Another republican, a more fiery man of action than Harrington, was Algernon Sidney (1622-1683), author of a 'Discourse on Government.' Sidney inherited headstrong blood from both parents. His father was Robert, Earl of Leicester, and his mother a daughter of Percy, Earl of Northumberland. He was a most determined foe to monarchy; engaged vehemently on the side of the Parliament, refused to take office under the usurpation of Cromwell, and fled to the Continent at the Restoration, refusing the mediation of his friends with the restored monarch. Obtaining permission to return in 1677, he threw himself into the opposition to the Government, and in his furious zeal for the accomplishment of his aims, engaged, if the papers of the French Ambassador are to be trusted, in unscrupulous intrigues with France. In 1683 he was condemned, on very partial evidence, upon the charge of conspiring to assassinate the King, and was executed on Tower-hill. He is regarded as a martyr to republican principles. His 'Discourse' was first published in 1698.

Marchmont Needham (1620-1678) is the chief representative of journalism in this generation. Public events favoured the growth of newspapers: the Thirty Years' War on the Continent was not concluded when topics of more powerful interest arose at home with the outbreak of the Civil War. Many sheets, with every variety of piquant title, started into existence to meet the public thirst for intelligence. On the 1st of January 1642 the ' Mercurius Aulicus' was issued from Oxford, avowedly as the organ of the King's party. It was edited by one Birkenhead, then a Fellow of All-Souls, and for a short time Professor of Moral Philosophy. He was appointed licenser of the press after the Restoration. In 1643, Needham, another Oxonian, appeared with an opposition Mercury," entitled 'Mercurius Britannicus.' His paper was exceedingly popular; but the Puritans were stern censors of the press, and the gay and restless Needham, after serving them for four years, went over to the King, and turned his wit against his former masters. He stood by the King to the last, and was imprisoned and condemned to death; but being offered his life by the Independents upon condition of giving them his services against the Presbyterians, he accepted the offer, and remained "Parliamentary intelligencer" until the Restoration. Both Birkenhead and Needham are abused for raillery, buffoonery, and want of principle; but facts do not show them to have differed much from their contemporaries, except in a clever faculty of gaining the popular ear.1 Needham's changes of party are explicable without the supposition that he was worse than other men. He seems to have been a gay, versatile creature, and is mentioned by Anthony à Wood as possessing considerable humour and convivial qualities.

1 Cornhill Magazine, July 1868.

312

CHAPTER V.

FROM 1670 TO 1700.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE,

1628-1699.

DIPLOMATIST, statesman, and miscellaneous writer, one of the most remarkable men under the reign of Charles II. Swift, not given to over-praising, said: "It is generally believed that this author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it can well bear." And Johnson is reported to have laid down in conversation that "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before this time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded." Spoken in the hurry of conversation, this dictum asserts several merits. Usually the first part is quoted and the second passed over, although the second is the higher compliment. Better general method, and greater attention to details of expression, are more valuable improvements than superior regularity of cadence.

To the family of Temple belong some of the most eminent names in our political history. The late Lord Palmerston was descended from a brother of Sir William's. In last century three Privy Councillors-Sir Richard Temple, Baron Cobham; Earl Temple; and Lord Grenville came from another branch of the same family. There were times," says Macaulay, "when the cousinhood, as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction of an efficient Cabinet." The lineal descendants of Sir William

himself ended with the third generation. The family has been continued chiefly through the female line.

Our author's ancestors did not rise to the highest offices of state, yet they were men of considerable mark. It is interesting to know that his grandfather was the chosen companion of Sir Philip Sidney during the Flemish war, and was present at that hero's untimely death. His father was made Master of the Rolls of Ireland by Charles I., and retained the office, with a short interval, throughout the Commonwealth, dying in 1677, of the same age as the century.

Sir William was born in London. His tutor at Cambridge, where he resided two years, was the learned Cudworth. From 1648 to 1654 he travelled on the Continent, making himself master of French and Spanish. His first public employment was as a member of the Irish Convention in 1660: there he gained distinction by taking the lead against an exorbitant tax proposed by the new and popular Government. In 1665 began his career as a diplomatist. In that year he displayed such address as envoy to the Bishop of Munster that he was appointed Resident at the vice-regal Spanish Court of Brussels. In 1668 he accomplished with unparalleled speed the famous negotiation usually coupled with his name, the Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden. Immediately after this he was made Ambassador at the Hague, and completed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1670, in consequence of the King's dishonest intrigues with France, he was recalled, and spent three years in retirement at Sheen. In 1673 he concluded the peace that followed upon Charles's second war with Holland; and, declining an offer of the embassy to Spain, and also the Secretaryship of State, was again, in June 1674, appointed Ambassador at the Hague. He had the credit of bringing about during that embassy the marriage between William of Orange and the Princess Mary. In 1678 he represented England in an endeavour to settle the complicated relations of Continental powers; but his efforts to uphold the dignity of our Government as an arbitrating power were baffled by the distractingly crooked policy of the King and his Ministers. He maintained his integrity by refusing to sign the Treaty of Nimeguen. In 1679 he was summoned from Holland to take office as Secretary of State, but ingeniously contrived to evade the hazardous dignity. His only other public service was the plan of a Privy Council of thirty to renew the confidence of the nation in King Charles. When this scheme worked ill from the multiplicity of intrigue at the Court, he retired altogether from public business. He was frequently consulted during his retirement by Charles II., James II., and William; but nothing could induce him to resume office. No man, he said, should be in public business after fifty; and ten years before this

he had declared that he knew enough of Courts to see "that they were not made for one another." Having purchased Moor Park, near Farnham in Surrey, he went there in 1686, and amused himself with literature, architecture, Dutch gardening, and other employments of retired leisure. At the Revolution he was much pressed to take office, but steadfastly refused, and lived in retirement at Moor Park till his death in 1699.

The various works he has left us were composed in his periods of retirement. During his temporary seclusion, between 1670 and 1673, he wrote his 'Observations on the United Provinces,' and some miscellaneous pieces. In his final retirement he selected and prepared for the press his public correspondence during the years of his active life. He also wrote 'Memoirs of the Treaty of Nimeguen,' with an account of the difficulties that this Treaty was designed to solve. To complete his record of what passed during his public employment, he wrote other Memoirs, "from the peace concluded 1679, to the time of the author's retirement from public business." He wrote also various Miscellanies-"Upon the Gardens of Epicurus;" "Of Heroic Virtue;" "Of Poetry;" "On the Cure of the Gout by Moxa," &c.

"Sir William Temple's person," says the nameless writer of “a short character" prefixed to his works, "is best known by his pictures and prints. He was rather tall than low; his shape, when young, very exact; his hair a dark brown, and curled naturally, and, whilst that was esteemed a beauty, nobody had it in greater perfection; his eyes grey, but lively; and his body lean, but extreme active, so that none acquitted themselves better at all sorts of exercise."

What principally strikes us in Temple's intellect is its singular measure, solidity, sagacity. In negotiating he timed his movements with admirable skill; he succeeded in whatever he undertook; he was the author of the most famous alliance in that generation, and nobody has detected a flaw in his plans, or proved that in his diplomacy he should have acted otherwise than he did. The same sagacity appears in his political speculations; he keeps close to the facts, and does not begin to speculate till he has mastered them. Such he was as a man of practice and a thinker, attempting comparatively little, and doing what he attempted with thoroughness. When we view him on the æsthetic side, we see the same characteristic appearing in the shape of refined taste. He did not attempt works of the imagination, but he studied the beauties of order and finished rhythm, and even in his most didactic compositions the language and the similitudes have a refined elevation.

He seems to have been a man of deep tenderness and strong

personal feelings, a great favourite with children, a passionate lover, a fond husband, a constant friend. As his likes were strong, so were his dislikes; he had such an aversion for some men as to be impatient of their conversation.

expres

But however strong his feelings might be, he kept the sion of them under control. He was not extravagant in his professions of attachment, but sprightly and humorous; and he had, as even Macaulay admits, a good command of his naturally irritable temper. So with his love of power; he did not rush actively into the struggle of ambition, and he would not seem to have occupied his imagination with ambitious dreams. He was equally moderate in his admiration of power: he could admire ; he was not an envious disappointed man; but he admired with a just appreciation of the actors and the circumstances. Unprincipled, egotistic ambition he could not admire; his sympathies and general human kindliness were too predominant for that. In his political treatises, his personality comes little to the surface; he is grave and dignified as becomes his subject, and criticises in the impersonal spirit of a statesman warmly interested in humanity, but elevated above party or national feeling by the comprehensiveness of his views. In the Preface to the Observations on the United Provinces,' he states how far he looks upon History as a field of scenic interest. His published letters abound in graceful compliments and strokes of wit. But in nearly all his formal essays he has an eye to instruction rather than pleasure: "I can truly say, that, of all the paper I have blotted, which has been a great deal in my time, I have never written anything for the public without the intention of some public good."

In the discharge of public business he showed the measure that seems to us his most striking characteristic. That he could act with vigour and decision upon an emergency was proved in more than one trying situation. He ascribed the failure of his constitution in middle life partly to "unnecessary diligences in his employments abroad;" and doubtless one-half of his success as a diplomatist was due to his promptitude in seizing the favourable moment. But he kept his energies strictly in hand; he lived temperately, he was distinguished for his frankness and truthfulness, and showed no propensity to grasp momentary advantages by unscrupulous craft. He refrained immovably from affairs that he knew to be beyond his power. When the Court was in confusion from the intrigues of unscrupulous rivals and the unpatriotic policy of the King, nothing could induce him to accept office. joined neither the unprincipled struggle for power, nor the hopeless endeavours under the name of patriotism. He boldly lectured the King on the duties of his position, and steadily wound himself

1 See p. 318.

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