“But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land.”
The circumstance is the more remarkable, because Dryden has really no
couplet which would seem to a good critic more intensely Drydenian, both
in thought and expression, than this, of which the whole thought, and
almost the whole expression, are stolen.
As we are on this subject, we cannot refrain from observing that Mr.
Courtenay has done Dryden injustice by inadvertently attributing to him
some feeble lines which are in Tate’s part of Absalom and Achitophel.]
The dates of the two poems will, we think, explain this discrepancy.
The third part of Hudibras appeared in 1678, when the character of
Shaftesbury had as yet but imperfectly developed itself. He had,
indeed, been a traitor to every party in the State; but his treasons had
hitherto prospered. Whether it were accident or sagacity, he had timed
his desertions in such a manner that fortune seemed to go to and fro
with him from side to side. The extent of his perfidy was known; but it
was not till the Popish Plot furnished him with a machinery which seemed
sufficiently powerful for all his purposes, that the audacity of his
spirit, and the fierceness of his malevolent passions, became fully
manifest. His subsequent conduct showed undoubtedly great ability, but
not ability of the sort for which he had formerly been so eminent. He
was now headstrong, sanguine, full of impetuous confidence in his own
wisdom and his own good luck. He, whose fame as a political tactician
had hitherto rested chiefly on his skilful retreats, now set himself
to break down all the bridges behind him. His plans were castles in the
air: his talk was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he
treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands:
he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not
proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned
by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more
consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were
lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if a man had
inquired of the oracle of God, was turned into foolishness. He who
had become a by-word, for the certainty with which he foresaw and the
suppleness with which he evaded danger, now, when beset on every side
with snares and death, seemed to be smitten with a blindness as strange
as his former clear-sightedness, and, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, strode straight on with desperate hardihood to his doom.
Therefore, after having early acquired and long preserved the reputation
of infallible wisdom and invariable success, he lived to see a mighty
ruin wrought by his own ungovernable passions, to see the great party
which he had led vanquished, and scattered, and trampled down, to see
all his own devilish enginery of lying witnesses, partial sheriffs,
packed juries, unjust judges, bloodthirsty mobs, ready to be employed
against himself and his most devoted followers, to fly from that proud
city whose favour had almost raised him to be Mayor of the Palace,
to hide himself in squalid retreats, to cover his grey head with
ignominious disguises; and he died in hopeless exile, sheltered by the
generosity of a State which he had cruelly injured and insulted, from
the vengeance of a master whose favour he had purchased by one series of
crimes, and forfeited by another.
Halifax had, in common with Shaftesbury, and with almost all the
politicians of that age, a very loose morality where the public was
concerned; but in Halifax the prevailing infection was modified by
a very peculiar constitution both of heart and head, by a temper
singularly free from gall, and by a refining and sceptical
understanding. He changed his course as often as Shaftesbury; but he did
not change it to the same extent, or in the same direction. Shaftesbury
was the very reverse of a trimmer. His disposition led him generally to
do his utmost to exalt the side which was up, and to depress the side
which was down. His transitions were from extreme to extreme. While he
stayed with a party he went all lengths for it: when he quitted it
he went all lengths against it. Halifax was emphatically a trimmer; a
trimmer both by intellect and by constitution. The name was fixed on him
by his contemporaries; and he was so far from being ashamed of it that
he assumed it as a badge of honour. He passed from faction to faction.
But instead of adopting and inflaming the passions of those whom he
joined, he tried to diffuse among them something of the spirit of
those whom he had just left. While he acted with the Opposition he was
suspected of being a spy of the Court; and when he had joined the Court
all the Tories were dismayed by his Republican doctrines.
He wanted neither arguments nor eloquence to exhibit what was commonly
regarded as his wavering policy in the fairest light. He trimmed,
he said, as the temperate zone trims between intolerable heat and
intolerable cold, as a good government trims between despotism and
anarchy, as a pure church trims between the errors of the Papist and
those of the Anabaptist. Nor was this defence by any means without
weight; for though there is abundant proof that his integrity was not of
strength to withstand the temptations by which his cupidity and vanity
were sometimes assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving
and compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him,
preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his time. If
both parties accused him of deserting them, both were compelled to admit
that they had great obligations to his humanity, and that, though an
uncertain friend, he was a placable enemy. He voted in favour of Lord
Stafford, the victim of the Whigs; he did his utmost to save Lord
Russell, the victim of the Tories; and, on the whole, we are inclined to
think that his public life, though far indeed from faultless, has as
few great stains as that of any politician who took an active part in
affairs during the troubled and disastrous period of ten years which
elapsed between the fall of Lord Danby and the Revolution.
His mind was much less turned to particular observations, and much more
to general speculations, than that of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury knew the
King, the Council, the Parliament, the City, better than Halifax; but
Halifax would have written a far better treatise on political science
than Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury shone more in consultation, and Halifax in
controversy: Shaftesbury was more fertile in expedients, and Halifax in
arguments. Nothing that remains from the pen of Shaftesbury will bear a
comparison with the political tracts of Halifax. Indeed, very little
of the prose of that age is so well worth reading as the Character of a
Trimmer and the Anatomy of an Equivalent. What particularly strikes
us in those works is the writer’s passion for generalisation. He was
treating of the most exciting subjects in the most agitated times he was
himself placed in the very thick of the civil conflict; yet there is no
acrimony, nothing inflammatory, nothing personal. He preserves an air of
cold superiority, a certain philosophical serenity, which is perfectly
marvellous. He treats every question as an abstract question, begins
with the widest propositions, argues those propositions on general
grounds, and often, when he has brought out his theorem, leaves the
reader to make the application, without adding an allusion to particular
men, or to passing events. This speculative turn of mind rendered him a
bad adviser in cases which required celerity. He brought forward,
with wonderful readiness and copiousness, arguments, replies to those
arguments, rejoinders to those replies, general maxims of policy, and
analogous cases from history. But Shaftesbury was the man for a prompt
decision. Of the parliamentary eloquence of these celebrated rivals,
we can judge only by report; and, so judging, we should be inclined
to think that, though Shaftesbury was a distinguished speaker, the
superiority belonged to Halifax. Indeed the readiness of Halifax in
debate, the extent of his knowledge, the ingenuity of his reasoning, the
liveliness of his expression, and the silver clearness and sweetness
of his voice, seems to have made the strongest impression on his
contemporaries. By Dryden he is described as
“of piercing wit and pregnant thought,
Endued by nature and by learning taught
To move assemblies.”
His oratory is utterly and irretrievably lost to us, like that of
Somers, of Bolingbroke, of Charles Townshend, of many others who were
accustomed to rise amid the breathless expectation of senates, and to
sit down amidst reiterated bursts of applause. But old men who lived to
admire the eloquence of Pulteney in its meridian, and that of Pitt in
its splendid dawn, still murmured that they had heard nothing like
the great speeches of Lord Halifax on the Exclusion Bill. The power of
Shaftesbury over large masses was unrivalled. Halifax was disqualified
by his whole character, moral and intellectual, for the part of a
demagogue. It was in small circles, and, above all, in the House of
Lords, that his ascendency was felt.
Shaftesbury seems to have troubled himself very little about theories
of government. Halifax was, in speculation, a strong republican, and did
not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracy the
subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battles of
the Court, and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage. In
this way, he tried to gratify at once his intellectual vanity and his
more vulgar ambition. He shaped his life according to the opinion of the
multitude, and indemnified himself by talking according to his own.
His colloquial powers were great; his perception of the ridiculous
exquisitely fine; and he seems to have had the rare art of preserving
the reputation of good breeding and good nature, while habitually
indulging a strong propensity to mockery.
Temple wished to put Halifax into the new Council, and leave out
Shaftesbury. The King objected strongly to Halifax, to whom he had taken
a great dislike, which is not accounted for, and which did not last
long. Temple replied that Halifax was a man eminent both by his station
and by his abilities, and would, if excluded, do everything against the
new arrangement that could be done by eloquence, sarcasm, and intrigue.
All who were consulted were of the same mind; and the King yielded, but
not till Temple had almost gone on his knees. This point was no sooner
settled than his Majesty declared that he would have Shaftesbury too.
Temple again had recourse to entreaties and expostulations. Charles told
him that the enmity of Shaftesbury would be at least as formidable as
that of Halifax, and this was true; but Temple might have replied that
by giving power to Halifax they gained a friend, and that by giving
power to Shaftesbury they only strengthened an enemy. It was vain to
argue and protest. The King only laughed and jested at Temple’s anger;
and Shaftesbury was not only sworn of the Council, but appointed Lord
President.
Temple was so bitterly mortified by this step that he had at one
time resolved to have nothing to do with the new Administration, and
seriously thought of disqualifying himself from sitting in council by
omitting to take the Sacrament. But the urgency of Lady Temple and Lady
Giffard induced him to abandon that intention.
The Council was organised on the twenty-first of April, 1679; and,
within a few hours, one of the fundamental principles on which it had
been constructed was violated. A secret committee, or, in the modern
phrase, a cabinet of nine members, was formed. But as this committee
included Shaftesbury and Monmouth, it contained within itself the
elements of as much faction as would have sufficed to impede all
business. Accordingly there soon arose a small interior cabinet,
consisting of Essex, Sunderland, Halifax, and Temple. For a time perfect
harmony and confidence subsisted between the four. But the meetings of
the thirty were stormy. Sharp retorts passed between Shaftesbury and
Halifax, who led the opposite parties, In the Council, Halifax generally
had the advantage. But it soon became apparent that Shaftesbury still
had at his back the majority of the House of Commons. The discontents
which the change of Ministry had for a moment quieted broke forth again
with redoubled violence; and the only effect which the late measures
appeared to have produced was that the Lord President, with all the
dignity and authority belonging to his high place, stood at the head of
the Opposition. The impeachment of Lord Danby was eagerly prosecuted.
The Commons were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne.
All offers of compromise were rejected. It must not be forgotten,
however, that, in the midst of the confusion, one inestimable law, the
only benefit which England has derived from the troubles of that period,
but a benefit which may well be set off against a great mass of evil,
the Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through the Houses and received the
royal assent.
The King, finding the Parliament as troublesome as ever, determined to
prorogue it; and he did so, without even mentioning his intention to the
Council by whose advice he had pledged himself, only a month before, to
conduct the Government. The counsellors were generally dissatisfied; and
Shaftesbury swore, with great vehemence, that if he could find out who
the secret advisers were, he would have their heads.
The Parliament rose; London was deserted; and Temple retired to his
villa, whence, on council days, he went to Hampton Court. The post of
Secretary was again and again pressed on him by his master and by
his three colleagues of the inner Cabinet. Halifax, in particular,
threatened laughingly to burn down the house at Sheen. But Temple was
immovable. His short experience of English politics had disgusted him;
and he felt himself so much oppressed by the responsibility under which
he at present lay that he had no inclination to add to the load.
When the term fixed for the prorogation had nearly expired, it became
necessary to consider what course should be taken. The King and his four
confidential advisers thought that a new Parliament might possibly be
more manageable, and could not possibly be more refractory, than that
which they now had, and they therefore determined on a dissolution. But
when the question was proposed at council, the majority, jealous, it
should seem, of the small directing knot, and unwilling to bear the
unpopularity of the measures of Government, while excluded from all
power, joined Shaftesbury, and the members of the Cabinet were left
alone in the minority. The King, however, had made up his mind, and
ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved. Temple’s Council was
now nothing more than an ordinary Privy Council, if indeed it were not
something less; and, though Temple threw the blame of this on the King,
on Lord Shaftesbury, on everybody but himself, it is evident that
the failure of his plan is to be chiefly ascribed to its own inherent
defects. His Council was too large to transact business which required
expedition, secrecy, and cordial cooperation. A Cabinet was therefore
formed within the Council. The Cabinet and the majority of the Council
differed; and, as was to be expected, the Cabinet carried their point.
Four votes outweighed six-and-twenty. This being the case, the meetings
of the thirty were not only useless, but positively noxious.
At the ensuing election, Temple was chosen for the University of
Cambridge. The only objection that was made to him by the members
of that learned body was that, in his little work on Holland, he had
expressed great approbation of the tolerant policy of the States; and
this blemish, however serious, was overlooked, in consideration of his
high reputation, and of the strong recommendations with which he was
furnished by the Court.
During the summer he remained at Sheen, and amused himself with rearing
melons, leaving to the three other members of the inner Cabinet the
whole direction of public affairs. Some unexplained cause began about
this time, to alienate them from him. They do not appear to have
been made angry by any part of his conduct, or to have disliked him
personally. But they had, we suspect, taken the measure of his mind, and
satisfied themselves that he was not a man for that troubled time,
and that he would be a mere incumbrance to them. Living themselves for
ambition, they despised his love of ease. Accustomed to deep stakes
in the game of political hazard, they despised his piddling play. They
looked on his cautious measures with the sort of scorn with which the
gamblers at the ordinary, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, regarded Nigel’s
practice of never touching a card but when he was certain to win. He
soon found that he was left out of their secrets. The King had, about
this time, a dangerous attack of illness. The Duke of York, on receiving
the news, returned from Holland. The sudden appearance of the detested
Popish successor excited anxiety throughout the country. Temple was
greatly amazed and disturbed. He hastened up to London and visited
Essex, who professed to be astonished and mortified, but could not
disguise a sneering smile. Temple then saw Halifax, who talked to him
much about the pleasures of the country, the anxieties of office, and
the vanity of all human things, but carefully avoided politics and when
the Duke’s return was mentioned, only sighed, shook his head, shrugged
his shoulders, and lifted up his eyes and hands. In a short time Temple
found that his two friends had been laughing at him, and that they had
themselves sent for the Duke, in order that his Royal Highness might,
if the King should die, be on the spot to frustrate the designs of
Monmouth.
He was soon convinced, by a still stronger proof, that, though he had
not exactly offended his master or his colleagues in the Cabinet, he had
ceased to enjoy their confidence. The result of the general election
had been decidedly unfavourable to the Government; and Shaftesbury
impatiently expected the day when the Houses were to meet. The King,
guided by the advice of the inner Cabinet, determined on a step of the
highest importance. He told the Council that he had resolved to prorogue
the new Parliament for a year, and requested them not to object; for he
had, he said, considered the subject fully, and had made up his mind.
All who were not in the secret were thunderstruck, Temple as much
as any. Several members rose, and entreated to be heard against
the prorogation. But the King silenced them, and declared that his
resolution was unalterable. Temple, much hurt at the manner in which
both himself and the Council had been treated, spoke with great spirit.
He would not, he said, disobey the King by objecting to a measure an
which his Majesty was determined to hear no argument; but he would most
earnestly entreat his Majesty, if the present Council was incompetent
to give advice, to dissolve it and select another; for it was absurd to
have counsellors who did not counsel, and who were summoned only to be
silent witnesses of the acts of others. The King listened courteously.
But the members of the Cabinet resented this reproof highly; and
from that day Temple was almost as much estranged from them as from
Shaftesbury.
He wished to retire altogether from business. But just at this time
Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and some other counsellors of the
popular party, waited on the King in a body, declared their strong
disapprobation of his measures, and requested to be excused from
attending any more at council. Temple feared that if, at this moment, he
also were to withdraw, he might be supposed to act in concert with
those decided opponents of the Court, and to have determined on taking
a course hostile to the Government. He, therefore, continued to go
occasionally to the board; but he had no longer any real share in the
direction of public affairs.
At length the long term of the prorogation expired. In October 1680,
the Houses met; and the great question of the Exclusion was revived.
Few parliamentary contests in our history appear to have called forth a
greater display of talent; none certainly ever called forth more violent
passions. The whole nation was convulsed by party spirit. The gentlemen
of every county, the traders of every town, the boys of every public
school, were divided into exclusionists and abhorrers. The book-stalls
were covered with tracts on the sacredness of hereditary right, on the
omnipotence of Parliament, on the dangers of a disputed succession, on
the dangers of a Popish reign. It was in the midst of this ferment that
Temple took his seat, for the first time, in the House of Commons.
The occasion was a very great one. His talents, his long experience of
affairs, his unspotted public character, the high posts which he had
filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on whom much would depend. He
acted like himself, He saw that, if he supported the Exclusion, he made
the King and the heir presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed
it, he made himself an object of hatred to the unscrupulous and
turbulent Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly
absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us,
never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence Hyde,
afterwards Earl of Rochester, asked him why he did not attend in his
place. Temple replied that he acted according to Solomon’s advice,
neither to oppose the mighty, nor to go about to stop the current of a
river. Hyde answered, “You are a wise and a quiet man.” And this might
be true. But surely such wise and quiet men have no call to be members
of Parliament in critical times.
A single session was quite enough for Temple. When the Parliament was
dissolved, and another summoned at Oxford, he obtained an audience of
the King, and begged to know whether his Majesty wished him to
continue in Parliament. Charles, who had a singularly quick eye for the
weaknesses of all who came near him, had no doubt seen through Temple,
and rated the parliamentary support of so cool and guarded a friend at
its proper value. He answered good-naturedly, but we suspect a little
contemptuously, “I doubt, as things stand, your coming into the House
will not do much good. I think you may as well let it alone.” Sir
William accordingly informed his constituents that he should not again
apply for their suffrages, and set off for Sheen, resolving never
again to meddle with public affairs. He soon found that the King was
displeased with him. Charles, indeed, in his usual easy way, protested
that he was not angry, not at all. But in a few days he struck Temple’s
name out of the list of Privy Councillors.
Why this was done Temple declares himself unable to comprehend. But
surely it hardly required his long and extensive converse with the world
to teach him that there are conjunctures when men think that all who
are not with them are against them, that there are conjunctures when a
lukewarm friend, who will not put himself the least out of his way, who
will make no exertion, who will run no risk, is more distasteful than
an enemy. Charles had hoped that the fair character of Temple would add
credit to an unpopular and suspected Government. But his Majesty soon
found that this fair character resembled pieces of furniture which we
have seen in the drawing-rooms of very precise old ladies, and which
are a great deal too white to be used. This exceeding niceness was
altogether out of season. Neither party wanted a man who was afraid
of taking a part, of incurring abuse, of making enemies. There were
probably many good and moderate men who would have hailed the appearance
of a respectable mediator. But Temple was not a mediator. He was merely
a neutral.
At last, however, he had escaped from public life, and found himself at
liberty to follow his favourite pursuits. His fortune was easy. He had
about fifteen hundred a year, besides the Mastership of the Rolls in
Ireland, an office in which he had succeeded his father, and which was
then a mere sinecure for life, requiring no residence. His reputation
both as a negotiator and a writer stood high. He resolved to be safe,
to enjoy himself, and to let the world take its course; and he kept his
resolution.
Darker times followed. The Oxford Parliament was dissolved. The Tories
were triumphant. A terrible vengeance was inflicted on the chiefs of the
Opposition. Temple learned in his retreat the disastrous fate of several
of his old colleagues in council. Shaftesbury fled to Holland. Russell
died on the scaffold. Essex added a yet sadder and more fearful story
to the bloody chronicles of the Tower. Monmouth clung in agonies of
supplication round the knees of the stern uncle whom he had wronged, and
tasted a bitterness worse than that of death, the bitterness of knowing
that he had humbled himself in vain. A tyrant trampled on the liberties
and religion of the realm. The national spirit swelled high under the
oppression. Disaffection spread even to the strongholds of loyalty,
to the Cloisters of Westminster, to the schools of Oxford, to the
guard-room of the household troops, to the very hearth and bed-chamber
of the Sovereign. But the troubles which agitated the whole country did
not reach the quiet orangery in which Temple loitered away several years
without once seeing the smoke of London. He now and then appeared in
the circle at Richmond or Windsor. But the only expressions which he is
recorded to have used during these perilous times were, that he would be
a good subject, but that he had done with politics.
The Revolution came: he remained strictly neutral during the short
struggle; and he then transferred to the new settlement the same languid
sort of loyalty which he had felt for his former masters. He paid court
to William at Windsor, and William dined with him at Sheen. But, in
spite of the most pressing solicitations, Temple refused to become
Secretary of State. The refusal evidently proceeded only from his
dislike of trouble and danger; and not, as some of his admirers would
have us believe, from any scruple of conscience or honour. For he
consented that his son should take the office of Secretary at War under
the new Sovereign. This unfortunate young man destroyed himself within a
week after his appointment from vexation at finding that his advice had
led the King into some improper steps with regard to Ireland. He seems
to have inherited his father’s extreme sensibility to failure, without
that singular prudence which kept his father out of all situations in
which any serious failure was to be apprehended. The blow fell heavily
on the family. They retired in deep dejection to Moor Park, [Mr.
Courtenay (vol. ii. p. 160) confounds Moor Park in Surrey, where Temple
resided, with the Moor Park in Hertfordshire, which is praised in the
Essay on Gardening.] which they now preferred to Sheen, on account of
the greater distance from London. In that spot, then very secluded,
Temple passed the remainder of his life. The air agreed with him.
The soil was fruitful, and well suited to an experimental farmer and
gardener. The grounds were laid out with the angular regularity which
Sir William had admired in the flower-beds of Haarlem and the Hague. A
beautiful rivulet, flowing from the hills of Surrey, bounded the domain.
But a straight canal which, bordered by a terrace, intersected the
garden, was probably more admired by the lovers of the picturesque
in that age. The house was small but neat, and well-furnished; the
neighbourhood very thinly peopled. Temple had no visitors, except a few
friends who were willing to travel twenty or thirty miles in order to
see him, and now and then a foreigner whom curiosity brought to have a
look at the author of the Triple Alliance.
Here, in May 1694, died Lady Temple. From the time of her marriage we
know little of her, except that her letters were always greatly admired,
and that she had the honour to correspond constantly with Queen Mary.
Lady Giffard, who, as far as appears, had always been on the best terms
with her sister-in-law, still continued to live with Sir William.
But there were other inmates of Moor Park to whom a far higher interest
belongs. An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who
had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, attended Sir William as an
amanuensis, for board and twenty pounds a year, dined at the second
table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a
very pretty, dark-eyed young girl, who waited on Lady Giffard. Little
did Temple imagine that the coarse exterior of his dependant concealed
a genius equally suited to politics and to letters, a genius destined to
shake great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions, and
to leave to posterity memorials which can perish only with the English
language. Little did he think that the flirtation in his servants’ hall,
which he perhaps scarcely deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the
beginning of a long unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed
as the passion of Petrarch or of Abelard. Sir William’s secretary was
Jonathan Swift. Lady Giffard’s waiting-maid was poor Stella.
Swift retained no pleasing recollection of Moor Park. And we may easily
suppose a situation like his to have been intolerably painful to a mind
haughty, irascible, and conscious of pre-eminent ability. Long after,
when he stood in the Court of Requests with a circle of gartered peers
round him, or punned and rhymed with Cabinet Ministers over Secretary
St. John’s Monte-Pulciano, he remembered, with deep and sore feeling,
how miserable he used to be for days together when he suspected that Sir
William had taken something ill. He could hardly believe that he, the
Swift who chid the Lord Treasurer, rallied the Captain General, and
confronted the pride of the Duke of Buckinghamshire with pride still
more inflexible, could be the same being who had passed nights of
sleepless anxiety, in musing over a cross look or a testy word of a
patron. “Faith,” he wrote to Stella, with bitter levity, “Sir William
spoiled a fine gentleman.” Yet, in justice to Temple, we must say that
there is no reason to think that Swift was more unhappy at Moor Park
than he would have been in a similar situation under any roof in
England. We think also that the obligations which the mind of Swift owed
to that of Temple were not inconsiderable. Every judicious reader must
be struck by the peculiarities which distinguish Swift’s political
tracts from all similar works produced by mere men of letters. Let any
person compare, for example, the Conduct of the Allies, or the Letter
to the October Club, with Johnson’s False Alarm, or Taxation no Tyranny,
and he will be at once struck by the difference of which we speak. He
may possibly think Johnson a greater man than Swift. He may possibly
prefer Johnson’s style to Swift’s. But he will at once acknowledge that
Johnson writes like a man who has never been out of his study. Swift
writes like a man who has passed his whole life in the midst of public
business, and to whom the most important affairs of state are as
familiar as his weekly bills.
“Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will
unloose, Familiar as his garter.”
The difference, in short, between a political pamphlet by Johnson and
a political pamphlet by Swift, is as great as the difference between an
account of a battle by Mr. Southey, and the account of the same battle
by Colonel Napier. It is impossible to doubt that the superiority of
Swift is to be, in a great measure, attributed to his long and close
connection with Temple.
Indeed, remote as were the alleys and flower-pots of Moor Park from the
haunts of the busy and the ambitious, Swift had ample opportunities of
becoming acquainted with the hidden causes of many great events. William
was in the habit of consulting Temple, and occasionally visited him. Of
what passed between them very little is known. It is certain, however,
that when the Triennial Bill had been carried through the two Houses,
his Majesty, who was exceedingly unwilling to pass it, sent the Earl of
Portland to learn Temple’s opinion. Whether Temple thought the bill in
itself a good one does not appear; but he clearly saw how imprudent
it must be in a prince, situated as William was, to engage in an
altercation with his Parliament, and directed Swift to draw up a paper
on the subject, which, however, did not convince the King.
The chief amusement of Temple’s declining years was literature. After
his final retreat from business, he wrote his very agreeable Memoirs,
corrected and transcribed many of his letters, and published several
miscellaneous treatises, the best of which, we think, is that on
Gardening. The style of his essays is, on the whole, excellent, almost
always pleasing, and now and then stately and splendid. The matter is
generally of much less value; as our readers will readily believe when
we inform them that Mr. Courtenay, a biographer, that is to say, a
literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure to render
homage, aids, reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord,
avows that he cannot give an opinion about the essay on Heroic Virtue,
because he cannot read it without skipping; a circumstance which strikes
us as peculiarly strange, when we consider how long Mr. Courtenay was
at the India Board, and how many thousand paragraphs of the copious
official eloquence of the East he must have perused.
One of Sir William’s pieces, however, deserves notice, not, indeed, on
account of its intrinsic merit, but on account of the light which it
throws on some curious weaknesses of his character, and on account of
the extraordinary effects which it produced in the republic of letters.
A most idle and contemptible controversy had arisen in France touching
the comparative merit of the ancient and modern writers. It was
certainly not to be expected that, in that age, the question would be
tried according to those large and philosophical principles of criticism
which guided the judgments of Lessing and of Herder. But it might have
been expected that those who undertook to decide the point would at
least take the trouble to read and understand the authors on whose
merits they were to pronounce. Now, it is no exaggeration to say that,
among the disputants who clamoured, some for the ancients and some for
the moderns, very few were decently acquainted with either ancient or
modern literature, and hardly one was well acquainted with both. In
Racine’s amusing preface to the Iphigenie the reader may have noticed a
most ridiculous mistake into which one of the champions of the moderns
fell about a passage in the Alcestis of Euripides. Another writer is
so inconceivably ignorant as to blame Homer for mixing the four Greek
dialects, Doric, Ionic, Aeolic, and Attic, just, says he, as if a French
poet were to put Gascon phrases and Picard phrases into the midst of his
pure Parisian writing. On the other hand, it is no exaggeration to say
that the defenders of the ancients were entirely unacquainted with the
greatest productions of later times; nor, indeed, were the defenders of
the moderns better informed. The parallels which were instituted in the
course of this dispute are inexpressibly ridiculous. Balzac was selected
as the rival of Cicero. Corneille was said to unite the merits of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We should like to see a Prometheus
after Corneille’s fashion. The Provincial Letters, masterpieces
undoubtedly of reasoning, wit, and eloquence, were pronounced to be
superior to all the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Lucian together,
particularly in the art of dialogue, an art in which, as it happens,
Plato far excelled all men, and in which Pascal, great and admirable in
other respects, is notoriously very deficient.
This childish controversy spread to England; and some mischievous
daemon suggested to Temple the thought of undertaking the defence of the
ancients. As to his qualifications for the task, it is sufficient to
say that he knew not a word of Greek. But his vanity, which, when he was
engaged in the conflicts of active life and surrounded by rivals, had
been kept in tolerable order by his discretion, now, when he had long
lived in seclusion, and had become accustomed to regard himself as
by far the first man of his circle, rendered him blind to his own
deficiencies. In an evil hour he published an Essay on Ancient and
Modern Learning. The style of this treatise is very good, the matter
ludicrous and contemptible to the last degree. There we read how
Lycurgus travelled into India, and brought the Spartan laws from that
country; how Orpheus made voyages in search of knowledge, and attained
to a depth of learning which has made him renowned in all succeeding
ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in Egypt, and, after
graduating there, spent twelve years more at Babylon, where the Magi
admitted him ad eundem; how the ancient Brahmins lived two hundred
years; how the earliest Greek philosophers foretold earthquakes and
plagues, and put down riots by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in
abilities any of his successors on the throne of Assyria. The moderns,
Sir William owns, have found out the circulation of blood; but, on
the other hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any
modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his performance.
He tells us that “Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato,
Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires
of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach”;
which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in
British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon.
Indeed, the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the fabulous
reminds us of those classical dictionaries, intended for the use of
schools, in which Narcissus the lover of himself and Narcissus the
freedman of Claudius, Pollux the son of Jupiter and Leda and Pollux
the author of the Onomasticon, are ranged under the same headings, and
treated as personages equally real.
The effect of this arrangement resembles that which would be produced
by a dictionary of modern names, consisting of such articles as the
following:-“Jones, William, an eminent Orientalist, and one of the
judges of the Supreme Court of judicature in Bengal--Davy, a fiend, who
destroys ships--Thomas, a foundling, brought up by Mr. Allworthy.” It is
from such sources as these that Temple seems to have learned all that
he knew about the ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the
Olympic games and the battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same
reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts with his lyre, which we
have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or that Alexander
conquered Darius.
He manages little better when he comes to the moderns. He gives us a
catalogue of those whom he regards as the greatest writers of later
times. It is sufficient to say that, in his list of Italians, he has
omitted Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of Spaniards,
Lope and Calderon; in his list of French, Pascal, Bossuet, Moliere,
Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; and in his list of English, Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.
In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity one paragraph stands out
pre-eminent. The doctrine of Temple, not a very comfortable doctrine,
is that the human race is constantly degenerating, and that the oldest
books in every kind are the best in confirmation of this notion, he
remarks that the Fables of Aesop are the best Fables, and the Letters of
Phalaris the best Letters in the world. On the merit of the Letters of
Phalaris he dwells with great warmth and with extraordinary felicity of
language. Indeed we could hardly select a more favourable specimen of
the graceful and easy majesty to which his style sometimes rises than
this unlucky passage. He knows, he says, that some learned men, or men
who pass for learned, such as Politian, have doubted the genuineness of
these letters; but of such doubts he speaks with the greatest contempt.
Now it is perfectly certain, first, that the letters are very bad;
secondly, that they are spurious; and thirdly, that, whether they be bad
or good, spurious or genuine, Temple could know nothing of the matter;
inasmuch as he was no more able to construe a line of them than to
decipher an Egyptian obelisk.
This Essay, silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both in
England and on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The classical
scholars who saw its absurdity were generally on the side of the
ancients, and were inclined rather to veil than to expose the blunders
of an ally; the champions of the moderns were generally as ignorant
as Temple himself; and the multitude was charmed by his flowing
and melodious diction. He was doomed, however, to smart, as he well
deserved, for his vanity and folly.
Christchurch at Oxford was then widely and justly celebrated as a place
where the lighter parts of classical learning were cultivated with
success. With the deeper mysteries of philology neither the instructors
nor the pupils had the smallest acquaintance. They fancied themselves
Scaligers, as Bentley scornfully said, if they could write a copy of
Latin verses with only two or three small faults. From this College
proceeded a new edition of the Letters of Phalaris, which were rare, and
had been in request since the appearance of Temple’s Essay. The nominal
editor was Charles Boyle, a young man of noble family and promising
parts; but some older members of the society lent their assistance.
While this work was in preparation, an idle quarrel, occasioned, it
should seem, by the negligence and misrepresentations of a bookseller,
arose between Boyle and the King’s Librarian, Richard Bentley. Boyle
in the preface to his edition, inserted a bitter reflection on Bentley.
Bentley revenged himself by proving that the Epistles of Phalaris
were forgeries, and in his remarks on this subject treated Temple, not
indecently, but with no great reverence.
Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful usage,
who, even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk from all rude
collision, and had generally succeeded in avoiding it, and whose
sensitiveness had been increased by many years of seclusion and
flattery, was moved to most violent resentment, complained, very
unjustly, of Bentley’s foul-mouthed raillery, and declared that he had
commenced an answer, but had laid it aside, “having no mind to enter the
lists with such a mean, dull, unmannerly pedant” Whatever may be thought
of the temper which Sir William showed on this occasion, we cannot
too highly applaud his discretion in not finishing and publishing
his answer, which would certainly have been a most extraordinary
performance.
He was not, however, without defenders. Like Hector, when struck down
prostrate by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick crowd of
shields.
Outis edunesato poimena laou Outasai oudi balein prin gar peribesan
aristoi Polubmas te, kai Aineias, kai dios Agenor, Sarpedon t’archos
Lukion, kai Glaukos amumon.
Christchurch was up in arms; and though that College seems then to have
been almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no academical
society could show a greater array of orators, wits, politicians,
bustling adventurers who united the superficial accomplishments of the
scholar with the manners and arts of the man of the world; and this
formidable body resolved to try how far smart repartees, well-turned
sentences, confidence, puffing, and intrigue could, on the question
whether a Greek book were or were not genuine, supply the place of a
little knowledge of Greek.
Out came the Reply to Bentley, bearing the name of Boyle, but in truth
written by Atterbury with the assistance of Smalridge and others. A most
remarkable book it is, and often reminds us of Goldsmith’s observation,
that the French would be the best cooks in the world if they had any
butcher’s meat, for that they can make ten dishes out of a nettle-top.
It really deserves the praise, whatever that praise may be worth, of
being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a
question of which he was profoundly ignorant. The learning of the
confederacy is that of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary
schoolboy; but it is used with the skill and address of most able,
artful, and experienced men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf,
and is disposed in such a way as to seem ten times larger than it is.
The dexterity with which the confederates avoid grappling with those
parts of the subject with which they know themselves to be incompetent
to deal is quite wonderful. Now and then, indeed, they commit
disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom they had studied,
would have whipped them all round. But this circumstance only raises our
opinion of the talents which made such a fight with such scanty means.
Let readers who are not acquainted with the controversy imagine a
Frenchman, who has acquired just English enough to read the Spectator
with a dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of Ireland’s
Vortigern against Malone; and they will have some notion of the feat
which Atterbury had the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it
was really thought that he had performed.
The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley’s answer for ever settled the
question, and established his claim to the first place amongst classical
scholars. Nor do those do him justice who represent the controversy as
a battle between wit and learning. For though there is a lamentable
deficiency of learning on the side of Boyle, there is no want of wit on
the side of Bentley. Other qualities, too, as valuable as either wit or
learning, appear conspicuously in Bentley’s book, a rare sagacity, an
unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery of all the weapons
of logic. He was greatly indebted to the furious outcry which the
misrepresentations, sarcasms, and intrigues of his opponents had raised
against him, an outcry in which fashionable and political circles
joined, and which was echoed by thousands who did not know whether
Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to
rashness, self-confident even to negligence, and proud even to insolent
ferocity, was awed for the first and for the last time, awed, not into
meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For once he ran
no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes;
above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In
almost everything that he has written we can discover proofs of genius
and learning. But it is only here that his genius and learning appear to
have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper.
Here, we find none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on
his own luck, which he showed when he undertook to edit Milton; none of
that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many of his notes on Horace;
none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid himself open to
the keen and dexterous thrust of Middleton; none of that extravagant
vaunting and savage scurrility by which he afterwards dishonoured his
studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of
De Pauw.
Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat of
his champions. He died, indeed, at a fortunate moment, just after the
appearance of Boyle’s book, and while all England was laughing at the
way in which the Christchurch men had handled the pedant. In Boyle’s
book, Temple was praised in the highest terms, and compared to Memmius:
not a very happy comparison; for almost the only particular information
which we have about Memmius is that, in agitated times, he thought it
his duty to attend exclusively to politics, and that his friends could
not venture, except when the Republic was quiet and prosperous, to
intrude on him with their philosophical and poetical productions. It is
on this account that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beautiful prayer
for peace with which his poem opens.
“Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo Possumus aequo animo,
nec Memmi clara propago Talibus in rebus communi de esse saluti.”
This description is surely by no means applicable to a statesman who
had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing
himself in seasons of trouble; who had repeatedly refused, in most
critical conjunctures, to be Secretary of State; and, who now, in the
midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and domestic wars, was quietly
writing nonsense about the visits of Lycurgus to the Brahmins and the
tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin.
We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about Phalaris
was raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal and attachment, wrote the
Battle of the Books, the earliest piece in which his peculiar talents
are discernible. We may observe that the bitter dislike of Bentley,
bequeathed by Temple to Swift, seems to have been communicated by Swift
to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to others, who continued to tease the great
critic long after he had shaken hands very cordially both with Boyle and
with Atterbury.
Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in January 1699. He appears to have
suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sundial
which still stands in his favourite garden. His body was laid in
Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a place hard by was set
apart for Lady Giffard, who long survived him. Swift was his literary
executor, superintended the publication of his Letters and Memoirs, and,
in the performance of this office, had some acrimonious contests with
the family.
Of Temple’s character little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him
of holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting everybody who came near
him. But the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Burnet,
about a man with whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is
of little weight. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may
have been a freethinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very
young man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen of
rank and fashion who made their entrance into society while the Puritan
party was at the height of power, and while the memory of the reign
of that party was still recent, conceived a strong disgust for all
religion. The imputation was common between Temple and all the most
distinguished courtiers of the age. Rochester, and Buckingham were open
scoffers, and Mulgrave very little better. Shaftesbury, though more
guarded, was supposed to agree with them in opinion. All the three
noblemen who were Temple’s colleagues during the short time of his
sitting in the Cabinet were of very indifferent repute as to orthodoxy.
Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as an atheist; but he solemnly
denied the charge; and, indeed, the truth seems to be that he was more
religiously disposed than most of the statesmen of that age, though two
impulses which were unusually strong in him, a passion for ludicrous
images, and a passion for subtle speculations, sometimes prompted him to
talk on serious subjects in a manner which gave grave and just offence.
It is not unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below the surface of
any question, may have been infected with the prevailing scepticism. All
that we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in
his works, and that the case with which he carried his election for an
university, where the majority of the voters were clergymen, though
it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we think, be considered as
proving that he was not, as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the habit of
talking atheism to all who came near him.
Temple, however, will scarcely carry with him any great accession of
authority to the side either of religion or of infidelity. He was
no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and quick
observation, a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters
among men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the Ambassador and
Cabinet counsellor; mere politicians by the Essayist and Historian. But
neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot to him any very high
place. As a man, he seems to us to have been excessively selfish, but
very sober, wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness; to have known
better than most people what he really wanted in life; and to have
pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and
sagacity, never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by bad or
by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he
desired success, to prefer security, comfort, repose, leisure, to the
turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from greatness; and this
natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant energy of
the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes
appears to resemble the moderation of virtue. But we must own that he
seems to us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him,
we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality, but with many
of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from
the right path by strong passions and strong temptations, have left to
posterity a doubtful and checkered fame.