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LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR OCTOBER, 1838.]

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.

only are these passages out of place, but scar of them are intrinsically such that they woule become the editor of a third-rate party newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courtenay's talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that "it is a remarkable circumstance, 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 Shaftes bury; 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 cornot sufficiently studied the arts of selection and rúption, 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 against the Whigs of the present day. Not

Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple. By the Right Hon. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1836. VOL. III-44

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

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Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. 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 or 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 seifishness. 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 he 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 ribunal, 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 percumstances 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 mote 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 tyranny and sedition, were of the most serious

"Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto."

Of course a man is not bound to be a politician 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 duties 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 considering 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 greatest of 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 ings which prompted the "Grand Remon- of constitutions, of which the average durastrance" 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 contemplation of immemorial those political leaders who, at the time of the antiquity and immovable stability. AccustomRestoration, were still young, or in the vigour ed, on the other hand, to see change after change of manhood, there was neither a Southampton welcomed with eager hope and ending in disnor a Vane, neither a Falkland nor a Hamp- appointment,--to see shame and confusion of den. That pure, fervent, and constant loyalty face follow the extravagant hopes and predic which, in the preceding reign, had remained tions of rash and fanatical innovators--they unshaken on fields of disastrous battle, in had learned to look on professions of public foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust the High Court of Justice, was scarcely to be and contempt. They had sometimes talked found among the rising courtiers. As little, or the language of devoted subjects--sometimes still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay that of ardent lovers of their country. But claim to the great qualities of the statesmen their secret creed seems to have been, that who had stood at the head of the Long Parlia- loyalty was one great delusion, and patriotism ment. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are another. If they really entertained any predi discriminated from the ablest politicians of lection for the monarchical or for the popular the succeeding generation, by all the strong part of the constitution,--for Episcopacy or for lineaments which distinguish the men who Presbyterianism,-that predilection was feeble produce revolutions from the men whom revo- and languid; and instead of overcoming, as in lutions produce. The leader in a great change, the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, conthe man who stirs up a reposing community, fiscation, and death, was rarely of proof to resist and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be selfish fear. Such was the texture of the Presdestitute of some moral qualities which extort byterianism of Lauderdale, and of the specula even from enemies a reluctant admiration- tive republicanism of Halifax. The sense of fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthu- political honour seemed to be extinct. With siasm which is not the less fierce or perse- the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity vering, because it is sometimes disguised under in a public man is consistency. This test, the semblance of composure, and which bears though very defective, is perhaps the best that down before it the force of circumstances and any, except very acute or very near observers, the opposition of reluctant minds. These are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly qualities, variously combined with all sorts of enable the people to form an estimate of the virtues and vices, may be found, we think, in characters of the great, which, on the whole, most of the authors of great civil and religious approximates to correctness. But during the movements,-in Cæsar, in Mohammed, in latter part of the seventeenth century, inconHildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robes- sistency had necessarily ceased to be a dispierre; and these qualities were found, in no grace; and a man was no more taunted with scanty measure, among the chiefs of the party it, than he is taunted with being black at Timwhich opposed Charles the First. The cha- buctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing racter of the men whose minds are formed in what was common to him with the whole the midst of the confusion which follows a nation. In the short space of about seven great revolution is generally very different. years, the supreme power had been held by the Heat, the natural philosophers tell us, produces Long Parliament, by a Council of Officers, by rarefaction of the air, and rarefaction of the air Barebone's Parliament, by a Council of Officers produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions, again, by a Protector according to the Instruand revolutions make men zealous for nothing. ment of Government, by a Protector according The politicians of whom we speak, whatever to the humble petition and advice, by the Long may be their natural capacity or courage, are Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, almost always characterized by a peculiar by the Long Parliament a third time, by the levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apa- Convention, and by the king. In such times, thetic way of looking at the most solemn ques- consistency is so inconvenient to a man who tions, a willingness to leave the direction of affects it, and to all who are connected with their course to fortune and popular opinion, a him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, notion that one public cause is pretty nearly and is considered as impracticable obstinacy as good as another, and a firm conviction that and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such times, it is much better to be the hireling of the worst a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve cause than to be a martyr to the best. 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 mino

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

mportance is not likely to be regarded as ishonourable. In a country in which many very honest people had, within the space of a ew months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed.

The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable-we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some of our countrymen of those days. Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: "Uustable as water, thou shall not excel."

ancient and honourable, had, before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history; but which, long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and formed such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a regular and constitutional manner, an influence in the state scarcely inferior to that which, in widely different times, and by widely different arts, the house of Neville attained in England, and that of Douglas in Scotland. During the latter years of George II., and through the whole reign of George III., members of that widely spread and powerful connection were almost constantly at the head either of the Government or of the Opposition. There were times when the "cousinhood," as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction of an efficient cabinet. Within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple.

mond, but regained his liberty by an exchange, repaired to England, and there sat in the House of Commons as burgess for Chichester.. Heattached himself to the Presbyterian party, and was one of those moderate members who, at the close of the year 1648, voted for treating with Charles on the basis to which that prince had himself agreed, and who were, in conse quence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his office in Ireland.

This character is susceptible of innumerable So splendid have been the fortunes of the modifications, according to the innumerable main stock of the Temple family, continued by varieties of intellect and temper in which it female succession. William Temple, the first may be found. Men of unquiet minds and of the line who attained to any great historical violent ambition followed a fearfully eccentric eminence, was of a younger branch. His facourse-darted wildly from one extreme to ther, Sir John Temple, was Master of the Rolls another-served and betrayed all parties in in Ireland, and distinguished himself among turn-showed their unblushing foreheads al- the Privy Councillors of that kingdom by the ternately in the van of the most corrupt admi-zeal with which, at the commencement of the nistrations and the most factious oppositions- struggle between the crown and the Long were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first Parliament, he supported the popular cause. of the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot | He was arrested by order of the Duke of Or-abjured their religion to win their sovereign's favour, while they were secretly planning his overthrow--shrived themselves to Jesuits with letters in cipher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets-corresponded with the Hague whilst in office under James-began to correspond with St. Germains as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls within which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he enjoyed it and in the very first moment in which it could no longer be enjoyed without danger and vexation, he contentedly let it go. He was not exempt, we think, from the prevailing political immorality. His mind took the contagion, but took it ad modum recipientis ;-in a form so inild that an undiscerning judge might doubt whether it were indeed the same fierce pestilence that was raging all around. The malady partook of the constitutional languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated by nis calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of Shaftesbury and Sunderland.

Temple sprang from a family which, though

Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the king with very conspicuous zeal during the Civil War, and was deprived of his preferment in the church after the victory of the Parliament. On account of the loss which Hammond sustained on this occasion, he has the honour of being designated, in the cant of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries who unite the worst parts of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor.

William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London, in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at BishopStortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling.

greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from BishopStortford, and never retrieved the loss;-a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing 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 questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, 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.

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 illustrious father, destitute also of the meek 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 sentiments 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 dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised 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 Proby any means deeply read, but versed in all tector. Love, however, triumphed over ambithe 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 writpolitics he professed himself a Royalist. His ten just at the time when all England was ringopinions 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 vabling 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.

On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter was Governor of Guernsey for the king, and the young people were, like the father, warm for the royal cause. At an inn where they stopped, in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested and brought before the governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at liberty with

her fellow-travellers.

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready to render services to any party for the sake of preferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's character. Yet a character, even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to Marlborougn. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the eulogists of Ternple have dignified with the appellation of phi 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 persecuted 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."

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 Nearly seven years did this arduous wooing prospects of the lovers were scarcely less continue. We are not accurately informed gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advan- respecting Temple's movements during that tageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy time. But he seems to have led a rambling Osborne was in the mean time beseiged by as life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in

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