serviency to his will, she effected whatsoever she desired, without which it was impossible to keep him within any bounds."* The ex officio Keeper of the King's conscience learned some secrets worth knowing that day, tête-à-tête with the jovial Prime Minister, as they sat together, hobnobbing, over Houghton's best wine and walnuts. A dashing French essayist says of George II. that il jouait le Lovelace; amoureux de sa femme, et cachant cet amour, "il payait des maîtresses qu'il détestait, et tenait à certain vices de gentilhomme qui, fort inutiles à son bien-être, lui semblaient essentiels à son honneur." There was not much of Lovelace about dapper George. But the amoureux de sa femme, et cachant cet amour, might have suggested to M. Chasles, who is a reader of our eighteenth century light literature, the more appropriate type of Sir Bashful Constant. The French literature of a corresponding period and school does supply M. Chasles with a better type still-in a comedy by one who was envoy from the French court to ours "Caroline Wilhelmina, highly remarkable for good sense, personal beauty, and strength of character, regarded without apprehension these rivals whom her husband set up, only for his dignity's sake, and that he might not fall too far below Louis XIV. and the Regent Orleans. His wife was belle et jolie, spirituelle et fière: his illicit connexions had nothing of all that; but, according to the King's humour, le bon ton was satisfied: we have here, by the way, the type Destouches gives in his Philosophe Marié,' a comedy as absurd as its model; Destouches was our envoy at this court. "Queen Caroline," M. Chasles continues, "whose health was weak and her temperament cold, reconciled herself to this state of things; and, without seeming to do so, governed at once her husband and his sultanas; and corresponded with Leibnitz, and received Newton, and conversed with Clarke, and bestowed a pension on the poet Savage, and made herself adored by the people,-making amends, by the attractive decorum of her own court, for the offensive brutalities of the sergent aux gardes whom England maintained on the throne of the Tudors and the Stuarts. Brought up at the court of Berlin, she had some of the good qualities of Frederick the Great, without any of his vices. She it was who said to the King, The finest crown in the world is that which has among its subjects a Leibnitz in Hanover, and in England a Newton." "S It is rather amusing to compare with these high-flown terms the unvarnished prose of Caroline's dealings with the philosophers. In Mr. Kemble's valuable "State Papers" may be read some letters of hers to Leibnitz, of whom she was an old pupil, written in an appalling sort of French. Among other things, she assures her learned friend, soon after her arrival at St. James's as Princess of Wales, that she is endeavouring to have his great work (the Théodicée) translated-nous pansons à faire tradevuire votre deodisé,-but the difficulty is, who is to do it. Clerck is mentioned as the most capable person she knew of, but he was likely to be prejudiced, as il et trop de lopinion de Sr. Eizack newton. "D. *Notes on Domestic and Foreign Affairs, by Lord Chancellor King (Appendix to Lord King's Life of Locke), 2nd Sept., 1729. Etudes Politiques, par M. Philarète Chasles. In Murphy's comedy, "The Way to Keep Him." From this her Royal Highness passes into a dissertation on the immortality of the soul, on which Clerck and newton hold an adverse opinion-il on vue autre nossion sur lame." To entertain the subject at all-is an English reviewer's concluding comment-may be considered creditable to a princess, but the chief merit of her demonstration is that it is comprised in ten lines, and the chief interest it excites is that of deciphering what words she meant to use.* Horace Walpole expressly declares her learning to have been superficial, and her knowledge of languages the reverse of accurate. "She After describing her Majesty's manner as a most happy combination of Royal dignity with female grace, and her conversation as agreeable in all its varieties, from metaphysics down to mimicry and repartee, the present Earl Stanhope (historically speaking, Lord Mahon) says, that, in fact, her only faults were those of a Philaminte or a Belise.† was fond of talking on all learned subjects, and understood something of a few. Her toilette was a strange medley: prayers, and sometimes a sermon were read; tattle and gossip succeeded; metaphysics found a place; the head-dress was not forgotten; divines stood grouped with courtiers, and philosophers with ladies. On the table, perhaps, lay heaped together, the newest ode by Stephen Duck upon her beauty, her last letter from Leibnitz upon free will, and the most high-wrought panegyric of Dr. Clarke, on her 'inimitable sweetness of temper,' 'impartial love of truth,' and 'very particular and uncommon degree of knowledge, even on matters of the most abstract speculation.' Her great delight was to make theologians dispute in her presence, and argue controverted points, on which it has been said, perhaps untruly, that her own faith was wavering. But no doubt can exist as to her discerning and most praiseworthy patronage of worth and learning in the Church; the most able and pious men were everywhere sought out and preferred, and the Episcopal Bench was graced by such men as Hare, Sherlock, and Butler. Even to her enemies she could show favour, if they could show merit; through her intercession were Carte the historian and Lord Lansdowne the poet recalled from exile, and the former enabled to show his gratitude by renewing his intrigues for the Pretender."|| But if Walpole demurs to her scholarship, at least he does ample justice to the Queen's understanding, which, as well as her resolution, he pronounces "uncommonly strong." She had determined from the first, he says, to govern the King, and deserved to do so; for her submission to his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour and interest always took place of her own; so that her predominant feeling, love of power, was dearly bought, and, Horace thinks, seldom ill applied. Saturday Review, No. 62. † See Molière, Les Femmes Savantes. See his Dedication to his own and Leibnitz's Letters, pp. iii.-xiii., ed. 1717. § Butler, author of the celebrated " Analogy," was then living obscurely in the country as rector of Stanhope. The Queen thought that he was dead, and asked the question of Archbishop Blackburne. "No, Madam," said his Grace, "but he is buried!" The Queen took the hint, and put down Butler in her list for a vacant bishopric, which he obtained after her death.—See the Life of Secker, and Coxe's Walpole, pp. 551 and 554. || History of England from the Peace of Utrecht, &c., by Lord Mahon, vol. ii. ch. xv. 66 "She was ambitious too of fame; but, shackled by her devotion to the King, she seldom could pursue that object. She wished to be a patroness of learned men: but George had no respect for them or their works”. sneering impartially at Boetry and Bainting alike ;—" and her Majesty's own taste was not very exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies." Walpole further observes that her generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money only as the instrument of her good purposes: but the King stinted her in almost all her tastes; and though she wished for nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of her husband's avarice, as she did of others of his faults. Often, we are told, when she had made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not persuade the King to comply, she suffered the breach of word to fall on her, rather than reflect on him. Though his affection and confidence in her were, by Walpole's account, implicit, George lived in dread of being supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was extended even to the most private moments of business with my father [Sir Robert]. Whenever he entered, the Queen rose, courteseyed, and retired, or offered to retire. Sometimes the King condescended to bid her stay-on both occasions she and Sir Robert had previously settled the business to be discussed. Sometimes the King would quash the proposal in question, and yield after retalking it over with her but then he boasted to Sir Robert that he himself had better considered it."* shall presently see a curiously parallel instance in Madame de Maintenon's management of Louis XIV. We Meanwhile, we may cite an illustrious author whose adherence to Walpole's authority has already been noticed, and who says, expanding in his own facile manner the matter of Walpole's text, that since Margaret of Anjou, no queen-consort had exercised such weight in the political affairs of England; and that her husband, whose most shining quality was courage in the field of battle, and who endured the office of King of England, without ever being able to acquire English habits, or any familiarity with English dispositions, found the utmost assistance from the address of his partner; and that while he jealously affected to do everything according to his own will and pleasure, he was in secret prudent enough to take and follow the advice of his more adroit consort. "He entrusted to her the delicate office of determining the various degrees of favour necessary to attach the wavering, or to confirm such as were already friendly, or to regain those whose good will had been lost. "With all the winning address of an elegant, and, according to the times, an accomplished woman, Queen Caroline possessed the masculine soul of the other sex. She was proud by nature, and even her policy could not always temper her expressions of displeasure, though few were more ready at repairing any false step of this kind, when her prudence came up to the aid of her passions. She loved the real possession of power rather than the show of it, and whatever she did herself that was either wise or popular, she always desired that the King should have the full credit as well as the advantage of the measure, conscious that, by adding to his respectability, she was most likely to maintain her own. And so desirous was she to comply with all his tastes, that when * Walpole's Reminiscences, ch. vii. threatened with the gout, she repeatedly had recourse to checking the fit, by the use of the cold bath, thereby endangering her life, that she might be able to attend the King in his walks."* Her Vice-Chamberlain and confidant, "Lord Fanny," bears record, that by long studying and long experience of his Majesty's temper, the Queen knew how to instil her own sentiments, whilst she affected to receive his she could appear convinced while she was controverting, and obedient while she was ruling; by which means her dexterity and address made it impossible for anybody to persuade him what was truly his case that while she was seemingly on every occasion giving up her opinion and her will to his, she was always in reality turning his opinion and bending his will to hers. The Queen managed her august spouse, according to Lord Hervey, much as the heathen priests used to do the oracles of old, when, kneeling and prostrate before the altars of a pagan god, they received with the greatest devotion and reverence those directions in public which they had before instilled in private. And as these idols consequently were only propitious to the favourites of the augurers, so, his lordship goes on to say, "nobody who had not tampered with our chief priestess ever received a favourable answer from our god: storms and thunder greeted every votary that entered the temple without her protection; calms and sunshine those who obtained it." The king himself, we are further assured, was so little sensible of this being the case, that one day, enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife; Charles II. by his mistresses; King James by his priests; King William by his men-and Queen Anne by her women- -favourites. "His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, and asked—And who do they say governs now?' -The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels and lampoons of these days were composed : You may strut, dapper Goorge, but 't will all be in vain; Then if you would have us fall down and adore you, How absolutely Don Philip of Spain was under petticoat government, all * Sir Walter Scott. † Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second. See "Causeries du Lundi," t. v. "Louis XIV." it. his Majesty soon came to have premiers commis, First Commissioners, or what you will, who, by dint of artful manoeuvring and adroit flattery, knew perfectly how to make him adopt their measures as his own— tickling him with the complacent persuasion that what they prompted, and carried into effect, was verily his own purpose, and due entirely to his own royal impulse. Saint-Simon gives a life-like picture of Madame de Maintenon's influence with Louis, and the mode in which she exercised "Louis XIV. dreaded the imputation of being governed, and against no one was he more on his guard than his wife, just because she was commonly suspected of governing him. . . . This rendered her extremely cautious and timid. Whatever requests were made to her, she affected never to interfere in public affairs or to ask any favour, but she did not the less obtain by craft what would have been denied to plain dealing." When he consulted her about a list of candidates for places, after her accomplice the minister had duly perplexed him with contending considerations, and thus "driven him in his embarrassment to appeal to❞ Madame, she would coyly plead incapacity, would commend first one and then another, and would at last contrive, with an elaborate show of impartiality, to give the preference to her adopted candidate. And thus he who, in the words of an Edinburgh Reviewer, 66 was the terror of Europe, and who seemed to be the absolute master of France, was converted into a puppet moved by an old woman; and while he, in the fancied exercise of an unfettered will, issued his commands to obedient millions, the aged sorceress sat in silence and apparent humility beside him, guiding, by unseen springs, every movement of his hand and articulation of his voice, according to her pleasure." It may be hard to believe that she and her creatures did not sometimes smile, at least secretly, at the timid hints, the mock discussions, the hypocritical reverence, which were the potent incantations whereby these political magicians transformed their master into a slave.† Equally hard it is to doubt the fretting irksomeness of Madame's elaborate art. Affliction sore long time she bore, in this valley of humiliation, until practice made perfect. There is shrewd truth at bottom in what Horace Walpole says, -referring to his relations with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, as uncle of her Royal Highness,-" And it was not at all in my disposition to be at the trouble of governing anybody, which is in reality being their slave, for nobody is governed by any one but who humours them, and who is forced to give way nine times in order to succeed the tenth in some favourite object." Mademoiselle de la Chausseraye, one of the obscure mistresses of Louis XIV., and who kept up a secret understanding with him until the time of his death,§ related, long afterwards, to the Abbé d'Audigné, her approved method of dealing with his Majesty: her cue was de faire l'idiote, l'ignorante, l'indifférente à tout, and thereby impose on the King a comfortable assurance of his entire superiority over her: "c'était uniquement par là," Mademoiselle assured the Abbé, "qu'elle entretenait sa faveur et sa confiance, et qu'elle avait * Quarterly Review, CXCII. "Madame de Maintenon." † Edinburgh Review, LXXXVIII. "Court of France." Last Journals of Horace Walpole, vol. ii. p. 414. § See Barante, Etudes Historiques, t. i. "Etablissement de la Monarchie de Louis XIV." |