How, finally, can a man make the purpose, something more a decent end in plus-fours when he says: O, I die, Horatio ; The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit." 'The rest is silence." And as Mr Keith-Johnston spoke the last words allotted to him, we could but pity him for being thrust into a false position. He spoke his part with eloquence and understanding. He did not rant nor cry aloud. Some others in the cast, notably Ophelia and Polonius, showed what they might have done had a proper chance been given them. We want fantasy in the mounting of Shakespeare as little as we want archæology. We remember that the persons of Shakespeare's play belonged to his own age and land, and we do not wish to see them habited as mediæval Danes or as tailor's dummies of the twentieth century. Everything that distracts from the proper understanding of Shakespeare's lines is condemned out of hand. For in Hamlet,' more than anywhere else, "the play, the play's the thing." 6 The chief fault of Mr Evan Charteris''William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland,' is its title, which limits and does not define the scope of his book.1 The book is something less, and also, which is nearer to than that. Though Mr Charteris is intent upon doing a tardy justice to the muchmaligned Duke of Cumberland, his book is in no sense a biography. It is not even a "life and times." Rather is it a history of a period, whose understanding is necessary to the task of Cumberland's rehabilitation. Cumberland himself does not always hold the centre of the stage. He is subordinated at the will of the historian, now to Newcastle, now to Pitt, now to any one who for the moment is busiest in the affairs of the State. If he does not emerge consistently as a statesman, he emerges as a sportsman, and one among the most interesting of Mr Charteris' chapters is the chapter which deals with the Duke's success at Newmarket and as a breeder of horses. His failure as a general in Hanover was caused by no fault of his own. He was solely responsible for the breeding of Eclipse. Mr Charteris possesses in full measure the gifts of the historian. He is tireless in research. He omits no labour which may discover the hidden secrets of his period. To turn over masses of dull letters is for him the pleasant employment of a summer's day. The Newcastle Papers, that stumbling-block in the path of the historians, are no obstacle to him. It is characteristic of 1 'William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and the Seven Years' War.' By the Hon. Evan Charteris, K. C. London: Hutchinson & Co. Newcastle's prolixity and laboriousness that he should have laid a heavy burden of toil upon the backs of patient his torians. Mr Charteris bears his part of the burden with a shrug of nonchalance. It is Mr Charteris' second gift that he is fair-minded. Even if he escapes the cardinal sin of impartiality, he still desires that every man shall have his due, and he has a happy manner of touching off the characters of the men, many of them worthless, who fill his pages, with brevity and justice. He passes no harsh judgment upon any of them, and those with whom his sympathy seems imperfect are let off with a hint or a phrase. He appears to cherish no liking for one of the greatest of his age-Lord Chesterfield, a statesman and a wit, who, we should have thought, had won most easily his admiration. At any rate, he quotes without disapproval Dr Johnson's dishonouring foolish words about the famous letter - writer - words which Johnson himself chose to express not the truth, but his own rancour. "In a subsequent letter to his son," writes Mr Charteris about the passage through Parliament of Lord Chesterfield's Bill for reforming the calendar, and adopt ing the Gregorian in place of the Julian system, "he passed from what Dr Johnson described as the characteristic of his letters-namely, inculcating the manners of a dancing-master and the morals of a whore to betray trade 6 secrets as to the composition and manner of his oratory, secrets more flattering to his own perspicacity than to the intelligence of his audience." It amused Johnson to feel himself aggrieved by Chesterfield's treatment of him, and to give to his grievance a rhetorical expression, but no other should repeat this expression without holding up a warning finger. Mr Charteris has a third historical gift, which is only too rare. He knows how to paint a background to his picture. The persons of his drama do not move in a vacuum. The society in which they lived is described by him with a fulness and an accuracy which help us to understand its complexity and its "decadence." Perhaps "decadence is not the right word to use of a jumble of habits and customs, which did no dishonour to the eighteenth century. Periods of high culture and civilisation cannot but have their reactions, and it is not wonderful that in 1755, as Mr Charteris says, "the cloud of war was throwing no shadow over social life." Though the rupture which Frederick prophesied was imminent, the town was enveloped in an atmosphere of gaiety. "Balls, masquerades, and diversions," wrote Walpole, "don't trouble their heads about the Parliament or the war; the righteous, who hate pleasures and love prophecies, are finding out parallels between London and Nineveh and other goodly cities of old, who went to his graver manner; and who operas and ridottos when the French were at their gates." The King and the Royal Family attended the ball given by the Russian Ambassador in full state, as though to show their indifference to or their confidence in the future. The King," says Mr Charteris, "arrived soon after eight, dressed in a black domino, tye-wig, and gold-laced hat. Cumberland showed to advantage in a Turkish dress with a large bunch of diamonds in his turban." In vain did philosophers deplore the levity of "the upper part of mankind"; in vain did Fielding declare that "diversion is no longer the recreation or amusement, but the whole business of their lives." They all gambled, drank, and masked their faces, while every day brought the war nearer. 66 And side by side with the increasing dissipation Methodism grew and prospered. The 'new light was in fashion, and the men of the time faced it, each according to his character, without much blinking of the eyes. Walpole saw one side of Wesleyanism clearly enough. Being a cynic, he knew well that, in the estimation of the devout, the greater the sin the greater the repentance. "The Methodists," he said, "love your big sinners as proper subjects to work on, and, indeed, they have a plentiful harvest. I think what you call flagrancy was never more in fashion." Cumberland envisaged the movement after shall say that his appreciation was not the wiser? He did what he could to encourage it in the ranks of the army, and Wesley, having visited the triangular tower built by "that active and useful man the Duke of Cumberland" in Windsor Forest, paid him a lofty compliment. "I was agreeably surprised," wrote the evangelist, "to find many of the books not only religious, but admirably chosen. Perhaps the great man spent many hours here with only Him that seeth in secret; and who can say how deep that change went, which was so discernible in the latter part of his life." Wesley, at any rate, does not echo the common opinion of Butcher Cumberland. Mr Charteris, then, with admirable skill, sets his characters in their right surroundings. And he expends the greatest pains in the portraiture of the great men who crossed the Duke of Cumberland's path. He makes a gallant attempt to put the Duke of Newcastle in a favourable light, and if his attempt fails, it is, we think, because success in such an enterprise is doomed to failure. For Newcastle was what would once have been called the Compleat Politician, the man of words not deeds, an official, always fussy, and always industrious-to no purpose. His aptitude for what are called "affairs" need not be doubted. He knew what was going on in all the Chancelleries. He col Nor does his eulogist succeed in convincing himself. His care for historical truth induces him to acknowledge all the weakness and irrelevancy of his hero. "Newcastle," he writes, As writes, "was, it is true, an expert in the less reputable manifestations of human nature. He knew by nature the vanities and jealousies, the aversions and ambitions, the fears and venality of those within the radius of his personal influence, and on these he could play with a master hand. Moreover, it may be said that he never knew England, and never understood his countrymen." And, again, "Newcastle was not framed to advocate generous causes. Great events found him hesitating and often bewildered." This is a heavy indictment, sketched justly by an advocate for the defence, and Mr Charteris has very little to put in the opposite scale. He claims that he should be judged on his diplomatic successes on the eve of the Seven Years' War. But these successes lected the secrets of every Foreign Office in Europe. That was his hobby. He looked at those secrets with the same curiosity which persuades an entomologist to examine a cabinet of dead butterflies. As the dead butterflies will never be seen on the wing again, so the dead secrets, when once they are docketed, will not move the politician's mind. Now knowledge, for the politician, is valueless, unless it leads to action. The odds and ends locked up in Newcastle's mind might just as well have not been there. They did not give strength to his trembling arm; they did not equip him for the fray. They did but They did but increase the infirmity of his purpose. If action had been possible for him, he would have been all the better for an unhampered mind. Pitt, who had little respect for irrelevancies, achieved in the few years of his triumph that which was always beyond the reach of his highly instructed colleague. As for Newcastle, his laboriously collected knowledge led him to write hundreds of superfluous letters, which have unduly perplexed the historians, and which, so far from inducing us to "revalue his character and attainments," in the phrase of Mr Charteris, only deepen the impression of his busy futility. Had Newcastle continued in office, we should have lost India, we should have lost Canada, and then what would his vast correspondence have availed us? were, in fact, small enough, and they were such that Newcastle himself could never have profited by them. When he was confronted by a real danger, he was powerless to act, as Mr Charteris makes only too plain. "Newcastle," he writes in another place, cross and confuse any given by his duplicity. The gesture line of action to which he in- may well claim an abatement clined. It was little use, there- of the prejudice which, initifore, that his general view was ated by the Jacobites, has been correct." What, then, is there so carefully maintained by traleft to say of Newcastle, except dition. By the common conthat he was a typical politician, sent of historians, Cumberland such as would destroy and has was a man to be trusted, destroyed the country com- in whose category of values mitted to his charge at all the Throne and the public times and at all hazards, and service ranked far above all that he is a conspicuous warn- other other considerations. Those ing for all time against the who would find charm and the danger of mere industry? lighter graces of human intercourse must seek elsewhere. They were not with Cumberland. His virtues were civic rather than social, his qualities fitted more for the service of the State than the adornment of life." This is well said, and no more need be added to it than the unwilling tribute of Walpole, who, having held up the Duke to ridicule for many a year, admitted at last that he was one of the five great men he had known. So we close Mr Charteris' book in the sure hope that he will not lay his pen aside, but will continue the history of the Seven Years' War, thus happily begun, to its triumphing end. In sketching the character of Cumberland, Mr Charteris is on surer ground, and we cannot do better than quote, as a model of the historian's style and judgment, the passage in which Mr Charteris sums up Cumberland's nobility when he resigned his command in the Army rather than justify himself at the expense of his father: "These last days," he writes, probably the most difficult to face in his military career, had seen the supreme expression of those qualities of loyalty and self-discipline which had been the distinguishing marks of his whole public life. Had he given to the world the text of his instructions, he would have protected his fame and reputation. Instinctively he chose the more difficult course. He maintained his reserve. He sacrificed himself and his professional name, he surrendered the calling to which his life was devoted, and this on behalf of a father who had sullied their relationship by his insults and forfeited his claim to generous treatment |