The Age of Dryden Part 13

Although Richard Bentley (1662-1743) belongs mainly to the eighteenth century, his dissertation upon the _Epistles of Phalaris_ (1699) falls within the seventeenth, and an account of the literary criticism of this age would be incomplete without some mention of the one epoch-making critical work it produced. There is no need to tell again the story of the Bentley-Boyle controversy, so admirably narrated by Macaulay and Jebb; but it may be observed here that it marks an era in criticism as the first example of the testimony of antiquity being irretrievably overthrown by internal evidence. It was not the first time that the genuineness of attested ancient writings had been disputed. Valla had waged war upon the forged donation of Constantine, but his case was so very clear that he had not been answered, but as far as possible ignored. Phalaris had found defenders, and this controversy was perhaps the first in which tradition and authority were fairly vanquished in a pitched battle. Bentley's extraordinary powers of mind were almost equally evinced in his _Boyle Lectures_, also a production of the seventeenth century, which will be noticed in their place.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] An instance of the observation of nature as unusual with Dryden as chimneys of the size required are unusual with us.

CHAPTER VIII.

PHILOSOPHY.

From the criticism of books we pa.s.s, by no violent transition, to the criticism of principles--moral science. The latter half of the seventeenth century is a distinguished period in the history of English philosophy, for in it the most distinctively national of all systems which have obtained currency in this country was fully formulated. It is remarkable that while both empirical and transcendental views in philosophy found supporters, the champions of the latter comprised several ill.u.s.trious names, and that of the former only one, while nevertheless empiricism obtained as complete a triumph as has ever been recorded in the history of opinion. The princ.i.p.al reason, no doubt, is the natural attractiveness to the solid homely understanding of the Englishman of conclusions based on experience and common sense;[9] but partly also to the fact that the ill.u.s.trious man by whom the empirical philosophy was mainly upheld carried his speculations into practical life, and became foremost among the defenders of civil and religious liberty. If Locke, like his forerunner Hobbes, had employed his acuteness in defence of absolute power, he would, like Hobbes, have been caressed by the court, but his doctrines would have been slighted by the nation.

[Sidenote: John Locke (1632-1704).]

John Locke was born at Wrington in the north of Somerset, August 29 (N.S.), 1632, the same year that gave birth to Spinoza. His father, an attorney, was a man of independent character and strong principle, which he proved by accepting a commission in a Parliamentary regiment. Locke was elected to a foundation scholars.h.i.+p at Westminster in 1647, and to a students.h.i.+p at Christ Church in 1652. He became M.A. in June, 1658, was appointed Greek Lecturer in 1660, and held other college offices. He wrote about this time two treatises as yet unpublished, one upon the Roman commonwealth, the other on the right of the civil magistrate to regulate indifferent matters touching the exercise of religion, which, under the influence of the hopes which moderate men entertained of the Restoration government, he was at the time inclined to allow. Having determined to study medicine, he obtained in 1666 a dispensation to enable him to hold his students.h.i.+p, and in the same year the decisive bias was given to his life by his acquaintance with Shaftesbury, of whose family he became virtually a member in the following year.

Shaftesbury was as yet neither the Shaftesbury of the Cabal nor the Shaftesbury of the Popish Plot, and there was no reason why Locke should hesitate in attaching himself to a statesman, who, whatever his astuteness and versatility, possessed by far the most enlightened and comprehensive mind of any public man of his day. The main bond which united the two was their agreement on the principle of toleration, for which Chillingworth had been denounced and Roger Williams persecuted, and which scarcely any one would then have subscribed as an abstract proposition, though Cromwell had gone a long way towards reducing it to practice. Influenced probably by Shaftesbury, Locke drew up in 1667 an _Essay on Toleration_, the first draft of his subsequent celebrated work, and which has itself been retrieved from oblivion by Mr. Fox Bourne. Considering the circ.u.mstances of the times, it can excite neither surprise nor censure that he should have argued in favour of denying the privileges of toleration to those who denied them to others, _i.e._, to Roman Catholics. Two years later he drew up, at Shaftesbury's instance, a const.i.tution for the colony of Carolina, in which Shaftesbury was largely interested. His medical skill was exerted in relieving Shaftesbury from the effects of a serious complaint; and he acquitted himself successfully in a yet more delicate undertaking, the choosing a wife for his son. He also attended professionally at the birth of Shaftesbury's grandson, the future author of _Characteristics_.

These services were fitly recompensed by secretarys.h.i.+ps, both at the Great Seal and at the Board of Trade, but there is not the slightest proof of his having partic.i.p.ated in any of his patron's plots; while it is not too much to say that the steady regard entertained for Shaftesbury by a man like Locke affords the strongest of all presumptions that this enigmatical personage was, after all, a patriot.

During three and a half stormy years Locke was in France for the benefit of his health, making observations on the culture of the vine and olive, and noting, under the external splendour of Louis XIV.'s reign, symptoms of that distress among the industrial cla.s.ses which was to issue in the Revolution. Returning, he found his patron just liberated from the Tower, and their intimate relations continued until Shaftesbury's flight to Holland in November, 1682, followed by his death in the succeeding January. Locke was thus a mark for the suspicions and animosities of the triumphant Court party. His usual place of residence was now Oxford, where he still enjoyed his Christ Church students.h.i.+p, and curious letters are extant from Dean Prideaux, avowing practices akin to espionage, but admitting that John Locke is so close a man, and his servant such a phoenix of discretion, that nothing can be made out.

Locke wisely withdrew to Holland about the autumn of 1683, and in November, 1684, was arbitrarily ejected from his students.h.i.+p by a royal mandate. He employed his exile in forming friends.h.i.+ps with Limborch, Le Clerc, and other distinguished men, in composing his famous _Letter on Toleration_, published anonymously in 1689, and in active communication with William and Mary when the Deliverer's expedition was finally determined upon. He came to England with Mary in 1689, and received the most flattering offers of important diplomatic posts, which he declined on account of the weakness of his health. He accepted, however, a small appointment, but his princ.i.p.al public services were rendered as a referee on the various important questions submitted to him by Government; and as a man of letters, having nearly reached the age of sixty without publis.h.i.+ng anything of importance, he produced within ten years the series of unadorned tracts which have made him, alike in the regions of philosophy and of politics, the most conspicuous representative of masculine, unimaginative, English common sense.

The _Letter on Toleration_, as already mentioned, had appeared anonymously in Holland in 1689. In 1690 the _Essay on the Human Understanding_ was published, and also the two _Treatises on Government_; the first, a reply to Filmer, the advocate of divine right, composed, in Professor Fowler's opinion, between 1680 and 1685; the second written during the last years of Locke's residence in Holland.

The _Letter on Toleration_, the authors.h.i.+p of which was not acknowledged during Locke's lifetime, was followed by three defences against a.s.sailants, two of which appeared respectively in 1690 and 1692, the third was posthumous. The _Essay on the Human Understanding_, adopted from the first as a text-book at Trinity College, Dublin, but ineffectually proscribed in the writer's own university, called forth criticisms from Norris of Bemerton, to which Locke replied in two essays allowed to remain unpublished during his life, 'for,' he said, 'I love not controversy.' He could not, however, avoid a controversy with John Edwards and Bishop Stillingfleet, on his _Reasonableness of Christianity_ (1695). After writing five pamphlets, Locke ultimately remained in possession of the field, the drift of opinion being entirely in his favour, though few of the official ministers of religion ventured to come forward openly in his defence. The _Treatise on Education_ (1693), written at the request of William Molyneux, excited comparatively little controversy. Another very important cla.s.s of the productions of his affluent maturity were those on trade and finance, by which he rendered the utmost service to the state. By his _Considerations on the Value of Money_ (1691), and other tracts, he contributed largely to the reform of the currency, the condition of which had become intolerable, but was in great danger of being corrected by remedies worse than the disease. Several other publications contributed to disseminate enlightened views on trade, manufactures, and the interest of money. He could not always be right; it is both painful and ludicrous to find so wise and good a man obliged _ex officio_ as a Commissioner of Trade to find reasons for discouraging the woollen manufacture in Ireland; which Swift seems to ridicule in describing the Laputan philosophers who had devised means to remove the wool from a sheep's back, and hoped shortly to propagate the breed of naked sheep over the kingdom. This, nevertheless, is but a slight inconsistency with the general tenor of Locke's views on economical subjects, which, no less than his political and religious convictions, tended irresistibly towards unrestricted freedom. In 1700 he was released from public life, and spent his few remaining years undisturbed by controversy, in the society of the amiable family of Sir Francis Masham, of High Laver, Ess.e.x, of whose house he had long been an inmate. Lady Masham, singularly enough, was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the great English champion of the ideal school of philosophy, and therefore as far removed as possible from Locke in opinion. He died on October 28, 1704.

Locke's intellectual character must be considered along with his writings; of his moral character it may justly be said, that no English writer of equal eminence stands so high. Butler and Berkeley may have been equally faultless, and the latter, no doubt, possessed more of the spell of personal fascination; but neither was, like Locke, exposed to the storms of a corrupt and factious age; neither was called upon to encounter such perils and make such sacrifices; neither had the same opportunity of exercising fort.i.tude in adversity and moderation in success. Whether as public patriot or private friend, Locke appears 'a spirit without spot,' and his resolute temper, his intellectual ardour, and his brilliant achievements, effectually preserve him from the insipidity which so frequently mars the moral physiognomies of good men.

His countenance, indeed, is not illumined by the spirituality of a Channing; but the robuster virtues stand forth in even bolder relief, and his apparent exemption from the minor failings which beset even a Newton, is the more remarkable as he wanted neither for enemies nor biographers.

Locke's great work as a philosopher is the _Essay on the Human Understanding_, 'the best chart of the human mind,' says Hallam, one of the great representative books of the world. In Locke, as in his predecessor Hobbes, were united two endowments rarely combined, the st.u.r.dy prosaic common sense of the man of the world and the dexterity and subtlety of the practised logician. In his utter antipathy to everything in the slightest degree illumined, or, as he would have thought, distorted, by the glamour of imagination or fancy, Locke was the true representative of his age, and no subsequent change of mental att.i.tude, as the world sweeps on into new and more genial climates of thought, can deprive his work of its representative historical importance. Nor is this all. Locke's treatise was almost the first investigation of the mind which took note of facts, and was not purely metaphysical. It was also the first in which this study took a leading place. 'The science which we now call Psychology, or the study of mind,'

says Dr. Fowler, 'had hitherto, amongst modern writers, been almost exclusively subordinated to other branches of speculation. Locke was the first of modern writers to attempt at once an independent and a complete treatment of the phenomena of the human mind, of their mutual relations, of their causes and limits. This task he undertakes, not in the dogmatic spirit of his predecessors, but in the critical spirit which he may be said almost to have inaugurated. And the effect of his candour on his first readers must have been enhanced by the fact, not always favourable to his precision, that, as far as he can, he throws aside the technical terminology of the schools, and employs the language current in the better kinds of ordinary literature and the well-bred society of his time.' In fact, as was said of Socrates, he brought philosophy down from heaven to earth; and this service, and the great influence which his work produced upon the future development of philosophy, are perhaps stronger claims to permanent distinction than the merits of a theory which can never be overlooked, but can never again command the almost universal a.s.sent which it received in its own day. For the application of physiology to psychological research, implicitly, at all events, advocated by Locke, has produced results of which neither he nor his opponents dreamed. The central point of his philosophy is the denial of innate ideas; the mind is to him a _tabula rasa_, a sheet of blank paper, and all the ideas which have been thought inherent in it are the result of experience. In a sense we now know this to be true; but we also know this experience not to be the experience of the individual, but of the race, or rather say of sentient existence for ages inconceivably remote. It follows that although Locke may be abstractedly right in denying the possibility of the acquisition of ideas except through experience, yet practically everyone comes into the world with a host of ideas derived from his ancestors, connate if not innate; and that, so far from the human mind resembling a sheet of blank paper, it is more like a palimpsest inscribed and reinscribed _ad infinitum_. It also follows that the discrepancies of mankind respecting points of morality do not, as Locke thought, disprove the existence of an ideal rule of right, for everyone must necessarily be born with inherited instincts by which such a rule is more or less deflected or obscured. In fact, Locke and his adversaries were both partly right and partly wrong--one party in denying intuition, the other in defining it. Neither had found, or at that period could have found, the real key to the difficulty; but it is to the immortal honour of Locke that all real advance in psychology has been effected by working in his spirit of observation and induction, rather than by the _a priori_ method of his opponents. The third and fourth books of the essay, _On Words_ and _On Knowledge_, contain but little controversial matter, and are chiefly devoted to ill.u.s.trating the imperfection of human faculties, especially language, the necessity for clear and definite conceptions, and the countless impediments in the way of truth.

Three others among Locke's writings are regarded as cla.s.sical: _On the Reasonableness of Christianity_, and _On Education_, and his _Letters on Toleration_. _The Reasonableness of Christianity_ (1695) is from one point of view an endeavour to render Christianity reasonable by eliminating its corruptions; from another an attempt to establish it on the basis of fulfilled prophecy and miracle. In both respects it was admirably adapted to the prevalent sentiment of Locke's own day, and, although warmly attacked by Stillingfleet, exerted a great influence upon the theology of the eighteenth century. In our time the point of view has s.h.i.+fted so far as to expose Locke to the full weight of Dr.

Martineau's terse criticism, 'The affidavit has become the brief.' Its historical importance, however, can never be impaired, any more than that of the admirable _Letters on Toleration_, which seem commonplace because they are now esteemed irrefragable. It was otherwise in his own time, and for long afterwards. Their princ.i.p.al literary defects are that they are too polemical, and too long. Of all Locke's works, _Some Thoughts concerning Education_ is perhaps the most universally approved, and it is in truth a golden treatise, the very incarnation of good sense and right feeling; and more useful in its own time than it can be now that the errors which Locke especially a.s.sailed have become contrary, instead of congenial, to the general spirit of the age. The prevailing tone, the confidence in human nature rightly treated, the abhorrence of the merely arbitrary and despotic, render the work an epoch in the history of culture, and, compared with the coa.r.s.e maxims of a Defoe, or even the _Whole Duty of Man_'s exclusive reliance upon authority, show how greatly Locke was beyond his contemporaries in enlightenment and the genuine spirit of humanity. The insight and penetration into children's characters are surprising in a man who had no children of his own, or much direct concern with the education of the children of others. They prove that Locke must have been a most careful and accurate observer. If there is a fault in the treatise, it is that the range of view is not always sufficiently wide, and that the author's precepts are too exclusively propounded with reference to the individual, and too little with a view to the general advantage of society. The disuse of Latin composition, for example, would have done little personal harm to the majority of the individual boys of whom Locke is thinking; but, in his day at all events, would have lowered the standard of culture throughout Europe. In general, however, Locke's remarks are characterized by the soundest common sense; and there is perhaps no other production of the age so thoroughly in harmony with its pervading spirit.

In sharp contrast to Locke and his school stand the small knot of Cambridge Platonists and their allies--Cudworth, Henry More, Culverwell, c.u.mberland, Glanvil, and Whichcote, which last may indeed be regarded as a connecting link between the rival thinkers. His place is rather with the divines, and Henry More (1614-1657) belongs more properly to the period of Vaughan in virtue of his poetry, though continuing to write to a late date. Culverwell and c.u.mberland scarcely rank in a literary history; so that the school is chiefly represented by Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Cudworth's life was uneventful. One of those moderate men whom the excesses of party provoke to opposition, he sided mainly with the Puritans during the Civil War, but was no Puritan himself, and protested energetically against Puritan disparagement of sweetness and light. He had no difficulty in conforming to the Restoration, and accepting a living from Archbishop Sheldon, but his life was mainly spent in his study, in the production of vast folios, where the ingots of philosophy lay stored while Locke's current coin pa.s.sed nimbly from hand to hand. The contrast between the men and the systems is complete at every point; and it is a.s.suredly one of the strangest ironies of fate that Cudworth's daughter should have become the good angel of Locke's old age. Cudworth is no doubt by much the more attractive figure to imaginative minds; but it must be conceded as an indisputable truth that his way of thinking could not possibly have produced nearly so much good, have so profoundly leavened men's ideas on legislation and education, or have so contributed to build up the national character for sound common sense. This admitted, Cudworth may be heartily praised as a sublime and refined thinker, epithets inappropriate to Locke. His great work is _The Intellectual System_, published in 1678, only the first part of which ever appeared. A _Treatise on Immutable Morality_ remained in ma.n.u.script until 1731. Cudworth's purpose may briefly be defined as the expulsion of all materialistic and mechanical notions from theology, metaphysics, and ethics. He wages war upon atheism, fatalism, utilitarianism, whatsoever is opposed to elevating and poetical conceptions of the order of things. His erudition is only too extensive, and he is very candid. Dryden thought that he had stated the atheistic objections more powerfully than he had answered them; and his doctrine of plastic force in nature verges upon Pantheism, as indeed religious philosophies usually do. He is finely a.n.a.lyzed in the _Types of Ethical Theory_ of Dr. Martineau, who says of his philosophy:

'Embodied as it is in unfinished books, and buried in ma.s.sive erudition, it has been distantly respected rather than closely studied; and has left upon few readers an adequate impression of the depth of the author's penetration, the comprehensiveness of his grasp, the subtlety of his a.n.a.lysis, and the happy flashes of expression by which he flings light upon real though unsuspected relations.'

[Sidenote: Joseph Glanvil (1636-1680).]

Joseph Glanvil, although an Oxford man, practically belonged to the group of Cambridge Platonists, and was especially connected with Henry More. He is the author of two very dissimilar books, _The Vanity of Dogmatizing_ (1660), and _Saducismus Triumphatus_ (1681), published after his death with additions by More, Horneck, and others. The former book, though containing no evidence of original power of thought, is remarkable as an evidence of the influence of Bacon in overthrowing the authority of Aristotle; for its idolatry of Descartes; for its many curious antic.i.p.ations (not originating with Glanvil) of modern discoveries; above all, for its testimony of the ardent scientific curiosity then fermenting in England, and about to issue in the establishment of the Royal Society. 'Methinks,' Glanvil says, 'this age seems resolved to bequeath posterity something to remember it.' The following is a remarkable pa.s.sage to have been written six years before Newton's great discovery: 'That heavy bodies descend by gravity, is no better an account than we might expect from a rustic; and again, that gravity is a quality whereby a heavy body descends, is an impertinent circle, and teacheth nothing.' The other and much more celebrated work, on the other hand, is a most melancholy example of superst.i.tious credulity, but full of striking stories of the supernatural. The contrast between the styles of the two books is instructive; the earlier might have been written in the days of James I.; the later, though still antiquated, is much nearer modern English prose.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Coleridge told Crabb Robinson that he 'considered Locke as having led to the destruction of metaphysical science, by encouraging the unlearned public to think that with mere common sense they might dispense with disciplined study.'

CHAPTER IX.

WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT.

The hinge of the controversies on government which agitated England in the seventeenth century, and produced the great treatises of Locke and Algernon Sidney, was a feeble book by Sir Robert Filmer, a Cavalier, written about the end of the Civil War, but published at a period which brings it within the scope of this volume. Filmer, though not a man of conspicuous mental power, was able to discern that the right of the nation to resist the arbitrary encroachments of Charles I. could not well be disputed so long as it continued to be held that 'Mankind is naturally endowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it please, and that the power which any one man hath over others was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the mult.i.tude.' This opinion, which he admits to be that generally held, he endeavours to overthrow by the argument that no man was ever born in a state of freedom, for everyone comes into the world subject to the authority of his parents. 'Not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children.' How they came to have royal authority over the children of other patriarchs Filmer does not explain; and it seems obvious on his own showing that either this latter authority does not exist, in which case there must be as many monarchies as families, or that it exists in virtue of a mutual contract among individual families; so that royal authority derives from the people after all. Illogical, however, as Filmer might be, his views were too agreeable to the Court and to the supporters of absolute power not to find much encouragement, and men of first-rate powers found it necessary to take the field against them.

Seldom indeed has a writer of such slender abilities made so much stir, or unintentionally laid the cause of liberty and reason under such deep obligations. As a measure of his own qualifications, it is sufficient to state that he seriously takes Samuel's dissuasion of the Israelites from setting up a monarchy on the ground of the oppressions to which they would subject themselves, for a luminous exposition of the rights of the sovereign and the duties of the subject.

Filmer was answered by three writers of great distinction--Locke, Algernon Sidney, and the Rev. George Johnson, a memorable pamphleteer who scarcely vindicates a place for himself in literature. The merit of their polemic, and the obligation under which it has placed posterity, must of necessity be ill appreciated by an age which finds it difficult to believe that Filmer could ever be thought to require an answer. The propositions that the first man was invested by Heaven with monarchical privileges, and that these privileges had in some manner devolved on King Charles I., seem to us so palpably absurd that Locke himself appears chargeable with folly for having spent his time in refuting them. The steady intellectual upheaval which has been going on ever since the revival of letters has lifted us into a region where the conceptions of divine right and non-resistance cannot live; and we are inclined to attribute to the improvement of our understandings what really proceeds from the alteration of our environment. Ideas as baseless as Filmer's are now daily advanced, and daily combated by opponents whose services will one day be requited by the neglect that has overtaken Locke. Had Locke been a wit, he might indeed have immortalized himself and his antagonist together; but although he can and does make the latter ridiculous, he cannot make him amusing. There is more vitality in the second of his two _Tracts on Government_, for this in part deals with speculative questions regarding the origin of civil society as yet unsettled, and therefore not as yet commonplace.

Locke deduces the mutual relations and obligations of rulers and ruled from a contract which he supposes to have been entered into in the infancy of society. The theory was highly salutary for the age, abolis.h.i.+ng all superst.i.tious notions of divine right, and providing sufficient justification for popular resistance to evil rulers. It must be owned, however, that it lacked the only safe basis of theory, the historical; the const.i.tutions of uncivilized man were little known in Locke's day, and the better known they have become the less affinity they have seemed to present to the parliament which his imagination transported back from Westminster to s.h.i.+nar. His essay nevertheless represents a necessary phase in the development of opinion, and exerted the most beneficial influence in generating the enlightened political sentiment of the eighteenth century. It is amusing to remark that, in spite of the Israelites, Locke stoutly refuses his imaginary society the right to contract itself out of its freedom by establis.h.i.+ng an absolute monarchy, the only form of government which, according to his opponents, could be legitimate in any sense.

Algernon Sidney's _Discourse on Government_ has attracted less attention than Locke's, mainly because it claims more. So elaborate and ambitious a work was not required to crush Filmer, who had in fact been crushed by Locke some years before the appearance of Sidney's belated refutation.

It is nevertheless a more interesting work than Locke's, partly from the fineness of the style, a n.o.ble specimen of dignified though vehement English prose, partly from the reflection of the striking personality of the author, 'a Roman in un-Roman times.' Though a patrician both on the father's and the mother's side, Sidney was theoretically a republican.

Born in 1622, second son of the Earl of Leicester, he had served the Commonwealth in the Civil War, and distinguished himself afterwards by his resistance to what he deemed the usurpation of Cromwell. The Restoration found him envoy to the northern courts. Exchanging emba.s.sy for exile, he remained abroad until 1677, when he returned under an engagement to live quietly. Whether he had any actual concern in the Rye House plot is one of the problems of history; certain it is that no good evidence was produced, and that he was iniquitously condemned on the testimony of one witness of infamous character, and of papers in his handwriting written years before. These seem to have formed part of a brief reply to Filmer, never published; the stately work that has come down to us was written after the publication of Filmer's ma.n.u.script in 1680, and was evidently prompted by the debates on the Exclusion Bill.

The style precisely corresponds to the author's character, haughty, fiery, and arrogant; but thrilling with conviction, and meriting the highest praise as a specimen of masculine, nervous, and at the same time polished English. Much additional zest is imparted to the author's argument by his continual strokes at the political abuses and the unworthy characters of his own day, from Charles II. downwards. He had the advantage of writing under the stimulus of fiery indignation kindled and maintained by the actual existence of a tyranny. He is thus never tame, and depicts himself as one of that remarkable cla.s.s of men of whom Alfieri is perhaps the most characteristic type--aristocrats by temperament, champions of democracy by intellectual conviction.[10]

Although the controversy in which he engaged now belongs entirely to the past, he is often modern in sentiment as well as in style; sometimes we are reminded of Sh.e.l.ley, at other times, and more frequently, of Landor.

It certainly indicates some want of good sense to have written so grandiose a reply to a tract so diminutive in every point of view, and most will be contented with his biographer's, Miss Blackburne's, excellent a.n.a.lysis. As a fine writer, however, Sidney has a right to a place in any collection of Restoration prose:

'No man can be my judge, unless he be my superior; and he cannot be my superior, who is not so by my consent, nor to any other purpose than I consent to. This cannot be the case of a nation, which can have no equal within itself. Controversies may arise with other nations, the decision of which may be left to judges chosen by mutual agreement; but this relates not to our question. A nation, and especially one that is powerful, cannot recede from its own right, as a private man, from the knowledge of his own weakness, and inability to defend himself, must come under the protection of a greater power than his own.

The strength of a nation is not in the magistrate, but the strength of the magistrate is in the nation. The wisdom, industry, and valour of a prince may add to the glory and greatness of a nation, but the foundation and substance will always be in itself. If the magistrate and people were upon equal terms, as Caius and Sejus, receiving equal and mutual advantages from each other, no man could be judge of their differences, but such as they should set up for that end. This has been done by many nations. The ancient Germans referred the decision of the most difficult matters to their priests; the Gauls and Britons to the Druids; the Mahometans for some ages to the caliphs of Babylon; the Saxons in England, when they had embraced the Christian religion, to their clergy. Whilst all Europe lay under the popish superst.i.tion, the decision of such matters was frequently a.s.sumed by the pope: men often submitted to his judgment, and the princes that resisted were for the most part excommunicated, deposed and destroyed. All this was done for the same reasons. These men were accounted holy and inspired, and the sentence p.r.o.nounced by them was usually reverenced as the judgment of G.o.d, who was thought to direct them; and all those who refused to submit were esteemed execrable. But no man or number of men, as I think, at the inst.i.tution of a magistrate, did ever say, if any difference happen between you or your successors and us, it shall be determined by yourself, or by them, whether they be men, women, children, mad, foolish, or vicious. Nay, if any such thing had been, the folly, turpitude, and madness of such a sanction or stipulation must necessarily have destroyed it. But if no such thing was ever known, or could have no effect, if it had been in any place, it is most absurd to impose it upon all. The people therefore cannot be deprived of their natural rights upon a frivolous pretence to that which never was, and never can be. They who create magistracies, and give to them such name, form, and power, as they think fit, do only know, whether the end for which they were created be performed or not. They who give a being to the power which had none can only judge, whether it be employed to their welfare, or turned to their ruin. They do not set up one or a few men, that they and their posterity may live in splendour and greatness, but that justice may be administered, virtue established, and provision made for the public safety. No wise man will think this can be done, if those who set themselves to overthrow the law are to be their own judges.'

Sir William Temple, in an essay on government written in 1672, arrives at substantially the same conclusion as Sidney by a different path.

Fletcher of Saltoun, the ill.u.s.trious Scottish patriot, wrote _An Account of a Conversation for a right Regulation of Governments_ (1704).

The development of the English periodical press during the Restoration epoch is a matter of such moment that the two men princ.i.p.ally connected with it cannot be left unnoticed, although, at least in one instance, their claim to rank as men of letters is very slender. Marchamont Needham (1620-1678) had scarcely any other character than that of a pamphleteer who only escaped the designation of hired scribbler by his political infidelities and a certain rough effectiveness in his ephemeral writings. This 'most seditious, mutable, and railing author's'

position in the history of the press is nevertheless important; for if not the first strictly professional journalist, he is the first whose name has descended to posterity. Having from 1641 to 1647 made war against the king in his _Mercurius Britannicus_, he changed sides and wrote as a royalist in _Mercurius Pragmaticus_, recanted again and supported Cromwell as the conductor of _Mercurius Politicus_; and, after a short exile, ultimately made his peace with the Restoration. He had already excited the animosity of the stricter Puritans, one of whom thus antic.i.p.ated and refuted the best plea that could be made for him: 'He is a man of parts, and hath a notable vein of writing. Doubtless so hath the Devil; must therefore the Devil be made use of?' He subsequently made war upon schoolmasters and physicians, and died suddenly as he was about returning to his old trade of political pamphleteer. Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was a man of much higher character, being a consistent royalist. His connection with the periodical press in Charles II.'s day was brief, lasting only from 1663 to 1666, when his _Intelligencer_ and _News_ were extinguished by the appearance of an official journal, the _Oxford_, afterwards the _London Gazette_. But he has a permanent place in history as the first 'able editor,' who not only made his journal the vehicle for political discussions, and availed himself of regular news-letters, but employed a regular staff of a.s.sistants to collect news. He was no friend to his own trade, for he says in a prospectus: 'Supposing the press in order, the people in their right wits, and news or no news to be the question, a public Mercury should never have my vote, because I think it makes the mult.i.tude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only a wish but a kind of colourable right and licence to the meddling with the government.' A man who thought thus must have seemed admirably qualified for the office of licenser of the press, which he held from 1663 to the Revolution, and in the discharge of which he inevitably acc.u.mulated the odium which even now somewhat undeservedly rests upon his memory. In 1681 he returned to newspaper editing, and successfully carried on _Herac.l.i.tus Ridens_ and _The Observator_ until March, 1687, when James II., who was enacting liberty of conscience to serve his own ends, silenced the old Cavalier just as the latter was demonstrating this liberty to be 'a paradox against law, reason, nature, and religion.' L'Estrange's prose style is bad, but he was the author of several useful translations, of which those from aesop, Josephus, Quevedo, and Erasmus are the best known. He was a courtly and well-bred man, of considerable culture, and would be mentioned with more respect if he had not exercised a function detestable to the entire republic of letters. Dr. Johnson regarded him as the first writer upon record who regularly enlisted himself under the banners of a party for pay, and fought for it through right and wrong.

This is probably correct as a mere statement of fact, but unjust if it was intended to imply any doubt of the purity of L'Estrange's motives in serving the high monarchical party, or of the sincerity of his advocacy of its principles.

The _Political Arithmetic_ of Sir William Petty (1623-1687), and the _Discourse of Trade_ of Sir Josiah Child (1630-1699), take high rank among economic publications, but can scarcely be regarded as literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Sidney and his friends are frequently taxed with having accepted money from France. It is worth noting that their conduct in so doing is vindicated by so powerful and, in this instance, so unprejudiced a reasoner as Warburton, in an unpublished letter to Balguy now before us.

CHAPTER X.

HISTORIES AND MEMOIRS OF PUBLIC TRANSACTIONS.

History is one of the departments of literature in which it is easiest to approach the unsurpa.s.sable perfection of antiquity. Poets must in general be accepted as inspiring influences rather than as models; but the methods of historians may be studied and even copied without undue servility. This was soon perceived by the Latin races, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the vernacular literatures of Italy, Spain, and Portugal possessed many truly cla.s.sical historians. It is difficult to understand why England should have been so backward. The Restoration found its historical literature in an intermediate stage, half way between the artless old chroniclers and the consummate examples of historical style and construction which the next century was to produce.

It left historical composition, however, much more advanced than it had found it. The chief history of the age, though far from perfect, at all events was a history and not a chronicle. Clarendon's great work, it is true, belongs to the preceding generation in everything but the date of its composition; and will, accordingly, be found to be treated in a previous section of this history. His successor, Burnet, on the other hand, was in literary matters a perfect representative of his own day, a man of his times; and their works taken together, while ill.u.s.trating the mutations of taste and the gradual popularization of culture, may be regarded as the Iliad and Odyssey of the period, the former a high epical treatment of a tragic theme, decreed by the Fates and directed by the G.o.ds; the second a bustling tragi-comedy true to human nature and crowded with domestic incident. The writers, moreover, have these things in common: that both are men of original and marked character, whose personality is vividly embodied in their productions; that both had been busy actors in many of the events which they detail; that both, therefore, had unusual means of information, and the narrative of neither could miss the liveliness imparted by actual contact with the transactions they relate. Both were inevitably prejudiced, but both were high-minded and conscientious; and the bias against which they vainly contended is too visible and too much a matter of course to detract seriously from the value of their histories.

Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh, September 18th, 1643. By the wish of his father he selected the Church as his profession, which placed him in the invidious position of an Episcopalian ministering amid a nation of Presbyterians. His moderation, nevertheless, gained the confidence of the dissidents, and his great influence with Lauderdale, the ruler of Scotland, was exerted in favour of the most conciliatory measures and the widest toleration possible.

When at length Lauderdale had become hopelessly committed to a violent course, Burnet withdrew from Scotland, and settled in London as preacher at the Rolls and at St. Clement Danes. During Charles's reign, though an object of great suspicion to the court, he maintained his ground, but at the accession of James found it expedient to go abroad. After travelling in France, and proceeding as far as Rome, he settled in Holland, returning with William III. in 1688. William's proclamation was drafted by him, and he drew up the engagement signed by the n.o.bility who joined the prince. These and many other services were rewarded by the bishopric of Salisbury, where, by the confession of his adversaries, he proved as charitable and exemplary a prelate as the Church had ever seen. He is especially memorable in this capacity as the author of the scheme for the augmentation of poor livings commonly known as Queen Anne's Bounty.

He died in 1715. His moral character was of the highest; his intellectual character was disfigured by some foibles, unimportant in themselves, but which, not being of the kind usually found in conjunction with first-rate abilities, have occasioned his powers to be considerably undervalued. The man, however, who was respected by the cynical Charles and trusted by the jealous William, cannot have been of ordinary mould; nor can it be said of many authors that they have produced three books which, after the lapse of two centuries, are still regarded as standard authorities. The _History of the Reformation_ was published in 1679-1714; the _Exposition of the Articles_ in 1699; the _History of his Own Times_ in 1723-34.