Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century Part 1

Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles.

by Various.

THE CHARACTER

The seventeenth century is rich in short studies or characters of its great men. Its rulers and statesmen, its soldiers and politicians, its lawyers and divines, all who played a prominent part in the public life, have with few notable exceptions been described for us by their contemporaries. There are earlier characters in English literature; but as a definite and established form of literary composition the character dates from the seventeenth century. Even Sir Robert Naunton's _Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth her Times and Favourites_, a series of studies of the great men of Elizabeth's court, and the first book of its kind, is an old man's recollection of his early life, and belongs to the Stuart period in everything but its theme. Nor at any later period is there the same wealth of material for such a collection as is given in this volume.

The eighteenth century devoted itself rather to biography. When the facts of a man's life, his works, and his opinions claimed detailed treatment, the fas.h.i.+on of the short character had pa.s.sed.

Yet the seventeenth century did not know its richness. None of its best characters were then printed. The writers themselves could not have suspected how many others were similarly engaged, so far were they from belonging to a school. The characters in Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_ were too intimate and searching to be published at once, and they remained in ma.n.u.script till about thirty years after his death. In the interval Burnet was drawing the characters in his _History of His Own Time_. He, like Clarendon, was not aware of being indebted to any English model. Throughout the period which they cover there are the characters by Fuller, Sir Philip Warwick, Baxter, Halifax, Shaftesbury, and many others, the Latin characters by Milton, and the verse characters by Dryden. There is no sign that any of these writers copied another or tried to emulate him. Together, but with no sense of their community, they made the seventeenth century the great age of the character in England.

I. The Beginnings.

The art of literary portraiture in the seventeenth century developed with the effort to improve the writing of history. Its first and at all times its chief purpose in England was to show to later ages what kind of men had directed the affairs and shaped the fortunes of the nation. In France it was to be practised as a mere pastime; to sketch well-known figures in society, or to sketch oneself, was for some years the fas.h.i.+onable occupation of the salons. In England the character never wholly lost the qualities of its origin. It might be used on occasion as a record of affection, or as a weapon of political satire; but our chief character writers are our historians. At the beginning of the seventeenth century England was recognized to be deficient in historical writings. Poetry looked back to Chaucer as its father, was proud of its long tradition, and had proved its right to sing the glories of Elizabeth's reign. The drama, in the full vigour of its youth, challenged comparison with the drama of Greece and Rome.

Prose was conscious of its power in exposition and controversy. But in every review of our literature's great achievement and greater promise there was one cause of serious misgivings. England could not yet rank with other countries in its histories. Many large volumes had been printed, some of them containing matter that is invaluable to the modern student, but there was no single work that was thought to be worthy of England's greatness. The prevailing type was still the chronicle. Even Camden, 'the glory and light of the kingdom', as Ben Jonson called him, was an antiquary, a collector, and an annalist.

History had yet to be practised as one of the great literary arts.

Bacon pointed out the 'unworthiness' and 'deficiences' of English history in his _Advancement of Learning_.[1] 'Some few very worthy, but the greater part beneath mediocrity' was his verdict on modern histories in general. He was not the first to express these views.

Sir Henry Savile had been more emphatic in his dedication to Queen Elizabeth of his collection of early chronicles, _Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam_, published in 1596.[2] And after Bacon, somewhere about 1618, these views were again expressed by Edmund Bolton in his _Hypercritica, or a Rule of Judgement for writing or reading our Histories_.[3] 'The vast vulgar Tomes', he said, 'procured for the most part by the husbandry of Printers, and not by appointment of the Prince or Authority of the Common-weal, in their tumultuary and centonical Writings do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable Temple, whose Architect was not his Arts Master'. He repeated what he calls the common wish 'that the majesty of handling our history might once equal the majesty of the argument'. England had had all other honours, but only wanted a history.

But the most valuable statement on the conditions of English history at this time and the obstacles that hindered its progress was made by Sir John Hayward at the beginning of his _Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England_, published in 1613. Leaving aside the methods of the chroniclers, he had taken the cla.s.sical historians as his model in his _First Part of the Life and raigne of King Henrie the IIII_. The interest of this work to the modern reader lies in its structure, its attempt at artistic unity, its recognition that English history must be written on a different plan, rather than in its historical matter.

But it was no sooner published than Hayward was committed to the Tower because the account of the deposition of Richard II was held to be treasonable, the offence being aggravated by the dedication, in perfectly innocent terms, to the Earl of Ess.e.x. His work was thus checked till he met with encouragement from Henry, Prince of Wales, a patron of literature, of whom, though a mere youth, such men as Jonson, Chapman, and Raleigh, spoke with an enthusiasm that cannot be mistaken for flattery. Prince Henry saw the need of a worthy history of England. He therefore sent for Hayward to discuss the reasons with him:

Prince Henry ... sent for mee, a few monethes before his death. And at my second comming to his presence, among some other speeches, hee complained much of our Histories of England; and that the English Nation, which is inferiour to none in Honourable actions, should be surpa.s.sed by all, in leauing the memorie of them to posteritie....

I answered, that I conceiued these causes hereof; One, that men of sufficiencie were otherwise employed; either in publicke affaires, or in wrestling with the world, for maintenance or encrease of their private estates. Another is, for that men might safely write of others in maner of a tale, but in maner of a History, safely they could not: because, albeit they should write of men long since dead, and whose posteritie is cleane worne out; yet some aliue, finding themselues foule in those vices, which they see obserued, reproued, condemned in others; their guiltinesse maketh them apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of our _English_ historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues discredited by dealing in it....

Then he questioned, whether I had wrote any part of our _English_ Historie, other then that which had been published; which at that time he had in his hands. I answered, that I had wrote of certaine of our _English_ Kings, by way of a briefe description of their liues: but for historie, I did princ.i.p.ally bend, and binde my selfe to the times wherein I should liue; in which my owne obseruations might somewhat direct me: but as well in the one as in the other I had at that time perfected nothing.

The result of the interview was that Hayward proceeded to 'perfect somewhat of both sorts'. The brief description of the lives of the three Norman kings was in due course ordered to be published, and would have been dedicated to its real patron but for his untimely death; in dedicating it instead to Prince Charles, Hayward fortunately took the opportunity to relate his conversation with Prince Henry.

How far he carried the other work is not certain; it survives in the fragment called _The Beginning of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth_,[4]

published after his death with _The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt_. He might have brought it down to the reign of James. Had he been at liberty to follow his own wishes, he would have been the first Englishman to write a 'History of his own time'. But when an author incurred imprisonment for writing about the deposition of a sovereign, and when modern applications were read into accounts of what had happened long ago, the complexity of his own time was a dangerous if not a forbidden subject.

There is a pa.s.sage to the same effect in the preface to _The Historie of the World_ by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, unlike Hayward, willingly chose to be silent on what he knew best:

I know that it will bee said by many, That I might have beene more pleasing to the Reader, if I had written the Story of mine owne times; having been permitted to draw water as neare the Well-head as another. To this I answer, that who-so-ever in writing a moderne Historie, shall follow truth too neare the heeles, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no Mistresse or Guide, that hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries.... It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to write of the eldest times: wherein also why may it not be said, that in speaking of the past, I point at the present, and taxe the vices of those that are yet lyving, in their persons that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge? But this I cannot helpe, though innocent.

He wrote of remote ages, and contributed nothing to historical knowledge. But he enriched English literature with a 'just history', as distinct from annals and chronicles.[5] 'I am not altogether ignorant', he said, 'in the Lawes of Historie, and of the Kindes.'

When we read his lives and commendations of the great men of antiquity as he pictured them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the same overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not been employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another country. It is the _History of the Turks_ by Richard Knolles.

The character was definitely introduced into English literature when the historians took as their subjects contemporary or recent events at home, and, abandoning the methods of the chronicle, fas.h.i.+oned their work on cla.s.sical models. Its introduction had been further prepared to some extent by the growing interest in lives, which, unlike chronicles that recorded events, recognized the part played by men in the control of events. In his _Advancement of Learning_ Bacon regretted that Englishmen gave so little thought to describing the deeds and characters of their great countrymen. 'I do find strange', he said, 'that these times have so little esteemed the virtues of the times, as that the writing of lives should be no more frequent.' He and Hayward both wrote lives with the consciousness that their methods were new in English, though largely borrowed from the cla.s.sics.[6]

Hayward tried to produce a picture of the period he dealt with, and his means for procuring harmoniousness of design was to centre attention on the person of the sovereign. It is a conception of history not as a register of facts but as a representation of the national drama. His _Henry IV_ gives the impression, especially by its speeches, that he looked upon history as resolving itself ultimately into a study of men; and it thus explains how he wished to be free to describe the times wherein he lived. He is on the whole earlier than Bacon, who wrote his _Historie of the Reigne of King Henry the Seventh_ late in life, during the leisure that was forced on him by his removal from all public offices. Written to display the controlling policy in days that were 'rough, and full of mutations, and rare accidents', it is a study of the statecraft and character of a king who had few personal gifts and small capacity for a brilliant part, yet won by his ready wisdom the best of all praises that 'what he minded he compa.s.sed'. How he compa.s.sed it, is what interested Bacon. 'I have not flattered him,' he says, 'but took him to the life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light.'

Would that Bacon had felt at liberty to choose those who sat near at hand. Who better than the writer of the _Essays_ could have painted a series of miniatures of the courts of Elizabeth and James?

When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its full importance and excellence. 'That posterity may not be deceaved by the prosperous wickednesse of these tymes, into an opinyon, that lesse then a generall combination and universall apostacy in the whole Nacion from their religion and allegiaunce could in so shorte a tyme have produced such a totall and prodigious alteration and confusion over the whole kingdome, and so the memory of those few who out of duty and conscience have opposed and resisted that Torrent which hath overwhelmed them, may loose the recompence dew to ther virtue, and havinge undergone the injuryes and reproches of this, may not finde a vindication in a better Age'--in these words Clarendon began his _History of the Rebellion_. But he could not vindicate the memory of his political friends without describing the men who had overcome them. The history of these confused and difficult years would not be properly understood if the characters of all the chief actors in the tragic drama were not known. For to Clarendon history was the record of the struggle of personalities. When we are in the midst of a crisis, or view it from too near a distance, it is natural for us to think of it as a fight between the opposing leaders, and the historians of their own time are always liable to attribute to the personal force of a statesman what is due to general causes of which he is only the instrument. Of these general causes Clarendon took little account. 'Motives which influenced ma.s.ses of men', it has been said, 'escape his appreciation, and the _History of the Rebellion_ is accordingly an account of the Puritan Revolution which is unintelligible because the part played by Puritanism is misunderstood or omitted altogether'.[7] But the _History of the Rebellion_ is a Stuart portrait gallery, and the greatest portrait gallery in the English language.

[Footnote 1: Book II, ed. Aldis Wright, pp. 92-5.]

[Footnote 2: 'Historae nostrae particulam quidam non male: sed qui totum corpus ea fide, eaque dignitate scriptis complexus sit, quam suscepti operis magnitudo postularet, hactenus plane neminem ext.i.tisse constat.... Nostri ex faece plebis historici, dum maiestatem tanti operis ornare studuerunt, putidissimis ineptiis contaminarunt. Ita factum est nescio qua huiusce insulae infoelicitate, ut maiores tui, (serenissima Regina) viri maximi, qui magnam huius...o...b..s nostri partem imperio complexi, omnes sui temporis reges rerum gestarum gloria facile superarunt, magnorum ingeniorum quasi lumine dest.i.tuti, iaceant ignoti, & delitescant.']

[Footnote 3: _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, ed.

Spingarn, vol. i, pp. 82-115.]

[Footnote 4: See also Camden Society Publications, No. 7, 1840.]

[Footnote 5: Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_ divides History into 'Diaria', 'Annales', 'Commentaries', and 'Iustam Historiam'.]

[Footnote 6: Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in Hayward's _Henry IV_, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus'

(_Apophthegms_, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of _The History of King Richard the Thirde_, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's _Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey_, which they likewise used for its facts.]

[Footnote 7: C.H. Firth, 'Burnet as a Historian', in Clarke and Foxcroft's _Life of Gilbert Burnet_, 1907, pp. xliv, xlv.]

II. The Literary Models.

The authentic models for historical composition were in Greek and Latin. Much as our literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed to the cla.s.sics, the debt was nowhere more obvious, and more fully acknowledged, than in our histories. The number of translations is in itself remarkable. Many of them, and notably the greatest of all, North's Plutarch, belong to the early part of Elizabeth's reign, but they became more frequent at the very time when the inferiority of our native works was engaging attention.[1] By the middle of the seventeenth century the great cla.s.sical historians could all be read in English. It was not through translation, however, that their influence was chiefly exercised.

The cla.s.sical historians who were best known were Thucydides, Polybius, and Plutarch among the Greeks, and Sall.u.s.t, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius among the Latins; and the former group were not so well known as the latter. It was recognized that in Thucydides, to use Hobbes's words, 'the faculty of writing history is at the highest.'[2]

But Thucydides was a difficult author, and neither he nor Polybius exerted the same direct influence as the Latin historians who had imitated them, or learned from them. Most of what can be traced ultimately to the Greeks came to England in the seventeenth century through Latin channels. Every educated man had been trained in Latin, and was as familiar with it for literary purposes as with his native tongue. Further, the main types of history--the history of a long period of years, the history of recent events, and the biographical history--were all so admirably represented in Latin that it was not necessary to go to Greek for a model. In one respect Latin could claim pre-eminence. It might possess no single pa.s.sage greater than the character study of Pericles or of the Athenians by Thucydides, but it developed the character study into a recognized and clearly defined element in historical narrative. Livy provided a pattern of narrative on a grand scale. For 'exquisite eloquence' he was held not to have his equal.[3] But of all the Latin historians, Tacitus had the greatest influence. 'There is no learning so proper for the direction of the life of man as Historie; there is no historie so well worth the reading as Tacitus. Hee hath written the most matter with best conceit in fewest words of any Historiographer ancient or moderne.'[4] This had been said at the beginning of the first English translation of Tacitus, and it was the view generally held when he came to be better known. He appealed to Englishmen of the seventeenth century like no other historian. They felt the human interest of a narrative based on what the writer had experienced for himself; and they found that its political wisdom could be applied, or even applied itself spontaneously, to their own circ.u.mstances. They were widely read in the cla.s.sics. They knew how Plutarch depicted character in his Lives, and Cicero in his Speeches. They knew all the Latin historians. But when they wrote their own characters their chief master was Tacitus.

Continental historians provided the incentive of rivalry. They too were the pupils of the Ancients, and taught nothing that might not be learned equally well or better from their masters, but they invited the question why England should be behind Italy, France, or the Low Countries in worthy records of its achievements. In their own century, Thua.n.u.s, Davila, Bentivoglio, Strada, and Grotius set the standard for modern historical composition. Jacques Auguste de Thou, or Thua.n.u.s, wrote in Latin a history of his own time in 138 books. He intended to complete it in 143 books with the a.s.sa.s.sination of Henri IV in 1610, but his labours were interrupted by his death in 1617. The collected edition of his monumental work was issued in 1620 under the t.i.tle _Iacobi Augusti Thuani Historiarum sui temporis ab anno 1543 usque ad annum 1607 Libri Cx.x.xVIII_. Enrico Caterino Davila dealt with the affairs of France from Francis II to Henri IV in his _Historia delle guerre civili di Francia_, published in 1630. Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio described the troubles in the Low Countries in his _Della Guerra di Fiandra_, published from 1632 to 1639. Famia.n.u.s Strada wrote on the same subject in Latin; the first part of his _De Bella Belgico_, which was meant to cover the period from 1555 to 1590 but was not completed, appeared in 1632, and the second in 1647. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch scholar, had long been engaged on his _Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis_ when he died in 1640; it was brought out by his sons in 1657, and contained five books of Annals from 1566 to 1588, and eighteen books of Histories to 1609. These five historians were well known in England, and were studied for their method as well as their matter. Burnet took Thua.n.u.s as his model. 'I have made him ', he says, 'my pattern in writing.'[5] The others are discussed by Clarendon in a long pa.s.sage of his essay 'On an Active and on a Contemplative Life'.[6] He there develops the view, not without reference to his own history, that 'there was never yet a good History written but by men conversant in business, and of the best and most liberal education'; and he ill.u.s.trates it by comparing the histories of his four contemporaries:

Two of these are by so much preferable before the other Two, that the first may worthily stand by the Sides of the best of the Ancients, whilst both the others must be placed under them; and a Man, without knowing more of them, may by reading their Books find the Difference between their Extractions, their Educations, their Conversations, and their Judgment. The first Two are _Henry D'Avila_ and Cardinal _Bentivoglio_, both _Italians_ of ill.u.s.trious Birth; ... they often set forth and describe the same Actions with very pleasant and delightful Variety; and commonly the greatest Persons they have occasion to mention were very well known to them both, which makes their Characters always very lively. Both their Histories are excellent, and will instruct the ablest and wisest Men how to write, and terrify them from writing. The other Two were _Hugo Grotius_ and _Famia.n.u.s Strada_, who both wrote in _Latin_ upon the same Argument, and of the same Time, of the Wars of _Flanders_, and of the _Low-Countries_.

He proceeds to show that Grotius, with all his learning and abilities, and with all his careful revisions, had not been able to give his narrative enough life and spirit; it was deficient in 'a lively Representation of Persons and Actions, which makes the Reader present at all they say or do'. The whole pa.s.sage, which is too long to be quoted in full, is not more valuable as a criticism than as an indication of his own aims, and of his equipment to realize them. Some years earlier, when he was still thinking 'with much agony' about the method he was to employ in his own history, he had cited the methods of Davila, 'who', he added, 'I think hath written as ours should be written.'[7]

One of Clarendon's tests of a good history, it will be noted, is the 'lively representation of persons'; the better writers are distinguished by making 'their characters always very lively'. In his own hands, and in Burnet's, the character a.s.sumes even greater importance than the continental historians had given it. At every opportunity Clarendon leaves off his narrative of events to describe the actors in the great drama, and Burnet introduces his main subject with what is in effect an account of his _dramatis personae_. They excel in the range and variety of their characters. But they had studied the continental historians, and the encouragement of example must not be forgotten.

The debt to French literature can easily be overstated. No French influence is discoverable in the origin and rise of the English character, nor in its form or manner; but its later development may have been hastened by French example, especially during the third quarter of the seventeenth century.

France was the home of the _memoire_, the personal record in which the individual portrays himself as the centre of his world, and describes events and persons in the light of his own experience. It was established as a characteristic form of French literature in the sixteenth century,[8] and it reached its full vigour and variety in the century of Sully, Rohan, Richelieu, Tallemant des Reaux, Ba.s.sompierre, Madame de Motteville, Mlle de Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, Villars, Cardinal de Retz, Bussy-Rabutin--to name but a few. This was the age of the _memoire_, always interesting, often admirably written; and, as might be expected, sometimes exhibiting the art of portraiture at perfection. The English memoir is comparatively late. The word, in the sense of a narrative of personal recollections, was borrowed at the Restoration. The thing itself, under other names, is older. It is a branch of history that flourishes in stirring and difficult times when men believe themselves to have special information about hidden forces that directed the main current of events, and we date it in this country from the period of the Civil Wars. It is significant that when Shaftesbury in his old age composed his short and fragmentary autobiography he began by saying, 'I in this follow the French fas.h.i.+on, and write my own memoirs.' Even Swift, when publis.h.i.+ng Temple's _Memoirs_, said that ''tis to the French (if I mistake not) we chiefly owe that manner of writing; and Sir William Temple is not only the first, but I think the only Englishman (at least of any consequence) who ever attempted it.' Few English memoirs were then in print, whereas French memoirs were to be numbered by dozens. But the French fas.h.i.+on is not to be regarded as an importation into English literature, supplying what had hitherto been lacking. At most it stimulated what already existed.

The _memoire_ was not the only setting for French portraits at this time. There were the French romances, and notably the _Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus_ and the _Clelie_ of Madeleine de Scudery. The full significance of the _Grand Cyrus_ has been recovered for modern readers by Victor Cousin, with great skill and charm, in his _Societe francaise au XVIIe siecle_, where he has shown it to be, 'properly speaking, a history in portraits'. The characters were drawn from familiar figures in French society. 'Ainsi s'explique', says Cousin, 'l'immense succes du _Cyrus_ dans le temps ou il parut. C'etait une galerie des portraits vrais et frappants, mais un peu embellis, ou tout ce qu'il y avait de plus ill.u.s.tre en tout genre--princes, courtisans, militaires, beaux-esprits, et surtout jolies femmes--allaient se chercher et se reconnaissaient avec un plaisir inexprimable.'[9] It was easy to attack these romances. Boileau made fun of them because the cla.s.sical names borne by the characters were so absurdly at variance with the matter of the stories.[10] But instead of giving, as he said, a French air and spirit to Greece and Rome, Madeleine de Scudery only gave Greek and Roman names to France as she knew it. The names were a transparent disguise that was not meant to conceal the picture of fas.h.i.+onable society.

The next stage was the portrait by itself, without any setting. At the height of the popularity of the romances, Mlle de Montpensier hit upon a new kind of entertainment for the talented circle of which she was the brilliant centre. It was nothing more nor less than a paper game.

They drew each other, or persons whom they knew, or themselves, and under their real names. And they played the game so well that what was written for amus.e.m.e.nt was worth printing. _Divers Portraits, Imprimes en l'annee M DC LIX_ was the simple t.i.tle of the first collection, which was intended only for the contributors.[11] When it reached its final form in 1663, it contained over a hundred and fifty portraits, and was offered to the public as _La Galerie des Peintures, ou Recueil des portraits et eloges en vers et en prose, contenant les portraits du Roy, de la Reyne, des princes, princesses, d.u.c.h.esses, marquises, comtesses, et autres seigneurs et dames les plus ill.u.s.tres de France; la plupart composes par eux-memes_.[12] The introductory defence of the portrait cites Suetonius and Plutarch, and Horace and Montaigne, but also states frankly the true original of the new fas.h.i.+on--'il faut avouer que nous sommes tres redevables au _Cyrus_ et a la _Clelie_ qui nous en ont fourni les modeles.' About the same time Antoine Baudeau, sieur de Somaize, brought out his _Grand Dictionnaire des Precieuses_,[13] in which there are many portraits in the accepted manner. The portrait was more than a fas.h.i.+on at this time in France; it was the rage. It therefore invited the satirists. Moliere has a pa.s.sing jest at them in his _Precieuses Ridicules_;[14] Charles Sorel published his _Description de I'isle de la Portraiture et de la ville des Portraits_; and Boileau wrote his _Heros de Roman_.