The art of literary portraiture in the seventeenth century developed
with the effort to improve the writing of history. Its first and at
all times its chief purpose in England was to show to later ages what
kind of men had directed the affairs and shaped the fortunes of
the nation. In France it was to be practised as a mere pastime; to
sketch well-known figures in society, or to sketch oneself, was for
some years the fashionable occupation of the salons. In England the
character never wholly lost the qualities of its origin. It might be
used on occasion as a record of affection, or as a weapon of political
satire; but our chief character writers are our historians. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century England was recognized to be
deficient in historical writings. Poetry looked back to Chaucer as its
father, was proud of its long tradition, and had proved its right to
sing the glories of Elizabeth's reign. The drama, in the full vigour
of its youth, challenged comparison with the drama of Greece and Rome.
Prose was conscious of its power in exposition and controversy. But in
every review of our literature's great achievement and greater promise
there was one cause of serious misgivings. England could not yet rank
with other countries in its histories. Many large volumes had been
printed, some of them containing matter that is invaluable to the
modern student, but there was no single work that was thought to
be worthy of England's greatness. The prevailing type was still the
chronicle. Even Camden, 'the glory and light of the kingdom', as Ben
Jonson called him, was an antiquary, a collector, and an annalist.
History had yet to be practised as one of the great literary arts.
Bacon pointed out the 'unworthiness' and 'deficiences' of English
history in his _Advancement of Learning_.[1] 'Some few very worthy,
but the greater part beneath mediocrity' was his verdict on modern
histories in general. He was not the first to express these views.
Sir Henry Savile had been more emphatic in his dedication to Queen
Elizabeth of his collection of early chronicles, _Rerum Anglicarum
Scriptores post Bedam_, published in 1596.[2] And after Bacon,
somewhere about 1618, these views were again expressed by Edmund
Bolton in his _Hypercritica, or a Rule of Judgement for writing or
reading our Histories_.[3] 'The vast vulgar Tomes', he said, 'procured
for the most part by the husbandry of Printers, and not by appointment
of the Prince or Authority of the Common-weal, in their tumultuary and
centonical Writings do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable
Temple, whose Architect was not his Arts Master'. He repeated what he
calls the common wish 'that the majesty of handling our history might
once equal the majesty of the argument'. England had had all other
honours, but only wanted a history.
But the most valuable statement on the conditions of English history
at this time and the obstacles that hindered its progress was made by
Sir John Hayward at the beginning of his _Lives of the III Normans,
Kings of England_, published in 1613. Leaving aside the methods of the
chroniclers, he had taken the classical historians as his model in
his _First Part of the Life and raigne of King Henrie the IIII_. The
interest of this work to the modern reader lies in its structure, its
attempt at artistic unity, its recognition that English history must
be written on a different plan, rather than in its historical matter.
But it was no sooner published than Hayward was committed to the
Tower because the account of the deposition of Richard II was held
to be treasonable, the offence being aggravated by the dedication,
in perfectly innocent terms, to the Earl of Essex. His work was thus
checked till he met with encouragement from Henry, Prince of Wales,
a patron of literature, of whom, though a mere youth, such men as
Jonson, Chapman, and Raleigh, spoke with an enthusiasm that cannot be
mistaken for flattery. Prince Henry saw the need of a worthy history
of England. He therefore sent for Hayward to discuss the reasons with
him:
Prince Henry ... sent for mee, a few monethes before his
death. And at my second comming to his presence, among some
other speeches, hee complained much of our Histories of
England; and that the English Nation, which is inferiour to
none in Honourable actions, should be surpassed by all, in
leauing the memorie of them to posteritie....
I answered, that I conceiued these causes hereof; One,
that men of sufficiencie were otherwise employed; either
in publicke affaires, or in wrestling with the world, for
maintenance or encrease of their private estates. Another is,
for that men might safely write of others in maner of a tale,
but in maner of a History, safely they could not: because,
albeit they should write of men long since dead, and whose
posteritie is cleane worne out; yet some aliue, finding
themselues foule in those vices, which they see obserued,
reproued, condemned in others; their guiltinesse maketh them
apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger
pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of
our _English_ historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some
unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues
discredited by dealing in it....
Then he questioned, whether I had wrote any part of our
_English_ Historie, other then that which had been published;
which at that time he had in his hands. I answered, that I
had wrote of certaine of our _English_ Kings, by way of a
briefe description of their liues: but for historie, I did
principally bend, and binde my selfe to the times wherein
I should liue; in which my owne obseruations might somewhat
direct me: but as well in the one as in the other I had at
that time perfected nothing.
The result of the interview was that Hayward proceeded to 'perfect
somewhat of both sorts'. The brief description of the lives of the
three Norman kings was in due course ordered to be published, and
would have been dedicated to its real patron but for his untimely
death; in dedicating it instead to Prince Charles, Hayward fortunately
took the opportunity to relate his conversation with Prince Henry.
How far he carried the other work is not certain; it survives in the
fragment called _The Beginning of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth_,[4]
published after his death with _The Life and Raigne of King Edward
the Sixt_. He might have brought it down to the reign of James. Had he
been at liberty to follow his own wishes, he would have been the first
Englishman to write a 'History of his own time'. But when an author
incurred imprisonment for writing about the deposition of a sovereign,
and when modern applications were read into accounts of what had
happened long ago, the complexity of his own time was a dangerous if
not a forbidden subject.
There is a passage to the same effect in the preface to _The Historie
of the World_ by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, unlike Hayward, willingly
chose to be silent on what he knew best:
I know that it will bee said by many, That I might have beene
more pleasing to the Reader, if I had written the Story of
mine owne times; having been permitted to draw water as neare
the Well-head as another. To this I answer, that who-so-ever
in writing a moderne Historie, shall follow truth too neare
the heeles, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no
Mistresse or Guide, that hath led her followers and servants
into greater miseries.... It is enough for me (being in that
state I am) to write of the eldest times: wherein also why may
it not be said, that in speaking of the past, I point at the
present, and taxe the vices of those that are yet lyving, in
their persons that are long since dead; and have it laid to my
charge? But this I cannot helpe, though innocent.
He wrote of remote ages, and contributed nothing to historical
knowledge. But he enriched English literature with a 'just history',
as distinct from annals and chronicles.[5] 'I am not altogether
ignorant', he said, 'in the Lawes of Historie, and of the Kindes.'
When we read his lives and commendations of the great men of antiquity
as he pictured them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the
same overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not
been employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other
Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the
historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another
country. It is the _History of the Turks_ by Richard Knolles.
The character was definitely introduced into English literature when
the historians took as their subjects contemporary or recent events
at home, and, abandoning the methods of the chronicle, fashioned their
work on classical models. Its introduction had been further prepared
to some extent by the growing interest in lives, which, unlike
chronicles that recorded events, recognized the part played by men
in the control of events. In his _Advancement of Learning_ Bacon
regretted that Englishmen gave so little thought to describing the
deeds and characters of their great countrymen. 'I do find strange',
he said, 'that these times have so little esteemed the virtues of the
times, as that the writing of lives should be no more frequent.' He
and Hayward both wrote lives with the consciousness that their methods
were new in English, though largely borrowed from the classics.[6]
Hayward tried to produce a picture of the period he dealt with,
and his means for procuring harmoniousness of design was to centre
attention on the person of the sovereign. It is a conception of
history not as a register of facts but as a representation of the
national drama. His _Henry IV_ gives the impression, especially by its
speeches, that he looked upon history as resolving itself ultimately
into a study of men; and it thus explains how he wished to be free
to describe the times wherein he lived. He is on the whole earlier
than Bacon, who wrote his _Historie of the Reigne of King Henry the
Seventh_ late in life, during the leisure that was forced on him
by his removal from all public offices. Written to display the
controlling policy in days that were 'rough, and full of mutations,
and rare accidents', it is a study of the statecraft and character of
a king who had few personal gifts and small capacity for a brilliant
part, yet won by his ready wisdom the best of all praises that 'what
he minded he compassed'. How he compassed it, is what interested
Bacon. 'I have not flattered him,' he says, 'but took him to the life
as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light.'
Would that Bacon had felt at liberty to choose those who sat near at
hand. Who better than the writer of the _Essays_ could have painted a
series of miniatures of the courts of Elizabeth and James?
When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to
leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of
what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its
full importance and excellence. 'That posterity may not be deceaved
by the prosperous wickednesse of these tymes, into an opinyon, that
lesse then a generall combination and universall apostacy in the whole
Nacion from their religion and allegiaunce could in so shorte a tyme
have produced such a totall and prodigious alteration and confusion
over the whole kingdome, and so the memory of those few who out of
duty and conscience have opposed and resisted that Torrent which hath
overwhelmed them, may loose the recompence dew to ther virtue, and
havinge undergone the injuryes and reproches of this, may not finde
a vindication in a better Age'--in these words Clarendon began his
_History of the Rebellion_. But he could not vindicate the memory
of his political friends without describing the men who had overcome
them. The history of these confused and difficult years would not be
properly understood if the characters of all the chief actors in the
tragic drama were not known. For to Clarendon history was the record
of the struggle of personalities. When we are in the midst of a
crisis, or view it from too near a distance, it is natural for us
to think of it as a fight between the opposing leaders, and the
historians of their own time are always liable to attribute to the
personal force of a statesman what is due to general causes of which
he is only the instrument. Of these general causes Clarendon took
little account. 'Motives which influenced masses of men', it has been
said, 'escape his appreciation, and the _History of the Rebellion_
is accordingly an account of the Puritan Revolution which is
unintelligible because the part played by Puritanism is misunderstood
or omitted altogether'.[7] But the _History of the Rebellion_ is a
Stuart portrait gallery, and the greatest portrait gallery in the
English language.
[Footnote 1: Book II, ed. Aldis Wright, pp. 92-5.]
[Footnote 2: 'Historæ nostræ particulam quidam non male: sed qui totum
corpus ea fide, eaque dignitate scriptis complexus sit, quam suscepti
operis magnitudo postularet, hactenus plane neminem extitisse
constat.... Nostri ex fæce plebis historici, dum maiestatem tanti
operis ornare studuerunt, putidissimis ineptiis contaminarunt. Ita
factum est nescio qua huiusce insulæ infoelicitate, ut maiores tui,
(serenissima Regina) viri maximi, qui magnam huius orbis nostri partem
imperio complexi, omnes sui temporis reges rerum gestarum gloria
facile superarunt, magnorum ingeniorum quasi lumine destituti, iaceant
ignoti, & delitescant.']
[Footnote 3: _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, ed.
Spingarn, vol. i, pp. 82-115.]
[Footnote 4: See also Camden Society Publications, No. 7, 1840.]
[Footnote 5: Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_ divides History into
'Diaria', 'Annales', 'Commentaries', and 'Iustam Historiam'.]
[Footnote 6: Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in
Hayward's _Henry IV_, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had
stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus'
(_Apophthegms_, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author
of _The History of King Richard the Thirde_, generally attributed to
Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published
in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the
writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's _Life and Death of
Thomas Wolsey_, which they likewise used for its facts.]
[Footnote 7: C.H. Firth, 'Burnet as a Historian', in Clarke and
Foxcroft's _Life of Gilbert Burnet_, 1907, pp. xliv, xlv.]