Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

CHARACTERS

FROM THE

HISTORIES & MEMOIRS

OF THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

With an Essay on THE CHARACTER

and Historical Notes

By DAVID NICHOL SMITH

OXFORD

1918

CONTENTS

ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER

I. The Beginnings
II. The Literary Models
III. Clarendon
IV. Other Character Writers

CHARACTERS

1. JAMES I. By Arthur Wilson 2. " By Sir Anthony Weldon 3. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, first Duke). By Clarendon 4. SIR THOMAS COVENTRY. By Clarendon 5. SIR RICHARD WESTON. By Clarendon 6. THE EARL OF ARUNDEL (Thomas Howard, fourteenth Earl). By Clarendon 7. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE (William Herbert, third Earl). By Clarendon 8. SIR FRANCIS BACON. By Ben Jonson 9. " " " By Arthur Wilson 10. " " " By Thomas Fuller 11. " " " By William Rawley 12. BEN JONSON. By Clarendon 13. " " By James Howell 14. HENRY HASTINGS. By Shaftesbury 15. CHARLES I. By Clarendon 16. " By Sir Philip Warwick 17. THE EARL OF STRAFFORD (Thomas Wentworth, first Earl). By Clarendon 18. THE EARL OF STRAFFORD (Thomas Wentworth, first Earl). By Sir Philip Warwick 19. THE EARL OF NORTHAMPTON (Spencer Compton, second Earl). By Clarendon 20. THE EARL OF CARNARVON (Robert Dormer, first Earl). By Clarendon 21. LORD FALKLAND (Lucius Cary, second Viscount). By Clarendon 22. LORD FALKLAND (Lucius Cary, second Viscount). By Clarendon 23. SIDNEY GODOLPHIN. By Clarendon 24. WILLIAM LAUD. By Clarendon 25. " " By Thomas Fuller 26. " " By Sir Philip Warwick 27. WILLIAM JUXON. By Sir Philip Warwick 28. THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD (William Seymour, first Marquis). By Clarendon 29. THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE (William Cavendish, first Marquis, and Duke). By Clarendon 30. THE LORD DIGBY (George Digby, second Earl of Bristol). By Clarendon 31. THE LORD CAPEL (Arthur Capel, first Baron). By Clarendon 32. ROYALIST GENERALS: PATRICK RETHVEN, EARL OF BRENTFORD; PRINCE RUPERT; GEORGE, LORD GORING; HENRY WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER. By Clarendon 33. JOHN HAMPDEN. By Clarendon 34. JOHN PYM. By Clarendon 35. OLIVER CROMWELL. By Clarendon 36. OLIVER CROMWELL. By Clarendon 37. " " By Sir Philip Warwick 38. " " By John Maidston 39. " " By Richard Baxter 40. SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX. By Richard Baxter 41. SIR HENRY VANE, the younger. By Clarendon 42. " " " " " By Clarendon 43. COLONEL JOHN HUTCHINSON. By Lucy Hutchinson 44. THE EARL OF ESSEX (Robert Devereux, third Earl). By Clarendon 45. THE EARL OF SALISBURY (William Cecil, second Earl). By Clarendon 46. THE EARL OF WARWICK (Robert Rich, second Earl). By Clarendon 47. THE EARL OF MANCHESTER (Edward Montagu, second Earl). By Clarendon 48. THE LORD SAY (William Fiennes, first Viscount Say and Sele). By Clarendon 49. JOHN SELDEN. By Clarendon 50. JOHN EARLE. By Clarendon 51. JOHN HALES. By Clarendon 52. WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. By Clarendon 53. EDMUND WALLER. By Clarendon 54. THOMAS HOBBES. By Clarendon 55. " " Notes by John Aubrey 56. THOMAS FULLER. Anonymous 57. JOHN MILTON. Notes by John Aubrey 58. " " Note by Edward Phillips 59. " " Notes by Jonathan Richardson 60. ABRAHAM COWLEY. By himself 61. " " By Thomas Sprat 62. CHARLES II. By Halifax 63. CHARLES II. By Burnet 64. CHARLES II. By Burnet 65. THE EARL OF CLARENDON (Edward Hyde, first Earl), By Burnet 66. THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE (John Maitland, second Earl, created Duke 1672). By Clarendon. 67. THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE (John Maitland, second Earl, created Duke 1672). By Burnet 68. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl). By Burnet 69. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl). By Dryden 70. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, second Duke). By Burnet 71. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, second Duke). By Dryden 72. THE MARQUIS OF HALIFAX (George Savile, first Marquis). By Burnet 73. SIR EDMUND SAUNDERS. By Roger North 74. TWO GROUPS OF DIVINES: (1. Benjamin Whitchcot, Ralph Cudworth, John Wilkins, Henry More, John Worthington; 2. John Tillotson, Edward Stillingfleet, Simon Patrick, William Lloyd, Thomas Tenison). By Burnet 75. JAMES II. By Burnet 76. JAMES II. By Burnet

THE CHARACTER

The seventeenth century is rich in short studies or characters of its great men. Its rulers and statesmen, its soldiers and politicians, its lawyers and divines, all who played a prominent part in the public life, have with few notable exceptions been described for us by their contemporaries. There are earlier characters in English literature; but as a definite and established form of literary composition the character dates from the seventeenth century. Even Sir Robert Naunton's _Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth her Times and Favourites_, a series of studies of the great men of Elizabeth's court, and the first book of its kind, is an old man's recollection of his early life, and belongs to the Stuart period in everything but its theme. Nor at any later period is there the same wealth of material for such a collection as is given in this volume. The eighteenth century devoted itself rather to biography. When the facts of a man's life, his works, and his opinions claimed detailed treatment, the fashion of the short character had passed.

Yet the seventeenth century did not know its richness. None of its best characters were then printed. The writers themselves could not have suspected how many others were similarly engaged, so far were they from belonging to a school. The characters in Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_ were too intimate and searching to be published at once, and they remained in manuscript till about thirty years after his death. In the interval Burnet was drawing the characters in his _History of His Own Time_. He, like Clarendon, was not aware of being indebted to any English model. Throughout the period which they cover there are the characters by Fuller, Sir Philip Warwick, Baxter, Halifax, Shaftesbury, and many others, the Latin characters by Milton, and the verse characters by Dryden. There is no sign that any of these writers copied another or tried to emulate him. Together, but with no sense of their community, they made the seventeenth century the great age of the character in England.

I. The Beginnings.

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.]

II. The Literary Models.

The authentic models for historical composition were in Greek and Latin. Much as our literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed to the classics, the debt was nowhere more obvious, and more fully acknowledged, than in our histories. The number of translations is in itself remarkable. Many of them, and notably the greatest of all, North's Plutarch, belong to the early part of Elizabeth's reign, but they became more frequent at the very time when the inferiority of our native works was engaging attention.[1] By the middle of the seventeenth century the great classical historians could all be read in English. It was not through translation, however, that their influence was chiefly exercised.

The classical historians who were best known were Thucydides, Polybius, and Plutarch among the Greeks, and Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius among the Latins; and the former group were not so well known as the latter. It was recognized that in Thucydides, to use Hobbes's words, 'the faculty of writing history is at the highest.'[2] But Thucydides was a difficult author, and neither he nor Polybius exerted the same direct influence as the Latin historians who had imitated them, or learned from them. Most of what can be traced ultimately to the Greeks came to England in the seventeenth century through Latin channels. Every educated man had been trained in Latin, and was as familiar with it for literary purposes as with his native tongue. Further, the main types of history--the history of a long period of years, the history of recent events, and the biographical history--were all so admirably represented in Latin that it was not necessary to go to Greek for a model. In one respect Latin could claim pre-eminence. It might possess no single passage greater than the character study of Pericles or of the Athenians by Thucydides, but it developed the character study into a recognized and clearly defined element in historical narrative. Livy provided a pattern of narrative on a grand scale. For 'exquisite eloquence' he was held not to have his equal.[3] But of all the Latin historians, Tacitus had the greatest influence. 'There is no learning so proper for the direction of the life of man as Historie; there is no historie so well worth the reading as Tacitus. Hee hath written the most matter with best conceit in fewest words of any Historiographer ancient or moderne.'[4] This had been said at the beginning of the first English translation of Tacitus, and it was the view generally held when he came to be better known. He appealed to Englishmen of the seventeenth century like no other historian. They felt the human interest of a narrative based on what the writer had experienced for himself; and they found that its political wisdom could be applied, or even applied itself spontaneously, to their own circumstances. They were widely read in the classics. They knew how Plutarch depicted character in his Lives, and Cicero in his Speeches. They knew all the Latin historians. But when they wrote their own characters their chief master was Tacitus.

* * * * *

Continental historians provided the incentive of rivalry. They too were the pupils of the Ancients, and taught nothing that might not be learned equally well or better from their masters, but they invited the question why England should be behind Italy, France, or the Low Countries in worthy records of its achievements. In their own century, Thuanus, Davila, Bentivoglio, Strada, and Grotius set the standard for modern historical composition. Jacques Auguste de Thou, or Thuanus, wrote in Latin a history of his own time in 138 books. He intended to complete it in 143 books with the assassination of Henri IV in 1610, but his labours were interrupted by his death in 1617. The collected edition of his monumental work was issued in 1620 under the title _Iacobi Augusti Thuani Historiarum sui temporis ab anno 1543 usque ad annum 1607 Libri CXXXVIII_. Enrico Caterino Davila dealt with the affairs of France from Francis II to Henri IV in his _Historia delle guerre civili di Francia_, published in 1630. Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio described the troubles in the Low Countries in his _Della Guerra di Fiandra_, published from 1632 to 1639. Famianus Strada wrote on the same subject in Latin; the first part of his _De Bella Belgico_, which was meant to cover the period from 1555 to 1590 but was not completed, appeared in 1632, and the second in 1647. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch scholar, had long been engaged on his _Annales et Historiæ de Rebus Belgicis_ when he died in 1640; it was brought out by his sons in 1657, and contained five books of Annals from 1566 to 1588, and eighteen books of Histories to 1609. These five historians were well known in England, and were studied for their method as well as their matter. Burnet took Thuanus as his model. 'I have made him ', he says, 'my pattern in writing.'[5] The others are discussed by Clarendon in a long passage of his essay 'On an Active and on a Contemplative Life'.[6] He there develops the view, not without reference to his own history, that 'there was never yet a good History written but by men conversant in business, and of the best and most liberal education'; and he illustrates it by comparing the histories of his four contemporaries:

Two of these are by so much preferable before the other Two,
that the first may worthily stand by the Sides of the best
of the Ancients, whilst both the others must be placed under
them; and a Man, without knowing more of them, may by reading
their Books find the Difference between their Extractions,
their Educations, their Conversations, and their Judgment. The
first Two are _Henry D'Avila_ and Cardinal _Bentivoglio_, both
_Italians_ of illustrious Birth; ... they often set forth and
describe the same Actions with very pleasant and delightful
Variety; and commonly the greatest Persons they have occasion
to mention were very well known to them both, which makes
their Characters always very lively. Both their Histories are
excellent, and will instruct the ablest and wisest Men how to
write, and terrify them from writing. The other Two were _Hugo
Grotius_ and _Famianus Strada_, who both wrote in _Latin_
upon the same Argument, and of the same Time, of the Wars of
_Flanders_, and of the _Low-Countries_.

He proceeds to show that Grotius, with all his learning and abilities, and with all his careful revisions, had not been able to give his narrative enough life and spirit; it was deficient in 'a lively Representation of Persons and Actions, which makes the Reader present at all they say or do'. The whole passage, which is too long to be quoted in full, is not more valuable as a criticism than as an indication of his own aims, and of his equipment to realize them. Some years earlier, when he was still thinking 'with much agony' about the method he was to employ in his own history, he had cited the methods of Davila, 'who', he added, 'I think hath written as ours should be written.'[7]

One of Clarendon's tests of a good history, it will be noted, is the 'lively representation of persons'; the better writers are distinguished by making 'their characters always very lively'. In his own hands, and in Burnet's, the character assumes even greater importance than the continental historians had given it. At every opportunity Clarendon leaves off his narrative of events to describe the actors in the great drama, and Burnet introduces his main subject with what is in effect an account of his _dramatis personæ_. They excel in the range and variety of their characters. But they had studied the continental historians, and the encouragement of example must not be forgotten.

* * * * *

The debt to French literature can easily be overstated. No French influence is discoverable in the origin and rise of the English character, nor in its form or manner; but its later development may have been hastened by French example, especially during the third quarter of the seventeenth century.

France was the home of the _mémoire_, the personal record in which the individual portrays himself as the centre of his world, and describes events and persons in the light of his own experience. It was established as a characteristic form of French literature in the sixteenth century,[8] and it reached its full vigour and variety in the century of Sully, Rohan, Richelieu, Tallemant des Réaux, Bassompierre, Madame de Motteville, Mlle de Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, Villars, Cardinal de Retz, Bussy-Rabutin--to name but a few. This was the age of the _mémoire_, always interesting, often admirably written; and, as might be expected, sometimes exhibiting the art of portraiture at perfection. The English memoir is comparatively late. The word, in the sense of a narrative of personal recollections, was borrowed at the Restoration. The thing itself, under other names, is older. It is a branch of history that flourishes in stirring and difficult times when men believe themselves to have special information about hidden forces that directed the main current of events, and we date it in this country from the period of the Civil Wars. It is significant that when Shaftesbury in his old age composed his short and fragmentary autobiography he began by saying, 'I in this follow the French fashion, and write my own memoirs.' Even Swift, when publishing Temple's _Memoirs_, said that ''tis to the French (if I mistake not) we chiefly owe that manner of writing; and Sir William Temple is not only the first, but I think the only Englishman (at least of any consequence) who ever attempted it.' Few English memoirs were then in print, whereas French memoirs were to be numbered by dozens. But the French fashion is not to be regarded as an importation into English literature, supplying what had hitherto been lacking. At most it stimulated what already existed.

The _mémoire_ was not the only setting for French portraits at this time. There were the French romances, and notably the _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_ and the _Clélie_ of Madeleine de Scudéry. The full significance of the _Grand Cyrus_ has been recovered for modern readers by Victor Cousin, with great skill and charm, in his _Société française au XVIIe siècle_, where he has shown it to be, 'properly speaking, a history in portraits'. The characters were drawn from familiar figures in French society. 'Ainsi s'explique', says Cousin, 'l'immense succès du _Cyrus_ dans le temps où il parut. C'était une galerie des portraits vrais et frappants, mais un peu embellis, où tout ce qu'il y avait de plus illustre en tout genre--princes, courtisans, militaires, beaux-esprits, et surtout jolies femmes--allaient se chercher et se reconnaissaient avec un plaisir inexprimable.'[9] It was easy to attack these romances. Boileau made fun of them because the classical names borne by the characters were so absurdly at variance with the matter of the stories.[10] But instead of giving, as he said, a French air and spirit to Greece and Rome, Madeleine de Scudéry only gave Greek and Roman names to France as she knew it. The names were a transparent disguise that was not meant to conceal the picture of fashionable society.

The next stage was the portrait by itself, without any setting. At the height of the popularity of the romances, Mlle de Montpensier hit upon a new kind of entertainment for the talented circle of which she was the brilliant centre. It was nothing more nor less than a paper game. They drew each other, or persons whom they knew, or themselves, and under their real names. And they played the game so well that what was written for amusement was worth printing. _Divers Portraits, Imprimés en l'année M DC LIX_ was the simple title of the first collection, which was intended only for the contributors.[11] When it reached its final form in 1663, it contained over a hundred and fifty portraits, and was offered to the public as _La Galerie des Peintures, ou Recueil des portraits et éloges en vers et en prose, contenant les portraits du Roy, de la Reyne, des princes, princesses, duchesses, marquises, comtesses, et autres seigneurs et dames les plus illustres de France; la plupart composés par eux-mêmes_.[12] The introductory defence of the portrait cites Suetonius and Plutarch, and Horace and Montaigne, but also states frankly the true original of the new fashion--'il faut avouer que nous sommes très redevables au _Cyrus_ et à la _Clélie_ qui nous en ont fourni les modèles.' About the same time Antoine Baudeau, sieur de Somaize, brought out his _Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses_,[13] in which there are many portraits in the accepted manner. The portrait was more than a fashion at this time in France; it was the rage. It therefore invited the satirists. Molière has a passing jest at them in his _Précieuses Ridicules_;[14] Charles Sorel published his _Description de I'isle de la Portraiture et de la ville des Portraits_; and Boileau wrote his _Héros de Roman_.

The effects of all this in England are certainly not obvious. It is quite a tenable view that the English characters would have been no less numerous, nor in any way different in quality, had every Englishman been ignorant of French. But the _mémoires_ and romances were well known, and it was after 1660 that the art of the character attained its fullest excellence. The literary career of Clarendon poses the question in a simple form. Most of his characters, and the best as a whole, were written at Montpelier towards the close of his life. Did he find in French literature an incentive to indulge and perfect his natural bent? Yet there can be no conclusive answer to those who find a sufficient explanation in the leisure of these unhappy years, and in the solace that comes to chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place in ruminating on their experiences and impressions.

* * * * *

Something may have been learned also from the other kind of character that is found at its best in modern literature in the seventeenth century, the character derived from Theophrastus, and depicting not the individual but the type. In France, the one kind led on to the other. The romances of Scudéry prepared the way for the _Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle_ of La Bruyère. When the fashionable portrait of particular persons fell out of favour, there arose in its place the description of dispositions and temperaments; and in the hands of La Bruyère 'the manners of the century' were the habits and varieties of human nature. In England the two kinds existed side by side. They correspond to the two methods of the drama. Begin with the individual, but draw him in such a way that we recognize in him our own or others' qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally--and only then--let him take on his distinctive traits: these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry. Long before France had her La Bruyère, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] The Theophrastan character was at its best in this country at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the historical character was still in its early stages; and it was declining when the historical character had attained its full excellence. They cannot always be clearly distinguished, and they are sometimes purposely blended, as in Butler's character of 'A Duke of Bucks,' where the satire on a man of pronounced individuality is heightened by describing his eccentricities as if they belonged to a recognized class.

The great lesson that the Theophrastan type of character could teach was the value of balance and unity. A haphazard statement of features and habits and peculiarities might suffice for a sketch, but perspective and harmony were necessary to a finished portrait. It taught that the surest method in depicting character was first to conceive the character as a whole, and then to introduce detail incidentally and in proper subordination. But the same lesson could have been learned elsewhere. It might have been learned from the English drama.

[Footnote 1: North's Plutarch went into five editions between 1579 and 1631; Thucydides was translated by Hobbes in 1629, and Polybius by Edward Grimeston in 1633; Xenophon's _Anabasis_ was translated by John Bingham in 1623, and the _Cyropædia_ by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding's version of Cæsar's _Gallic War_ was several times reprinted between 1565 and 1609; Philemon Holland, the translator-general of the age, as Fuller called him, brought out his Livy in 1600, and his Suetonius in 1606; Sallust was translated by Thomas Heywood in 1608, and by William Crosse in 1629; Velleius Paterculus was 'rendred English by Sir Robert Le Grys' in 1632; and by 1640 there had been six editions of Sir Henry Savile's _Histories_ and _Agricola_ of Tacitus, first published in 1591, and five editions of Richard Grenewey's _Annals_ and _Germany_, first published in 1598. See H.R. Palmer's _English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics printed before 1641_, Bibliographical Society, 1911.]

[Footnote 2: 'Thucydides ... in whom (I beleeve with many others) the Faculty of writing History is at the Highest.' Thucydides, 1629, 'To the Readers.']

[Footnote 3: Philemon Holland's Livy, 1600, 'Dedication to Elizabeth.']

[Footnote 4: Sir Henry Savile's Tacitus, 1591, 'A.B. To the Reader.']

[Footnote 5: _Supplement to Burnet's History_, ed. H.C. Foxcroft, p. 451.]

[Footnote 6: In 'Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, by Way of Essays', printed in _A Collection of several Tracts of Edward Earl of Clarendon_, 1727, pp. 80-1.]

[Footnote 7: Letter to the Earl of Bristol, February 1, 1646 (_State Papers_, vol. ii, p. 334). Davila was very well known in England--better, it would appear, than the other three--and was credited with being more than a mere literary model. Clarendon says that from his account of the civil wars of France 'no question our Gamesters learned much of their play'. Sir Philip Warwick, after remarking that Hampden was well read in history, tells us that the first time he ever saw Davila's book it was lent to him 'under the title of Mr. Hambden's _Vade Mecum_' (_Mémoires_, 1701, p. 240). A translation was published by the authority of the Parliament in 1647-8. Translations of Strada, Bentivoglio, and Grotius followed in 1650, 1654, and 1665. Only parts of Thuanus were translated. The size of his history was against a complete version.]

[Footnote 8: See the _Mémoires_ of Monluc, Brantôme, La Noue, &c. The fifty-two volumes in Petitot's incomplete series entitled _Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France jusqu'au commencement du dix-septième siècle_ show at a glance the remarkable richness of French literature in the _mémoire_ at an early date.]

[Footnote 9: _La Socíété française au XVIIe siècle_, 1858 vol. i, p. 7. The 'key' drawn up in 1657 is printed as an appendix.]

[Footnote 10: _Art poétique_, iii. 115-18.]

[Footnote 11: Cousin, _Madame de Sablé_, 1854, pp. 42-8.]

[Footnote 12: Edited by Edouard de Barthélemy in 1860 under the title _La Galerie des Portraits de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_.]

[Footnote 13: Edited by Ch. Livet, 1856 (Bibliothèque Elzevirienne. 2 vols.).]

[Footnote 14: Sc. x, where Madelon says 'Je vous avoue que je suis furieusement pour les portraits: je ne vois rien de si galant que cela', and Mascarille replies, 'Les portraits sont difficiles, et demandent un esprit profond: vous en verrez de ma manière qui ne vous déplairont pas.']

[Footnote 15: Joseph Hall's _Characters of Vertues and Vices_ appeared in 1608 Overbury's _Characters_ 1614-22. For Earle, see pp. 168-70.]

III. Clarendon.

Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England_ is made up of two works composed with different purposes and at a distance of twenty years. The first, which may be called the 'Manuscript History', belongs to 1646-8; the second, the 'Manuscript Life', to 1668-70. They were combined to form the _History_ as we now read it in 1671, when new sections were added to give continuity and to complete the narrative. On Clarendon's death in 1674 the manuscripts passed to his two sons, Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; and under the supervision of the latter a transcript of the _History_ was made for the printers. The work was published at Oxford in three handsome folio volumes in 1702, 1703, and 1704, and became the property of the University. The portions of the 'Manuscript Life' which Clarendon had not incorporated in the _History_ as being too personal, were published by the University in 1759, under the title _The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon_, and were likewise printed from a transcript.[1]

The original manuscripts, now also in the possession of the University of which Clarendon's family were such generous benefactors, enable us to fix the dates of composition. We know whether a part belongs originally to the 'Manuscript History' or the 'Manuscript Life', or whether it was pieced in later. More than this, Clarendon every now and again inserts the month and the day on which he began or ended a section. We can thus trace the stages by which his great work was built up, and learn how his art developed. We can also judge how closely the printed texts represent what Clarendon had written. The old controversy on the authenticity of the first edition has long been settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3] Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously reproduced Clarendon's own words. But no edition has yet reproduced his spelling. In the characters printed in this volume the attempt is made, for the first time it is believed, to represent the original manuscripts accurately to the letter.[4]

On the defeat of the last Royalist army in Cornwall in February 1646 it was necessary to provide for the safety of Prince Charles, and Clarendon, in these days Sir Edward Hyde, accompanied him when on the night of March 2 he set sail for Scilly. They arrived in Scilly on March 4, and there they remained till April 16, when the danger of capture by the Parliamentary fleet compelled them to make good their escape to Jersey. It is a remarkable testimony to the vigour of Clarendon's mind that even in the midst of this crisis he should have been able to begin his _History_. He began it in Scilly on March 18, 1646--the date is at the head of his manuscript; and once he was settled in Jersey he immediately resumed it. But in writing his _History_ he did not, in these days, think of himself only as an historian. He was a trusted adviser of the defeated party, and he planned his faithful narrative of what he knew so well not solely to vindicate the character and conduct of the King, but also with the immediate purpose of showing how the disasters had been brought out, and, by implication, how further disaster might be avoided. The proof of this is to be found not in the _History_ itself, where he seems to have his eye only on 'posterity' and 'a better age', but in his correspondence. In a letter written to Sir Edward Nicholas, the King's secretary, on November 15, 1646, Clarendon spoke of his _History_ at some length:

As soon as I found myself alone, I thought the best way to
provide myself for new business against the time I should be
called to it (for, Mr. Secretary, you and I must once again
to business) was to look over the faults of the old; and so
I resolved (which you know I threatned you with long ago) to
write the history of these evil times, and of this most lovely
Rebellion. Well; without any other help than a few diurnals
I have wrote of longer paper than this, and in the same fine
small hand, above threescore sheets of paper.... I write with
all fidelity and freedom of all I know, of persons and things,
and the oversights and omissions on both sides, in order to
what they desired; so that you will believe it will make mad
work among friends and foes, if it were published; but out
of it enough may be chosen to make a perfect story, and the
original kept for their perusal, who may be the wiser for
knowing the most secret truths; and you know it will be an
easier matter to blot out two sheets, than to write half an
one. If I live to finish it (as on my conscience I shall, for
I write apace), I intend to seal it up, and have it always
with me. If I die, I appoint it to be delivered to you, to
whose care (with a couple of good fellows more) I shall leave
it; that either of you dying, you may so preserve it, that
in due time somewhat by your care may be published, and the
original be delivered to the King, who will not find himself
flattered in it, nor irreverently handled: though, the truth
will better suit a dead than a living man. Three hours a
day I assign to this writing task; the rest to other study
and books; so I doubt not after seven years time in this
retirement, you will find me a pretty fellow.[5]

From this, as from other passages in his letters, Clarendon's first intentions are clear. The _History_ was to be a repository of authentic information on 'this most lovely Rebellion', constructed with the specifically didactic purpose of showing the King and his advisers what lessons were to be learned from their errors; they would be 'the wiser for knowing the most secret truths'. At first he looked on his work as containing the materials of a 'perfect story', but as he proceeded his ambitions grew. He had begun to introduce characters; and when in the spring of 1647 he was about to write his first character of Lord Falkland, he had come to the view that 'the preservation of the fame and merit of persons, and deriving the same to posterity, is no less the business of history than the truth of things'.[6] He gave much thought to the character of Falkland, 'whom the next age shall be taught', he was determined, 'to value more than the present did.'[7] Concurrently with the introduction of characters he paid more attention to the literary, as distinct from the didactic, merits of his work. We find him comparing himself with other historians, and considering what Livy and Tacitus would have done in like circumstances. By the spring of 1648 he had brought down his narrative to the opening of the campaign of 1644. Earlier in the year he had been commanded by the King to be ready to rejoin Prince Charles, and shortly afterwards he received definite instructions from the Queen to attend on her and the Prince at Paris. He left Jersey in June, and with his re-entry into active politics his _History_ was abruptly ended. The seven years of retirement which he had anticipated were cut down by the outbreak of the Second Civil War to two; and within a year the King for whose benefit he had begun this _History_ was led to the scaffold. Not for twenty years was Clarendon again to have the leisure to be an historian. When in 1668 he once more took up his pen, it was not a continuation of the first work, but an entirely new work, that came in steady flow from the abundance of his knowledge.

Clarendon returned to England as Lord Chancellor in 1660, and for seven years enjoyed the power which he had earned by ceaseless devotion to his two royal masters. The ill success of the war with the Dutch, jealousy of his place and influence, the spiteful opposition of the King's chief mistress, and the King's own resentment at an attitude that showed too little deference and imprudently suggested the old relations of tutor and pupil, all combined to bring about his fall. He fled from England on November 30, 1667, and was never to set foot in England again. Broken in health and spirit, he sought in vain for many months a resting-place in France, and not till July 1668 did he find a new home at Montpelier. Here his health improved, and here he remained till June 1671. These were busy years of writing, and by far the greater portion of his published work, if his letters and state papers be excluded, belongs to this time. First of all he answered the charge of high treason brought against him by the House of Commons in _A Discourse, by Way of Vindication of my self_, begun on July 24, 1668; he wrote most of his _Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral_, a collection of twenty-five essays, some of considerable length, on subjects largely suggested by his own circumstances; and he completed between December 1668 and February 1671 his _Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalms of David_, an elaborate exposition extending to well over four hundred folio pages of print, which he had begun at Jersey in 1647. But his great work at this time was his _Life_, begun on July 23, 1668, and brought down to 1660 by August 1, 1670. It is by far the most elaborate autobiography that had yet been attempted in English. The manuscript consists of over six hundred pages, and each page contains on an average about a thousand words. He wrote with perfect freedom, for this work, unlike the earlier _History_, was not intended for the eyes of the King, and the didactic days were over. He wrote too with remarkable ease. The very appearance of the manuscript, where page follows page with hardly an erasure, and the 'fine hand' becomes finer and finer, conveys even a sense of relief and pleasure. His pen seems to move of itself and the long and elaborate sentences to evolve of their own free will. The story of his life became a loose framework into which he could fit all that he wished to tell of his own times; and the more he told, his vindication would be the more complete. 'Even unawares', he admitted, 'many things are inserted not so immediately applicable to his own person, which possibly may hereafter, in some other method, be communicated to the world.'[8] He welcomed the opportunity to tell all that he knew. There was no reason for reticence. He wrote of men as of things frankly as he knew them. More than a history of the Rebellion, his _Life_ is also a picture of the society in which he had moved. It is the work which contains most of his characters.[9]