he in the Westminster Assembly refused to admit the divine right of presbytery. Under Cromwell he held several high appointments, and during the government of the Protector's son Richard, acted as one of the keepers of the great seal. At the Restoration he retired to his Wiltshire estate of Chilton. The Memorials were not intended for publication, and, written almost wholly in the form of a diary, are to be regarded rather as a collection of historical materials than as history itself. A mutilated edition of them appeared in 1682, a much more satisfactory one in 1732. In a posthumous volume of Essays, Ecclesiastical and Civil, he strongly advocates religious toleration. His Journal of his embassy in 1653 to Sweden was edited by H. Reeve (1855). See his Memoirs by Professor

His

studied at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, and at Gray's Inn, he published translations, critical discussions on poetry, dramas, and works on history, and in 1692 was appointed historiographer royal. He is remembered as compiler of the invaluable collection of historical materials known as the Fædera, extending from the eleventh century to his own time (vols. i.-xv. in 1704-13; continuation by Sanderson in vols. xvi.-xx. in 1715-35). principal critical work is The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1678), in virtue of which Pope considered him one of the best critics we ever had;' Macaulay, 'the worst critic that ever lived.' Dryden, who wrote the 'heads of an answer to Rymer,' treated with great respect this excellent critique,' but stated a case for the English poets against the Greek. Rymer's classical prejudices made him view modern English poetry and drama

with jaundiced eye. Paradise Lost, which some are pleased to call a poem,' pleased him more, however, than Othello, a bloody farce without salt or savour.' His own poems are inconsiderable-verses to the memory of Waller, a poem on Queen Mary's arrival, and a few amorous ditties.

Sir William Temple (1628-99), diplomatist and essay-writer, was the son of Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, but was born in London. He studied at Cambridge under Cudworth as tutor, but being intended for public life, devoted his attention chiefly to French and Spanish, and at nineteen went abroad for some years. He had ere this fallen in love with Dorothy Osborne (1627-95), whose father, Sir Peter, a strong royalist, disliked the matchfor Temple's father sat in the Long Parliament. But the lovers were constant in their affection, and their seven years of separation gave occasion for Dorothy's delightful letters. Temple married her in 1655, lived in Ireland, and was returned to the Irish Parliament for Carlow in 1660.

On his removal two years afterwards to

England, the introductions which he carried to leading statesmen speedily procured him employment in the diplomatic service. He was sent in 1665 on a secret mission to the Bishop of Münster, and on his return he was made a baronet and appointed English resident at the court of Brussels. Temple's great diplomatic success was the negotiation at the Hague in 1668, with the Grand Pensionary De Witt, of the famous Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden, by which the ambition of Louis XIV. was for a time effectually checked. He took part in the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), and as ambassador at the Hague, enjoyed for a year the intimacy of De Witt, and also of his strenuous opponent, the young Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. of England. Recalled in 1669, he retired from public business to his residence at Sheen, near Richmond, and there employed himself in literary occupations and gardening. In 1674, again ambassador to Holland, he contributed to bring about the marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Duke of York's eldest daughter, Mary (1677). Having finally returned to England in 1679, Temple refused the king's offer of a Secretaryship of State. Charles used to hold anxious conferences with Temple on the means of extricating himself from the embarrassments created by a long course of misgovernment; and Sir William advised the appointment of a privy-council of thirty persons, in conformity with whose advice the king should always act. Temple, who was himself for a time one of an inner council of four (with Halifax, Essex, and Sunderland), soon became disgusted with the policy in vogue and the constant intrigues, and in 1681 finally retired from public life. spent the remainder of his days chiefly at Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey, so called by him after the other Moor Park, a seat of the Bedford family near Rickmansworth in Herts-'the sweetest place that I have seen in my life either before or since, at home or abroad.' He has left a description of the Herts garden in a famous essay, quoted below. At Moor Park, Temple had for secretary and humble companion the famous Jonathan Swift, who retained no very agreeable recollection of that period of dependence and obscurity. There also resided one with whom Swift is indissolubly associated-Esther Johnson, immortalised as 'Stella,' the daughter of Temple's housekeeper.

He

After the Revolution King William sometimes visited Temple and sought his advice about public affairs. Throughout his whole career his conduct was marked by a cautious regard for his personal comfort and reputation, which strongly disposed him to avoid risks of every kind, and to stand aloof from public business where special courage or decision was required; he seems to have had a lively consciousness that neither his abilities nor dispositions fitted him for vigorous action in stormy times; but as an adviser he was en

lightened, safe, and sagacious. In character Sir William was estimable and decorous; his temper, naturally haughty, was generally kept in order; and among his foibles, vanity was the most prominent.

The works of Sir William Temple consist chiefly of short miscellaneous pieces. His longest disquisition is Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, composed during his first retirement at Sheen; and both this and his Essay on the Original and Nature of Government show his gift as an observer and describer. Besides several political tracts, he wrote essays entitled Miscellanea (1680-92), which became famous, on Ancient and Modern Learning, on Gardening, Heroic Virtue, Poetry, Popular Discontents, Health and Long Life, and other miscellaneous

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. From the Picture by Sir Peter Lely in the National Portrait Gallery.

subjects. Though his philosophy was not very profound nor his intellectual power great, his Miscellanea contain many sound and acute observations, expressed in an easy and perspicuous style. Dr Johnson said 'Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose: before his 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.' This is hardly fair to Ben Jonson, to Bishop Hall, Cowley, and Jeremy Taylor. But even Dryden, Halifax, and Tillotson are hardly so modern as Temple, who may fairly rank as the forerunner of the eighteenth-century essayist. His Letters are many of them admirable. The three following extracts are from the Miscellanea:

English Gardening and the English Climate. But after so much ramble into ancient times and remote places, to return home and consider the present way and humour of our gardening in England; which seem to have grown into such vogue, and to have been so mightily improved in three or four and twenty years of his Majesty's reign, that perhaps few countries are before us, either in the elegance of our gardens, or in the number of our plants; and, I believe, none equals us in the variety of fruits, which may be justly called good; and from the earliest cherry and strawberry, to the last apples and pears, may furnish every day of the circling year. For the taste and perfection of what we esteem the best, I may truly say that the French, who have eaten my peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally concluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten in France on this side Fountainbleau; and the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony; I mean those which come from the stone, and are properly called peaches, not those which are hard, and are termed pavies; for these cannot grow in too warm a climate, nor ever be good in a cold; and are better at Madrid than in Gascony itself: Italians have agreed my white figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there; for in the latter kind and the blue we cannot come near the warm climates, no more than in the Frontignac or Muscat grape.

My orange-trees are as large as any I saw when I was young in France. except those of Fountainbleau, or what I have seen since in the Low Countries, except some very old ones of the Prince of Orange's; as laden with flowers as any can well be, as full of fruit as I suffer or desire them, and as well tasted as are commonly brought over, except the best sorts of Sevil and Portugal. And thus much I could not but say, in defence of our climate, which is so much and so generally decried abroad, by those who never saw it; or, if they have been here, have yet perhaps seen no more of it than what belongs to inns, or to taverns and ordinaries; who accuse our country for their own defaults, and speak ill, not only of our gardens and houses, but of our humours, our breeding, our customs and manners of life, by what they have observed of the meaner and baser sort of mankind; and of company among us, because they wanted themselves perhaps either fortune or birth, either quality or merit, to introduce them among the good.

I must needs add one thing more in favour of our climate which I heard the king say, and I thought new and right, and truly like a king of England that loved and esteemed his own country; 'twas in reply to some of the company that were reviling our climate, and extolling those of Italy and Spain, or at least of France. He said he thought that was the best climate where he could be abroad in the air with pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he thought he could be in England more than in any country he knew of in Europe. And I believe it true, not only of the hot and the cold, but even among our neighbours of France and the Low Countries themselves, where the heats or the colds and changes of the seasons are less treatable than they are with us.

The truth is, our climate wants no heat to produce excellent fruits; and the default of it is only the short seasons of our heats or summers, by which many of the

later are left behind and imperfect with us. But all such as are ripe before the end of August are, for aught I know, as good with us as anywhere else. This makes me esteem the true region of gardens in England to be the compass of ten miles about London, where the accidental warmth of air from the fires and steams of so vast a town, makes fruits as well as corn a great deal forwarder than in Hampshire or Wiltshire, though more southward by a full degree. There are, besides the temper of our climate, two things particular to us that contribute much to the beauty and elegance of our gardens, which are the gravel of our walks, and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf. The first is not known anywhere else, which leaves all their dry walks in other countries very unpleasant and uneasy. The other cannot be found in France or in Holland, as we have it, the soil not admitting that fineness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness in France, during most of the summer; nor, indeed, is it to be found but in the finest of our soils.

Moor Park Garden.

The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor-Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, esteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Doctor Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost; but greater sums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want sense in proportion to money, or if nature be not followed; which I take to be the great rule in this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far as the conduct not only of our lives, but our governments. And whether the greatest of mortal men should attempt the forcing of nature may best be judged, by observing how seldom God Almighty does it himself, by so few, true, and undisputed miracles as we see or hear of in the world. For my own part, I know not three wiser precepts for the conduct either of princes or private men, than

-Servare modum, finemque tueri,
Naturamque sequi.

Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation, and are above the regards of common expence. It lies on the side of a hill (upon which the house stands), but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden; the great parlour opens into the middle of a terras gravel-walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower and fruit: from this walk are three descents by many stone-steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in the several quarters; at the end of the terras-walk are two summerhouses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters, open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer-houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for

walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over these two cloisters are two terrasses covered with lead, and fenced with balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two summerhouses, at the end of the first terras-walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange-house, and the other for myrtles, or other more common greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now.

From the middle of the parterre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a grotto that lies between them (covered with lead, and flat) into the lower garden, which is all fruit-trees ranged about the several quarters of a wilderness which is very shady; the walks here are all green, the grotto embellished with figures of shellrock-work, fountains, and water-works. If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens; but this want is supplied by a garden on the other side the house, which is all of that sort, very wild, shady, and adorned with rough rock-work and fountains.

This was Moor-Park, when I was acquainted with it, and the sweetest place, I think, that I have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad; what it is now, I can give little account, having passed through several hands that have made great changes in gardens as well as houses; but the remembrance of what it was is too pleasant ever to forget, and therefore I do not believe to have mistaken the figure of it, which may serve for a pattern to the best gardens of our manner, and that are most proper for our country and climate.

On Poetry.

But to spin off this thread, which is already grown too long what honour and request the ancient poetry has lived in, may not only be observed from the universal reception and use in all nations from China to Peru, from Scythia to Arabia, but from the esteem of the best and the greatest men as well as the vulgar. Among the Hebrews, David and Solomon, the wisest kings, Job and Jeremiah, the holiest men, were the best poets of their nation and language. Among the Greeks, the two most renowned sages and lawgivers were Lycurgus and Solon, whereof the last is known to have excelled in poetry, and the first was so great a lover of it, that to his care and industry we are said (by some authors) to owe the collection and preservation of the loose and scattered pieces of Homer in the order wherein they have since appeared. Alexander is reported neither to have travelled nor slept without those admirable poems always in his company. Phalaris, that was inexorable to all other enemies, relented at the charms of Stesichorus his Among the Romans, the last and great Scipio passed the soft hours of his life in the conversation of Terence, and was thought to have a part in the composition of his comedies. Cæsar was an excellent poet as well as orator, and composed a poem in his voyage from Rome to Spain, relieving the tedious difficulties of his march with the entertainments of his muse. Augustus was not only a patron, but a friend and companion of Virgil and Horace, and was himself both an admirer of poetry, and a pretender too, as far as his genius would reach, or his busy scene allow. 'Tis true, since his age we have few such examples of great princes favouring

muse.

or affecting poetry, and as few perhaps of great poets deserving it. Whether it be that the fierceness of the Gothic humours or noise of their perpetual wars frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern languages would not bear it; certain it is that the great heights and excellency both of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the softest and sweetest, the most general and most innocent amusements of common time and life. They still find room in the courts of princes and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor or idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to human life; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions and affections. I know very well that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to these charms, would I think do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper and bringing the goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into question it may be thought at least an ill sign, if not an ill constitution, since some of the fathers went so far as to esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing divine, and reserved for the felicities of heaven itself. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and requests of these two entertainments will do so too and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent; and do not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet themselves, though no body hurts them!

:

When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple's Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning gave occasion to a very celebrated literary controversy. The question was raised by a work of Charles Perrault (immortal as the author of 'Puss in Boots,' 'Cinderella,' and 'Blue Beard') in which, with the view of flattering the pride of the Grand Monarque, it was affirmed that the writers of antiquity had been excelled by those of modern times. Boileau strenuously opposed the doctrine; and in behalf of the ancients Sir William also took the field. According to Perrault, we must have more knowledge than the ancients, because we have the advantage both of theirs and our own; as a dwarf standing upon a giant's shoulders sees more and further than he;' the ancients are really the young of the earth, and we are the true ancients. Temple replies that the ancients derived vast stores of knowledge from their predecessors-the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syrians,

to the

and Jews; and thence, no doubt, Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, and Plato drew their stores. Temple, whose scholarship was inadequate (he knew no Greek, and the essay was rather a jeu d'esprit than a critical performance), absurdly assumed as facts the veriest fables-as about Orpheus, asking triumphantly, 'What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so that they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable art?' The more ancient sages of Greece were greater men than Hippocrates, Plato, and Xenophon. There is nothing new in astronomy,' he says, 'to vie with the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system; nor in physic unless Harvey's circulation of the blood! But it is disputed whether these discoveries are not derived from ancient fountains ; in any case they have made no change in the conclusions of astronomy nor in the practice of physic, and so have been of little use world, though perhaps of much honour to the authors' (!) In comparing the great wits among the moderns' with the authors of antiquity, he mentions no Englishmen except Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden, leaving Shakespeare and Milton altogether out of view. After Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, he knows none of the moderns that have made any achievements in heroic poetry worth recording.' Descartes and Hobbes are 'the only new philosophers that have made entries upon the noble stage of the sciences for fifteen hundred years past.' But Temple's most unlucky blunder was his adducing the Greek Epistles of Phalaris to prove that 'the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best ;' these Epistles I think to have more grace, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others i have seen, either ancient or modern.' In fairness to Temple, however, it must be added that in the essay on Poetry, published in the same volume, he shows a much more adequate knowledge and appreciation of the moderns, extolling 'the matchless writer of Don Quixote,' and asserting that the English drama, in its development under Shakespeare and his successors, had in some kind excelled both the ancient and the modern achievements in that line. Temple's Essay led to the appearance of a new edition of the Epistles by Charles Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery; and so Boyle got into a quarrel with the great critic Bentley. Bentley demonstrated the Epistles to be a forgery, spoke irreverently of Temple, and in his immortal dissertation (1699) overwhelmed Boyle, Aldrich, Atterbury, and other Christ Church doctors with ridicule. Swift came into the field on behalf of his patron with his famous Battle of the Books, and to the end of

his life spoke of Bentley with contempt. Many other contemporaries also engaged in the fray, critical opinion being all on one side, though good wit and satire were squandered on the other-and not wholly in vain, for the uncritical view continued to assert itself from time to time. To one of Bentley's allies Temple wrote a reply, which might partly have suggested Swift's account, in Gulliver's Travels, of experimental researches of the projectors at Lagado:

What has been produced for the use, benefit, or pleasure of mankind, by all the airy speculations of those who have passed for the great advancers of knowledge and learning these last fifty years (which is the date of our modern pretenders), I confess I am yet to seek, and should be very glad to find. I have indeed heard of wondrous pretensions and visions of men possessed with notions of the strange advancement of learning and sciences on foot in this age, and the progress they are like to make in the next; as the universal medicine, which will certainly cure all that have it; the philosopher's stone, which will be found out by men that care not for riches; the transfusion of young blood into old men's veins, which will make them as gamesome as the lambs from which 'tis to be derived; an universal language, which may serve all men's turn when they have forgot their own; the knowledge of one another's thoughts without the grievous trouble of speaking; the art of flying, till a man happens to fall down and break his neck; double-bottomed ships, whereof none can ever be cast away besides the first that was made; the admirable virtues of that noble and necessary juice called spittle, which will come to be sold, and very cheap, in the apothecaries' shops; discoveries of new worlds in the planets, and voyages between this and that in the moon, to be made as frequently as between York and London: which such poor mortals as I am think as wild as those of Ariosto, but without half so much wit or so much instruction; for there these modern sages may know where they may hope in time to find their lost senses, preserved in phials with those of Orlando.

The following is part of one of Dorothy Osborne's letters to her betrothed, written from her father's house of Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, in 1653:

You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for me. About ten o'clock I think of making me ready, and when that's done I go into my father's chamber, from whence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and I sit in great state in a room, and at a table that would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr B. comes in question, and then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but, trust

I

me, I think these are as innocent as those could be. talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in the midst

of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think 'tis time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it, when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this is not kind neither). In earnest, 'tis a pleasant place, and would be much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to be done as going to bed.

Since I writ this my company is increased by two, my brother Harry and a fair niece, the eldest of my brother Peyton's children. She is so much a woman that I am almost ashamed to say I am her aunt; and so pretty, that, if I had any design to gain of servants, I should not like her company; but I have none, and therefore shall endeavour to keep her here as long as I can persuade her father to spare her, for she will easily consent to it, having so much of my humour (though it be the worst thing in her) as to like a melancholy place and little company. My brother John is not come down again, nor am I certain when he will be here. He went from London into Gloucestershire to my sister who was very ill, and his youngest girl, of which he was very fond, is since dead. But I believe by that time his wife has a little recovered her sickness and loss of her child, he will be coming this way. My father is reasonably well, but keeps his chamber still, and will hardly, I am afraid, ever be so perfectly recovered as to come abroad again.

Temple's collected works fill 4 vols. (1814). See, besides the older Lives by Boyard, Swift, and Temple's sister, Lady Giffard, the elaborate Memoirs by T. P. Courtenay (1836), Macaulay's brilliant Essay thereon, and E. A. Parry's admirable edition of seventyone of Dorothy Osborne's Letters (1888). The best of all criticisms of Temple as an essayist is Charles Lamb's essay on 'The Genteel Style in Writing.'

The Marquis of Halifax (GEORGE SAVILE ; 1633-95) was distinguished as statesman, orator, and political writer. In the contests between the Crown and the Parliament after the restoration of Charles II. he was alternately in high favour with both parties as he supported or opposed the measures of each. He opposed the Test Bill in 1675; as a keen critic of the Cabal he secured the king's dislike, but after 1678 became the chiefest favourite at court. To popery he was unfeignedly hostile, and he disliked the Duke of York as the representative of French influence and Catholic hopes, yet it was his skill and power in debate that did most to defeat the bill excluding the Duke from the succession to the throne. For this he was elevated to the dignity of marquis, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and President of the Council. He retained his offices till his opposition to the proposed repeal of the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts caused his dismissal. After the flight of James, Halifax was