LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.*

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MR. COURTENAY has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, on some questions, been so Whigish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast to through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good-will of many who strongly dissent from his opinions.

This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by a preface, in which he informs us, that the assistance furnished to him from various quarters “has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life." We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit, from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep, and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature,—they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of Power.

SW

only are these passages out of place, but scale of them are intrinsically such that they would become the editor of a third-rate party newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courte nay's talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that "it is a remarkable circum stance, familiar to those who are acquainted with history, but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politician of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, never extended their liberality to the native Irish or the professors of the ancient religion." What schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of this remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or old, was ever such an idiot as to think that it could be suppressed? Really, we might as well say that it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to people well read in history, but carefully suppressed by the clergy of the Established Church, that in the fifteenth century England was Catholic. We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to be spoken against the Reform bill: but we forbear.

We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William Temple owes much to Mr. Courtenay's researches. Temple is one of those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet he is not without fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled or surpassed him in talents; but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few may be named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested than his; but they were men of no eminent ability. Morally, he was above Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell.

The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of diligence, care, good sense, and impartiality; and these qualities are sufficient to make a book valuable, but not quite suffi- To say of a man that he occupied a high cient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has position in times of misgovernment, of cor not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and ruption, of civil and religious faction, and that, compression. The information with which he nevertheless, he contracted no great stain and furnishes us must still, we apprehend, be con- bore no part in any crime;-that he won the sidered as so much raw material. To manu-esteem of a profligate court and of a turbulent facture it will be highly useful, but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write.

We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls of the present day. Not

against the Whigs of t

Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple. By the Right Hon. THOMAS PERE

BRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1836.

people, without being guilty of any great subserviency to either, seems to be very high praise; and all this may with truth be said ald of Temple.

Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. A temper not naturally good, but under strict command,-a constant regard to decorum,--a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life,-a disposition to be content with small and certain winnings rather than go on doubling the stake,-these seem to us to be the most remarkable features of his character. This sort of moderation, when united, as in him it was, with very con

siderable abilities, is, under ordinary circum- | kind. He could not bear discomfort, bodily o stances, scarcely to be distinguished from the mental. His lamentations when, in the course highest and purest integrity; and yet may be of his diplomatic journeys, he was put a little perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, out his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, with coldness of heart, and with the most in- to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of tense selfishness. Temple, we fear, had not riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian road, sufficient warmth and elevation of sentiment of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling to deserve the name of a virtuous man. He in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he if he had gone on an expedition to the North rendered considerable service to her; but he Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind risked nothing for her. No temptation which of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of codeither the King or the Opposition could hold dling himself, appears in all parts of his conout ever induced him to come forward as the duct. He loved fame, but not with the love of supporter either of arbitrary or of factious an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as measures. But he was most careful not to give an end, not at all as a means;-as a personal offence by strenuously opposing such measures. luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage He never put himself prominently before the to others. He scraped it together and treasured public eye, except at conjunctures when be it up with a timid and niggardly thrift; and was almost certain to gain, and could not pos- never employed the hoard in any enterprise, sibly lose at conjunctures when the interest however virtuous and honourable, in which of the state, the views of the court, and the there was hazard of losing one particle. No passions of the multitude all appeared for an wonder if such a person did little or nothing instant to coincide. By judiciously availing which deserves positive blame. But much himself of several of these rare moments, he more than this may justly be demanded of a succeeded in establishing a high character for man possessed of such abilities and placed in wisdom and patriotism. When the favourable such a situation. Had Temple been brought crisis was passed, he never risked the reputa- before Dante's infernal tribunal, he would not tion which he had won. He avoided the great have been condemned to the deeper recesses. offices of state which a caution almost pusilla- of the abyss. He would not have been boiled nimous, and confined himself to quiet and se- with Dundee in the crimson pool of Bulicame, cluded departments of public business, in or hurled with Danby into the seething pitch which he could enjoy moderate but certain ad- of Malebolge, or congealed with Churchill in vantage without incurring envy. If the cir- the eternal ice of Giudecca; but he would per. cumstances of the country became such that haps have been placed in a dark vestibule next it was impossible to take any part in politics to the shade of that inglorious pontiffwithout some danger, he retired to his Library and his Orchard; and, while the nation groaned under oppression, or resounded with tumult and with the din of civil arms, amused himself by writing Memoirs and tying up Apricots. His political career bore some resemblance to the military career of Louis XIV. Louis, lest his royal dignity should be compromised by failure, never repaired to a siege, till it had been reported to him by the most skilful officers in his service that nothing could prevent the fall of the place. When this was ascertained, the monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared among the tents, held councils of war, dictated the capitulation, received the keys, and then returned to Versailles to hear his flatterers repeat that Turenne had been beaten at Mariendal, that Condé had been forced to raise the siege of Arras, and that the only warrior whose glory had never been obscured by a single check was Louis the Great! Yet Condé and Turenne will always be considered captains of a very different order from the invincible Louis; and we must own that many statesmen who have committed very great faults, appear to us to be deserving of more esteem than the faultless Temple. For in truth his faultlessness is chiefly to be as cribed to his extreme dread of all responsibility;-to his determination rather to leave his country in a scrape than to run any chance of being in a scrape himself. He seems to have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to which a public man was exposed, in those days of conflicting ty ranny and sedition, were of the most serious

"Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto."

Of course a man is not bound to be a politi cian any more than he is bound to be a soldier; and there are perfectly honourable ways of quitting both politics and the military profes sion. But neither in the one way of life, nor in the other, is any man entitled to take all the sweet and leave all the sour. A man who belongs to the army only in time of peace,who appears at reviews in Hyde Park, escorts the sovereign with the utmost valour and fidelity to and from the House of Lords, and retires as soon as he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an expedition-is justly thought to have disgraced himself. Some portion of the censure due to such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the mere holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as those du ties become difficult and disagreeable; that is to say, as soon as it becomes peculiarly important that he should resolutely perform them.

But though we are far indeed from consider ing Temple as a perfect statesmen, though we place him below many statesmen who have committed very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared with his contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable appearance. The reaction which followed the victory of the popular party over Charles the First, had produced a hurtful effect on the national charac ter; and this effect was most discernible in the classes and in the places which had been most strongly excited by the recent Revolution. The deterioration was greater in London than in the country, and was greatestof all in the courtly and

official circles. Almost all that remained of what feelings; yet they had not acquired a strong
had been good and noble in the Cavaliers and passion for innovation. Accustomed to see old
Roundheads of 1642, was now to be found in establishments shaking, falling, lying in ruins
the middling orders. The principles and feel- all around them,-to live under a succession
ngs which prompted the "Grand Remon- of constitutions, of which the average dura
strance" were still strong among the sturdy tion was about a twelvemonth,-they had no
yeomen, and the decent God-fearing merchants. religious reverence for prescription;-nothing
The spirit of Derby and Capel still glowed in of that frame of mind which naturally springs
many sequestered manor-houses; but among from the habitual contemplatior. of immemorial
those political leaders who, at the time of the antiquity and immovable stability. Accustom.
Restoration, were still young, or in the vigoured, on the other hand, to see change after change
of manhood, there was neither a Southampton welcomed with eager hope and ending in dis-
nor a Vane, neither a Falkland nor a Hamp-appointment,-to see shame and confusion of
den. That pure, fervent, and constant loyalty
which, in the preceding reign, had remained
unshaken on fields of disastrous battle, in
foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of
the High Court of Justice, was scarcely to be
found among the rising courtiers. As little, or
still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay
claim to the great qualities of the statesmen
who had stood at the head of the Long Parlia-
ment. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are
discriminated from the ablest politicians of
the succeeding generation, by all the strong
lineaments which distinguish the men who
produce revolutions from the men whom revo-
lutions produce. The leader in a great change,
the man who stirs up a reposing community,
and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be
a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be
destitute of some moral qualities which extort
even from enemies a reluctant admiration-
fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthu-
siasm which is not the less fierce or perse-
vering, because it is sometimes disguised under
the semblance of composure, and which bears
down before it the force of circumstances and
the opposition of reluctant minds. These
qualities, variously combined with all sorts of
virtues and vices, may be found, we think, in
most of the authors of great civil and religious
movements,-in Cæsar, in Mohammed, in
Hildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robes-
pierre; and these qualities were found, in no
scanty measure, among the chiefs of the party
which opposed Charles the First. The cha-
racter of the men whose minds are formed in
the midst of the confusion which follows a
great revolution is generally very different.
Heat, the natural philosophers tell us, produces
rarefaction of the air, and rarefaction of the air
produces cold.
So zeal makes revolutions,
and revolutions make men zealous for nothing.
The politicians of whom we speak, whatever
may be their natural capacity or courage, are
almost always characterized by a peculiar
levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apa-
thetic way of looking at the most solemn ques-
tions, a willingness to leave the direction of
their course to fortune and popular opinion, a
aotion that one public cause is pretty nearly
as good as another, and a firm conviction that
it is much better to be the hireling of the worst
cause than to be a martyr to the best.

This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither the enthusiasm of the Cavalier, nor the enthusiasm of the Republican. They had been early emancipated from the dominion of old usages and

face follow the extravagant hopes and predictions of rash and fanatical innovators-they had learned to look on professions of public spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust and contempt. They had sometimes talked the language of devoted subjects--sometimes that of ardent lovers of their country. But their secret creed seems to have been, that loyalty was one great delusion, and patriotism another. If they really entertained any predilection for the monarchical or for the popular part of the constitution,-for Episcopacy or for Presbyterianism,-that predilection was feeble and languid; and instead of overcoming, as in the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely of proof to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the Presbyterianism of Lauderdale, and of the specula tive republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near observers, are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable the people to form an estimate of the characters of the great, which, on the whole, approximates to correctness. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century, inconsistency had necessarily ceased to be a disgrace; and a man was no more taunted with it, than he is taunted with being black at Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common to him with the whole nation. In the short space of about seven years, the supreme power had been held by the Long Parliament, by a Council of Officers, by Barebone's Parliament, by a Council of Officers again, by & Protector according to the Instrument of Government, by a Protector according to the humble petition and advice, by the Long Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, by the Long Parliament a third time, by the Convention, and by the king. In such times, consistency is so inconvenient to a man who affects it, and to all who are connected with him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, and is considered as impracticable obstinacy and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such times, a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve a succession of governments. Blake did so in one profession, and Hale in another; and the conduct of both has been approved by pos terity. But it is clear that when inconsistency with respect to the most important public questions has ceased to be a reproach, incon sistency with respect to questions of minor

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many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his

greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolu-
tions in the government and discipline of the
colleges, and unsettled the minds of the stu-
dents. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little
Greek which he had brought from Bishop-illustrious father, destitute also of the meek
Stortford, and never retrieved the loss;-a cir-
cumstance which would hardly be worth notic-
ing but for the almost incredible fact, that fifty
years later, he was so absurd as to set up his
own authority against that of Bentley on ques-
tions of Greek history and philology. He made
no proficiency either in the old philosophy
which still lingered in the schools of Cam-
bridge, or in the new philosophy of which
Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end
of his life he continued to speak of the former
with ignorant admiration, and of the latter
with equally ignorant contempt.

and placid virtues of his elder brother, this
young man was perhaps a more formidable
rival in love than either of them would have
been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the senti
ments of the grave and aged, describes him as
an "insolent fool," and a "debauched ungodly
Cavalier." These expressions probably mean
that he was one who, among young and dissi.
pated people, would pass for a fine gentleman.
Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more
formidable breed than those which lie on mo-
dern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell pro-
mised that the highest functionaries at Dublin
After residing at Cambridge two years, he should be set to work to procure her a fine
departed without taking a degree, and set out Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his
upon his travels. He seems then to have been attentions as very flattering, though his father
a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not was then only Lord-General, and not yet Pro-
by any means deeply read, but versed in all tector. Love, however, triumphed over ambi.
the superficial accomplishments of a gentle- tion, and the young lady appears never to have
man, and acceptable in all polite societies. In regretted her decision; though, in a letter writ-
politics he professed himself a Royalist. His ten just at the time when all England was ring.
opinions on religious subjects seem to have ing with the news of the violent dissolution of
been such as might be expected from a young the Long Parliament, she could not refrain
man of quick parts, who had received a ram- from reminding Temple, with pardonable va-
bling education, who had not thought deeply,nity, "how great she might have been, if she
who had been disgusted by the morose austeri- had been so wise as to have taken hold of the
ty of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from offer of H. C."
childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects,
might easily learn to feel an impartial contempt
for them all.

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, On his road to France he fell in with the son and spoke of him as an unprincipled advenand daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter turer, without honour or religion, ready to renwas Governor of Guernsey for the king, and der services to any party for the sake of prethe young people were, like the father, warm ferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view for the royal cause. At an inn where they of Temple's character. Yet a character, even stopped, in the Isle of Wight, the brother in the most distorted view taken of it by the amused himself with inscribing on the windows most angry and prejudiced minds, generally his opinion of the ruling powers. For this in- retains something of its outline. No caricastance of malignancy the whole party were ar- turist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, rested and brought before the governor. The or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profuin those troubled times, scarcely any gentle- sion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that man of any party ever failed to show where a the turn of mind which the eulogists of Temwoman was concerned, took the crime on her-ple have dignified with the appellation of phiself, and was immediately set at liberty with losophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appear ance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight or suffer martyrdom for their exiled king and their perse. cuted church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back. and addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple: "We talked ourselves weary," she says "he renounced me, and I defied him."

her fellow-travellers.

This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty, Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament, the father of the heroine was holding Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the mean time beseiged by as

Nearly seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes u