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Near 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 in Ireland, sometimes
in London. He made himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and
amused himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at least
served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has
preserved of these early compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there
is one passage on Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind
habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of
the best things in Montaigne.
Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress.
His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in
these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his readers will think
him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish
that there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic
correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading. There is a vile
phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond, "the dignity of history."
One writer is in possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most
strikingly the operation of the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of
the Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are too low for
the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted to mention some facts
indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two hundred years ago.
But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging together on
bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square, would form a subject suited to the
dignity of history. Another, from respect for the dignity of history, publishes
an account of the reign of George the Second, without ever mentioning
Whitefield's preaching in Moorfields. How should a writer, who can talk about
senates, and congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines,
and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed, and six
thousand men with fifty stand of colors and eighty guns taken, stoop to the
Stock Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle?
Tragedy has its dignity as well as history; and how much the tragic art has owed
to that dignity any man may judge who will compare the majestic Alexandrines in
which the Seigneur Oreste and Madame Andromaque utter their complaints, with the
chattering of the fool in Lear and of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
That a historian should not record trifles, that he should confine himself to
what is important, is perfectly true. But many writers seem never to have
considered on what the historical importance of an event depends. They seem not
to be aware that the importance of a fact, when that fact is considered with
reference to its immediate effects, and the importance of the same fact, when
that fact is considered as part of the materials for the construction of a
science, are two very different things. The quantity of good or evil which a
transaction produces is by no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of
light which that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may
hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more
serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning of a rat may be an
era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and
with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the
occurrence. An action for a hundred thousand pounds is in one sense a more
momentous affair than an action for fifty pounds. But it by no means follows
that the learned gentlemen who report the proceedings of the courts of law ought
to give a fuller account of an action for a hundred thousand pounds, than of an
action for fifty pounds. For a cause in which a large sum is at stake may be
important only to the particular plaintiff and the particular defendant. A
cause, on the other hand, in which a small sum is at stake, may establish some
great principle interesting to half the families in the kingdom. The case is
exactly the same with that class of subjects of which historians treat. To an
Athenian, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result of the battle of
Delium was far more important than the fate of the comedy of The Knights. But to
us the fact that the comedy of The Knights was brought on the Athenian stage
with success is far more important than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave
way at Delium. Neither the one event nor the other has now any intrinsic
importance. We are in no danger of being speared by the Thebans. We are not
quizzed in The Knights. To us the importance of both events consists in the
value of the general truth which is to be learned from them. What general truth
do we learn from the accounts which have come down to us of the battle of
Delium? Very little more than this, that when two armies fight, it is not
improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten, a truth which it would
not, we apprehend, be difficult to establish, even if all memory of the battle
of Delium were lost among men. But a man who becomes acquainted with the comedy
of The Knights, and with the history of that comedy, at once feels his mind
enlarged. Society is presented to him under a new aspect. He may have read and
traveled much. He may have visited all the countries of Europe, and the
civilized nations of the East. He may have observed the manners of many
barbarous races. But here is something altogether different from everything
which he has seen, either among polished men or among savages. Here is a
community politically, intellectually, and morally unlike any other community of
which he has the means of forming an opinion. This is the really precious part
of history, the corn which some threshers carefully sever from the chaff, for
the purpose of gathering the chaff into the garner, and flinging the corn into
the fire.
Thinking thus, we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more,
about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century, to
be sure, Lewis the Fourteenth was a much more important person than Temple's
sweetheart. But death and time equalize all things. Neither the great King, nor
the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mistress
Osborne's favorite walk "in the common that lay hard by the house, where a great
many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of
ballads," is anything to us. Lewis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill
stands on the ruins of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the
ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that information for the sake of which alone
it is worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love letters
which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally
interesting billets with ten times their weight in state-papers taken at random.
To us surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of England employed
themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated,
what were their favorite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to them,
what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in
men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favored
suitors, as to know all about the seizure of Franche Comte and the treaty of
Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as
important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the world; and a
series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable, and sensible girl, and
intended for the eye of her lover alone, can scarcely fail to throw some light
on the relations of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have
made any historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of dispatches
and protocols, without catching one glimpse of light about the relations of
governments.
Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne's devoted servants,
and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will add to the number.
We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really seems to have been a very
charming young woman, modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and
sprightly; a royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any
of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and
occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not
too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy
rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine
who was thought to be one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster;
with a little turn of coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and
disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed
the bounds of good-nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of
Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord
Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of Fernando
Mendez Pinto. But her favorite books were those ponderous French romances which
modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant satire of Charlotte Lennox. She
could not, however, help laughing at the vile English into which they were
translated. Her own style is very agreeable; nor are her letters at all the
worse for some passages in which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a very
engaging namby-pamby.
When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the obstacles
which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet more serious
calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of the small-pox, and,
though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty. To this most severe trial the
affection and honor of the lovers of that age was not infrequently subjected.
Our readers probably remember what Mrs. Hutchinson tells of herself. The lofty
Cornelia-like spirit of the aged matron seems to melt into a long-forgotten
softness when she relates how her beloved Colonel "married her as soon as she
was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were
affrighted to look on her. But God," she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity,
"recompensed his justice and constancy, by restoring her as well as before."
Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy which did so much
honor to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly known. But
Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place about the end of the year 1654.
From this time we lose sight of Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opinion of
the terms on which she and her husband were from very slight indications which
may easily mislead us.
Temple soon went to Ireland, and resided with his father, partly at Dublin,
partly in the county of Carlow. Ireland was probably then a more agreeable
residence for the higher classes, as compared with England, than it has ever
been before or since. In no part of the empire were the superiority of
Cromwell's abilities and the force of his character so signally displayed. He
had not the power, and probably had not the inclination, to govern that island
in the best way. The rebellion of the aboriginal race had excited in England a
strong religious and national aversion to them; nor is there any reason to
believe that the Protector was so far beyond his age as to be free from the
prevailing sentiment. He had vanquished them; he knew that they were in his
power; and he regarded them as a band of malefactors and idolaters, who were
mercifully treated if they were not smitten with the edge of the sword. On those
who resisted he had made war as the Hebrews made war on the Canaanites. Drogheda
was as Jericho; and Wexford as Ai. To the remains of the old population the
conqueror granted a peace, such as that which Israel granted to the Gibeonites.
He made them hewers of wood and drawers of water. But, good or bad, he could not
be otherwise than great. Under favorable circumstances, Ireland would have found
in him a most just and beneficent ruler. She found in him a tyrant; not a small
teasing tyrant, such as those who have so long been her curse and her shame, but
one of those awful tyrants who, at long intervals, seem to be sent on earth,
like avenging angels, with some high commission of destruction and renovation.
He was no man of half measures, of mean affronts and ungracious concessions. His
Protestant ascendancy was not an ascendancy of ribands, and fiddles, and
statues, and processions. He would never have dreamed of abolishing the penal
code and withholding from Catholics the elective franchise, of giving them the
elective franchise and excluding them from Parliament, of admitting them to
Parliament, and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all the
blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from his clear
intellect and his commanding spirit was petty persecution. He knew how to
tolerate; and he knew how to destroy. His administration in Ireland was an
administration on what are now called Orange principles, followed out most ably,
most steadily, most undauntedly, most unrelentingly, to every extreme
consequence to which those principles lead; and it would, if continued,
inevitably have produced the effect which he contemplated, an entire
decomposition and reconstruction of society. He had a great and definite object
in view, to make Ireland thoroughly English, to make Ireland another Yorkshire
or Norfolk. Thinly peopled as Ireland then was, this end was not unattainable;
and there is every reason to believe that, if his policy had been followed
during fifty years, this end would have been attained. Instead of an emigration,
such as we now see from Ireland to England, there was, under his government, a
constant and large emigration from England to Ireland. This tide of population
ran almost as strongly as that which now runs from Massachusetts and Connecticut
to the states behind the Ohio. The native race was driven back before the
advancing van of the Anglo-Saxon population, as the American Indians or the
tribes of Southern Africa are now driven back before the white settlers. Those
fearful phenomena which have almost invariably attended the planting of
civilized colonies in uncivilized countries, and which had been known to the
nations of Europe only by distant and questionable rumor, were now publicly
exhibited in their sight. The words "extirpation," "eradication," were often in
the mouths of the English back-settlers of Leinster and Munster, cruel words,
yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than much softer expressions which
have since been sanctioned by universities and cheered by Parliaments. For it is
in truth more merciful to extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once and
to fill the void with a well-governed population, than to misgovern millions
through a long succession of generations. We can much more easily pardon
tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless series of
paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational object at all.
Ireland was fast becoming English. Civilization and wealth were making rapid
progress in almost every part of the island. The effects of that iron despotism
are described to us by a hostile witness in very remarkable language. "Which is
more wonderful," says Lord Clarendon, "all this was done and settled within
little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many
buildings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of
trees, and fences and enclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made
by one from another at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon marriages,
and all other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a kingdom at peace
within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles."
All Temple's feelings about Irish questions were those of a colonist and a
member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of
the remains of the old Celtic population, as an English farmer on the Swan River
troubles himself about the New Hollanders, or a Dutch boor at the Cape about the
Caffres. The years which he passed in Ireland, while the Cromwellian system was
in full operation, he always described as "years of great satisfaction."
Farming, gardening, county business, and studies rather entertaining than
profound, occupied his time. In politics he took no part, and many years later
he attributed this inaction to his love of the ancient constitution, which, he
said, "would not suffer him to enter into public affairs till the way was plain
for the King's happy restoration." It does not appear, indeed, that any offer of
employment was made to him. If he really did refuse any preferment, we may,
without much breach of charity, attribute the refusal rather to the caution
which, during his whole life, prevented him from running any risk, than to the
fervor of his loyalty.
In 1660 he made his first appearance in public life. He sat in the convention
which, in the midst of the general confusion that preceded the Restoration, was
summoned by the chiefs of the army of Ireland to meet in Dublin. After the
King's return an Irish parliament was regularly convoked, in which Temple
represented the county of Carlow. The details of his conduct in this situation
are not known to us. But we are told in general terms, and can easily believe,
that he showed great moderation, and great aptitude for business. It is probable
that he also distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he
remarked that "his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he had any talent
at all, it lay in that way."
In May, 1663, the Irish parliament was prorogued, and Temple repaired to England
with his wife. His income amounted to about five hundred pounds a-year, a sum
which was then sufficient for the wants of a family mixing in fashionable
circles, He passed two years in London, where he seems to have led that easy,
lounging life which was best suited to his temper.
He was not, however, unmindful of his interest. He had brought with him letters
of introduction from the Duke of Ormond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to
Clarendon, and to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, who was Secretary of State.
Clarendon was at the head of affairs. But his power was visibly declining, and
was certain to decline more and more every day. An observer much less discerning
than Temple might easily perceive that the Chancellor was a man who belonged to
a by-gone world, a representative of a past age, of obsolete modes of thinking,
of unfashionable vices, and of more unfashionable virtues. His long exile had
made him a stranger in the country of his birth. His mind, heated by conflict
and by personal suffering, was far more set against popular and tolerant courses
than it had been at the time of the breaking out of the civil war. He pined for
the decorous tyranny of the old Whitehall; for the days of that sainted king who
deprived his people of their money and their ears, but let their wives and
daughters alone; and could scarcely reconcile himself to a court with a seraglio
and without a Star-Chamber. By taking this course he made himself every day more
odious, both to the sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative,
and to the people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal
pleasures; and thus he was at last more detested by the Court than any chief of
the Opposition, and more detested by the Parliament than any pandar of the
Court.
Temple, whose great maxim was to offend no party, was not likely to cling to the
falling fortunes of a minister the study of whose life was to offend all
parties. Arlington, whose influence was gradually rising as that of Clarendon
diminished, was the most useful patron to whom a young adventurer could attach
himself. This statesman, without virtue, wisdom, or strength of mind, had raised
himself to greatness by superficial qualities, and was the mere creature of the
time, the circumstances, and the company. The dignified reserve of manners which
he had acquired during a residence in Spain provoked the ridicule of those who
considered the usages of the French court as the only standard of good breeding,
but served to impress the crowd with a favorable opinion of his sagacity and
gravity. In situations where the solemnity of the Escurial would have been out
of place, he threw it aside without difficulty, and conversed with great humor
and vivacity. While the multitude were talking of "Bennet's grave looks,"1
his mirth made his presence always welcome in the royal closet. While
Buckingham, in the antechamber, was mimicking the pompous Castilian strut of the
Secretary, for the diversion of Mistress Stuart, this stately Don was ridiculing
Clarendon's sober counsels to the King within, till his Majesty cried with
laughter, and the Chancellor with vexation. There perhaps never was a man whose
outward demeanor made such different impressions on different people. Count
Hamilton, for example, describes him as a stupid formalist, who had been made
secretary solely on account of his mysterious and important looks. Clarendon, on
the other hand, represents him as a man whose "best faculty was raillery," and
who was "for his pleasant and agreeable humor acceptable unto the King." The
truth seems to be that, destitute as Bennet was of all the higher qualifications
of a minister, he had a wonderful talent for becoming, in outward semblance, all
things to all men. He had two aspects, a busy and serious one for the public,
whom he wished to awe into respect, and a gay one for Charles, who thought that
the greatest service which could be rendered to a prince was to amuse him. Yet
both these were masks which he laid aside when they had served their turn. Long
after, when he had retired to his deer-park and fish-ponds in Suffolk, and had
no motive to act the part either of the hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who
was neither an unpracticed nor an undiscerning judge, conversed much with him,
and pronounced him to be a man of singularly polished manners and of great
colloquial powers.
Clarendon, proud and imperious by nature, soured by age and disease, and relying
on his great talents and services, sought out no new allies. He seems to have
taken a sort of morose pleasure in slighting and provoking all the rising talent
of the kingdom. His connections were almost entirely confined to the small
circle, every day becoming smaller, of old cavaliers who had been friends of his
youth or companions of his exile. Arlington, on the other hand, beat up
everywhere for recruits. No man had a greater personal following, and no man
exerted himself more to serve his adherents. It was a kind of habit with him to
push up his dependants to his own level, and then to complain bitterly of their
ingratitude because they did not choose to be his dependants any longer. It was
thus that he quarreled with two successive Treasurers, Gifford and Danby. To
Arlington Temple attached himself, and was not sparing of warm professions of
affection, or even, we grieve to say, of gross and almost profane adulation. In
no long time he obtained his reward.
England was in a very different situation with respect to foreign powers from
that which she had occupied during the splendid administration of the Protector.
She was engaged in war with the United Provinces, then governed with almost
regal power by the Grand Pensionary, John de Witt; and though no war had ever
cost the kingdom so much, none had ever been more feebly and meanly conducted.
France had espoused the interests of the States-General. Denmark seemed likely
to take the same side. Spain, indignant at the close political and matrimonial
alliance which Charles had formed with the House of Braganza, was not disposed
to lend him any assistance. The great plague of London had suspended trade, had
scattered the ministers and nobles, had paralyzed every department of the public
service, and had increased the gloomy discontent which misgovernment had begun
to excite throughout the nation. One continental ally England possessed, the
Bishop of Munster, a restless and ambitious prelate, bred a soldier, and still a
soldier in all his tastes and passions. He hated the Dutch for interfering in
the affairs of his see, and declared himself willing to risk his little
dominions for the chance of revenge. He sent, accordingly, a strange kind of
ambassador to London, a Benedictine monk, who spoke bad English, and looked,
says Lord Clarendon, "like a carter." This person brought a letter from the
Bishop, offering to make an attack by land on the Dutch territory. The English
ministers eagerly caught at the proposal, and promised a subsidy of 500,000
rix-dollars to their new ally. It was determined to send an English agent to
Munster; and Arlington, to whose department the business belonged, fixed on
Temple for this post.
Temple accepted the commission, and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his
employers, though the whole plan ended in nothing, and the Bishop, finding that
France had joined Holland, made haste, after pocketing an installment of his
subsidy, to conclude a separate peace. Temple, at a later period, looked back
with no great satisfaction to this part of his life; and excused himself for
undertaking a negotiation from which little good could result, by saying that he
was then young and very new to business. In truth, he could hardly have been
placed in a situation where the eminent diplomatic talents which he possessed
could have appeared to less advantage. He was ignorant of the German language,
and did not easily accommodate himself to the manners of the people. He could
not bear much wine; and none but a hard drinker had any chance of success in
Westphalian society. Under all these disadvantages, however, he gave so much
satisfaction that he was created a Baronet, and appointed resident at the
vice-regal court of Brussels.
Brussels suited Temple far better than the palaces of the boar-hunting and
wine-bibbing princes of Germany. He now occupied one of the most important posts
of observation in which a diplomatist could be stationed. He was placed in the
territory of a great neutral power, between the territories of two great powers
which were at war with England. From this excellent school he soon came forth
the most accomplished negotiator of his age.
In the meantime the government of Charles had suffered a succession of
humiliating disasters. The extravagance of the court had dissipated all the
means which Parliament had supplied for the purpose of carrying on offensive
hostilities.
It was determined to wage only a defensive war; and even for defensive war the
vast resources of England, managed by triflers and public robbers, were found
insufficient. The Dutch insulted the British coasts, sailed up the Thames, took
Sheerness, and carried their ravages to Chatham. The blaze of the ships burning
in the river was seen at London: it was rumored that a foreign army had landed
at Gravesend; and military men seriously proposed to abandon the Tower. To such
a depth of infamy had a bad administration reduced that proud and victorious
country, which a few years before had dictated its pleasure to Mazarine, to the
States-General, and to the Vatican. Humbled by the events of the war, and
dreading the just anger of Parliament, the English Ministry hastened to huddle
up a peace with France and Holland at Breda.
But a new scheme was about to open. It had already been for some time apparent
to discerning observers, that England and Holland were threatened by a common
danger, much more formidable than any which they had reason to apprehend from
each other. The old enemy of their independence and of their religion was no
longer to be dreaded. The scepter had passed away from Spain. That mighty
empire, on which the sun never set, which had crushed the liberties of Italy and
Germany, which had occupied Paris with its armies, and covered the British seas
with its sails, was at the mercy of every spoiler; and Europe observed with
dismay the rapid growth of a new and more formidable power. Men looked to Spain
and saw only weakness disguised and increased by pride, dominions of vast bulk
and little strength, tempting, unwieldy, and defenseless, an empty treasury, a
sullen and torpid nation, a child on the throne, factions in the council,
ministers who served only themselves, and soldiers who were terrible only to
their countrymen. Men looked to France, and saw a large and compact territory, a
rich soil, a central situation, a bold, alert, and ingenious people, large
revenues, numerous and well-disciplined troops, an active and ambitious prince,
in the flower of his age, surrounded by generals of unrivalled skill. The
projects of Lewis could be counteracted only by ability, vigor, and union on the
part of his neighbors. Ability and vigor had hitherto been found in the councils
of Holland alone, and of union there was no appearance in Europe. The question
of Portuguese independence separated England from Spain. Old grudges, recent
hostilities, maritime pretensions, commercial competition separated England as
widely from the United Provinces.
1 "Bennet's grave looks were a pretence" is a line in one of
the best political poems of that age,
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