torily disproves an insinuation thrown out by a former biographer of Temple, that he was a justifier of that cowardly crime-suicide. After observing that her excess of grief may lead to the destruction of life, he adds: "You will say this is your design, or if not, your desire. But I hope you are not yet so far gone, or so desperately bent. Your ladyship knows very well your life is not your own, but His that lent it to you, to manage and preserve the best you could, and not throw it away, as if it came from some common hand. It belongs, in a great measure to your country and your family, and therefore, by all human laws, as well as divine, self-murder has ever been agreed upon as the greatest crime, and is punished here with the utmost shame, which is all that can be inflicted upon the dead. If we do it, and know that we do it by a long and continued grief, can we think ourselves innocent ?" "When you go about to throw away your health, or your life, so great a remainder of your own family, and no great hopes of that into which you have entered, and all by a desperate melancholy, upon an accident past remedy, and to which all mortal race is perpetually subject; for God's sake, madam, give me leave to tell you, that what you do is not at all agreeable either with so good a Christian, or so reasonable, or so great a person as your ladyship appears to the world in all other lights. I know no duty in religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God Almighty, than a perfect submission to his will in all things; nor do I think any disposition of mind can please him more, or become us better than that of being satisfied with all he gives, and contented with all that he takes away. None, I am sure, can be of more honour to God, nor of more ease to ourselves: for if we consider him as our Maker, we cannot contend with him; if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him; so that we may be confident whatever he does is in tended for good, and whatever happens that we can interpret otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repining, nor save any thing by resisting. If you look about you, and consider other lives as well as your own, and what your lot is in comparison with those that have been drawn in the circle of your knowledge, if you think how few are born with honour, how many die without name or . children, how little beauty we see, how few friends we hear of, how many diseases, and how much poverty there is in the world, you will fall down upon your knees, and instead of repining at one affliction, will admire so many blessings as you have received at the hand of God. God Almighty gave you all blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest: is this his fault or yours? nay, is it not to be very unthankful to heaven, as well as very scornful to the rest of the world? Is it not to say, because you have lost one thing which God has given, you thank him for nothing he has left, and care not what he takes away? Is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the world, there is nothing left in it which you think can deserve your kindness or esteem? Your extreme fondness was, perhaps, as displeasing to God before, as now your extreme affliction; and your loss may have been a punishment for your faults in the manner of enjoying what you had. It is at least pious to ascribe all the ill that befals us to our own demerits, rather than to injustice in God; and it becomes us better to adore all the issues of his providence in the effects, than inquire into the causes; for submission is the only way of reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the greatest duty we can pretend to, and the best remedy we can apply to all our misfor tunes." After these appeals to religion, he gives worldly reasons for controlling duty to her husband, her son, and her the violence of her grief; urging her friends: "I was in hope," he says in concluding, " that what was so violent could not be so long; but when I observed it to be stronger with age, and increase like a stream, the farther it ran; when I saw it draw out such unhappy consequences, and threaten no less than your child, your health, and your life, I could no longer forbear this endeavour, nor end without begging of your ladyship, for God's sake, and for your own, for your children, and for your friends, for your country's and for your family's, that you would no longer abandon yourself to disconsolate passion, but that you would at length awaken your piety, give way to your prudence, or at least rouse up the invincible spirit of the Percys, that Temple's long intimacy and apparent cordiality with Lord Arlington, seems to us not very reconcileable with Firm as the his general character. Lord Chamberlain certainly was, and devoted to Charles in his adversity, his conduct as a statesman, when Secretary of State, and as adviser of his royal master, was anything but commendable. The portrait which the author of "Grammont" gives of him is remarkable. Speaking of his unsuccessful negociations in Spain, he says: · Quoiqu'il n'y eût pas reussi pour les interêts de sou maitre, il n'y avait pas tout-a-fait perdu sou temps: car il avait parfaitement attrapê par son exterieur le serieux et la gravetê des Espagnols et dans les affaires il imitait Il avait une assez bien leur denteur. Cicatrice an Travers du nez, qui couvrait une longue mouche, ou pour mieux dire, une petite emplâtre en losange. Les blessures au visage donnent d' ordinaire certain air violent et guerrier qui ne sied pas mal. C'etait tout le contraire a son egard, et cette emplâtre remarquable s' etait tellement accomodé a l' air mysterieux du sien qu' il semblait y ajouter quelque chose d' important et de capable. Arlington, a l'abri de cette contenance composée d'une grande acidité pour le travail et d'une impenetrable stupidité pour le secret, s'etait donné pour grand politique et n'ayant pas le loisir de l' examiner, on l' avait cru sur sa parole, et : ou l'avait fait ministre et secretaire d' etat sur sa mine." Hume and Burnet speak of him in terms of great disparagement. He is however, more favourably viewed by his biographer in the " Biographia Britannica;" and Clarendon, who did not like him, speaks of his pleasant and agreeable humour. Temple and he at length became estranged from one another. The first palpable occasion of this seems to have been the marriage of the Princess Mary with remonstrate with him, on behalf of For several years previous to what Lady Gifford calls "the surprising Revolution of 1688," Temple had lived secluded, between Sheen and Moor-Park. At the latter end of 1686 he waited on James the Second, at Windsor, to assure him that he never would again enter upon any public appointment, and begged his favor and protection to one who would James, always live a good subject. who used to say that it was Sir Wm. Temple's character always to be believed, promised him what he desired, but made him some reproaches for not coming into his service upon the On this passage, with one from the "Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning," "Observe, Blair, after noticing an unharmonious sentence from Tillotson, says: now, on the other hand, the ease with which the following sentence glides along and Here every thing the graceful intervals at which the pauses are placed. is at once easy to the breath, and grateful to the ear; and it is this sort of flowing measure, this regular and proportional division of his sentence, which renders Sir Wm. Temple's style always agreeable. I must observe, at the same time, that a sentence with too many rests, and these placed at intervals too apparently measured and regular, is apt to savour of affectation."-i. 325. landing of William. John Temple, who then resided at Sheen, and had married a rich French heiress, the daughter of Monsieur Duplessin Rambouillet, a French Protestant, in vain solicited his father's permission to meet the Prince. He had promised James never to engage in any illegal measure in opposition to the Crown, with a reserve of the case of the introduction of foreigners into this country. He conceived he could take no part in the revolution, consistently with this promise, but upon the abdication of the King his scruples were so far removed that he waited upon the Prince, who was at Windsor, and took his son with him. The Prince pressed him to come into his service, and paid him two or three visits at Sheen; but Temple's resolution (now in his 61st year) was not to be shaken, and he returned to Moor-Park, in the latter end of 1689, to be out of the way of further solicitation. In the first moments of the struggle, as remarked by his biographer, he could not have foreseen that it would be easy and bloodless. We, who only read these events, are apt to forget that those who embarked in the enterprize of William, were committed in a contest of indefinite duration and doubtful issue, which they might have to sustain with their lives and properties, amidst confiscation and carnage. They might have been required to act over again the scenes of the Great Rebellion,not those of the Glorious Revolution. As Mr. M'Auley remarks, in a review of Sir James Mackintosh's " Fragment on the Revolution :" "Every man who then meddled with public affairs, took his life in his hand. Men of gentle natures stood aloof from contests in which they could not engage without hazarding their own necks, and the fortunes of their children. This was the course adopted by Sir William Temple, by Evelyn, and by many other men, who were in every respect admirably qualified to serve the state." Temple." The causes of this unhappy occurrence remain in obscurity. Lady Gifford, alluding to his death, thus concludes her interesting memoir : "With this deplorable accident ended all the good fortune so long taken notice firmed the rule that no man ought to of in our family, and but too well conthink his life happy till the end of it. With this load of his affliction, and my own, and all of us with hearts oppressed, we returned with Sir William Temple and his desolate family to Moor-Park, and he had so firm a resolution of passing his life there, that I believe another such Revolution itself would not have altered it. God Almighty only knows how he shall be pleased to dispose of what remains to him, who upon all the dismal accidents that happened in his life, I have so often heard repeat these words, God's holy name be praised.'" It was about the period of the Revolution that the connection between Sir William Temple and Jonathan Swift commenced. death Swift published a collection of his letters. Soon after his Shortly after coming under his roof he tried to propitiate his patron by compliments in verse. The ode which he addressed to him in June 1689, we leave, as to its poetical merit, to the biographers of its author; but the topics are not uninteresting in a life of Temple. The burden of the song is, that Temple was the first man who was learned without Most men the young poet pedantry. says III. "Purchase knowledge at th' expense IV. "Thrice happy you have 'scap'd this general pest. Those mighty epithets, learn'd, good, and great, Which we ne'er joined before, but in romances meet, You cannot be compared to one; I must, like him who painted Venus' face, Borrow from every one a grace. Temple's son, however, ultimately We find in you at last united grown. accepted, and apparently with his father's permission, the situation of secretary at war. Within a week afterwards he was found drowned in the Thames, having left this writing behind him: "I wish the King all happiness, and abler servants than John Virgil and Epicurus will not do, Their courting a retreat like you, Unless I put in Cæsar's learning too; Your happy frame at once controls This great triumvirate of souls.'" "Other topics of praise are his detection of political intrigues and machinations" VII. "The wily tricks of state, those jugglers' tricks, About this time time pass the bill. "Deduction's broken chain, Meets and salutes her sister-link again,' "and dwell on the lines in which Lady Temple is introduced :— "After two years Swift went to Ireland for his health, and it was not until after his return that his talents greatly improved by copious reading, and his powers of observation did obtain for him a share of Sir William's confidence. Indeed he was certainly now treated as one of the family, and occasionally made one of the party when the king himself, who occasionally visited Moor Park, was pre- Sprung from a better world, and chosen then sent. "There is, unfortunately, little record of what passed between Temple and his royal acquaintance, or even of the subjects upon which King William consulted him, but his advice was asked occasionally upon matters of high importance. For the Earl of Portland came to consult him, by the King's command, on the expediency of refusing the royal assent to the bill for triennial parliaments. Sir William Temple's advice was, that the bill should pass, and he employed Swift to draw up reasons for it taken from English history. Temple's opinions in favour of a conciliatory treatment of parliament, would doubtless have induced him to advise that a bill which had passed both houses should be accepted by the King; and he might easily have satisfied William from history, that, in point of fact, short parliaments had been usual; and that the two parliaments of longest duration (1640 and 1661) were by no means favourable to the monarchy. Swift, who was sent to the Earl of Portland with the reasons for passing the bill, says, that the King had been persuaded that Charles the First lost his crown by passing one of the same purport; whereas the truth was, that Charles' ruin was rather owing to the bill which put it out of his power to dissolve the parliament. It was the long parlia. ment which went to war with him. The reasonings of Temple and Swift did not prevail. The King would not at that As parent earth, burst by imprisoned winds, The best companion for the best of men : "But he apostrophizes himself in lines “An abandoned wretch by hopes forsook ; Forsook by hopes, ill-fortune's last relief, Assign'd for life to unremitting grief. For let heaven's wrath enlarge those weary days "Thy few ill-presented graces seem teem.'" "A complaining dependent, especially if he complains in verse, will generally obtain compassion; his readers are apt to think him in the right, particularly if they are themselves literary men: these not only sympathise with the sufferer, but record his griefs. "Swift's biographers accordingly, including the last and most eminent, Sir Walter Scott, have deemed him ill-used by Sir William Temple, at least at this period of their connection. But it is at least as probable that Swift was unreasonable in his expectations, as that Temple was luke-warm in his patronage. Swift's complaints began as early as 1692, when he was about twenty-five years old, and had been with his patron scarcely two years. Having made up his mind to go into the church, he had received from Sir William Temple a promise of his influence in obtaining preferment:-'I am not to take orders,' he says, in a letter of 29th November, 1692, until the King gives me a prebend; and Sir William Temple, though he promises me the certainty of it, yet is less forward than I could wish, because, I suppose he believes I shall leave him, and upon some accounts he thinks me a little necessary to him.' Such is Swift's representation; in the absence of Temple's we must recollect that Swift had no claim upon him but that of service, and that however valuable the services of the secretary might have been, it was unreasonable to expect that they should be continued a little longer, before they were rewarded by a provision for life. But we do not know that Sir William Temple had already had it in his power to procure this prebend, or had neglected any opportunity of obtaining it. When Swift himself became a courtier, and liable to the solicitations of all his Irish cousins, he must have learned that the most powerful influence cannot at all times command even the smallest preferment. Nearly two years afterwards, in which period, no doubt, Sir William had perceived his talents and usefulness, and had accordingly put him forward even in his intercourse with the King, Swift left Moor Park, and thus announced his departure:I forgot to tell you I left Sir William Temple a month ago, just as I foretold it to you, and everything happened thereupon exactly as I guessed. He was extremely angry I left him, and yet would not oblige himself any farther than upon my good behaviour, nor would promise any thing firmly to me at all, so that every body judged I did best to leave him.' Swift might certainly forget to tell his cousin of his leaving Moor Park; but when his memory returned he ought to have told the story fully and fairly. He was told it elsewhere: Although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the church merely for support; and Sir William Temple, who was then Master of the Rolls in Ireland, offered him an employ about £120 a year in that office, whereupon Mr. Swift told him, that having now an opportunity of living without being driven into the church for a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland to take holy orders; he was recommended to the Lord Capel, then Lord Deputy, who gave him a prebend in the North worth about £100 a year.' Surely, considering that Swift had come to Sir William Temple a very few years before for £20 a year and his board, this offer, with the alternative of remaining longer in his service, and then obtaining preferment in the church, was not illiberal. Whether Temple was angry as Swift avers, or cold as Sheridan assumes, we know not; but he gave Swift no substantial ground of complaint, still less if, as is probable, he gave him the recommendation to Lord Capel which procured him the prebend in the North. Some months after his departure, being about to take orders, Swift applied to Sir William for the necessary testimonial. I entreat your honour will please to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family, wherein I shall stand in need of all your goodness to excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much more to say any thing to my advantage. The particulars expected of me are what relate to morals and learning, and the reasons for quitting your honour's family; that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any farther, than for infirmities.' Sir William Temple, who probably thought himself the injured party, received this as a sufficient atonement, and gave a testimonial so prompt and satisfactory that Swift obtained orders within twelve days of his application. Surely nothing in Swift's character makes it improbable that his patron had something to forgive whether of unbecoming behaviour or unreasonable expression of disappointment. It is to the credit of both parties that the breach was not irreparable. Swift took possession of the prebend of Kilroot; fourd it intolerably dull, and after an absence of about a year, readily accepted an invitation to return to Moor Park, where he remained during the life of the proprietor. From this time there was no acknowledged disagreement between these two eminent persons; and Swift, whose salary and situation in the family had probably been improved, does not appear to have complained that he was not preferred in the church, or indeed to have wished to alter his condition." |