Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century Part 33

l. 16. _Usurp'd_, in ed. 1 'a.s.sum'd'.

l. 25. _Abbethdin_ 'the president of the Jewish judicature', 'the father of the house of judgement'. Shaftesbury was Lord Chancellor, 1672-3.

Page 234, l. 4. David would have sung his praises instead of writing a psalm, and so Heaven would have had one psalm the less.

ll. 5, 6. Macaulay pointed out in his essay on Sir William Temple that these lines are a reminiscence of a couplet under the portrait of Sultan Mustapha the First in Knolles's _Historie of the Turkes_ (ed.

1638, p. 1370):

Greatnesse, on Goodnesse loues to slide, not stand, and leaues for Fortunes ice, Vertues firm land.

l. 15. The alleged Popish Plot, invented by t.i.tus Oates, to murder the king and put the government in the hands of the Jesuits. Shaftesbury had no share in the invention, but he believed it, and made political use of it.

Page 235, l. 4. This line reappears in _The Hind and the Panther_, Part I, l. 211. As W.D. Christie pointed out, it is a reminiscence of a couplet in _Lachrymae Musarum_, 1649, the volume to which Dryden contributed his school-boy verses 'Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings':

It is decreed, we must be drain'd (I see) Down to the dregs of a _Democracie_.

This is the opening couplet of the English poem preceding Dryden's, and signed 'M.N.' i.e. Marchamont Needham (p. 81).

70.

Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. (p. 100.)

'The portrait of this Duke has been drawn by four masterly hands: Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chissel; Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy, that finishes while it seems but to sketch; Dryden catched the living likeness; Pope compleated the historical resemblance.'--Horace Walpole, _Royal and n.o.ble Authors_, ed. 1759, vol. ii, p. 78.

There is also Butler's prose character of 'A Duke of Bucks', first printed in Thyer's edition of the _Genuine Remains of Butler_, 1759, vol. ii, pp. 72-5, but written apparently about 1667-9. And there is a verse character in Duke's _Review_.

Page 235, l. 11. _a great liveliness of wit_. In the first sketch Burnet wrote 'he has a flame in his wit that is inimitable'. It lives in _The Rehearsal_. His 'Miscellaneous Works' were collected in two volumes by Tom Brown, 1704-5.

Page 236, l. 12. Compare Butler: 'one that has studied the whole Body of Vice.'

l. 14. Sir Henry Percy, created Baron Percy of Alnwick in 1643. He was then general of the ordinance of the king's army. He joined the Queen's party in France in 1645.

l. 15. _Hobbs_. For Burnet's view of Hobbes, see p. 246, ll. 21 ff.

71.

Absalom and Achitophel. Second Edition. 1681. (ll. 543-68.)

Dryden is his own best critic: 'The Character of _Zimri_ in my _Absalom_, is, in my Opinion, worth the whole Poem: 'Tis not b.l.o.o.d.y, but 'tis ridiculous enough. And he for whom it was intended, was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had rail'd, I might have suffer'd for it justly: But I manag'd my own Work more happily, perhaps more dextrously. I avoided the mention of great Crimes and apply'd my self to the representing of Blind-sides, and little Extravagancies: To which, the wittier a Man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wish'd.' ('Discourse concerning Satire' prefixed to Dryden's Juvenal, 1693, p. xlii.)

Burnet's prose character again furnishes the best commentary.

Page 236, ll. 28 ff. Compare Butler: 'He is as inconstant as the Moon, which he lives under ... His Mind entertains all Things very freely, that come and go; but, like Guests and Strangers they are not welcome, if they stay long ... His Ears are perpetually drilled with a Fiddlestick. He endures Pleasures with less Patience, than other Men do their Pains.'

72.

Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. (pp. 267-8.)

This is not one of Burnet's best characters. He did not see the political wisdom that lay behind the ready wit. Halifax was too subtle for Burnet's heavy-handed grasp. To recognize the inadequacy of this short-sighted estimate, it is sufficient to have read the 'Character of King Charles II' (No. 62).

Burnet suffered from Halifax's wit: 'In the House of Lords,' says the first Earl of Dartmouth, 'he affected to conclude all his discourses with a jest, though the subject were never so serious, and if it did not meet with the applause he expected, would be extremely out of countenance and silent, till an opportunity offered to retrieve the approbation he thought he had lost; but was never better pleased than when he was turning Bishop Burnet and his politics into ridicule'

(Burnet, ed. Airy, vol. i, p. 485).

Dryden understood Halifax, the Jotham of his _Absalom and Achitophel_:

_Jotham_ of piercing Wit and pregnant Thought: Endew'd by Nature, and by Learning taught To move a.s.semblies, who but onely tri'd The worse awhile, then chose the better side; Nor chose alone, but turn'd the Balance too; So much the weight of one brave man can do.

See also Dryden's dedication to Halifax of his _King Arthur_.

73.

The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guilford, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, under King Charles II. and King James II.... By the Honourable Roger North, Esq; London, MDCCXLII. (pp.

223-6.)

Roger North's lives of his three brothers, Lord Keeper Guilford, Sir Dudley North, and Dr. John North, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, were begun about 1710 but were not published till 1742-4, eight years after his death. The edition of the 'Lives of the Norths'

by Augustus Jessopp, 3 vols., 1890, contains also his autobiography.

The Life of Lord Keeper Guilford is invaluable as a picture of the bench and bar under Charles II and James II.

Page 240, l. 6. Sir Francis Pemberton (1625-97), Lord Chief Justice, 1681, removed from the King's Bench, 1683, 'near the time that the great cause of the _quo warranto_ against the city of London was to be brought to judgment in that court.' North had just described him as a judge.

Page 241, l. 1. Compare Scott's _Monastery_, ch. xiv: '"By my troggs,"

replied Christie, "I would have thrust my lance down his throat."'

'Troggs' is an altered form of 'Troth'. It appears to be Scottish in origin; no Southern instance is quoted in Wright's _Dialect Dictionary_. Saunders may have learned it from a London Scot.

l. 22. Sir John Maynard (1602-90), 'the king's eldest serjeant, but advanced no farther'. Described by North, ed. 1890, p. 149; also p.

26: 'Serjeant Maynard, the best old book-lawyer of his time, used to say that the law was _ars bablativa_'.

l. 30. Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, described by North, pp. 79 ff. Burnet wrote _The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale_, 1682.

Page 243, l. 5. The action taken by the Crown in 1682 contesting the charter of the city of London. Judgement was given for the Crown. See _State Trials_, ed. 1810, vol. viii, 1039 ff., and Burnet, ed. Airy, vol. ii, pp. 343 ff., and compare Hallam, _Const.i.tutional History_, ch. xii, ed. 1863, pp. 453-4.

74.

Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. (pp. 186-91).

This pa.s.sage brings together ten of the great divines of the century.

It would be easy, as critics have shown, to name as many others, such as Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Sheldon, Cosin, Pearson, and South. But Burnet is mainly concerned with the men who in his opinion had the greatest influence during the time of which he is writing, and who were known to him personally. By way of introduction he speaks of the Cambridge Platonists under whom his great contemporaries had been formed. Incidentally he expresses his views on Hobbes's _Leviathan_, and he concludes with a valuable account of the reform in preaching.

The pa.s.sage as a whole is an excellent specimen of Burnet's method and style.

Page 246, ll. 6, 7. John Owen (1616-83), made Dean of Christ Church by Cromwell in 1651, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1652-8, deprived of the Deanery, 1659. Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), President of Magdalen College, 1650-60, likewise one of the Commission of Visitors to the University appointed by the Parliament. Both were Independents. See H.L. Thompson, _Christ Church_ (College Histories), 1900, pp. 69, 70; and H.A. Wilson, _Magdalen College_, 1899, pp. 172-4.

Page 248, l. 5. Simon Episcopius, or Bischop (1583-1643), Dutch theologian and follower of Arminius: see p. 101, l. 3, note.