Chapter III: Part 3

Biographia, or the histories of particular lives, though circumscribed in the subject, is yet more extensive in the style than the other two; for it not only comprehends them both, but has somewhat superadded, which neither of them have. The style of it is various, according to the occasion. There are proper places in it for the plainness and nakedness of narration, which is ascribed to annals; there is also room reserved for the loftiness and gravity of general history, when the actions related shall require that manner of expression. But there is withal a descent into minute circumstances, and trivial passages of life, which are natural to this way of writing, and which the dignity of the other two will not admit. There you are conducted only into the rooms of state, here you are led into the private lodgings of the hero; you see him in his undress, and are made familiar with his most private actions and conversations. You may behold a Scipio and a Lælius gathering cockle-shells on the shore, Augustus playing at bounding-stones with boys, and Agesilaus riding on a hobby-horse among his children. The pageantry of life is taken away; you see the poor reasonable animal as naked as ever nature made him; are made acquainted with his passions and his follies, and find the demi-god, a man. Plutarch himself has more than once defended this kind of relating little passages; for, in the Life of Alexander, he says thus: “In writing the lives of illustrious men, I am not tied to the laws of history; nor does it follow, that, because an action is great, it therefore manifests the greatness and virtue of him who did it; but, on the other side, sometimes a word, or a casual jest, betrays a man more to our knowledge of him, than a battle fought wherein ten thousand men were slain, or sacking of cities, or a course of victories.” In another place, he quotes Xenophon on the like occasion: “The sayings of great men in their familiar discourses, and amidst their wine, have somewhat in them which is worthy to be transmitted to posterity.” Our author therefore needs no excuse, but rather deserves a commendation, when he relates, as pleasant, some sayings of his heroes, which appear (I must confess it) very cold and insipid mirth to us. For it is not his meaning to commend the jest, but to paint the man; besides, we may have lost somewhat of the idiotism of that language in which it was spoken; and where the conceit is couched in a single word, if all the significations of it are not critically understood, the grace and the pleasantry are lost.

But in all parts of biography, whether familiar or stately, whether sublime or low, whether serious or merry, Plutarch equally excelled. If we compare him to others, Dion Cassius is not so sincere; Herodian, a lover of truth, is oftentimes deceived himself with what he had falsely heard reported: then the time of his emperors exceeds not in all above sixty years; so that his whole history will scarce amount to three Lives of Plutarch. Suetonius and Tacitus may be called alike either authors of histories, or writers of lives; but the first of them runs too willingly into obscene descriptions, which he teaches, while he relates; the other, besides what has already been noted by him, often falls into obscurity; and both of them have made so unlucky a choice of times, that they are forced to describe rather monsters than men; and their emperors are either extravagant fools or tyrants, and most usually both. Our author, on the contrary, as he was more inclined to commend than to dispraise, has generally chosen such great men as were famous for their several virtues; at least such whose frailties or vices were overpoised by their excellencies; such from whose examples we may have more to follow than to shun. Yet, as he was impartial, he disguised not the faults of any man: an example of which is in the life of Lucullus; where, after he has told us that the double benefit which his countrymen, the Chæroneans, received from him, was the chiefest motive which he had to write his life, he afterwards rips up his luxury, and shews how he lost, through his mismanagement, his authority and his soldiers’ love.—Then he was more happy in his digressions than any we have named. I have always been pleased to see him, and his imitator, Montaigne, when they strike a little out of the common road; for we are sure to be the better for their wandering. The best quarry lies not always in the open field; and who would not be content to follow a good huntsman over hedges and ditches, when he knows the game will reward his pains? But if we mark him more narrowly, we may observe, that the great reason of his frequent starts is the variety of his learning; he knew so much of nature, was so vastly furnished with all the treasures of the mind, that he was uneasy to himself, and was forced, as I may say, to lay down some at every passage, and to scatter his riches as he went: like another Alexander or Adrian, he built a city, or planted a colony, in every part of his progress, and left behind him some memorial of his greatness. Sparta, and Thebes, and Athens, and Rome, the mistress of the world, he has discovered in their foundations, their institutions, their growth, their height; the decay of the three first, and the alteration of the last. You see those several people in their different laws, and policies, and forms of government, in their warriors, and senators, and demagogues. Nor are the ornaments of poetry, and the illustrations of similitudes, forgotten by him; in both which he instructs, as well as pleases; or rather pleases, that he may instruct.

This last reflection leads me naturally to say somewhat in general of his style; though after having justly praised him for copiousness of learning, integrity, perspicuity, and more than all this, for a certain air of goodness which appears through all his writings, it were unreasonable to be critical on his elocution. As on a tree which bears excellent fruit, we consider not the beauty of the blossoms,—for if they are not pleasant to the eye, or delightful to the scent, we know at the same time that they are not the prime intention of nature, but are thrust out in order to their product; so in Plutarch, whose business was not to please the ear, but to charm and to instruct the mind, we may easily forgive the cadences of words, and the roughness of expression. Yet, for manliness of eloquence, if it abounded not in our author, it was not wanting in him. He neither studied the sublime style, nor affected the flowery. The choice of words, the numbers of periods, the turns of sentences, and those other ornaments of speech, he neither sought nor shunned; but the depth of sense, the accuracy of judgment, the disposition of the parts, and contexture of the whole, in so admirable and vast a field of matter, and lastly, the copiousness and variety of words, appear shining in our author. It is, indeed, observed of him, that he keeps not always to the style of prose, but if a poetical word, which carries in it more of emphasis or signification, offer itself at any time, he refuses it not because Homer or Euripides have used it; but if this be a fault, I know not how Xenophon will stand excused. Yet neither do I compare our author with him, or with Herodotus, in the sweetness and graces of his style, nor with Thucydides in the solidity and closeness of expression; for Herodotus is acknowledged the prince of the Ionic, the other two of the Attic eloquence. As for Plutarch, his style is so particular, that there is none of the ancients to whom we can properly resemble him. And the reason of this is obvious; for, being conversant in so great variety of authors, and collecting from all of them what he thought most excellent, out of the confusion, or rather mixture, of all their styles, he formed his own, which, partaking of each, was yet none of them, but a compound of them all; like the Corinthian metal, which had in it gold, and brass, and silver, and yet was a species by itself. Add to this, that in Plutarch’s time, and long before it, the purity of the Greek tongue was corrupted, and the native splendour of it had taken the tarnish of barbarism, and contracted the filth and spots of degenerating ages: for the fall of empires always draws after it the language and eloquence of the people; they, who labour under misfortunes or servitude, have little leisure to cultivate their mother tongue. To conclude; when Athens had lost her sovereignty to the Peloponnesians, and her liberty to Philip, neither a Thucydides nor a Demosthenes were afterwards produced by her.

I have formerly acknowledged many lapses of our author, occasioned through his inadvertency; but he is likewise taxed with faults which reflect on his judgment in matters of fact, and his candour in the comparisons of his Greeks and Romans; both which are so well vindicated by Montaigne, that I need but barely to translate him:—“First, then, he is accused of want of judgment, in reporting things incredible; for proof of which is alleged the story he tells of the Spartan boy, who suffered his bowels to be torn out by a young fox which he had stolen, choosing rather to hide him under his garment till he died, than to confess his robbery. In the first place, this example is ill chosen, because it is difficult to set a bound to the force of our internal faculties; it is not defined how far our resolution may carry us to suffer. The force of bodies may more easily be determined, than that of souls. Then of all people, the Lacedemonians, by reason of their rigid institution, were most hardened to undergo labours, and to suffer pains. Cicero, before our author’s time, though then the Spartan virtue was degenerated, yet avows to have seen himself some Lacedemonian boys, who, to make trial of their patience, were placed before the altar of Diana, where they endured scourging till they were all over bloody, and that not only without crying, but even without a sigh or a groan: nay, and some of them so ambitious of this reputation, that they willingly resigned their lives under the hands of their tormentors.—The same may be said of another story, which Plutarch vouches with an hundred witnesses: that in the time of sacrifice, a burning coal by chance falling into the sleeve of a Spartan boy, who held the censer, he suffered his arm to be scorched so long without moving it, that the scent of it reeked up to the noses of the assistants.

“For my own part, who have taken in so vast an idea of the Lacedemonian magnanimity, Plutarch’s story is so far from seeming incredible to me, that I neither think it wonderful nor uncommon; for we ought not to measure possibilities or impossibilities by our own standard, that is, by what we ourselves could do or suffer. These, and some other slight examples, are made use of, to lessen the opinion of Plutarch’s judgment.—But the common exception against his candour is, that in his parallels of Greeks and Romans he has done too much honour to his countrymen, in matching them with heroes with whom they were not worthy to be compared. For instances of this, there are produced the comparisons of Demosthenes and Cicero, Aristides and Cato, Lysander and Sylla, Pelopidas and Marcellus, Agesilaus and Pompey. Now the ground of this accusation is most probably the lustre of those Roman names, which strikes on our imagination; for what proportion of glory is there betwixt a Roman consul or proconsul of so great a commonwealth, and a simple citizen of Athens? But he who considers the truth more nearly, and weighs not honours with honours, but men with men, which was Plutarch’s main design, will find in the balance of their manners, their virtues, their endowments and abilities, that Cicero and the elder Cato were far from having the over-weight against Demosthenes and Aristides. I might as well complain against him in behalf of his own countrymen; for neither was Camillus so famous as Themistocles, nor were Tiberius and Caius Gracchus comparable to Agis and Cleomenes, in regard of dignity; much less was the wisdom of Numa to be put in balance against that of Lycurgus, or the modesty and temperance of Scipio against the solid philosophy and perfect virtue of Epaminondas. Yet the disparity of victories, the reputation, the blaze of glory, in the two last, were evidently on the Roman side. But, as I said before, to compare them this way was the least of Plutarch’s aim; he openly declares against it; for, speaking of the course of Pompey’s fortune, his exploits of war, the greatness of the armies which he commanded, the splendour and number of his triumphs, in his comparison betwixt him and Agesilaus,—I believe, says he, that if Xenophon were now alive, and would indulge himself the liberty to write all he could to the advantage of his hero, Agesilaus, he would be ashamed to put their acts in competition. In his comparison of Sylla and Lysander, there is, says he, no manner of equality either in the number of their victories, or in the danger of their battles; for Lysander only gained two naval fights, &c. Now this is far from partiality to the Grecians. He who would convince him of this vice, must shew us in what particular judgment he has been too favourable to his countrymen; and make it out in general, where he has failed in matching such a Greek with such a Roman; which must be done by shewing how he could have paired them better, and naming any other in whom the resemblance might have been more perfect. But an equitable judge, who takes things by the same handle which Plutarch did, will find there is no injury offered to either party, though there be some disparity betwixt the persons; for he weighs every circumstance by itself, and judges separately of it; not comparing men at a lump, nor endeavouring to prove they were alike in all things, but allowing for disproportion of quality or fortune, shewing wherein they agreed or disagreed, and wherein one was to be preferred before the other.”

I thought I had answered all that could reasonably be objected against our author’s judgment; but casually casting my eye on the works of a French gentleman,[9] deservedly famous for wit and criticism, I wondered, amongst many commendations of Plutarch, to find this one reflection:—“As for his comparisons, they seem truly to me very great; but I think he might have carried them yet farther, and have penetrated more deeply into human nature. There are folds and recesses in our minds, which have escaped him; he judges man too much in gross, and thinks him not so different as he is often from himself; the same person being just, unjust, merciful, and cruel; which qualities seeming to belie each other in him, he attributes their inconsistencies to foreign causes. In fine, if he had described Catiline, he would have given him to us, either prodigal or covetous: that _alieni appetens, sui profusus_, was above his reach. He could never have reconciled those contrarieties in the same subject, which Sallust has so well unfolded, and which Montaigne so much better understood.”

This judgment could not have proceeded but from a man who has a nice taste in authors; and if it be not altogether just, it is at least delicate: but I am confident, that if he please to consider this following passage, taken out of the Life of Sylla, he will moderate, if not retract, his censure:

“In the rest of his manners he was unequal, irregular different from himself: ἀνώμαλὸς τις ἔοικε, και διάφορος πρὸς ἑαυτὸν.He took many things by rapine, he gave more; honoured men immoderately, and used them contumeliously; was submissive to those of whom he stood in need, insulting over those who stood in need of him; so that it was doubtful, whether he were more formed by nature to arrogance or flattery. As to his uncertain way of punishing, he would sometimes put men to death on the least occasion; at other times he would pardon the greatest crimes: so that judging him in the whole, you may conclude him to have been naturally cruel, and prone to vengeance, but that he could remit of his severity, when his interests required it.”

Here, methinks, our author seems to have sufficiently understood the folds and doubles of Sylla’s disposition; for his character is full of variety and inconsistencies. Yet in the conclusion it is to be confessed, that Plutarch has assigned him a bloody nature; the clemency was but artificial and assumed, the cruelty was inborn: but this cannot be said of his rapine, and his prodigality; for here the _alieni appetens, sui profusus_, is as plainly described, as if Plutarch had borrowed the sense from Sallust; and, as he was a great collector, perhaps he did. Nevertheless he judged rightly of Sylla, that naturally he was cruel, for that quality was predominant in him; and he was oftener revengeful than he was merciful. But this is sufficient to vindicate our author’s judgment from being superficial; and I desire not to press the argument more strongly against this gentleman, who has honoured our country by his long residence amongst us.

It seems to me, I must confess, that our author has not been more hardly treated by his enemies, in his comparing other men, than he has been by his friends, in their comparing Seneca with him. And herein, even Montaigne himself is scarcely to be defended; for no man more esteemed Plutarch, no man was better acquainted with his excellencies; yet, this notwithstanding, he has done too great an honour to Seneca, by ranking him with our philosopher and historian; him, I say, who was so much less a philosopher, and no historian. It is a reputation to Seneca, that any one has offered at the comparison; the worth of his adversary makes his defeat advantageous to him; and Plutarch might cry out, with justice,

_Qui cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur_.

If I had been to find out a parallel for Plutarch, I should rather have pitched on Varro, the most learned of the Romans, if at least his works had yet remained; or Pomponius Atticus, if he had written. But the likeness of Seneca is so little, that except the one’s being tutor to Nero, and the other to Trajan, both of them strangers to Rome, yet raised to the highest dignities in that city, and both philosophers, though of several sects; (for Seneca was a Stoic, Plutarch a Platonician, at least an Academic, that is, half Platonist, half Sceptic;) besides some such faint resemblances as these, Seneca and Plutarch seem to have as little relation to one another as their native countries, Spain and Greece. If we consider them in their inclinations or humours, Plutarch was sociable and pleasant, Seneca morose and melancholy: Plutarch a lover of conversation, and sober feasts; Seneca reserved, uneasy to himself when alone, to others when in company. Compare them in their manners; Plutarch every where appears candid, Seneca often is censorious. Plutarch, out of his natural humanity, is frequent in commending what he can; Seneca, out of the sourness of his temper, is prone to satire, and still searching for some occasion to vent his gall. Plutarch is pleased with an opportunity of praising virtue; and Seneca, to speak the best of him, is glad of a pretence to reprehend vice. Plutarch endeavours to teach others, but refuses not to be taught himself; for he is always doubtful and inquisitive: Seneca is altogether for teaching others, but so teaches them, that he imposes his opinions, for he was of a sect too imperious and dogmatical, either to be taught or contradicted; and yet Plutarch writes like a man of a confirmed probity, Seneca like one of a weak and staggering virtue. Plutarch seems to have vanquished vice, and to have triumphed over it; Seneca seems only to be combating and resisting, and that too but in his own defence: therefore Plutarch is easy in his discourse, as one who has overcome the difficulty; Seneca is painful, as he who still labours under it. Plutarch’s virtue is humble and civilized; Seneca’s haughty and ill-bred: Plutarch allures you, Seneca commands you. One would make virtue your companion, the other your tyrant. The style of Plutarch is easy and flowing, that of Seneca precipitous and harsh: the first is even, the second broken. The arguments of the Grecian, drawn from reason, work themselves into your understanding, and make a deep and lasting impression in your mind; those of the Roman, drawn from wit, flash immediately on your imagination, but leave no durable effect: so this tickles you by starts with his arguteness, that pleases you for continuance with his propriety. The course of their fortunes seems also to have partaken of their styles; for Plutarch’s was equal, smooth, and of the same tenor,—Seneca’s was turbid, unconstant, and full of revolutions. The life of Plutarch was unblameable, as the reader cannot but have observed; and of all his writings, there is nothing to be noted as having the least tendency to vice, but only that little treatise which is entitled Ἐρωτικός, wherein he speaks too broadly of a sin to which the eastern and southern parts of the world are most obnoxious; but Seneca is said to have been more libertine than suited with the gravity of a philosopher, or with the austerity of a Stoic. An ingenious Frenchman esteems, as he tells us, his person rather than his works; and values him more as the preceptor of Nero, a man ambitious of the empire, and the gallant of Agrippina, than as a teacher of morality. For my part, I dare not push the commendation so far. His courage was perhaps praiseworthy, if he endeavoured to deliver Rome from such a monster of tyranny as Nero was then beginning to appear; his ambition too was the more excusable if he found in himself an ability of governing the world, and a desire of doing good to human kind; but as to his good fortunes with the empress, I know not what value ought to be set on a wise man for them: except it be that women generally liking without judgment, it was a conquest for a philosopher, once in an age, to get the better of a fool. However, methinks there is something of awkward in the adventure: I cannot imagine, without laughter, a pedant, and a Stoic, making love in a long gown; for it puts me in mind of the civilities which are used by the cardinals and judges in the dance of “The Rehearsal.” If Agrippina would needs be so lavish of her favours, since a sot grew nauseous to her, because he was her husband, and nothing under a wit could atone for Claudius, I am half sorry that Petronius was not the man. We could have borne it better from his character, than from one who professed the severity of virtue, to make a cuckold of his emperor and benefactor. But let the historian answer for his own relation; only, if true, it is so much the worse that Seneca, after having abused his bed, could not let him sleep quiet in his grave. The Apocolocynthisis, or mock deification of Claudius, was too sharp and insulting on his memory; and Seneca, though he could preach forgiveness to others, did not practise it himself in that satire. Where was the patience and insensibility of a Stoic, in revenging his banishment with a libel? Where was the morality of a philosopher, in defaming and exposing of an harmless fool? And where was common humanity, in railing against the dead? But the talent of his malice is visible in other places: he censures Mæcenas, and I believe justly, for the looseness of his manners, the voluptuousness of his life, and the effeminacy of his style; but it appears that he takes pleasure in so doing, and that he never forced his nature when he spoke ill of any man. For his own style, we see what it is; and if we may be as bold with him as he has been with our old patron, we may call it a shattered eloquence, not vigorous, not united, not embodied, but broken into fragments; every part by itself pompous, but the whole confused and unharmonious. His Latin, as Monsieur St Evremont has well observed, has nothing in it of the purity and elegance of Augustus his times; and it is of him and of his imitators that Petronius said,—_pace vestrâ liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis_. The _controversiæ sententiis vibrantibus pictæ_, and the _vanus sententiarum strepitus_, make it evident that Seneca was taxed under the person of the old Rhetorician. What quarrel he had to the uncle and the nephew, I mean Seneca and Lucan, is not known; but Petronius plainly points them out, one for a bad orator, the other for as bad a poet. His own Essay of the Civil War is an open defiance of the “Pharsalia;” and the first oration of Eumolpus as full an arraignment of Seneca’s false eloquence. After all that has been said, he is certainly to be allowed a great wit, but not a good philosopher; not fit to be compared with Cicero, of whose reputation he was emulous, any more than Lucan is with Virgil. To sum up all in few words:—consider a philosopher declaiming against riches, yet vastly rich himself; against avarice, yet putting out his money at great extortion here in Britain; against honours, yet aiming to be emperor; against pleasure, yet enjoying Agrippina, and in his old age married to a beautiful young woman; and after this, let him be made a parallel to Plutarch.

And now with the usual vanity of Dutch prefacers, I could load our author with the praises and commemorations of writers; for both ancient and modern have made honourable mention of him: but to cumber pages with this kind of stuff, were to raise a distrust in common readers that Plutarch wants them. Rualdus indeed has collected ample testimonies of them: but I will only recite the names of some, and refer you to him for the particular quotations. He reckons Gellius, Eusebius, Himerius the Sophister, Eunapius, Cyrillus of Alexandria, Theodoret, Agathias, Photius and Xiphilin, patriarchs of Constantinople, Johannes Sarisberiensis, the famous Petrarch, Petrus Victorius, and Justus Lipsius.

But Theodorus Gaza, a man learned in the Latin, tongue, and a great restorer of the Greek, who lived above two hundred years ago, deserves to have his suffrage set down in words at length; for the rest have only commended Plutarch more than any single author, but he has extolled him above all together.

It is said, that, having this extravagant question put to him by a friend,—that if learning must suffer a general shipwreck, and he had only his choice left him of preserving one author, who should be the man he would preserve? he answered, Plutarch; and probably might give this reason, that, in saving him, he should secure the best collection of them all.

The Epigram of Agathias deserves also to be remembered. This author flourished about the year five hundred, in the reign of the Emperor Justinian; the verses are extant in the “Anthologia,” and with the translation of them I will conclude the praises of our author; having first admonished you, that they are supposed to be written on a statue erected by the Romans to his memory:

Σεῖο πολυκλήεντα τύπον στήσαντο Χερωνεῦ
Πλούταρχε κρατερῶν ὑιέες Ἀυσονίων·
Ὅττι παραλλήλοισι βίοις Ἑλληνας ἀρίστους
Ῥώμης ἐυπολέμοις ῆρμοσας ἑνναέταις;
Ἀλλὰ τεοῦ βιοτοιο παράλληλον βίον ἄλλον
Ὀυδὲ σύγ’ ἂν γράψαις, οὐ γὰρ ὅμοιον ἔχεις.

Cheronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise;
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared,
(Their heroes written, and their lives compared;)
But thou thyself could’st never write thy own;
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Thomas North’s translation, published in 1579, was executed through the medium of the French translation, by Jaques Amiot.

[2] Lord Howard, Sir Thomas Armstrong, Ford Lord Grey, and others among the opposers of government, notorious for being libertines even beyond the license of that age, seem to be here pointed at.

[3] These devices were impressed on the coin struck by the Commonwealth.

[4] Alluding to the Irish witnesses in the time of the Popish Plot; one set of whom came over to England, on purpose to support by their evidence that supposed conspiracy, but afterwards turned against their employer Shaftesbury. See Vol. IX. p. 410.

[5] Fought A. U. C. 724.

[6] This sentence is ungrammatical, as has been observed by Mr Malone. Perhaps we ought to read, “that he was invited thither; _and that_.”

[7] The authenticity of this letter has been doubted. Its dictatorial tone certainly rather resembles the forgery of some pedant, assuming the character of a great man, than that of a sage addressing a conquering emperor.

[8] Plutarch is said to have died in the reign of Antoninus Pius, A. D. 140, aged ninety years.

[9] Mons. de St Evremont.

SPECIMEN OF THE TRANSLATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE.

HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE.

The reader must recal to his mind the state of parties during the last years of Charles the Second’s reign, to which so many allusions have been made in the notes upon “Absalom and Achitophel,” and “The Medal.” The flight of Shaftesbury, and the discovery of the Rye-house conspiracy, had been deep wounds to the credit of the Whigs. The wealthy part of the nation dreaded a party, whose chief support was in the riotous mob of London; and men of principle, while they felt the severity of a government, which seemed approaching towards despotism, abhorred the assassination which a part at least of the popular leaders had meditated as a remedy. The king, meanwhile, was anxious to keep the advantage he had gained, and to stigmatise his adversaries as leagued together against him upon principles inimical to all kingly governments. For this purpose, Dryden was employed to translate from the French of the Jesuit Maimbourg, the “History of the League,” a work undertaken in France under the auspices of Louis XIV. The evident intention of bringing out this translation at the time when it appeared, was, to increase the unpopularity of the Whigs, by ascribing to the association which Shaftesbury had proposed, the same motives and principles which actuated the members of the League, and plunged France into the long and bloody civil war between their kings and the house of Guise. Dryden had already drawn such a parallel in the play, called “The Duke of Guise,” which he wrote in conjunction with Lee. The intended parallel between the faction of the League in France, and that of the Solemn League and Covenant, and afterwards of the Whigs in England, was avowed in the first lines of the prologue,[10] and more largely in the vindication of the play, which Dryden published shortly after its appearance.[11] Maimbourg, on the other hand, from whose work the translation was made, was not only a zealous royalist, but a professed enemy of the Huguenots, and had written a history of their religion, calculated to place it in the most odious point of view. There was, therefore, to be found in his “History of the League,” not only an accurate and terrifying account of that famous combination, but many hints towards completing the parallel to be deduced betwixt the principles of the Guisards and those of the Calvinists. With this intention, and under the immediate auspices of the king, the work was translated and published.

The title page bears that the translation was made according to his majesty’s command: and the frontispiece represents Charles enthroned in state; Justice is seated upon one side, and upon the other is a view of a harbour, with two light-houses, and a fleet in sail. A hand from heaven is about to place on the king’s head an imperial crown, from which glances a ray of light, bearing the motto, _Per me reges regnant_. In front, are the lords temporal and spiritual, assembled before the throne, in a dutiful posture, and at their feet a scroll, on which is written, _Sibi et successoribus suis legitimis_, in allusion to the celebrated Exclusion Bill.

TO THE KING.

SIR,

Having received the honour of your Majesty’s commands to translate the “History of the League,” I have applied myself, with my utmost diligence, to obey them: First, by a thorough understanding of my author, in which I was assisted by my former knowledge of the French history in general, and, in particular, of those very transactions which he has so faithfully and judiciously related; then by giving his thoughts the same beauty in our language which they had in the original, and, which I most of all endeavoured, the same force and perspicuity: both of which, I hope, I have performed with some exactness, and without any considerable mistake. But of this your Majesty is the truest judge, who are so great a master of the original; and who, having read this piece when it was first published, can easily find out my failings, but, to my comfort, can more easily forgive them. I confess, I could never have laid hold on that virtue of your royal clemency at a more unseasonable time; when your enemies have so far abused it, that pardons are grown dangerous to your safety, and consequently to the welfare of your loyal subjects. But frequent forgiveness is their encouragement; they have the sanctuary in their eye before they attempt the crime; and take all measures of security, either not to need a pardon, if they strike the blow, or to have it granted, if they fail. Upon the whole matter, your Majesty is not upon equal terms with them; you are still forgiving, and they still designing against your sacred life; your principle is mercy, theirs inveterate malice; when one only wards, and the other strikes, the prospect is sad on the defensive side. Hercules, as the poets tell us, had no advantage on Antæus, by his often throwing him on the ground; for he laid him only in his mother’s lap, which, in effect, was but doubling his strength to renew the combat. These sons of earth are never to be trusted in their mother-element; they must be hoisted into the air, and strangled.[12] If the experiment of clemency were new; if it had not been often tried without effect, or rather with effects quite contrary to the intentions of your goodness, your loyal subjects are generous enough to pity their countrymen, though offenders: but when that pity has been always found to draw into example of greater mischiefs; when they continually behold both your Majesty and themselves exposed to dangers; the church, the government, the succession, still threatened; ingratitude, so far from being converted by gentle means, that it is turned at last into the nature of the damned, desirous of revenge, and hardened in impenitence,—it is time, at length, for self-preservation to cry out for justice, and to lay by mildness, when it ceases to be a virtue. Almighty God has hitherto miraculously preserved you; but who knows how long the miracle will continue? His ordinary operations are by second causes; and then reason will conclude, that to be preserved, we ought to use the lawful means of preservation. If, on the other side, it be thus argued, that, of many attempts, one may possibly take place, if preventing justice be not employed against offenders; what remains, but that we implore the divine assistance to avert that judgment; which is no more than to desire of God to work another and another, and, in conclusion, a whole series of miracles. This, Sir, is the general voice of all true Englishmen; I might call it the loyal address of three nations infinitely solicitous of your safety, which includes their own prosperity. It is, indeed, an high presumption for a man so inconsiderable as I am to present it; but zeal and dutiful affection, in an affair of this importance, will make every good subject a counsellor. It is, in my opinion, the test of loyalty; and, to be either a friend or foe to the government needs no other distinction, than to declare at this time either for remissness or justice. I said at this time, because I look not on the storm as overblown. It is still a gusty kind of weather: there is a kind of sickness in the air; it seems, indeed, to be cleared up for some few hours; but the wind still blowing from the same corner, and when new matter is gathered into a body, it will not fail to bring it round, and pour upon us a second tempest. I shall be glad to be found a false prophet; but he was certainly inspired, who, when he saw a little cloud arising from the sea, and that no bigger than a hand, gave immediate notice to the king, that he might mount the chariot, before he was overtaken by the storm.[13] If so much care was taken of an idolatrous king, an usurper, a persecutor, and a tyrant, how much more vigilant ought we to be in the concernments of a lawful prince, a father of his country, and a defender of the faith, who stands exposed by his too much mercy to the unwearied and endless conspiracies of parricides? He was a better prince than the former whom I mentioned out of the sacred history, and the allusion comes yet more close, who stopped his hand after the third arrow: Three victories were indeed obtained; but the effect of often shooting had been the total destruction of his enemies.[14] To come yet nearer: Henry the Fourth, your royal grandfather,[15] whose victories, and the subversion of the League, are the main argument of this history, was a prince most clement in his nature: he forgave his rebels, and received them all into mercy, and some of them into favour, but it was not till he had fully vanquished them: they were sensible of their impiety; they submitted, and his clemency was not extorted from him; it was his free gift, and it was seasonably given. I wish the case were here the same: I confess it was not much unlike it at your Majesty’s happy restoration; yet so much of the parallel was then wanting, that the amnesty you gave produced not all the desired effects. For our sects are of a more obstinate nature than were those leaguing Catholics, who were always for a king, and, yet more, the major part of them would have him of the royal stem; but our associators and sectaries are men of commonwealth principles; and though their first stroke was only aimed at the immediate succession, it was most manifest that it would not there have ended, for at the same time they were hewing at your royal prerogatives. So that the next successor, if there had been any, must have been a precarious prince, and depended on them for the necessaries of life. But of these and more outrageous proceedings, your Majesty has already shewn yourself justly sensible in your declaration, after the dissolution of the last Parliament, which put an end to the arbitrary encroachments of a popular faction. Since which time it has pleased Almighty God so to prosper your affairs, that, without searching into the secrets of Divine Providence, it is evident your magnanimity and resolution, next under Him, have been the immediate cause of your safety and our present happiness. By weathering of which storm, may I presume to say it without flattery, you have performed a greater and more glorious work than all the conquests of your neighbours. For it is not difficult for a great monarchy, well united, and making use of advantages, to extend its limits; but to be pressed with wants, surrounded with dangers, your authority undermined in popular assemblies, your sacred life attempted by a conspiracy, your royal brother forced from your arms; in one word, to govern a kingdom, which was either possessed or turned into a bedlam, and yet in the midst of ruin to stand firm, undaunted, and resolved, and at last to break through all these difficulties and dispel them,—this is indeed an action which is worthy the grandson of Henry the Great. During all this violence of your enemies, your Majesty has contended with your natural clemency to make some examples of your justice; and they themselves will acknowledge, that you have not urged the law against them, but have been pressed and constrained by it to inflict punishments in your own defence, and in the mean time to watch every opportunity of shewing mercy, when there was the least probability of repentance: so that they, who have suffered, may be truly said to have forced the sword of justice out of your hand, and to have done execution on themselves. But by how much the more you have been willing to spare them, by so much has their impudence increased; and if by this mildness they recover from the great frost, which has almost blasted them to the roots, if these venomous plants shoot out again, it will be a sad comfort to say they have been ungrateful, when it is evident to mankind that ingratitude is their nature. That sort of pity which is proper for them, and may be of use to their conversion, is to make them sensible of their errors; and this your Majesty, out of your fatherly indulgence, amongst other experiments which you have made, is pleased to allow them in this book, which you have commanded to be translated for the public benefit; that at least all such as are not wilfully blind may view in it, as in a glass, their own deformities: for never was there a plainer parallel than of the troubles of France and of Great Britain; of their leagues, covenants, associations, and ours; of their Calvinists and our Presbyterians: they are all of the same family; and Titian’s famous table of the Altar-piece, with the pictures of Venetian senators from great-grandfather to great-grandson, shews not more the resemblance of a race than this: for as there, so here, the features are alike in all; there is nothing but the age that makes the difference; otherwise the old man of an hundred, and the babe in swaddling clouts, that is to say, 1584 and 1684, have but a century and a sea betwixt them, to be the same. But I have presumed too much upon your Majesty’s time already, and this is not the place to shew that resemblance, which is but too manifest in the whole history. It is enough to say, your Majesty has allowed our rebels a greater favour than the law; you have given them the benefit of their clergy: if they can but read, and will be honest enough to apply it, they may be saved. God Almighty give an answerable success to this your royal act of grace; may they all repent, and be united as the body to their head! May that treasury of mercy which is within your royal breast have leave to be poured forth upon them, when they put themselves in a condition of receiving it! and, in the mean time, permit me to implore it humbly for myself, and let my presumption in this bold address be forgiven to the zeal which I have to your service and to the public good. To conclude: may you never have a worse meaning offender at your feet, than him, who, besides his duty and his natural inclinations, has all manner of obligations to be perpetually,

SIR,

Your Majesty’s most humble,
Most obedient, and most faithful
Subject and servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION TO THE FRENCH KING.[16]

SIR,

France, which being well united, as we now behold it, under the glorious reign of your Majesty, might give law to all the world, was upon the point of self-destruction, by the division which was raised in it by two fatal leagues of rebels; the one in the middle, and the other towards the latter end, of the last age.

Heresy produced the first against the true religion;[17] ambition, under the masque of zeal, gave birth to the second, with pretence of maintaining what the other would have ruined: and both of them, though implacable enemies to each other, yet agreed in this, that each of them, at divers times, set up the standard of rebellion against our kings.

The crimes of the former I have set forth in the history of Calvinism, which made that impious League in France, against the Lord and his anointed; and I discover the wickedness of the latter in this work, which I present to your Majesty, as the fruit of my exact obedience to those commands with which you have been pleased to honour me. I have endeavoured to perform them with so much the greater satisfaction to myself, because I believed that, in reading this history, the falsehood of some advantages which the Leaguers and Huguenots have ascribed to themselves, may be easily discerned. These by boasting, as they frequently do, even at this day, that they set the crown on the head of King Henry IV.; those, that their League was the cause of his conversion. I hope the world will soon be disabused of those mistakes; and that it will be clearly seen, that they were the Catholics of the royal party, who, next under God, produced those two effects, so advantageous to France. We are owing for neither of them to those two unhappy Leagues, which were the most dangerous enemies to the prosperity of the kingdom; and it is manifest at this present time, that the glory of triumphing over both of them, was reserved, by the Divine Providence, to our kings of the imperial stem of Bourbon.

Henry IV. subdued and reduced the League of the false zealots, by the invincible force of his arms, and by the wonderful attractions of his clemency; Louis the Just disarmed that of the Calvinists, by the taking of Rochelle, and other places, which those heretics had moulded into a kind of commonwealth against their sovereign; and Louis the Great, without employing other arms than those of his ardent charity and incomparable zeal for the conversion of Protestants, accompanied by the justice of his laws,[18] has reduced it to that low condition, that we have reason to believe, we shall behold its ruin, by the repentance of those, who, being deluded and held back by their ministers, continue still in their erroneous belief, rather through ignorance than malice. And this it is which, when accomplished, will surpass even all those other wonders which daily are beheld, under your most auspicious government.

Undoubtedly, Sir, your Majesty has performed, by your victorious arms, your generous goodness, and your more than royal magnificence, all those great and heroic actions, which will ever be the admiration of the world, and infinitely above the commendations which future ages, in imitation of the present, will consecrate to your immortal memory. I presume not to undertake that subject, because it has already drained the praises of the noblest pens, which yet have not been able to raise us to that idea of you, which we ought justly to conceive: I shall only say, that what you have done with so much prudence, justice, and glory, by extending the French monarchy to its ancient bounds, and rendering it, as it is at present, as flourishing, and as much respected by all the world, as it ever has been, under the greatest and most renowned of all our monarchs, is not so great in the sight of God, as what your Majesty performs daily, with so much piety, zeal, and good success, in augmenting the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and procuring the conversion of our Protestants, by those gentle and efficacious means which you have used.

This, Sir, is, without exception, the most glorious of all your conquests; and while you continue to enjoy on earth that undisputed glory which your other actions have acquired you, is preparing an eternal triumph for you in the heavens.

It is what is continually implored of God, in his most ardent prayers, who, enjoying the abundant favours of your Majesty, lives at this day the most happy of mankind, under your most powerful protection; and is most obliged to continue all his life, with all imaginable respect and zeal,

SIR,

Your Majesty’s most obedient
And most faithful subject and servant,

LOUIS MAIMBOURG.

THE AUTHOR’S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER.

Since perhaps there are some, who may think themselves concerned in this history, because they are the grand-children or descendants of those who are here mentioned, I desire them to consider, that writing like a faithful historian, I am obliged sincerely to relate either the good or ill which they have done. If they find themselves offended, they must take their satisfaction on those who have prescribed the laws of history: let them give an account of their own rules; for historians are indispensably bound to follow them; and the sum of our reputation consists in a punctual execution of their orders.

Thus, as I pretend not to have deserved their thanks in speaking well of their relations, so I may reasonably conclude, that they ought not to wish me ill, when I say what is not much to their advantage. I faithfully relate what I find written in good authors, or in particular memoirs, which I take for good, after I have thoroughly examined them.

I do yet more; for, considering that no man is bound to believe, when I say in general that I have had the use of good manuscripts, on whose credit I give you what is not otherwhere to be had; I sincerely and particularly point out the originals from whence I drew these truths; and am fully convinced, that every historian, who hopes to gain the belief of his reader, ought to transact in the same manner. For, if there were no more to be done, than barely to say, I have found such or such an extraordinary passage in an authentic manuscript, without giving a more particular account of it under pretence of being bound to secrecy, there is no kind of fable which by this means might not be slurred upon the reader for a truth. An author might tell many a lusty lie, but a reader, who were not a very credulous fool, or a very complaisant gentleman, would have a care of believing him. It is for this reason that I have always marked in my margins, the books, relations, and memoirs, whether printed or manuscripts, from whence I take the substance of my relations.

One of those writers, of whom I have made most use, is Monsieur Peter Victor Cayet, in his nine years chronology, containing the history of the wars of Henry the Fourth.[19] Because he having always followed that prince, since he was placed in his service, together with Monsieur de la Gaucherie, who was his preceptor, it is exceeding probable, that he was better informed of the passages of those times, of which he was an eye-witness, than others who had not that advantage.

For what else concerns him, he was one of the most learned and able ministers which our Protestants have ever had; and in that quality served Madam Catharine, the king’s sister, till, about two years after the conversion of that great prince, he acknowledged the true Catholic religion, and made his solemn abjuration of heresy at Paris. He also published the motives of his conversion in a learned treatise, which was received with great applause both in France and in foreign countries; and his example, fortified with the strong reasons of a man so able as he was, to which no solid answer was ever given, was immediately followed by the conversion of a great number of Protestants, who by his means came to understand the falsehood of their religion pretendedly reformed.

This action so infinitely nettled his former brotherhood of ministers, that they grew outrageous against him. They ran down his reputation with full cry, and endeavoured to blacken it with a thousand horrible calumnies, with which they stuffed their libels; and, amongst others, that which they have inserted into the memoirs of the League, with the greatest villainy imaginable, taking no notice of the solid and convincing answers he made them. Which proceeding of theirs is sufficient to discover the falsity of all they have written to defame him, according to the libelling genius of presbytery.