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 amidst 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 {90}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 to 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 every thing 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 {91}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 organized 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
{92}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 {93}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 co-operation. 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. {94}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 {95}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 on
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 {96}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
{97}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 Counsellors. Why this was done Temple
declares himself {98}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
{99}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 guardroom 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. {100}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,
which they now preferred to Sheen, on account of the greater distance
from London. In that spot, (1) 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 gar-. den, 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
(1) 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.
{101}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 dependent 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 Gif-fard’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 preeminent 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 {102}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
{103}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 {104}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 _Iphigénie_ the reader may find noticed
a most ridiculous mistake into which one cf 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, Æolic, 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 {105}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 Æschylus, 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
dæmon 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 {106}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 the 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 {107}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, Molière,
Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; and in his list of English, Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton.
In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity one paragraph stands out
preeminent. 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 Æsop 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; {108}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 {109}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.
[Illustration: 0123]
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, {110}confidence, puffing, and intrigue could, on the question
whether a Greek hook 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 Smallridge 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, {111}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 every thing 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 édité 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 {112}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 patrial tempore iniquo