For Giacomo, the combat was what his blood boiled for. Would that he could have fought single-handed—he alone—and perilled, and have lost his life! But when he saw the respected form of the uncle of Constantia—when he reflected that the experiment he had so long desired,had been made and failed—that the cold virgin whom he had left up stairs was still invincible, whoever else he might conquer or resist, and that he should be exposing the lives of his companions in a combat where to him there was now no victory—he lowered his sword, and made treaty of peace with the Podestà. On consideration that none other but himself should suffer any species of penalty for that day's transaction, he offered to resign Constantia to her uncle, and himself to the pleasure of the Podestà. These terms were very readily accepted; his companions alone seemed reluctant to acquiesce in them.
While all this tumult was raging round the house, and within the heart of Giacomo, the student's lamp was burning, how calm, how still, in the remote and secluded chamber of his friend Petrarch! To him, out of a kind and considerate regard, and from no distrust in his zeal or attachment, the ardent lover had concealed his perilous enterprise. Remote from the whole scene, and remote from all the passions of it, sat the youthful sage; not remote, however, from deep excitements of his own. Far from it. Reflection has her emotions thrilling as those of passion. He who has not closed his door upon the world, and sat down with books and his own thoughts in a solitude like this—may have lived, we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an existence,—he has yet an excitement to experience, which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper, and more sustained than any he has known,—than any which the most brilliant scenes, or the most clamorous triumphs of life, can furnish. What is all the sparkling exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest,—what all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, compared with the intense feeling of theyouthful thinker, who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh contemplations,—who, for the first time, perceives in his solitude all the grand enigmas of human existence lying unsolved about him? His brow is not corrugated, his eye is not inflamed: he sits calm and serene—a child would look into his face and be drawn near to him—but it seems to him that on his beating heart the very hand of God is lying.
The poet had closed his door, and unrolled before his solitary lamp his favourite manuscript, "The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero." How well that solitary lamp burning on so vivid and so noiseless—the only thing there in motion, but whose very motion makes the stillness more evident, the calm more felt; how well that lamp—the very soul, as it seems, of the little chamber it illumines—harmonises with the student's mood! How it makes bright the solitude around him! How it brings sense of companionship and of life where nothing but it—and thought—are stirring!
But though the young student had seated himself to his intellectual feast, it was evident that he was not quite at his ease; there was something which occasioned him a slight disquietude. In truth he was destined, by his father, to be "learned in the law;" was enjoying a stolen fruit; and whatever the well-known proverb may say, we have never found, ourselves, that any enjoyment is heightened by a sense of insecurity in its possession, or a thought of the possible penalty which may be the consequence of its indulgence. Petrarch might have been observed to listen attentively to every footstep on the great staircase that served the whole wing of the building to which his little turret belonged;and till the step was lost, or he was sure that it had stopped at some lower stage in the house, he suspended the perusal of his manuscript, and sat prepared to drop the precious treasure into a chest that stood open at his feet, and to replace it by an enormous volume of jurisprudence which lay ready at hand for this piece of hypocritical service. This peculiarly nervous condition was the result of a paternal visit which had been paid him, most unexpectedly, a few evenings before. His father, suspecting that he was more devoted to the classics than to the study of the law, started suddenly from Avignon, stole upon his son unforewarned, ruthlessly snatched from him the prized manuscripts in which he found him absorbed, and committed them to the flames. Petrarch, of gentle temper, and full of filial respect, ventured upon no resistance; but when he saw his Virgil and his Cicero put upon his funeral pyre, he burst into a flood of uncontrollable tears. His father, who was not himself without a love of classic literature, but who was anxious for his son's advancement in the world, and his study of a profession on which that advancement appeared entirely to depend, was smit with compassion and some remorse. These last two manuscripts he rescued himself from the flames, and restored to his disconsolate son, with the repeated admonition, however, to indulge less in their perusal, nor to allow them to take the place due to the science of jurisprudence.
"Science!" said the young enthusiast, who had recovered something of his self-possession: "Can conclusions wrested often with perverted ingenuity from artificial principles and arbitrary axioms, be honoured with the name of science? And the law, to obtain this fictitious resemblance to a science, leaves justice behind and unthought of. I will study it, my father, as I would practise any mechanical art, if you should prescribe it as a means of being serviceable to my family; but you—who are a scholar—ah! place not a tissue of technicalities, however skilfully interwoven, on a level with truth, which has its basis in the nature of things. I would help my fellow-men to justice; but must I spend my life, and dry up and impoverish my very soul, in regulating his disputes according to rules that are something very different from justice?—often mere logical deductions from certain legal abstractions, in which all moral right and wrong,—all substantial justice between man and man, is utterly forgotten?"
"My son," said the father, "you are young, and therefore rash. You think it, perhaps, an easy thing to do justice between man and man.We cannot do justice between man and man.No combination of honesty and intelligence can effect it; the whole compass of society affords no means for its accomplishment. To administer moral justice, each case must be decided on its own peculiar merits, and those merits are to be found in the motives of the human heart. We cannot promise men justice. But we must terminate their disputes. Therefore it is we have a system of law—our only substitute for justice—by which men are contented to be governed because itisa system, and applicable to all alike. Believe me, that wise and able men of all countries are well occupied in rendering more symmetrical, more imposing, and as little immoral and unjust as possible, their several systems of jurisprudence."
Petrarch was silent; it was neither his wish nor his policy to prolong the discussion. Besides, his heart was too full. Had he dared, he would have pleaded for his own liberty; for choice of poverty and intellectual freedom—for poverty and greatness! But what he felt within him of the promptings of ambition, the assurance of fame, the consciousness of genius, he had too much modesty to express. He could not do justice to himself, without appearance of overweening pride. It was better to be silent than to say but half.
It was the remembrance of this visit which, on the present occasion, made him listen with a painful curiosity to every step upon the stairs. And now a stepwasheard. It came nearer and nearer, higher and higher—a rapid step which never paused an instant till it reached his own door. A loud knocking followed. But this time it was no spy upon his literaryhours. On opening the door, a fellow-student, breathless with haste, rushed into the room, and related the tragical event which had taken place at the house of their common friend Giacomo.
Petrarch immediately descended and ran to meet his friend. He found him already a prisoner! The Podestà, willing, however, to treat the unhappy student with as much lenity as possible, had converted his own apartments into his prison. He well knew, also, the honourable character of his prisoner; the granting this indulgence enabled him to exact his word of honour not to escape, and he probably judged, considering the extreme popularity of Giacomo in the university, that this was a greater security for his safe custody than any walls, or any guard, which he had at his command in Bologna.
Petrarch was horror-struck when he came fully to apprehend the extreme peril to which his friend had exposed himself. Whatever were his motives, he had committed, in fact, a capital offence, and one to be classed amongst the most heinous; it was the crime of abduction he had perpetrated, and for which he stood exposed to the penalty of death. The poet fell weeping into the arms of his friend.
"Alas!" said Giacomo, "she would not hear me!" The inflexibility of Constantia was still the only grief that dwelt upon his mind. "She stood there—on that spot—I could kiss the traces of her footstep could I see them—cold, cold as the statue—I might have prayed with better hope to the sculptured marble!"
But Petrarch did not limit his kind offices to sympathy and lamentation. Meditative as he was by character, and little habituated to what is called the business of life, he saw clearly the grave nature of his friend's position. The crime which Giacomo had actually committed—the abduction from her home of a noble virgin—subjected him, as we have said, to the punishment of death. Those only who could have read his heart, or knew the purity of his intentions, could have acquitted him; and even to those, his conduct would have appeared rash and unjustifiable. But to the citizens of Bologna, irritated and all but at war with the university, disposed to magnify every offence committed by a member of that body, and exasperated, moreover, by the late fruitless contest in which they had been engaged—the act of Giacomo would appear in all its unmitigated criminality. They were, in fact, resolved that he should not escape the utmost rigour of the law; they were already clamouring aloud for his death—his public execution.
There was but one man in Bologna who could save him. This was Romeo de' Pepoli, a man exceedingly rich—by far the richest in the city—and who, by a popular use of his wealth, had obtained a great ascendency in the republic. This Romeo de' Pepoli was secretly aiming at the tyranny. He failed, owing to the awakened jealousy of the people; but although he himself was banished from the city at the very moment when he seemed about to reap the fruits of his nefarious intrigues, he prepared the way to power for his sons, who were for some time tyrants of Bologna. There was no doubt that this man—and he alone—was able, if he chose, to rescue Giacomo from his threatened fate. For should his influence with the citizens fail to mitigate their animosity, still, in all the ill-assured governments of that day, such exorbitant wealth as he possessed gave something more than influence. Judgments of law were almost always to be bought, if a price high enough could be paid, or an armed force could be hired which would set the judgment of a court at defiance, and prevent its execution.
To this eminent citizen and nobleman Petrarch betook himself. So remarkable an event as that which had lately transpired in the city, we may be sure, had drawn the attention of this wily and ambitious personage. At first he had adopted the indignation and anger of the citizens, as being the part most likely to increase his popularity. But on reflection it had occurred to him, that a still greater advantage might perhaps be taken of this event, if, through his skilful mediation, and a dexterous advocacy of the cause of Giacomo, he should be able to obtain the favour and partisanship of the more spirited members of the university. Over these, no one hadso great an influence as Giacomo—in the cause of no one could they be more deeply interested—nor was it likely that, an occasion would arise in which he could serve them more signally than by coming to his rescue. On the other hand, a thousand ways would still be open to appease and conciliate the offended citizens. Add to all which, Giacomo himself, like all those on whom classical literature and the early histories of Rome and of Greece were just re-opening, was distinguished by an ardent zeal for liberty. Without seeking actually to intermeddle in the political affairs of the city, he and his associates were accustomed—probably in much the same manner as the German students of the present day—to proclaim and uphold the cause of freedom in their songs, and with the oratory of the wine-cup. They might be calculated on as stanch friends to the republic, and deadly opponents to the tyranny. To gain over this band of ardent and enthusiastic spirits, would be a great step in the prosecution of his ambitious enterprise. Even their neutrality would be an incalculable advantage to him.
Petrarch had been always well received by one who was anxious to win all sorts of golden opinions, and therefore desirous to be thought an admirer of learning and a patron of youthful genius. On the present occasion, he found the ambitious nobleman singularly courteous, and not indisposed to listen to his ardent vindication of Giacomo. With the usual artifice of such men, Pepoli appeared to be listening to the reasoning of the young advocate, whilst he was revolving only his own thoughts, and was not unwilling to let it appear that predeterminations of his own were the results of another's eloquence.
"Let me see your unfortunate friend," he said, with a sort of relenting air; "something, perhaps, maybe done—I cannot tell. But you see the whole town is in arms against him. I shall be risking," he added with a smile,—for there is nothing more common with crafty men than to speak the very truth in a light jesting manner, giving their earnest motives the air of sport, and so expressing and disguising themselves at the same time—"I shall be risking all my popularity with the good Bolognese—I must proceed cautiously."
Petrarch ran back, full of sanguine hope, to his friend, and repeated the result of his mission. Giacomo shook his head mournfully. He was slow to enter into the exhilarating prospects placed before him. Perhaps he had read deeper into the character of this man than Petrarch.
The interview which Pepoli desired took place. What circuitous terms the ambitious man employed to suggest the price which was to be paid for his intermediation, we do not know; but the smile on the lip of Giacomo was interpreted as the smile of intelligence and acquiescence. Of intelligence it certainly was. At this interview it was agreed that the student should assemble together some of the most ardent and influential of his friends, that he should present Pepoli to them, and induce them to swear a sort of allegiance and fidelity to his cause, in return for the aid he pledged himself to bring to Giacomo.
With the liberty allowed by the Podestà to his prisoner, it was not difficult to arrange this meeting. He was permitted to invite to supper a considerable number of his most faithful adherents and intimate associates. It being understood that Pepoli was to be one of the guests, there was still less scruple in granting this permission.
The supper passed off, as may be supposed under such circumstances, with little hilarity. Being brought to a conclusion, Giacomo, at whose side sat Pepoli, entreated the attention of his guests. He rose and addressed them. He began by proclaiming the intended mediation of Pepoli in his behalf. Cheers followed this announcement. He proceeded to enlarge on the wealth, the power, the manifest pre-eminence in the state which Pepoli had acquired. The students still applauded, but the exact drift of these somewhat ambiguous praises—ambiguous in the mouth of a republican speaking of a republican—they could not well perceive. Pepoli alone seemed to understand and to approve. He then solemnly called upon hisfriends to take an oath with him before he died.
"But you shall not die!" was the exclamation with which both Pepoli and the students interrupted him.
"An oath," he continued, not heeding this interruption, "which I exact from you in the name of friendship, in the name of virtue, in the name of liberty. Is it not generous, this offer of Pepoli—of him who has been the champion of the citizen against the student—the most popular man in all Bologna,—is it not generous that he should step forward to rescue my life from the blind rage and mad injustice of the multitude? But you must understand there is a certain price to be given for this generosity. You do not expect him to sacrifice his popularity, which is his power, out of mere compassion to one who has never courted nor applauded him, without receiving, in return, some compensation. If you accept his benefits, you must forward his counsels, you must promote his designs. Say, will you swear?"
"Yes! yes! we swear!" was the general response.
"Students of Bologna!" he proceeded, elevating his voice. "I accept this mark of your friendship. For my sake you have promised to swear. Now hear the oath I propose, and to which I bind you. This man offers me my life, and the price of it is—the liberty of Bologna! Fellow students, Romeo de' Pepoli aims at the tyranny. Swear that you will never, on any condition, for any boon, aid him in his flagitious enterprise; that you will thwart, and resist, and combat it to the utmost. Swear that you will, at all times, reject his mediation—as I now reject, utterly and with scorn, the service that he proffers me. I unmask him to you ere I die. I, too, have lived for one good purpose. This man, my friends, would be tyrant of Bologna—swear, to me that he shallnot!"
There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit—of patriotism and of self-sacrifice—of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent—he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath;—full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck.
After this, there was no more hope for the prisoner. If to the anger of the Bolognese was added the determined enmity of Romeo de' Pepoli, now resolved on his destruction, from what quarter could a ray of hope proceed? He was even now removed—such was the influence which the new enemy he had provoked possessed over the Podestà—to the common prison, and treated in all respects like a condemned malefactor. The university pleaded its privilege to judge a member of their own body, but the angry feeling of the citizens would not permit them for a moment to listen to this plea. There, was no power on earth to save him—and his fault was so light! A man more honourable did not exist. The purity of Constantia was more safe in his hands than in any others—he loved her so well.
We are not sufficiently in the "tragic vein" to follow the prisoner through the last hours of his confinement, and of his existence. To be struck dead in the flush of life, with all his passions in full bloom upon him, was a hard decree. Sometimes he protested vehemently against the palpable injustice and cruelty of his sentence; but, in general, he found his consolation in the mournful sentiment, that had he lived, he should have been miserable—for the great desire of his life was doomed to be thwarted. "I told you," he said one day to his friendPetrarch, "that this love would work my destruction. It has so; but its great misery has made destruction itself indifferent."
We willingly draw a veil over the last fatal scene, and all the horrors that precede a public death. Throughout this scene his courage never forsook him; but flashes of uncontrollable indignation would occasionally break from him, and occasionally a sigh of more tender despondency would escape. The last tear he shed, the last complaint he murmured, was still to the coldness of Constantia: "We should have been so happy, had she loved—and now!—"
History records that the execution of Giacomo, as well by infringing the supposed privileges of the university as by the indignation it excited in the large circle of his friends and companions, nearly led to the withdrawal of the university from the town of Bologna. The students and the professors seceded in a mass, and retired to Sienna. No entreaties could bring them back; the glory of Bologna might have been extinguished for ever. The Podestà and other magistrates of the town were compelled at length to send a solemn deputation. They promised, in future, to respect their privileges; and, by raising the salaries of the professors, and some other popular measures, they eventually prevailed upon them to return.
Petrarch had not left the city with the rest—he had lingered behind to perform the last rites and honours to the remains of Giacomo—to raise the tomb and inscribe it with his verse.
Upon that tomb the solitary moon was now shining. But who was that figure robed in deepest black that knelt beside it, so sadly, with so desponding a stillness, her forehead pressed against the marble? Was it, too, marble? No. The chisel may create beauty as exquisite, but never combine it with so great a sorrow. It was Constantia. Too late! Too late! She brought her tears where one smile would have given life and happiness. She felt the worth of him who had so passionately loved her, when nothing remained to love but the ashes in that urn. That pleading in the student's chamber seemed vain—and at the moment itwasvain; but when she recalled it in her own solitude, her heart had half assented. She remembered how tenderly—with what an ardent and gentle worship—he had pressed her hand; her own hand trembled then to the touch which at the time it had coldly rejected. When, moreover, she heard, through their common friend Petrarch, of the noble manner in which he had refused the aid of Pepoli, and chose death rather than the least dishonour, and thought to herself—this man loved me!—all her heart was won. Alas! too late!
She now knelt at the tomb of Giacomo, afflicted with regret that amounted to remorse. She raised her head—she raised her hand—there was that within it which glittered in the moonbeam. But her hand was suddenly arrested. Petrarch, a frequent visitor at that tomb, had seen and prevented this movement of despair. "No! no!" he cried. "Beautiful creature, and too much beloved—live on—live! And when some other Giacomo appears, make compensation to heaven—by loving him!"
So closely united are the arts of history and romance, that they may almost be said to be twin sisters. In both, the subjects are the same: and the objects which the artists have in view in handling them are identical. To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events—to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes—to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations—to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. The delineation of character, passion, and transaction is the great end of both, but to neither is the subordinate aid of description or pictorial embellishment denied. On the contrary, to both they constitute one of the principal charms of this art. The sphere of description is different, but the object and the impressions are the same. The novelist paints individual places, and strives to transfer to the mind of the reader a reflection of the brilliant scenes created in his own imagination. The historian embraces a wider sphere, and aims rather at portraying the general features of whole districts of country, or even quarters of the globe. But a painter's eye, a poet's mind, are equally required by both; and not the least interesting parts of the works of either are those in which the author leaves the busy and checkered scenes of dramatic incident, to dwell amidst the recesses of inanimate beauty,—to traverse the Alps with their shepherds, or the Pampas with their Gauchos, and mingle with the turbid course of human events somewhat of the purity which breathes amidst the works of Nature.
Notwithstanding this identity of object and art, there is nothing more certain than that romance writers in general have not made the best historians. Poets also, whose art so closely resembles that of the novelist, have in general failed when they invoked the historic muse. Smollett was in many respects an admirable romance writer; but the author of "Roderick Random" has left a History of England, which is nothing but a compilation of parliamentary debates and gazettes. Scott's powers as a romance writer were so great and various, and his delineations of historic scenes, characters, and events, so graphic and powerful, that it seemed next to impossible that he should not be equally successful as a historian, especially when the theme was one so varied and animating as the "Life of Napoleon." Voltaire's genius was universal, and seemed equally adapted to every object of human pursuit; but his historical works, though deservedly popular as school books, have never risen to an eminence approaching that justly attained by his tragedies and critical disquisitions.
What is very remarkable, and is just the reverse of what mighta priorihave been expected, the point in which romance writers in general fail, when they undertake history, is in giving sufficient life and animation to their narrative. Like race-horses, they seem in general incapable of carrying any considerable weight. They would break down under the panoply which a steed of Norman or Flemish extraction can sustain without difficulty. Their imagination is only kindled when it is at liberty to roam at will over a world of their own creation. Confined to the narration of actual events, limited to the delineation of real character, cramped by the description of actual scenes, their powers fail, their ardour is weakened, their fire is lost. A mind comparatively prosaic, subject to such burdens, speedily out-strips them even on their own element; and the scholar with his authorities kindles the imagination toan extent which the poet with his verses can hardly excel. Witness Livy's pictured pages—Gibbon's historical descriptions. Yet minds of the most elevated cast have occasionally, though at long intervals from each other, succeeded in uniting the historic and romantic arts. Homer's Iliad is the annals of the Siege of Troy in verse; his Odyssey, the versified Travels of Ulysses; and in the recent "Histoire des Girondins" by Lamartine, we have convincing proof that it is possible to unite the most ardent and enthusiastic poetical mind with the research, knowledge of character, and dramatic power, requisite to make the most interesting tragic annals.
As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place. He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers," "The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication, sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from thenumberof his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention. Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays; that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times. Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame—as was said of Dryden—would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from subsequent times.
One of the greatest charms of Mr James's writings is the beautiful ideas, clothed in felicitous language, which are to be found profusely scattered over them. It is not the general opinion that he excels in this respect; on the contrary, nothing is more common in conversation than to hear it remarked, that it is in depth of thought, and knowledge of the human heart, that he is deficient. But this opinion arises from the frequency, sometimes, perhaps, redundancy of his pictures of nature, and the brilliant colours in which he never fails to array her finest scenes. Thoughts the most beautiful are frequently concealed amidst profusion of description, as fruit sometimes amidst luxuriance of leaves. Take for example the following, on one of the most familiar objects in nature—a drop of rain.
"We spoke of the rain, and I foolishly enough, in mentioning all the annoyance it had occasioned me, loaded it with maledictions."'Call it not accursed, my son,' said the monk. 'Oh no! remember that every drop that falls, bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. Remember that glorious tree, and herb, and shrub, and flower, owes to those drops its life, its freshness, and its beauty. Remember that half the loveliness of the green world is all their gift; and that, without them, we should wander through a dull desert, as dusty as the grave. Take but a single drop of rain cloistered in the green fold of a blade of grass, and pour upon it one ray of the morning sun, where will you get lapidary, with his utmost skill, to cut a diamond that shall shine like that? Oh no! blessed for ever be the beautiful drops of the sky, the refreshing soothers of the seared earth—the nourishers of the flowers—that calm race of beings, which are all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion, or pain, or desire, or disappointment—whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume."—Henry Masterton.
"We spoke of the rain, and I foolishly enough, in mentioning all the annoyance it had occasioned me, loaded it with maledictions.
"'Call it not accursed, my son,' said the monk. 'Oh no! remember that every drop that falls, bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. Remember that glorious tree, and herb, and shrub, and flower, owes to those drops its life, its freshness, and its beauty. Remember that half the loveliness of the green world is all their gift; and that, without them, we should wander through a dull desert, as dusty as the grave. Take but a single drop of rain cloistered in the green fold of a blade of grass, and pour upon it one ray of the morning sun, where will you get lapidary, with his utmost skill, to cut a diamond that shall shine like that? Oh no! blessed for ever be the beautiful drops of the sky, the refreshing soothers of the seared earth—the nourishers of the flowers—that calm race of beings, which are all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion, or pain, or desire, or disappointment—whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume."—Henry Masterton.
Mr James cannot be considered as a historical writer of the highest class. He gives a spirited and agreeable narrative of the events of the reign or period which he has undertaken to describe, and in many passages the descriptive powers of the romance writer are strikingly conspicuous.He is diligent and worthy in the consultation of authorities, and free from any undue bias in the drawing of characters or narrative of events. But he has neither the philosophic glance of Guizot, nor the military fire of Napier, nor the incomparable descriptive powers of Gibbon. His merit, and it is a very great one, consists in the lucid and spirited telling of the story, interspersed with interesting descriptions of the scenes of the leading incidents, and dramaticportraitureof the principal characters. His greatest fault—no trifling one—is the perplexity produced in the mind of the reader by the want of proper grouping and arrangement, and the introduction of a vast number of characters and events at once into the story, without any preparatory description, to enable him to appreciate the one or understand the other. This is a very natural error for a romance writer to fall into when he undertakes history; because, in novels, where characters are few, and the events only such as happen to them, there is no need of previous preparation of the reader's mind, of such grouping and perspective, for the simplification and illustration of events. But, in history, where the events are so numerous and complicated, and each actor in general occupies only an inconsiderable portion of the canvass, it is indispensable, if the writer would avoid prolixity of details, or achieve that object so well known to artists, which they denominatebreadthof effect.
Biography should be, and when properly handled is, the most interesting branch of historical composition. It has the immense advantage—the value of which can only be properly appreciated by those who undertake to write general history—of being limited to the leading characters who have appeared on the theatre of the world, and consequently steering clear of the intermediate periods of uninteresting or tedious occurrence. How to get over these without exhausting the patience of his readers, on the one hand, or incurring the reproach of omitting some events of importance, on the other, is the great difficulty of general history. The biographer seizes the finest points of the story; he dwells only on the exploits of his hero, and casts the rest into the shade. If this style of composition does not afford room for those general and important views on the general march of events, or progress of our species, which constitute the most valuable part of the highest branch of history, it presents much greater opportunities for securing the interest of the general reader, and awakening that sympathy in the breast of others, which it is the great object of the fine arts to produce. It has one immense advantage—it possesses unity of subject, it is characterised by singleness of interest. The virtues or vices, the triumphs or misfortunes, the glories or ruin of one individual, form the main subject of the narrative. It is on them that the attention of the writer is fixed; it is to enhance their interest that his efforts are exhausted. The actions of others, the surrounding events, only require to be displayed in so far as they bear upon, or are connected with the exploits of the hero. But as great men usually appear in, or create by their single efforts, important eras in the annals of mankind, it rarely happens that the characters selected for biography are not surrounded by a cluster of others, which renders their Lives almost a general history of the period during which they communicated their impress to the events of the world; and thus their biography combines unity of interest with the highest importance in event.
This was pre-eminently the case with the history of Henry IV. of France. So important, indeed, were the events crowded into his lifetime, so great and lasting have been the consequences of his triumph, so prodigious the impulse which his genius communicated, not only to his own country, but to Europe, that he may almost be said to have created an era in modern times. The first of the Bourbon family, he was, in truth, the founder of the French monarchy, in one sense of the term. He first gave it unity, consistence, and power; he first rendered it formidable to the liberties of Europe. Before his time, during the reigns of the princes of the House of Valois, it was rather a clusterof separate and almost independent feudatories, than a compact and homogeneous empire. So powerful were these great vassals, so slender the force which the crown could command to control them, that France on many occasions made the narrowest possible escape from sharing the fate of Germany, and seeing in its chief nobles—the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Counts of Toulouse—independent monarchs rendering, like the electors of Brandenberg, Saxony, and Bavaria, only a nominal allegiance to their feudal superior. The religious wars, which broke out with the Reformation, still farther increased the divisions, and severed the ties of this distracted kingdom.
The contest of the rural nobility of the south, attached to the new opinions as fervently as the Scottish Covenanters, with the more numerous and concentrated Roman Catholics of the north, who clung with superstitious tenacity to the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient worship, continued through several successive generations, not only drenched the kingdom with blood, but altered the character, and obliterated the virtues of its inhabitants. Revenge became the only passion that retained its sway over the human heart; cruelty so common, that its atrocity was no longer perceived. The massacre of St Bartholomew, that lasting and indelible stain on ancient, as the massacre in the prisons, and the Reign of Terror, are on modern French history, is not to be regarded as the work of a blood-thirsty tyrant, aided by a corrupt and perfidious court. The public crimes of the rulers of men never can exceed, except by a few degrees, those for which the nation is prepared. It is the frenzy of the general mind which suggests and renders practicable the atrocious deeds, by which, happily at long intervals from each other, the annals of mankind are stained. The proscriptions of the Triumvirate, the alternate slaughters of Marius and Sylla, the massacre of St Bartholomew, theauto-da-fesof Castile, the reign of the Duke of Alva in Flanders, the butchery of the wars of the Roses in England, the blood shed by Robespierre in France, all proceeded from a frenzied state of the public mind, which made the great body of the people not only noways revolt at, but cordially support those savage deeds, at which, when recounted in the pages of history, all subsequent ages shudder. Even the massacre of St Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious, because the most cold-blooded and perfidious, of all those horrid deeds, excited at the time no feeling of indignation in the Roman Catholic party throughout Europe. On the Contrary, it was universally and cordially approved of by those of that persuasion in every country, as a most effectual and expedient, and withal justifiable way of lopping off a gangrened arm from the body politic, and extinguishing a pestilent heresy. The discharges of the cannon from the castle of St Angelo, and theTe Deumsung in St Peter's, on the arrival of the glorious intelligence, by the Head of the faithful at Rome, were re-echoed by the acclamation—without, so far as appears, a single exception—of the whole Romish world.[19]
It was the cessation of the hideous scenes of bloodshed and massacre which had signalised the civil wars in the reigns of the Valois princes, and the religious dissensions that succeeded them, which gave Henry IV. his great and deserved reputation. Like Napoleon, he calmed, by his acquisition of the throne, the passions of a nation in arms against itself. The hereditary feuds, the dreadful retaliations, the mutual proscriptions, the fierce passions, the frightful revenge of the feudal and Huguenot wars, were stilled as if by the wand of a mighty enchanter.
Henry IV. was the man of his age; and hence it was that he achieved this prodigy. His mental and physical qualities were precisely those which his time demanded; and it was thiscombination which enabled him to achieve his astonishing success. Bold, active, and enterprising, he presented that mixture of warlike virtues with chivalrous graces which it is the great object of romance to portray, and which may be said to form the ideal of the European character. He possessed that individual gallantry, that personal daring, that spontaneous generosity, which, even more than commanding intellectual qualities, succeed in winning the hearts of mankind. Ever the foremost in attack, the last in retreat, he excelled his boldest knights in personal courage. The battle-field was to him a scene of exultation. He had the true heroic character. Like the youth in Tacitus, he loved danger itself, not the rewards of valour. Nor were the mental qualities and combinations requisite in the general awanting. On the contrary, he possessed them in the very highest degree. Active, enterprising, indefatigable, he was ever in the field with the advanced guard, and often ran the greatest personal danger from his anxiety to see with his own eyes the position or forces of the enemy. His skill in partisan strife, on which so much of success in war then depended—in the surprise of castles, the siege of towns, the capture of convoys, the sudden irruption into territories, equalled all that poetry had conceived of the marvellous. His deeds, as narrated by the cool pen of Sully, resemble rather the fabulous exploits of knight-errantry than the events of real life. It was thus, by slow degrees and painful efforts, that he gradually brought up his inconsiderable party, at first not a fourth part of the forces of the League, to something like a level with his formidable opponents; and at length was enabled to rout them in decisive battles, and establish his fortunes on a permanent foundation in the fields of Arques and Ivry.
The contest at first appeared to be so unequal as to be altogether hopeless. Though the undoubted heir to the crown, his forces, when the succession opened to him by the assassination of Henry III., were so inconsiderable compared to those of the League, that it seemed impossible that he could fight his way to the throne. The Huguenots were only two millions of souls, and the Roman Catholics were eighteen millions. The latter were in possession of the capital, wielded the resources of its rich and ardent population, and had all the principal towns and strongholds of the kingdom in their hands. It was in the distant provinces, especially of the south, that the strength of the Protestants lay: their forces were the lances of the rural nobility, and the stout arms of the peasants in Dauphiny, the Cevennes, and around La Rochelle. But all history, and especially that of France, demonstrates how inadequate in general are the resources of remote and far-severed provinces to maintain a protracted contest with an enemy in possession of the capital, the fortresses, and ruling the standing army of the kingdom. The forces of the Catholics in this instance were the more formidable, that they were warlike and experienced, trained to the practical duties of soldiers in previous civil wars, united in a league which, like the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland, formed an unseen bond uniting together the most distant parts of the monarchy, and directed by the Duke of Guise, a leader second to none in capacity and daring, and equal to any in ruthless energy and unscrupulous wickedness.
It was the personal qualities, heroic spirit, and individual talents of the King which enabled him to triumph over this formidable combination. Never was evinced in a more striking light the influence of individual gallantry and conduct on national fortunes; or a more convincing illustration of the undoubted truth, that when important changes are about to be made in human affairs, Providence frequently makes use of the agency of individual greatness. But for Henry's capacity and determination, the Protestants would have been crushed, and the civil war terminated in the first campaign. But, like all other illustrious men, he became great in the school of adversity. His energy, resources, and perseverance triumphed over every difficulty, extricated him from every peril, and at length enabled him to triumph over every opposition. It was his wonderful partisan qualities—the secrecy, skill, and daring ofhis enterprises, which first laid the foundation of his fortune, by drawing to his standard many of those restless spirits, let loose over the country by the former wars, who in every age are attracted by the courage, capacity, and liberality of a leader. He was thus enabled to augment the little army of the Huguenots by a considerable accession of bold and valuable soldiers from the opposite faith, but who cared more for the capacity of their leader than for either the psalms of the Huguenots or the high mass of the Catholics.
By degrees, many even of the Romish nobility, penetrated with admiration at the manner in which the heir of the crown combated for his rights, joined his standard, in the secret hope that when he came to the throne he would revert to the faith of the majority of his subjects. He won all hearts, even in the enemy's ranks, by his generosity, humanity, and heroic spirit. The soldiers worshipped the hero who shared all their hardships, and whose greatest pleasure was ever to be the first in advancing into the enemy's fire; the officers were filled with enthusiasm for the prince who treated them all with the hearty courtesy of the camp, and claimed no distinction save that which all felt to be due to pre-eminent valour and never-failing capacity. Even his weaknesses augmented the general interest in his character; and when it was known that the leader whose exploits riveted the attention of all Europe, not unfrequently stole from the council-board or the tent to pursue some fugitive fair one through a forest, or subdue the obduracy of high-born beauty, by watching all night before her castle walls, the age of romance seemed to have returned to the earth, and all hearts were interested in the hero who appeared to unite the greatness of ancient patriotism with the spirit of modern chivalry.
Nor did Henry's conduct, when he had taken Paris and conquered the throne, belie the expectations formed by this brilliant dawn of his career. He proved not merely a warrior, but the father of his people. Great projects of amelioration were set on foot—greater still were in preparation, when he perished by the hand of Ravaillac. His celebrated saying, that he "hoped to see the time when every peasant should have his fowl in his pot," reveals the paternal spirit of his government. It is vain to say these were the acts of his ministers; that Sully was the real sovereign. The answer of Queen Elizabeth, when the success of her reign was imputed to the capacity of her ministers, "Did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?" affords the decisive reply to all such depreciatory attempts. Under his beneficent rule, industry was protected, commerce revived; canals, roads, and bridges penetrated the country in every direction; and, most marvellous of all, religious schisms were healed and religious fury stilled. The abjuration by the successful monarch of the faith in which he had been bred, and the warriors of which had combated for him, was unquestionably a measure called for, in a temporal view, by the interest of his dominions at the time, not less than by his own tenure of the throne. When it is recollected that the Huguenots did not at that period exceed two millions, among twenty which France contained, it becomes at once apparent, that, in a country so recently convulsed by the passions of religious and civil dissension, conformity with the faith of the great majority was the sole condition on which tranquillity could have been restored, discord appeased, a stable government established, or the crown transmitted to the descendants of the reigning monarch. And, while his biographer must lament the necessity to which he was subjected, of bending religious conviction to political expedience, all must admire the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes, which, without shocking the prejudices of the Catholics, secured liberty of conscience and just immunities to the Protestants; and which, if adhered to by succeeding monarchs, on the equitable spirit in which it had been conceived by its author, would probably have left the direct heirs of Henry IV. still on the throne of France, and averted all the bloodshed and horrors of the Revolution.
Henry IV., however, was not a perfect character; had he been so, he would not have been a child of Adam.He had the usual proportion of the weaknesses, some of the faults, of humanity. They were, for the most part, however, of that kind which are nearly allied to virtues, and to which heroic characters have, in every age, in a peculiar manner been subject. Heroism, love, and poetry, ever have and ever will be found united: they are, in truth, as Lamartine has expressed it, twin sisters of each other; they issued at a single birth from the same parents. We may regret that it is so; but if we do, we had better extend our regrets a little farther, and lament that we are not all immaculate as our First Parents were in the bowers of Paradise. His irregularities are universally known, and have, perhaps, rendered him as celebrated in France as his warlike exploits or pacific virtues; for they fell in with the prevailing passion of the nation, and were felt by all to be some excuse for their own indulgences. They are celebrated even in the well-known air which has become, in a manner, the National Anthem:—
"Vive Henri IV.!Vive le roi vaillant!Ce Diable à quatreA le triple talentDe boire et de battre,Et d'être vert galant."
Henry IV., however, had more apology than most men for these frailties. He lived in an age, and had been bred up in a court, in which female virtue was so rare that it had come to pass for a chimera, and licentious indulgence so frequent that it had become a habit, and ceased to be a subject of reproach. Naturally ardent, susceptible, and impetuous, he was immersed in a society in which intrigue with high-born beauty was universally considered as the great object and chief employment of life. The poetry and romances which were in every hand inculcated nothing else. His own Queen, Margaret of Valois, gave him the first example of such irregularities, and while she set no bounds to her jealousy of his mistresses, particularly La Belle Gabrielle, who so long held the monarch captive, she had no hesitation in bestowing her own favours on successive lovers with as little scruple as the King himself. In some instances, however, he was more completely inexcusable. It is remarkable that the attachments of Henry became more violent as he advanced in life, and had attained the period when the passions are usually found to cool. In some instances they impelled him into acts of vehemence and oppression wholly unworthy of his character and heart. His passion, late in years, for the young Princess of Condé—a child of seventeen, who might have been his granddaughter—and which prompted her flight with her husband to the Low Countries, on which he was preparing war for her recovery when cut short by death, was ridiculous in one of his age, and grossly criminal to one in her circumstances. But these passions pursued him to the very last; and when his tomb was broken open, and remained exposed, by the Parisian mob during the fury of the Revolution, the nicely combed and highly perfumed beard, the scent of which filled the air, proved that the dagger of Ravaillac had struck him while still immersed in the frivolities which tarnished his heroic exploits.[20]
In truth, without detracting from the many great and good qualities of the hero of the Bourbon family, it may safely be affirmed that his fame in subsequent times has been to the full as great as he deserved. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy partiality of subsequent times. His reign was filled with great and glorious actions; and that endeared him to the heroic and the brave. His court was the abode of gallantry—his life devotion to beauty; and that won for him the applause of the fair. He did wonders, and designed still greater, for the internal improvement of his dominions and the increase of his people's happiness; and that secured for him the approbation of the philanthropic and thoughtful. He gained for the Protestants religious freedom and immunity from persecution; and that secured theireternal gratitude. He restored to the Church of Rome the religious supremacy which had been so fiercely disputed, and in so many other countries had been lost; and that shut the mouths of the Catholics. He stilled the fury of civil, and pacified the fierceness of religious discord; and that justly won for him the gratitude of all. His reign formed a bright contrast to the frightful civil wars and universal bloodshed which had preceded it. Like Napoleon, he closed the gulf of revolution; and the admiration of subsequent times was the worthy meed of the inestimable service thus rendered to humanity. They have not diminished, perhaps exaggerated, the tribute. He was the first of a race of sovereigns who for two centuries sat in the direct line on the throne of France, and the collateral descendants of whom still hold it. Family partiality, courtly panegyric, thus came to be largely mingled with the just tribute of a nation's gratitude. The writers of other countries, particularly England and Germany, joined in the chorus of applause to the prince who had secured to the Protestant faith its just rights in so important a kingdom as France. The vices or weakness of subsequent sovereigns—the feeble rule of Louis XIII.; the tyrannical conduct, the splendid talents of Louis XIV.; the corruptions of the Regent Orleans; the disgraceful sensuality of Louis XV.; the benevolent heart, but passive resignation of Louis XVI.—rose up successively in striking contrast to his heroic deeds, vigorous government, and equitable administration. But, without disregarding the influence of these circumstances in brightening the halo which still surrounds the memory of Henry IV., the sober voice of distant and subsequent history must pronounce him one of the greatest princes who have adorned modern history, and certainly the greatest, after Charlemagne and Napoleon, who ever sat on the throne of France.
But it is time to put a period to this general disquisition, to give some extracts from the work of our author, in justice both to its own merits and the character of the hero which it is intended to portray.
Mr James gives the following interesting particulars concerning the birth and early years of Henry:—