“Here lies entomb’d a walking thing,Whom Fortune with the Fates did flingBetween these walls.”
“Here lies entomb’d a walking thing,Whom Fortune with the Fates did flingBetween these walls.”
“Here lies entomb’d a walking thing,Whom Fortune with the Fates did flingBetween these walls.”
“Here lies entomb’d a walking thing,
Whom Fortune with the Fates did fling
Between these walls.”
He wrote now his “Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign,” wisely putting no date on the epistles as to place. He composed also "Casual Discourses and Interlocutions between Patricius and Peregrin, touching the Distractions of the Times"--this work was the result of the Battle of Edge Hill--“Parables reflecting on the Times;” "England’s Tears for the Present War;" “Vindications of some Passages reflecting upon himself in Mr. Prynne’s book called the ‘Popish Royal Favourite,’” a work which coupled his name with that of Buckingham; and his “Epistolæ-Hoelianæ.” These works came out year after year. It is said by Wood that most of Howell’s letters were written in the Fleet, though some of them purported to have been sent from Madrid and other places. The fact is, he wrote for subsistence; and his works were popular and productive. His statements may, indeed, have been made so long after the events they relate occurred, as to render them doubtful; yet it is acknowledged that they containa good view of the actors in those stirring times--whilst they are almost the only letters that still preserve the memory of the writer among us.
Most of his other writings were political; one of his imaginative flights recalls, in the idea that originated it, the title of the pleasant brochure, “Voyage autour de ma chambre,” in our own times. Howell’s composition is styled, “A Nocturnal Progress; or, a perambulation of such Countries in Christendom performed in one night by strength of imagination.” All the titles of his works are striking: “Winter Dream,” "A Trance, or News from Hell, brought first to town by Mercurius Acheronticus;"--this was published in 1649, after the King’s death. He still, Royalist as he was, bore his misfortunes cheerfully; yet his loyalty sank at last beneath the pressure of starvation, and he yielded to expediency. It was not, however, until 1653 that his constancy broke down, and that he addressed to Oliver Cromwell his “Sober’s Inspections made into the carriage and consult of the late Long Parliament.” One may know the views he took from the title; but when he compliments the Lord Protector, compares him to Charles Martel, and descends to flattery, Howell loses our respect. Neither does he regain it by his “Cordial for the Cavaliers,”published in 1660, and answered by the “Caveat for the Cavaliers” of Sir Roger L’Estrange.
Payne Fisher, who had been poet-laureate to Cromwell, edited “Howell’s Works,” in which he calls the author the “prodigy of the age for the variety of his writings.” These were forty in number, and in “them all,” says Fisher, “there is something still new, either in the matter, method, or fancy, and in an untrodden tract.”
For the change of politics in the famous letter-writer his friends were prepared, when, after the King’s death, he wrote with what some call prudence, others pusillanimity, these words:--“I will attend with patience how England will thrive, now that she is let blood in the Basilican vein, and cured, as they say, of the King’s evil.” Nevertheless, Howell was made Historiographer-Royal in England by Charles II., who was so lenient to his enemies, so ungrateful to his friends. The place was even created for him; but death soon caused him to vacate it. He ended his chequered life in 1660, and-was buried in the Temple Church.
Among the few who remembered George Villiers with gratitude, or who endeavoured to rescue his memory from opprobrium, Henry Wotton, his biographer, appears in a conspicuous and favourable light. Most of the eminent menof the time had been reared, and even trained, to public service, during the reign of Elizabeth, when strength of purpose, honesty, ability, and learning were the grounds of promotion in all the minor, as well as in the superior departments of the State. Henry Wotton, born in 1568, at Bocton Hall,[240]in Kent, and descended from an ancient family, was a thoroughly-educated English gentleman. After some years’ instruction at Winchester School, he was entered at New College, Oxford. Close to that grand old college was Hart Hall, a sort of subsidiary establishment; and Wotton, perhaps from being a freshman, had his rooms in Hart Hall Lane. Here his chamber-fellow, as he was then called, was Richard Baker, the historian, who was entered at the same time, and born the same year, and whose predilections for letters resembled those of young Henry Wotton. The inestimable advantage of a companionship of such a nature cannot be too highly appreciated by those who watch the dawning mind of youth, and who desire them to have recourse to the only sure preventive of dissipation--employment. Baker, well known for hisChronicle, was also a writer on theological subjects, and a young man of sincere piety. His friend Wotton was then less distinguished for historical studies than for his wit and learning. For some reason, not explained, he left New College, and established himself in the then old-fashioned tenement of Queen’s College, in the High Street, where he was soon complimented by being selected to write a play for the inmates of that house to perform. He produced a tragedy called “Tancredo,” which was declared to manifest, in a very striking manner, his abilities for composition, his wit, and knowledge. Thus, like the gay Templar, or the student of Gray’s Inn, did the young Oxonian delight in the drama--which formed, to borrow a French expression, a sort ofdebûtfor wits; nor did Baker, though serious and plodding, despise the drama; and even when, in after life, he had been knighted at Theobald’s by King James, and Baker’s reputation stood high, he vindicated the stage against Prynne, in a work entitled “Theatrum Redivivum.”
Wotton, after proceeding Master of Arts in his twentieth year, left Oxford, and passed a year in France; and then going on to Geneva, formed there the friendship of Casaubon and of Beza. He remained nine years in Germany and Italy,and returned to England an accomplished and enlightened, as well as a learned man; being, says his biographer, “a dear lover of painting, sculpture, chemistry, and architecture.” He was soon appreciated by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, then high in favour with Elizabeth; and became one of that nobleman’s secretaries, and the most devoted of his friends. The parallel which he has left the world between Essex and Buckingham, and which Lord Clarendon answered, is written with an enthusiasm for the character of Wotton’s first patron, which can only have sprung from intimate acquaintance, and from that true affection which generous, impulsive natures, such as that of Essex, are likely to inspire.
With Essex, Wotton remained until his patron was apprehended and attainted of treason; then he fled to France, and scarcely had he landed there when he heard that the Earl had been beheaded. He took refuge from solitude, and perhaps peril, in Florence, where the Grand Duke[241]of Tuscany received him cordially. James I. was then reigning over Scotland; a plot threatened his life, and the Grand Duke having become aware of this, by some intercepted letters, sent Wotton, in disguise, to warn James of hisdanger. Wotton spoke Italian perfectly; he, therefore, assumed the name and dress of an Italian, and, thus disguised, set off on his hazardous journey. Having been so deeply concerned in the affairs of Essex, he did not venture to pass into England. He travelled, therefore, into Norway, and, by that route, reached Scotland. He found the King at Stirling, and was introduced into his presence under the name of Octavio Baldi. He soon found an opportunity of disclosing himself to the King, and, after remaining three months in Scotland, he returned to Florence.
Queen Elizabeth’s death brought him back to England, where his favour with the new King was ensured. When James I. saw Sir Edward Wotton, he inquired if “he knew not Henry Wotton?”
"I know him well," was the reply, “for he is my brother.”
The King then asked where he was, and ordered him to be sent for. When Wotton first saw his Majesty, James took him into his arms, and saluted him by the name of Octavio Baldi; then he knighted him, and nominated him Ambassador to Venice. But it was not easy, in those days, to avoid giving offence. The new Ambassador, passing through Augsburg, met there, amongst other learned men, his old friend, one ChristopherFlecamore, who requested him to write something in his Album, a book which even then Germans usually carried about with them; Sir Henry, complying, wrote a definition of an Ambassador in the Album. The sentence was given in Latin, as being a language common to all that erudite company, but the definition was, in English, this--“An Ambassador is an honest man sent tolieabroad for the good of his country.”
This sentence was imparted, eight years afterwards, to one of King James’s literary opponents, a jealous Romanist priest, named Scioppius, who printed it in a work directed against the royal polemic, and which pretended to show upon what a degraded principle a Protestant acted. The book reached King James, who had the mortification of hearing that this definition of an ambassador, which happened to be then the correct one, whatever may now be the case, was exhibited in glass windows at Venice. For some time James was displeased, but on receiving Sir Henry’s explanation, he forgave him, saying that the delinquent “had commuted sufficiently for a greater offence.”
The various embassies in which Sir Henry Wotton was engaged detained him abroad until 1623, when he came home finally. A greatpiece of preferment was then vacant; and, by the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, it was bestowed on Wotton. This was the post of Provost of Eton; but one great obstacle presented itself--Wotton had been everything that was useful and important, but he was not in orders; nevertheless, anything could be accomplished in those days--he was made a deacon, and held the Provostship from 1623 to 1639, when he died. The appointment did no discredit to him who procured it, for Wotton was an able, honest man, singularly liberal in his religious tenets for his time. He ordered that upon his grave, in the Chapel of Eton College, there should be a sentence, in Latin, decrying the itch for disputation as the real disease of the Church. He was a great enemy to disputation. On being asked, “Do you believe that a Papist can be saved?” he answered, “Youmay be saved without knowing that; look to yourself.” When he heard some one railing at the Romanists with stupid rancour, he said:--“Pray, sir, forbear, till you have studied these points better. There is an Italian proverb which says, ‘he that understands amiss concludes worse;’ forbear of thinking that the farther you go from the Church of Rome the nearer you are to God.”
Nevertheless, he was, like most lenient judges of the faith of others, a staunch adherent to his own. “Where was your religion to be found before Luther?” wrote a jocose Priest at Rome, seeing Sir Henry in an obscure corner of a church, listening to the beautiful service of the Vespers, and enjoying the exquisite music of a faith which appeals so much to the senses. “Where yours is not to be found--in the written Word of God,” was the answer, scribbled on a piece of paper underneath the interrogation.
Another evening Sir Henry sent one of the choir boys to his priestly friend with this question:--“Do you believe those many thousands of poor Austrians damned who were excommunicated because the Pope and the Duke of Venice could not agree about their temporalities?” To which inquiry the priest wrote in French underneath--"Excusez moi, Monsieur."
Such was the man whom Buckingham favoured; and who afterwards repaid the obligation by a beautiful, somewhat florid, but authentic biographical account of the Duke’s origin, his rise, his dangers, his services, and his death. Quaint but expressive language, genuine enthusiasm, and personal acquaintance, render this sketch one of the most delightful compositions of SirHenry’s pen. In comparing him, in prosperity and in adversity, to Essex, the master whom he loved, Wotton pays the Duke of Buckingham what he conceived to be the highest compliment. He was commencing a life of Martin Luther, and intending to interweave in it a history of the Reformation in Germany, when Charles I. prevailed on him to lay it aside, and to begin a history of England. That undertaking has something unfortunate associated with it. Rapin and Hume never lived to complete their works. Mackintosh died after leaving a noble fragment to increase our sorrow for his loss. Macaulay has expired before half his glorious task has been given to the world. Sir Henry Wotton had sketched out some short characters as materials, when his intentions and Charles’s commands were frustrated by death. His “Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, or a collection of Lives, Letters, and Poems, with characters of sundry personages, and other incomparable pieces of Language and Art, by the ever-memorable Sir Henry Wotton,”[242]is a small octavo volume; yet large enough to create regret that one of such rare powers and opportunities had not written, with the candour of his nature, ahistory of the times in which he flourished. His “State of Christendom, or a most exact and curious discovery of many secret passages and hidden mysteries of the times,” supplies in some measure that deficiency.
Successful in life, Wotton was, in his death, fortunate in being the subject of an elegy from the pen of Cowley, then a young man of twenty-one, at Trinity College, Cambridge.[243]
If we except the encouragement given by the Duke of Buckingham to the masque, and the preference evinced by him for literature as one of the essential ingredients of civilized society, the progress of letters, it must be avowed, has owed little to his direct intervention.
Clarendon, though at the time of the Duke’s death patronized by Laud, was then a young lawyer, little more than twenty years of age.[244]Being brought into contact with Archbishop Laud, during the course of a cause in which he was even then retained by some London merchants, Clarendon, at that time Edward Hyde, must not only have heard much of Buckingham, but have known him personally; but the publiccareer of the future historian did not commence till 1640. As, however, Hyde then affected the fine gentleman and the man of letters rather than the lawyer, he probably, in those characters, had opportunities of seeing Buckingham on the same footing as that on which he became acquainted with Falkland, Selden, Waller, Carew, and others; but he owed nothing, as far as we can trace, to the friendship of Villiers.
Ralegh and Bacon were above the patronage of the favourite; the one was suffered to die in prison, the other was long alienated from his early admirer and sometime pupil, the Duke. Nevertheless, there were not a few persons, as it has been seen, eminent as writers, who were indirectly assisted and protected by Buckingham, and who paid him the tribute of their gratitude or admiration. Still the aid he gave to art was far more liberal than any that he afforded to letters.
Such is the view taken of the redeeming services performed to society by a man who had much in his public career to be forgiven. With respect to the acts to which he prompted Charles, to screen himself, no defence can be offered: but for the general bearing of that King’s conduct towards his Parliament, he must be deemed irresponsible,since his death neither changed his Sovereign’s line of principle, nor moderated his actions. Buckingham was less a man of evil intentions than of expediency; to get out of a difficulty, he imperiled the freedom of the people, and the safety of the Crown, when he might bravely have courted inquiry, and profited by counsel. It was one of his great misfortunes that he never made a true and worthy friendship with any man so nearly his equal as to be able frankly to advise him against what Clarendon calls the “current, or rather the torrent, of his passions.” He was surrounded by needy brothers, and influenced by an ambitious, unscrupulous mother. One faithful friend would not only have saved him from many perils, but might have prompted him to do “as transcendant worthy actions” as any man in his sphere. In spite of prosperity, he was of a persuadable nature; he was naturally candid, just, and generous; no record remains of the temptation of money leading him to do any unkind action. “If,” says Lord Clarendon, “he had an immoderate ambition, it doth not appear that it was in his nature, or that he brought it to the Court, but rather found it there. He needed no ambition, who was so seated in the hearts of two such masters.”
No man was more vilified in his private life thanBuckingham. Like all persons of weak principles and impulsive nature, he was at once engaging and disappointing; warm-hearted one instant, selfish the next; the idol of his family, whom he befriended unceasingly; the object, during his life, of his young wife’s most devoted affection, which he often forgot or betrayed. Nevertheless, whilst his moral character was sullied by many blemishes, it was free from the unblushing profligacy of some of his predecessors, and superior to the hypocritical sensuality of his contemporary, Richelieu. Happily for the age, the almost blameless early career of Charles enforced that virtue should be respected, and that vice, where it existed, should remain concealed. Buckingham probably owed to this necessity much of what, at all events, may be endowed with the praise of decorum.
The popular error of many historians, who depict him as an arrogant favourite, a remorseless extortioner, a reckless invader of liberty, the minion of his own King, and the instrument of foreign Courts, yields before the more intimate view of Buckingham’s character which has been unfolded in the collections now laid open to all readers of history. That he was impetuous, but kind in nature--careless of forms, but courteous in spirit--led widely astray by madpassions, yet returning in love and penitence to his home--is now confessed. No instances have been found to substantiate against him charges of corruption, such as that which was commonly practised in those days; he was loaded with presents of land, of money--he spent freely what had been thus bestowed--and the affection borne to him by his dependents is the best earnest of his many good qualities as a master and a patron.
In his liberality to all around him, he is said by Wotton, who thoroughly understood the noble nature which he compared to that of Essex, to have been “cheerfully magnificent,” whilst he conferred his favours with such a grace, that the manner was as gratifying as the gift, “and men’s understandings were as much puzzled as their wits.”
His disposition was full of tenderness and compassion. The man who fell by the assassin’s hand had a horror of capital punishment, “Those,” Lord Clarendon observes, “who think the laws dead if they are not severely executed, censured him for being too merciful; and he believed, doubtless, hanging the worst use a man could be put to.” Consistent with this sweetness of character were his affability and gentleness to men younger than himself, as well as his ready forgivenessof injuries, an “easiness to reconcilement,” which caused him even too soon to forget the circumstances of affronts and evil deeds, and, therefore, exposed him to a repetition.
Of all the imputations which were fixed on Buckingham, that of a desire to enrich himself, from motives of avarice, is the most completely refuted by facts. During the four years that he enjoyed the unbounded confidence of Charles I. he became every day poorer. His affairs were investigated, and the result was proved. It is, indeed, a question, and a very serious one,--how far any man is justified in spending, even on noble purposes, and certainly not in mere show, largely beyond his income, as Buckingham did; but his conduct is, at all events, more pardonable than the mere desire to collect a great fortune, from sources which he seems to have considered should be expended either in doing honour to his Sovereign abroad in his embassies--a notion paramount in those days, though out of date in ours--or by the encouragement of arts and sciences, and the duties of hospitality at home.
When we recapitulate the errors of this celebrated man--his omissions, his sins, his want of good faith, his overlooking the benefits he might have conferred on his country, until it was almosttoo late for repentance, his sacrifice of his Sovereign’s best interests to his own will--we must, at the same time, admit great extenuation. No mercy was shown to his faults by the historians of his time, nor of the age succeeding; they wrote under a sense of the deep injuries from which the Rebellion received its first impulse. We must not look for fairness in such a ferment. Even after the tomb had long been closed over his remains, it was scarcely safe, certainly scarcely prudent, to palliate the faults, or to place the virtues of Buckingham in a fair light. We have now, however, the satisfactory assurance that Buckingham was conscious of his faults; contrite for his misdeeds; and earnest in his resolution to repair them, had his life been spared.[245]
Lord Clarendon closes his “Disparity” between the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham in these words:--
“He that shall continue this argument further may haply begin his parallel after their deaths, and not unfitly. He may say that they were both as mighty in obligations as any subjects; and both their memories and families as unrecompensed by such as they had raised. He may tell you of the clients that buried the pictures ofthe one, and defaced the arms of the other, lest they might be too long suspected for their dependants, and find disadvantage by being honest to their memories. He may tell you of some that drew strangers to their houses, lest they might find the track of their own footsteps, that might upbraid them with their former attendance. He may say that both their memories shall have a reverend fervour with all posterity, and all nations. He may tell you many more particulars, which I dare not do.”
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.