politics, law, theology, history, geology, biography, botany, bibliography, — he tried them all, and achieved something noticeable in each. His Manual of the Law of Scotland was for long an authority in the schools. His treatise on political economy is about as good as anything of the kind can be — transparently lucid and logical The Book-Hunter is one of the books — quaint, original, racy, idiomatic, unique — which takes its place on the shelf where the Anatomie of Melancholy and the Relvjio Medici are found. But from all this " fine confused feeding " (as the Scotchman said of his sheep's-head) he turned habitually and instinctively to his own country and its history. Saving David Laing only, no man knew so much of the devious and obscure byways of early Scottish life as disclosed in the old sermons and the old chap-books and the old records which are preserved in the Advocates' Library and the Register House of the nor- thern capital. His first public essays in this direction were more or less tentative and experimental — brief biographical sketches of distinguished or notorious Scotchmen. His Life of David Hume, indeed, has been the storehouse to which all subsequent biographers have turned. " A most competent authority," says Professor Huxle}', in his brilliant and remark- able monograph of the great philosopher, "Mr John Hill Burton, on whose valuable Life of Hume, I need not say, I have drawn freely for the materials of the present sketch." But it was not until he had settled himself seriously to the great work of his life — the History of the Xorthern Kingdom from the earliest times to the last Jacobite rising — that liis really admirable qualities as a writer manifested themselves. With all its defects and shortcomings, his History is undoubt- edly one of the most considerable works of a half-century which has been fertile in famous histories. It may be said without JOHN HILL BURTON. 329 exaggeration that in this work, for the first time, an exact and scientific method of investigation was brought to bear syste- matically on the myths of our earlier annals, and that with a shrewdness of insight, a variety of interest, and a liveliness of style, that are as rare as they are attractive. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon Mr Burton by the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and that of D.C.L. by the University of Oxford. Pie was appointed Historio- grapher-Royal of Scotland through the good offices of his friend Edward Gordon, the Lord Advocate, by the Tory Administra- tion of 1867. Though a Whig by conviction and training, he was essentially a moderate man, and for many years he had ceased to take any very active interest in the political fortunes of a party which had grown strange to him. It would be out of place, writing within a week of ]\Ir Bur- ton's death, to attempt to put on record any elaborate or delib- erate estimate of his life and work ; but there are one or two characteristic traits of our friend which may be briefly noted before the freshness of recollection is lost. The figures even of those we knew best quickly grow shadowy when they leave us to go over to the majority — a majority which, as we get up in life, seems to grow every day so much bigger than it used to be ! I There was a good deal of the Bohemian in Burton. He was iU at ease when in full dress ; he liked space and air ; he was an inveterate Avanderer — never happier than when tramping across the country-side, or camping among the heather. He did not care to become the mouthpiece of any clique or coterie. He valued his independence and his right to think for himself. And he was a most intrepid thinker. So long as he felt he was in the right, it did not matter to him what weight of authority might be arrayed against him. He brushed it aside — without scorn or contempt indeed, but with a quiet indifi'erence that was even more effective in the long-run. There was indeed a singular incapacity for resentment or anger or rancour in Burton's nature ; he was absolutely free from jealousy, as well as from the other vices which a literary life is sometimes supposed to breed. One never heard him utter a harsh or un- kindly word of a brother writer ; and his appreciation of excel- lence was. generous and unstinted. He Avas in every respect one of the most tolerant and catholic-hearted of men. Yet his tolerance did not proceed from coldness or indifference ; for 330 JOHN llll.l. BURTON. moannoss, or baseness, or deliberate malice could sting him on occasion into sharp ]irot4'st. The alacrity and alertness of Burton's gait were characteristic of his mind. To the hist he retained an almost boyish Inioy- ancy both of body and mind. His 8]>are and weather-})eat<,'n frame \va.s sustained by an amazing vitality. The gaunt and attenuated figim-, with the liabitual Ktooj), which jiaRsed you at express speed, turning neitln-r to right nor to left — the hat which possi})ly had seen ])etter days, thrown far back upon the head ; the black surtout, wliicli had Ijeen cut without any very close acquaintance on the part of tlie tailor with the angulari- ties of the form it was to cover, streaming behin