Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century Part 31

ll. 14 ff. At the instance of Jermyn, Cowley had been promised by both Charles I and Charles II the masters.h.i.+p of the Savoy Hospital, but the post was given in 1660 to Sheldon, and in 1663, on Sheldon's promotion to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, to Henry Killigrew: see W.J.

Loftie, _Memorials of the Savoy_, 1878, pp. 145 ff., and Wood, _Fasti Oxonienses_, ed. Bliss, part I, col. 494. In the _Calendar of State Papers_, Domestic Series, 1661-2, p. 210, there is the statement of the case of Abraham Cowley, 'showing that the place may be held by a person not a divine, and that Cowley ... having seen all preferments given away, and his old University companions advanced before him, is put to great shame by missing this place'. He is called 'Savoy missing Cowley' in the Restoration _Session of the Poets_, printed in _Poems on State Affairs_.

l. 21. _Thou, neither_. In the ode ent.i.tled 'Destinie', _Pindarique Odes_, 1656 (ed. 1668, p. 31, 'That neglected').

l. 28. _A Corps perdu_, misprinted _A Corps perdi_, edd. 1668, 1669, _A Corpus perdi_, 1672, 1674, &c.; _Perdue_, Errata, 1668.

Page 202, l. 1. St. Luke, xii. 16-21.

ll. 3-5. 'Out of hast to be gone away from the Tumult and Noyse of the City, he had not prepar'd so healthful a situation in the Country, as he might have done, if he had made a more leasurable choice. Of this he soon began to find the inconvenience at _Barn Elms_, where he was afflicted with a dangerous and lingring _Fever_.... Shortly after his removal to _Chertsea_ [April 1665], he fell into another consuming Disease. Having languish'd under this for some months, he seem'd to be pretty well cur'd of its ill Symptomes. But in the heat of the last Summer [1667], by staying too long amongst his Laborers in the Medows, he was taken with a violent Defluxion, and Stoppage in his Breast, and Throat. This he at first neglected as an ordinary Cold, and refus'd to send for his usual Physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end after a fortnight sickness, it prov'd mortal to him'

(Sprat). In the Latin life prefixed to Cowley's _Poemata Latina_, 1668, Sprat is more specific: 'Initio superioris Anni, inciderat in _Morb.u.m_, quem Medici _Diabeten_ appellant.'

l. 6. _Non ego_. Horace, _Odes_, ii. 17. 9, 10.

ll. 11 ff. _Nec vos_. These late Latin verses may be Cowley's own, but they are not in his collected Latin poems. Compare Virgil, _Georgics_, ii. 485-6. 'Syluaeq;' = 'Sylvaeque': 'q;' was a regular contraction for _que_: cf. p. 44, l. 6.

61.

The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, 1668.--'An Account of the Life and Writings of M'r Abraham Cowley'. (pp. [18]-[20].)

Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), author of _The History of the Royal-Society_, 1667, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, 1684, was entrusted by Cowley's will with 'the revising of all his Works that were formerly printed, and the collecting of those Papers which he had design'd for the Press'; and as literary executor he brought out in 1668 a folio edition of the English works, and an octavo edition of the Latin works. To both he prefixed a life, one in English and the other in Latin. The more elaborate English life was written partly in the hope that 'a Character of Mr. _Cowley_ may be of good advantage to our Nation'. Unfortunately the ethical bias has injured the biography.

In Johnson's words, 'his zeal of friends.h.i.+p, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shewn confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.' Similarly Coleridge asks 'What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Sprat in refusing to let his friend Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing-gown?'

(_Biographia Literaria_, ch. iii). His method is the more to be regretted as no one knew Cowley better in his later years. His greatest error of judgement was to suppress his large collection of Cowley's letters. But with all its faults Sprat's Life of Cowley occupies an important place at the beginning of English biography of men of letters. It is the earliest substantial life of a poet whose reputation rested on his poetry. Fulke Greville's life of Sir Philip Sidney was the life of a soldier and a statesman of promise; and to Izaak Walton, Donne was not so much a poet as a great Churchman.

In the edition of 1668 the life of Cowley runs to twenty-four folio pages. The pa.s.sage here selected deals directly with his character.

Page 203, ll. 25-7. It is evidently the impression of a stranger at first sight that Aubrey gives in his short note: 'A.C. discoursed very ill and with hesitation' (ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 190).

62.

A Character of King Charles the Second: And Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections. By George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. London: MDCCL.

Halifax's elaborate and searching account of Charles II was first published in 1750 'from his original Ma.n.u.scripts, in the Possession of his Grand-daughter Dorothy Countess of Burlington'. It consists of seven parts: I. Of his Religion; II. His Dissimulation; III. His Amours, Mistresses, &c.; IV. His Conduct to his Ministers; V. Of his Wit and Conversation; VI. His Talents, Temper, Habits, &c.; VII.

Conclusion. Only the second, fifth, and sixth are given here. The complete text is reprinted in Sir Walter Raleigh's _Works of Halifax_, 1912, pp. 187-208.

For other characters of Charles, in addition to the two by Burnet which follow, see Evelyn's _Diary_, February 4, 1685; Dryden's dedication of _King Arthur_, 1691; 'A Short Character of King Charles the II' by John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, Duke of Buckingham, 'Printed from the Original Copy' in _Miscellaneous Works Written by George, late Duke of Buckingham_, ed. Tho. Brown, vol. ii, 1705, pp.

153-60, and with Pope's emendations in _Works_, 1723, vol. ii, pp.

57-65; and James Welwood's _Memoirs Of the Most Material Transactions in England, for the Last Hundred Years, Preceding the Revolution_, 1700, pp. 148-53.

For Halifax himself, see No. 72.

Page 208, l. 12. An allusion to the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, which a.s.sumed prominence in England with the publication in 1690 of Sir William Temple's _Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning_. Compare Burnet, p. 223, l. 11 and note.

PAGE 209, l. 29. _Ruelle_. Under Louis XIV it was the custom for ladies of fas.h.i.+on to receive morning visitors in their bedrooms; hence _ruelle_, the pa.s.sage by the side of a bed, came to mean a ladies'

chamber. Compare _The Spectator_, Nos. 45 and 530.

Page 211, l. 2. _Tiendro cuydado_, evidently an imperfect recollection of the phrase _se tendra cuydado_, 'care will be taken', 'the matter will have attention': compare _Cortes de Madrid_, 1573, Peticion 96,... 'se tendra cuidado de proueher en ello lo que conuiniere'.

Page 212, ll. 7, 8. Compare Pepys's _Diary_, May 4, 1663: 'meeting the King, we followed him into the Park, where Mr. Coventry and he talking of building a new yacht out of his private purse, he having some contrivance of his own'. Also, Evelyn's _Diary_, February 4, 1685: 'a lover of the sea, and skilful in s.h.i.+pping; not affecting other studies, yet he had a laboratory and knew of many empirical medicines, and the easier mechanical mathematics.' Also, Buckingham, ed. 1705, p. 155: 'the great and almost only pleasure of Mind he seem'd addicted to, was _s.h.i.+pping_ and _Sea-Affairs_; which seem'd to be so much his Talent for _Knowledge_, as well as _Inclination_, that a War of that Kind, was rather an _Entertainment_, than any _Disturbance_ to his Thoughts.' Also Welwood, _Memoirs_, p. 151. Also, Burnet, _infra_, p.

219.

Page 213, l. 10. According to Pepys (_Diary_, December 8, 1666), the distinction between Charles Stuart and the King was drawn by Tom Killigrew in his remonstrance to Charles on the very ill state that matters were coming to: 'There is a good, honest, able man, that I could name, that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would soon be mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it.'

Page 217, ll. 11 ff. Compare Welwood's _Memoirs_, p. 149.

63.

Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. From the Restoration of King Charles II. to the Settlement of King William and Queen Mary at the Revolution. London: 1724. (pp. 93-4.)

Burnet began his _History of His Own Time_ in 1683, after the publication of his _History of the Reformation_. In its original form it partook largely of the nature of Memoirs. But on the appearance of Clarendon's History in 1702 he was prompted to recast his entire narrative on a method that confined the strictly autobiographical matter to a section by itself and as a whole a.s.sured greater dignity.

The part dealing with the reign of Charles II was rewritten by August 1703. The work was brought down to 1713 and completed in that year.

Two years later Burnet died, leaving instructions that it was not to be printed till six years after his death.

The _History_ was published in two folio volumes, dated 1724 and 1734.

The first, which contains the reigns of Charles II and James II, came out at the end of 1723 and was edited by Burnet's second son, Gilbert Burnet, then rector of East Barnet. The second volume was edited by his third son, Thomas Burnet, afterwards a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. The complete autograph of the History, and the transcript which was prepared for the press under the author's directions, are now both in the Bodleian Library.

The original form of the work survives in two transcripts (one of them with Burnet's autograph corrections) in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, and in a fragment of Burnet's original ma.n.u.script in the Bodleian. The portions of this original version that differ materially from the final printed version were published in 1902 by Miss H.C. Foxcroft under the t.i.tle _A Supplement to Burnet's History_.

Much of the interest of the earlier version lies in the characters, which are generally longer than they became on revision, and sometimes contain details that were suppressed. But in a volume of representative selections, where the art of a writer is as much our concern as his matter, the preference must be given to what Burnet himself intended to be final. The extracts are reprinted from the two volumes edited by his sons. There was not the same reason to go direct to his ma.n.u.script as to Clarendon's: see notes p. 231, l. 26; p. 252, l. 10; and p. 255, l. 6.

64.

Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. (pp. 611-3.)

Burnet's two characters of Charles II are in striking agreement with the more elaborate study by Halifax.

Page 221, ll. 1 ff. Compare Halifax, p. 216, ll. 10 ff.

l. 14. _his Chancellor_, Clarendon.

Page 222, l. 16. _he became cruel_. This statement was attacked by Roger North, _Lives of the Norths_, ed. 1890, vol. i, p. 330: 'whereas some of our barbarous writers call this awaking of the king's genius to a sedulity in his affairs, a growing cruel, because some suffered for notorious treasons, I must interpret their meaning; which is a distaste, because his majesty was not pleased to be undone as his father was; and accordingly, since they failed to wound his person and authority, they fell to wounding his honour.' Buckingham says, 'He was an Ill.u.s.trious Exception to all the Common Rules of _Phisiognomy_; for with a most _Saturnine_ harsh sort of Countenance, he was both of a _Merry_ and a _Merciful_ Disposition' (ed. 1705, p. 159); with which compare Welwood, ed. 1700, p. 149. The judicial verdict had already been p.r.o.nounced by Halifax: see p. 216, ll. 23 ff.

ll. 21-3. See Burnet, ed. Osmund Airy, vol. i, p. 539, for the particular reference. The scandal was widespread, but groundless.

Page 223, l. 9. _the war of Paris_, the Fronde. See Clarendon, vol. v, pp. 243-5.

ll. 11 ff. Compare Buckingham, ed. 1705, p. 157: 'Witty in all sorts of Conversation; and telling a Story so well, that, not out of Flattery, but the Pleasure of hearing it, we seem'd Ignorant of what he had repeated to us Ten Times before; as a good _Comedy_ will bear the being often seen.' Also Halifax, p. 208, ll. 7-14.

l. 17. John Wilmot (1647-80), second Earl of Rochester, son of Henry Wilmot, first Earl (No. 32). Burnet knew him well and wrote his life, _Some Pa.s.sages of the Life and Death Of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester_, 1680; 'which', says Johnson, 'the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety' (_Lives of the Poets_, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 222).

ll. 25 ff. The resemblance to Tiberius was first pointed out in print in Welwood's _Memoirs_, p. 152, which appeared twenty-four years before Burnet's _History_. But Welwood was indebted to Burnet. He writes as if they had talked about it; or he might have seen Burnet's early ma.n.u.script.

65.