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of means and spirit to accomplish his design. For the rest, his obsolete language, and the ill choice of his stanza, are faults but of the second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice; and for the last, he is the more to be admired, that, labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr Waller among the English.

for vanity in me, for it is truth. More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living; and I had reason on my side to have defended my own innocence. I speak not of my poetry, which I have wholly given up to the critics: let them use it as they please: posterity, perhaps, may be more favourable to me; for interest and passion will lie buried in another age, and partiality and prejudice be forgotten. I speak of my morals, which have been sufficiently aspersed: that only sort of reputation ought to be dear to every honest man, and is to me. But let the world witness for me, that I have been often wanting to myself in that particular: I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, when it was in my power to have exposed my enemies: and, being naturally vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.

As for Mr Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his subject is not that of a heroic poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works; his heavenly machines are many, and his human persons are but two. But I will not take Mr Rymer's work out of his hands: he has promised the world a critique on that author, wherein, though he Anything, though never so little, which a man will not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will speaks of himself, in my opinion, is still too much; grant us that his thoughts are elevated, his words and therefore I will waive this subject, and proceed to sounding, and that no man has so happily copied the give the second reason which may justify a poet when manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his he writes against a particular person; and that is, Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is when he is become a public nuisance. All those, true he runs into a flat of thought sometimes for a whom Horace in his Satires, and Persius and Juvenal hundred lines together, but it is when he has got into have mentioned in theirs, with a brand of infamy, are a track of Scripture. His antiquated words were his wholly such. It is an action of virtue to make exchoice, not his necessity; for therein he imitated amples of vicious men. They may and ought to be Spenser, as Spenser did Chaucer. And though, per-upbraided with their crimes and follies; both for their haps, the love of their masters may have transported amendment, if they are not yet incorrigible, and for both too far, in the frequent use of them, yet, in my the terror of others, to hinder them from falling into opinion, obsolete words may then be laudably revived, those enormities, which they see are so severely when either they are more sounding or more signifi- punished in the persons of others. The first reason cant than those in practice; and when their obscu- was only an excuse for revenge; but this second is rity is taken away, by joining other words to them absolutely of a poet's office to perform: but how few which clear the sense, according to the rule of Horace, lampooners are now living who are capable of this for the admission of new words. But in both cases a duty!" When they come in my way, it is impossible moderation is to be observed in the use of them; for sometimes to avoid reading them. But, good God! unnecessary coinage, as well as unnecessary revival, how remote they are, in common justice, from the runs into affectation; a fault to be avoided on either choice of such persons as are the proper subject of hand. Neither will I justify Milton for his blank satire! And how little wit they bring for the support verse, though I may excuse him, by the example of of their injustice! The weaker sex is their most orHannibal Caro, and other Italians, who have used it; dinary theme; and the best and fairest are sure to be for whatever causes he alleges for the abolishing of the most severely handled. Amongst men, those who rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine), are prosperously unjust are entitled to panegyric; but his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme afflicted virtue is insolently stabbed with all manner was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing of reproaches; no decency is considered, no fulsomeit, nor the graces of it, which is manifest in his ness omitted; no venom is wanting, as far as dulness 'Juvenilia,' or verses written in his youth, where his can supply it; for there is a perpetual dearth of wit; rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes a barrenness of good sense and entertainment. The hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most neglect of the readers will soon put an end to this pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every sort of scribbling. There can be no pleasantry where man a rhymer, though not a poet. there is no wit; no impression can be made where there is no truth for the foundation. To conclude: they are like the fruits of the earth in this unnatural season; the corn which held up its head is spoiled with rankness; but the greater part of the harvest is laid along, and little of good income and wholesome nourishment is received into the barns. This is almost a digression, I confess to your lordship; but a just indignation forced it from me.

[Lampoon.]

In a word, that former sort of satire, which is known in England by the name of lampoon, is a dangerous sort of weapon, and for the most part unlawful. We have no moral right on the reputation of other men. It is taking from them what we cannot restore to them. There are only two reasons for which we may be permitted to write lampoons; and I will not promise that they can always justify us. The first is revenge, when we have been affronted in the same nature, or have been anyways notoriously abused, and can make ourselves no other reparation. And yet we know, that, in Christian charity, all offences are to be forgiven, as we expect the like pardon for those which we daily commit against Almighty God. And this consideration has often made me tremble when I was saying our Saviour's prayer; for the plain condition of the forgiveness which we beg, is the pardoning of others the offences which they have done to us; for which reason I have many times avoided the commission of that fault, even when I have been notoriously provoked. Let not this, my lord, pass

[Dryden's Translation of Virgil.]

What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me,

* The abuse of personal satires, or lampoons, as they were called, was carried to a prodigious extent in the days of Dryden, when every man of fashion was obliged to write verses; and those who had neither poetry nor wit, had recourse to ribaldry and libelling.-Sir Walter Scott.

32

by the lying character which has been given them of my morals. Yet, steady to my principles, and not dispirited with my afflictions, I have, by the blessing of God on my endeavours, overcome all difficulties, and in some measure acquitted myself of the debt which I owed the public when I undertook this work. In the first place, therefore, I thankfully acknowledge to the Almighty Power the assistance he has given me in the beginning, the prosecution, and conclusion or my present studies, which are more happily performed than I could have promised to myself, when I laboured under such discouragements. For what I have done, imperfect as it is for want of health and leisure to correct it, will be judged in after ages, and possibly in the present, to be no dishonour to my native country, whose language and poetry would be more esteemed abroad, if they were better understood. Somewhat (give me leave to say) I have added to both of them in the choice of words and harmony of numbers, which were wanting (especially the last) in all our poets, even in those who, being endued with genius, yet have not cultivated their mother-tongue with sufficient care; or, relying on the beauty of their thoughts, have judged the ornament of words and sweetness of sound unnecessary. One is for raking in Chaucer (our English Ennius) for antiquated words, which are never to be revived, but when sound or significancy is wanting in the present language. But many of his deserve not this redemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slain for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish could revive them. Others have no ear for verse, nor choice of words, nor distinction of thoughts, but mingle farthings with their gold to make up the sum. Here is a field of satire opened to me; but since the Revolution, I have wholly renounced that talent: for who would give physic to the great when he is uncalled-to do his patient no good, and endanger himself for his prescription? Neither am I ignorant but I may justly be condemned for many of those faults, of which I have too liberally arraigned others.

[History and Biography.]

It may now be expected that, having written the life of a historian, I should take occasion to write somewhat concerning history itself. But I think to commend it is unnecessary, for the profit and pleasure of that study are both so very obvious, that a quick reader will be beforehand with me, and imagine faster than I can write. Besides, that the post is taken up already; and few authors have travelled this way, but who have strewed it with rhetoric as they passed. For my own part, who must confess it to my shame, that I never read anything but for pleasure, it has always been the most delightful entertainment of my life; but they who have employed the study of it, as they ought, for their instruction, for the regulation of their private manners, and the management of public affairs, must agree with me that it is the most pleasant school of wisdom. It is a familiarity with past ages, and an acquaintance with all the heroes of them; it is, if you will pardon the similitude, a prospective glass, carrying your soul to a vast distance, and taking in the farthest objects of antiquity. It informs the understanding by the memory; it helps us to judge of what will happen, by showing us the like revolutions of former times. For mankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and moved to action by the same interests, nothing can come to pass but some precedent of the like nature has already been produced; so that, having the causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceived

*Plutarch.

in the effects, if we have judgment enough but to draw the parallel.

God, it is true, with his divine providence overrules and guides all actions to the secret end he has ordained them; but in the way of human causes, a wise man may easily discern that there is a natural connection betwixt them; and though he cannot foresee accidents, or all things that possibly can come, he may apply examples, and by them foretell that from the like counsels will probably succeed the like events; and thereby in all concernments, and all offices of life, be instructed in the two main points on which depend our happiness-that is, what to avoid, and what to choose.

The laws of history, in general, are truth of matter, method, and clearness of expression. The first propriety is necessary, to keep our understanding from the impositions of falsehood; for history is an argument framed from many particular examples or inductions; if these examples are not true, then those measures of life which we take from them will be false, and deceive us in their consequence. The second is grounded on the former; for if the method be confused, if the words or expressions of thought are any way obscure, then the ideas which we receive must be imperfect; and if such, we are not taught by them what to elect or what to shun. Truth, therefore, is required as the foundation of history to inform us, disposition and perspicuity as the manner to inform us plainly; one is the being, the other the well being of it.

History is principally divided into these three species-commentaries, or annals; history, properly so called; and biographia, or the lives of particular men.

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Commentaries, or annals, are (as I may so call them) naked history, or the plain relation of matter of fact, according to the succession of time, divested of all other ornaments. The springs and motives of actions are not here sought, unless they offer themselves, and are open to every man's discernment. The method is the most natural that can be imagined, depending only on the observation of months and years, and drawing, in the order of them, whatsoever happened worthy of relation. The style is easy, simple, unforced, and unadorned with the pomp of figures; councils, guesses, politic observations, sentences, and orations, are avoided; in few words, a bare narration is its business. Of this kind, the Commentaries of Cæsar' are certainly the most admirable, and after him the 'Annals of Tacitus' may have place; nay, even the prince of Greek historians, Thucydides, may almost be adopted into the number. For, though he instructs everywhere || by sentences, though he gives the causes of actions, the councils of both parties, and makes orations where they are necessary, yet it is certain that he first designed his work a commentary; every year writing down, like an unconcerned spectator as he was, the particular occurrences of the time, in the order as they happened; and his eighth book is wholly written after the way of annals; though, out-living the war, he inserted in his others those ornaments which render his work the most complete and most instructive now extant.

History, properly so called, may be described by the addition of those parts which are not required annals; and therefore there is little farther to be said concerning it; only, that the dignity and gravity of style is here necessary. That the guesses of secret causes inducing to the actions, be drawn at least from the most probable circumstances, not perverted by the malignity of the author to sinister interpretations (of which Tacitus is accused), but candidly laid down, and left to the judgment of the reader; that nothing of concernment be omitted; but things of trivial mo ment are still to be neglected, as debasing the majesty of the work; that neither partiality nor prejudice

and as the reader is more concerned at one man's fortune than those of many, so likewise the writer is more capable of making a perfect work if he confine himself to this narrow compass. The lineaments, features, and colourings of a single picture may be hit exactly; but in a history-piece of many figures, the general design, the ordonnance or disposition of it, the relation of one figure to another, the diversity of the posture, habits, shadowings, and all the other graces conspiring to a uniformity, are of so difficult performance, that neither is the resemblance of particular persons often perfect, nor the beauty of the piece complete; for any considerable error in the parts renders the whole disagreeable and lame. Thus, then, the perfection of the work, and the benefit arising from it, are both more absolute in biography than in history. All history is only the precepts of moral philosophy reduced into examples. Moral philosophy is divided into two parts, ethics and politics; the first instructs us in our private offices of virtue, the second in those which relate to the management of the commonwealth. Both of these teach by argu

appear, but that truth may everywhere be sacred: 'Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat historicus'-' that a historian should never dare to speak falsely, or fear to speak what is true']; that he neither incline to superstition, in giving too much credit to oracles, prophecies, divinations, and prodigies, nor to irreligion, in disclaiming the Almighty Providence; but where general opinion has prevailed of any miraculous accident or portent, he ought to relate it as such, without imposing his opinion on our belief. Next to Thucydides in this kind, may be accounted Polybius, amongst the Grecians; Livy, though not free from superstition, nor Tacitus from ill nature, amongst the Romans; amongst the modern Italians, Guicciardini and Davila, if not partial; but above all men, in my opinion, the plain, sincere, unaffected, and most instructive Philip de Comines, amongst the French, though he only gives his history the humble name of Commentaries. I am sorry I cannot find in our own nation, though it has produced some commendable historians, any proper to be ranked with these. Buchanan, indeed, for the purity of his Latin, and for his learning, and for all other endowmentation and reasoning, which rush as it were into ments belonging to a historian, might be placed amongst the greatest, if he had not too much leaned to prejudice, and too manifestly declared himself a party of a cause, rather than a historian of it. Excepting only that (which I desire not to urge too far on so great a man, but only to give caution to his readers concerning it), our isle may justly boast in him a writer comparable to any of the moderns, and excelled by few of the ancients.

Biographia, or the history of particular men's lives, comes next to be considered; which in dignity is inferior to the other two, as being more confined in action, and treating of wars and councils, and all other public affairs of nations, only as they relate to him whose life is written, or as his fortunes have a particular dependence on them, or connexion to them. All things here are circumscribed and driven to a point, so as to terminate in one; consequently, if the action or counsel were managed by colleagues, some part of it must be either lame or wanting, except it be supplied by the excursion of the writer. Herein, likewise, must be less of variety, for the same reason; because the fortunes and actions of one man are re

lated, not those of many. Thus the actions and achievements of Sylla, Lucullus, and Pompey, are all of them but the successive parts of the Mithridatic war; of which we could have no perfect image, if the same hand had not given us the whole, though at several views, in their particular lives.

the mind, and possess it with violence; but history rather allures than forces us to virtue. There is nothing of the tyrant in example; but it gently glides into us, is easy and pleasant in its passage, and, in one word, reduces into practice our speculative notions; therefore the more powerful the examples are, they are the more useful also, and by being more known, they are more powerful. Now, unity, which is defined, is in its own nature more apt to be understood than multiplicity, which in some measure participates of infinity. The reason is Aristotle's.

Biographia, or the histories of particular lives, though circumscribed in the subject, is yet more extensive in the style than the other two; for it not only comprehends them both, but has somewhat superadded, which neither of them have. The style of it is various, according to the occasion. There are proper places in it for the plainness and nakedness of narration, which is ascribed to annals; there is also room reserved for the loftiness and gravity of general history, when the actions related shall require that manner of expression. But there is, withal, a descent into minute circumstances and trivial passages of life, which are natural to this way of writing, and which the dignity of the other two will not admit. There you are conducted only into the rooms of state, here you are led into the private lodgings of the hero; you see him in his undress, and are made familiar with his most private actions and conversations. You may behold a Yet though we allow, for the reasons above alleged, Scipio and a Lælius gathering cockle-shells on the that this kind of writing is in dignity inferior to his- shore, Augustus playing at bounding-stones with boys, tory and annals, in pleasure and instruction it equals, and Agesilaus riding on a hobby-horse among his or even excels, both of them. It is not only com- children. The pageantry of life is taken away; you mended by ancient practice to celebrate the memory see the poor reasonable animal as naked as ever nature of great and worthy men, as the best thanks which made him; are made acquainted with his passions posterity can pay them, but also the examples of and his follies, and find the demi-god a man. Pluvirtue are of more vigour when they are thus con- tarch himself has more than once defended this kind tracted into individuals. As the sunbeams, united of relating little passages; for, in the Life of Alexin a burning-glass to a point, have greater force than ander, he says thus: In writing the lives of illustrious when they are darted from a plain superficies, so the men, I am not tied to the laws of history; nor does virtues and actions of one man, drawn together into a it follow, that, because an action is great, it therefore single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and manifests the greatness and virtue of him who did it; more lively impression than the scattered relations of but, on the other side, sometimes a word or a casual jest many men and many actions; and by the same means betrays a man more to our knowledge of him, than a that they give us pleasure, they afford us profit too. battle fought wherein ten thousand men were slain, For when the understanding is intent and fixed on a or sacking of cities, or a course of victories.' In ansingle thing, it carries closer to the mark; every part other place, he quotes Xenophon on the like occasion: of the object sinks into it, and the soul receives itThe sayings of great men in their familiar discourses, unmixed and whole. For this reason Aristotle commends the unity of action in a poem; because the mind is not capable of digesting many things at once, nor of conceiving fully any more than one idea at a time. Whatsoever distracts the pleasure, lessens it;

and amidst their wine, have somewhat in them which is worthy to be transmitted to posterity.' Our author therefore needs no excuse, but rather deserves a commendation, when he relates, as pleasant, some sayings of his heroes, which appear (I must confess it) very

cold and insipid mirth to us. For it is not his meaning to commend the jest, but to paint the man; besides, we may have lost somewhat of the idiotism of that language in which it was spoken; and where the conceit is couched in a single word, if all the significations of it are not critically understood, the grace and the pleasantry are lost.

But in all parts of biography, whether familiar or stately, whether sublime or low, whether serious or merry, Plutarch equally excelled. If we compare him to others, Dion Cassius is not so sincere; Herodian, a lover of truth, is oftentimes deceived himself with what he had falsely heard reported; then, the time of his emperors exceeds not in all above sixty years, so that his whole history will scarce amount to three lives of Plutarch. Suetonius and Tacitus may be called alike either authors of histories or writers of lives; but the first of them runs too willingly into obscene descriptions, which he teaches, while he relates; the other, besides what has already been noted of him, often falls into obscurity; and both of them have made so unlucky a choice of times, that they are forced to describe rather monsters than men; and their emperors are either extravagant fools or tyrants, and most usually both. Our author, on the contrary, as he was more inclined to commend than to dispraise, has generally chosen such great men as were famous for their several virtues; at least such whose frailties or vices were overpoised by their excellences; such from whose examples we may have more to follow than to shun. Yet, as he was impartial, he disguised not the faults of any man, an example of which is in the life of Lucullus, where, after he has told us that the double benefit which his countrymen, the Charoneans, received from him, was the chiefest motive which he had to write his life, he afterwards rips up his luxury, and shows how he lost, through his mismanagement, his authority and his soldiers' love. Then he was more happy in his digressions than any we have named. I have always been pleased to see him, and his imitator Montaigne, when they strike a little out of the common road; for we are sure to be the better for their wandering. The best quarry lies not always in the open field: and who would not be content to follow a good huntsman over hedges and ditches, when he knows the game will reward his pains? But if we mark him more narrowly, we may observe that the great reason of his frequent starts is the variety of his learning; he knew so much of nature, was so vastly furnished with all the treasures of the mind, that he was uneasy to himself, and was forced, as I may say, to lay down some at every passage, and to scatter his riches as he went: like another Alexander or Adrian, he built a city, or planted a colony, in every part of his progress, and left behind him some memorial of his greatness. Sparta, and Thebes, and Athens, and Rome, the mistress of the world, he has discovered in their foundations, their institutions, their growth, their height; the decay of the three first, and the alteration of the last. You see those several people in their different laws, and policies, and forms of government, in their warriors, and senators, and demagogues. Nor are the ornaments of poetry, and the illustrations of similitudes, forgotten by him; in both which he instructs, as well as pleases; or rather pleases, that he may instruct.

Dryden was exceedingly sensitive to the criticisms of the paltry versifiers of his day. Among those who annoyed him was Elkanah Settle, a now forgotten rhymer, with whom he carried on a violent war of ridicule and abuse. The following is an

To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet

"To flattering lightning our feigned smiles conform,
Which, backed with thunder, do but gild a storm."

Conform a smile to lightning, make a smile imitate lightning, and flattering lightning; lightning, sure, is s threatening thing. And this lightning must gild a storm. Now, if I must conform my smiles to lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too: to gild with smiles is a new invention of gilding. And gild a storm by being backed with thunder. Thunder is part of the storm; so one part of the storm must help to gild another part, and help by backing; as if a man would gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon his back. So that here is gilding by conforming, smiling, lightning, backing, and thendering. The whole is as if I should say thus: I will make my counterfeit smiles look like a flattering horse, which, being backed with a trooper, does but gild the battle. I am mistaken if nonsense is not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.'

The controversies in which Dryden was frequently engaged, were not in general restrained within the bounds of legitimate discussion. The authors of those days descended to gross personalities. There was,' says Sir Walter Scott, during the reign of Charles II., a semi-barbarous virulence of controversy, even upon abstract points of literature, which would be now thought injudicious and unfair, even by the newspaper advocates of contending factions. A critic of that time never deemed he had so effectually refuted the reasoning of his adversary, as when he had said something disrespectful of his talents, person, or moral character. Thus, literary contest was embittered by personal hatred, and truth was so far from being the object of the combatants, that even victory was tasteless unless obtained by the disgrace and degradation of the antagonist."

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, a well-known statesman and miscellaneous writer, possesses a high reputation as one of the chief polishers of the English language. He was the son of Sir John Temple, master of the Rolls in Ireland in the reigns of Charles L and IL and was born in London in 1628. He studied at Cambridge under Cudworth as tutor; but being intended for public life, devoted his attention chiefly to the French and Spanish languages. After travelling for six years on the continent, he went to reside with his father in Ireland, where he represented the county of Carlow in the parliament at Dublin in 1661. Removing, two years afterwards, to England, the introductions which he carried to the leading statesman of the day speedily procured him employment in the diplomatic service. He was sent, in 1665, on a secret mission to the bishop of his return a baronetcy was bestowed on him, and be Munster, and performed his duty so well, that on was appointed English resident at the court of Brussels. The peace of western Europe was at this time in danger from the ambitious designs of Louis XIV., who aimed at the subjugation of the Spanish Netherlands. Temple paid a visit to the Dutch governor, De Witt, at the Hague, and with great skill brought about, in 1668, the celebrated

amusing specimen of a criticism by Dryden on triple alliance between England. Holland, and Settle's tragedy, called The Empress of Morocco,' Sweden, by which the career of Louis was for a which seems to have roused the jealousy and indig-time effectually checked. In the same year he re

nation of the critic :—

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*Scott's Life of Dryden, Sect. lii

ceived the appointment of ambassador at the Hague, where he resided in that capacity for about twelve

which strongly disposed him to avoid risks of every kind, and to stand aloof from those departments of public business where the exercise of eminent courage and decision was required. His character as a patriot is therefore not one which calls for high admiration; though it ought to be remarked, in his favour, that as he seems to have had a lively consciousness that neither his abilities nor dispositions fitted him for vigorous action in stormy times, he probably acted with prudence in withdrawing from a field in which he would have only been mortified by failure, and done harm instead of good to the public. Being subject to frequent attacks of low spirits, he might have been disabled for action by the very emergencies which demanded the greatest mental energy and self-possession. As a private character, he was respectable and decorous: his temper, naturally haughty and unamiable, was generally kept under good regulation; and among his foibles, vanity was the most prominent.

The works of Sir William Temple consist chiefly of short miscellaneous pieces. His longest production is Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, composed during his first retirement at Sheen. This is accounted a masterpiece of its kind, and, when compared with his Essay on the Original and Nature of Government, written about the same time, shows that he had much more ability as an observer and describer, than as a reasoner on what he saw. Besides several political tracts of temporary interest, he wrote Essays on Ancient and Modern Learning; the Gardens of Epicurus; Heroic Virtue; Poetry; Popular Discontents; Health and Long Life. In these are to be found many sound and acute observations expressed in the perspicuous and easy, but not very correct or precise language, for which he is noted. His correspondence on public affairs has also been published.

Of all his productions, that which appears to us, in matter as well as composition, the best, is a letter to the Countess of Essex on her excessive grief occasioned by the loss of a beloved daughter. As a specimen of eloquent, firm, and dignified, yet tender and affectionate expostulation, it is probably unequalled within the compass of English literature. This admirable piece will be found among the extracts which follow.

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Sir William Temple. months, on terms of intimacy with De Witt, and also with the young Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. of England. The corrupt and wavering principles of the English court having led to the recall of Temple in 1669, he retired from public business to his residence at Sheen, near Richmond, and there employed himself in literary occupations and gardening. In 1674, however, he with some reluctance consented to return as ambassador to Holland; in which country, besides engaging in various important negotiations, he contributed to bring about the marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Duke of York's eldest daughter Mary. That important and popular event took place in 1677. Having finally returned to England in 1679, Temple was pressed by the king to accept the appointment of secretary of state, which, however, he persisted in refusing. Charles was now in the utmost perplexity, in consequence of the discontents and difficulties which a long course of misgovern- The style of Sir William Temple is characterised ment had occasioned; and used to hold long conver- by Dr Blair as remarkable for its simplicity. sations with Temple, on the means of extricating point of ornament and correctness,' adds that critic, himself from his embarrassments. The measure he rises a degree above Tillotson; though, for coradvised by Sir William was the appointment of a rectness, he is not in the highest rank. All is easy privy council of thirty persons, in conformity with and flowing in him; he is exceedingly harmonious; whose advice the king should always act, and by smoothness, and what may be called amenity, are the whom all his affairs should be freely and openly distinguishing characters of his manner; relaxing debated; one half of the members to consist of the sometimes, as such a manner will naturally do, into great officers of state, and the other of the most in- a prolix and remiss style. No writer whatever has fluential and wealthy noblemen and gentlemen of the stamped upon his style a more lively impression of country. This scheme was adopted by Charles, and his own character. In reading his works, we seem excited great joy throughout the nation. The hopes engaged in conversation with him; we become of the people were, however, speedily frustrated by thoroughly acquainted with him, not merely as an the turbulent and unprincipled factiousness of some author, but as a man, and contract a friendship for of the members. Temple, who was himself one of him. He may be classed as standing in the middle the council, soon became disgusted with its proceed-between a negligent simplicity and the highest ings, as well as those of the king, and, in 1681, degree of ornament which this character of style finally retired from public life. He spent the re- admits."* In a conversation preserved by Boswell, mainder of his days chiefly at Moor Park, in Surrey, Dr Johnson said, that Sir William Temple was where Jonathan Swift, then a young man, resided the first writer who gave cadence to English prose: with him in the capacity of amanuensis. After the before his time, they were careless of arrangement, Revolution, King William sometimes visited Temple and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an in order to consult him about public affairs. His important word or an insignificant word, or with death took place in 1698, at the age of sixty-nine. what part of speech it was concluded.'t This Throughout his whole career, the conduct of Sir William Temple was marked by a cautious regard for his personal comfort and reputation; a quality

Blair's Lectures, Lect. 19.

+ Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. iii.

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