|
Indeed, remote as were the alleys and flower-pots of Moor Park from the haunts
of the busy and the ambitious, Swift had ample opportunities of becoming
acquainted with the hidden causes of many great events. William was in the habit
of consulting Temple, and occasionally visited him. Of what passed between them
very little is known. It is certain, however, that when the Triennial Bill had
been carried through the two Houses, his Majesty, who was exceedingly unwilling
to pass it, sent the Earl of Portland to learn Temple's opinion. Whether Temple
thought the bill in itself a good one does not appear; but he clearly saw how
imprudent it must be in a prince, situated as William was, to engage in an
altercation with his Parliament, and directed Swift to draw up a paper on the
subject, which, however, did not convince the King.
The chief amusement of Temple's declining years was literature. After his final
retreat from business, he wrote his very agreeable Memoirs, corrected and
transcribed many of his letters, and published several miscellaneous treatises,
the best of which, we think, is that on Gardening. The style of his essays is,
on the whole, excellent, almost always pleasing, and now and then stately and
splendid. The matter is generally of much less value; as our readers will
readily believe when we inform them that Mr. Courtenay, a biographer, that is to
say, a literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure to render
homage, aids, reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord, avows that
he cannot give an opinion about the essay on Heroic Virtue, because he cannot
read it without skipping; a circumstance which strikes us as peculiarly strange,
when we consider how long Mr. Courtenay was at the India Board, and how many
thousand paragraphs of the copious official eloquence of the East he must have
perused.
One of Sir William's pieces, however, deserves notice, not, indeed, on account
of its intrinsic merit, but on account of the light which it throws on some
curious weaknesses of his character, and on account of the extraordinary effects
which it produced in the republic of letters. A most idle and contemptible
controversy had arisen in France touching the comparative merit of the ancient
and modern writers. It was certainly not to be expected that, in that age, the
question would be tried according to those large and philosophical principles of
criticism which guided the judgments of Lessing and of Herder. But it might have
been expected that those who undertook to decide the point would at least take
the trouble to read and understand the authors on whose merits they were to
pronounce. Now, it is no exaggeration to say that, among the disputants who
clamored, some for the ancients and some for the moderns, very few were decently
acquainted with either ancient or modern literature, and hardly one was well
acquainted with both. In Racine's amusing preface to the Iphigenie the reader
may find noticed a most ridiculous mistake into which one of the champions of
the moderns fell about a passage in the Alcestis of Euripides. Another writer is
so inconceivably ignorant as to blame Homer for mixing the four Greek dialects,
Doric, Ionic, Aeolic, and Attic, just, says he, as if a French poet were to put
Gascon phrases and Picard phrases into the midst of his pure Parisian writing.
On the other hand, it is no exaggeration to say that the defenders of the
ancients were entirely unacquainted with the greatest productions of later
times; nor, indeed, were the defenders of the moderns better informed. The
parallels which were instituted in the course of this dispute are inexpressibly
ridiculous. Balzac was selected as the rival of Cicero. Corneille was said to
unite the merits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We should like to see a
Prometheus after Corneille's fashion. The Provincial Letters, masterpieces
undoubtedly of reasoning, wit, and eloquence, were pronounced to be superior to
all the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Lucian together, particularly in the art
of dialogue, an art in which, as it happens, Plato far excelled all men, and in
which Pascal, great and admirable in other respects, is notoriously very
deficient.
This childish controversy spread to England; and some mischievous daemon
suggested to Temple the thought of undertaking the defense of the ancients. As
to his qualifications for the task, it is sufficient to say that he knew not a
word of Greek. But his vanity, which, when he was engaged in the conflicts of
active life and surrounded by rivals, had been kept in tolerable order by his
discretion, now, when he had long lived in seclusion, and had become accustomed
to regard himself as by far the first man of his circle, rendered him blind to
his own deficiencies. In an evil hour he published an Essay on Ancient and
Modern Learning. The style of this treatise is very good, the matter ludicrous
and contemptible to the last degree. There we read how Lycurgus traveled into
India, and brought the Spartan laws from that country; how Orpheus made voyages
in search of knowledge, and attained to a depth of learning which has made him
renowned in all succeeding ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in
Egypt, and, after graduating there, spent twelve years more at Babylon, where
the Magi admitted him ad eundem; how the ancient Brahmins lived two hundred
years; how the earliest Greek philosophers foretold earthquakes and plagues, and
put down riots by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in abilities any of his
successors on the throne of Assyria. The moderns, Sir William owns, have found
out the circulation of blood; but, on the other hand, they have quite lost the
art of conjuring; nor can any modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents
by his performance. He tells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus,
Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the
several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to
reach"; which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in
British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon. Indeed,
the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the fabulous reminds us of
those classical dictionaries, intended for the use of schools, in which
Narcissus the lover of himself and Narcissus the freedman of Claudius, Pollux
the son of Jupiter and Leda and Pollux the author of the Onomasticon, are ranged
under the same headings, and treated as personages equally real.
The effect of this arrangement resembles that which would be produced by a
dictionary of modern names, consisting of such articles as the
following:-"Jones, William, an eminent Orientalist, and one of the judges of the
Supreme Court of judicature in Bengal--Davy, a fiend, who destroys
ships--Thomas, a foundling, brought up by Mr. Allworthy." It is from such
sources as these that Temple seems to have learned all that he knew about the
ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the battle
of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same reasons for believing that Orpheus led
beasts with his lyre, which we have for believing that there were races at Pisa,
or that Alexander conquered Darius.
He manages little better when he comes to the moderns. He gives us a catalogue
of those whom he regards as the greatest writers of later times. It is
sufficient to say that, in his list of Italians, he has omitted Dante, Petrarch,
Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; in his list of
French, Pascal, Bossuet, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; and in his
list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.
In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity one paragraph stands out
pre-eminent. The doctrine of Temple, not a very comfortable doctrine, is that
the human race is constantly degenerating, and that the oldest books in every
kind are the best In confirmation of this notion, he remarks that the Fables of
Aesop are the best Fables, and the Letters of Phalaris the best Letters in the
world. On the merit of the Letters of Phalaris he dwells with great warmth and
with extraordinary felicity of language. Indeed we could hardly select a more
favorable specimen of the graceful and easy majesty to which his style sometimes
rises than this unlucky passage. He knows, he says, that some learned men, or
men who pass for learned, such as Politian, have doubted the genuineness of
these letters; but of such doubts he speaks with the greatest contempt. Now it
is perfectly certain, first, that the letters are very bad; secondly, that they
are spurious; and thirdly, that, whether they be bad or good, spurious or
genuine, Temple could know nothing of the matter; inasmuch as he was no more
able to construe a line of them than to decipher an Egyptian obelisk.
This Essay, silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both in England and
on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The classical scholars who saw its
absurdity were generally on the side of the ancients, and were inclined rather
to veil than to expose the blunders of an ally; the champions of the moderns
were generally as ignorant as Temple himself; and the multitude was charmed by
his flowing and melodious diction. He was doomed, however, to smart, as he well
deserved, for his vanity and folly.
Christchurch at Oxford was then widely and justly celebrated as a place where
the lighter parts of classical learning were cultivated with success. With the
deeper mysteries of philology neither the instructors nor the pupils had the
smallest acquaintance. They fancied themselves Scaligers, as Bentley scornfully
said, if they could write a copy of Latin verses with only two or three small
faults. From this College proceeded a new edition of the Letters of Phalaris,
which were rare, and had been in request since the appearance of Temple's Essay.
The nominal editor was Charles Boyle, a young man of noble family and promising
parts; but some older members of the society lent their assistance. While this
work was in preparation, an idle quarrel, occasioned, it should seem, by the
negligence and misrepresentations of a bookseller, arose between Boyle and the
King's Librarian, Richard Bentley. Boyle in the preface to his edition, inserted
a bitter reflection on Bentley. Bentley revenged himself by proving that the
Epistles of Phalaris were forgeries, and in his remarks on this subject treated
Temple, not indecently, but with no great reverence.
Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful usage, who,
even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk from all rude collision, and
had generally succeeded in avoiding it, and whose sensitiveness had been
increased by many years of seclusion and flattery, was moved to most violent
resentment, complained, very unjustly, of Bentley's foul-mouthed raillery, and
declared that he had commenced an answer, but had laid it aside, "having no mind
to enter the lists with such a mean, dull, unmannerly pedant" Whatever may be
thought of the temper which Sir William showed on this occasion, we cannot too
highly applaud his discretion in not finishing and publishing his answer, which
would certainly have been a most extraordinary performance.
He was not, however, without defenders. Like Hector, when struck down prostrate
by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick crowd of shields.
Outis edunesato poimena laou Outasai oudi balein prin gar peribesan aristoi
Polubmas te, kai Aineias, kai dios Agenor, Sarpedon t'archos Lukion, kai Glaukos
amumon.
Christchurch was up in arms; and though that College seems then to have been
almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no academical society could
show, a greater array of orators, wits, politicians, bustling adventurers who
united the superficial accomplishments of the scholar with the manners and arts
of the man of the world; and this formidable body resolved to try how far smart
repartees, well-turned sentences, confidence, puffing, and intrigue could, on
the question whether a Greek book were or were not genuine, supply the place of
a little knowledge of Greek.
Out came the Reply to Bentley, bearing the name of Boyle, but in truth written
by Atterbury with the assistance of Smalridge and others. A most remarkable book
it is, and often reminds us of Goldsmith's observation, that the French would be
the best cooks in the world if they had any butcher's meat, for that they can
make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. It really deserves the praise, whatever
that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever written by any man on the
wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant. The learning of
the confederacy is that of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary schoolboy;
but it is used with the skill and address of most able, artful, and experienced
men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, and is disposed in such a way
as to seem ten times larger than it is. The dexterity with which the
confederates avoid grappling with those parts of the subject with which they
know themselves to be incompetent to deal is quite wonderful. Now and then,
indeed, they commit disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom they
had studied, would have whipped them all round. But this circumstance only
raises our opinion of the talents which made such a fight with such scanty
means. Let readers who are not acquainted with the controversy imagine a
Frenchman, who has acquired just English enough to read the Spectator with a
dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of Ireland's Vortigern
against Malone; and they will have some notion of the feat which Atterbury had
the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it was really thought that he
had performed.
The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley's answer for ever settled the question,
and established his claim to the first place amongst classical scholars. Nor do
those do him justice who represent the controversy as a battle between wit and
learning. For though there is a lamentable deficiency of learning on the side of
Boyle, there is no want of wit on the side of Bentley. Other qualities, too, as
valuable as either wit or learning, appear conspicuously in Bentley's book, a
rare sagacity, an unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery of all the
weapons of logic. He was greatly indebted to the furious outcry which the
misrepresentations, sarcasms, and intrigues of his opponents had raised against
him, an outcry in which fashionable and political circles joined, and which was
echoed by thousands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in
Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness, self-confident even to negligence,
and proud even to insolent ferocity, was awed for the first and for the last
time, awed, not into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For
once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes;
above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In almost
everything that he has written we can discover proofs of genius and learning.
But it is only here that his genius and learning appear to have been constantly
under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here, we find none of that
besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own luck, which he showed when he
undertook to edit Milton; none of that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many
of his notes on Horace; none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid
himself open to the keen and dexterous thrust of Middleton; none of that
extravagant vaunting and savage scurrility by which he afterwards dishonored his
studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Pauw.
Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat of his
champions. He died, indeed, at a fortunate moment, just after the appearance of
Boyle's book, and while all England was laughing at the way in which the
Christchurch men had handled the pedant. In Boyle's book, Temple was praised in
the highest terms, and compared to Memmius: not a very happy comparison; for
almost the only particular information which we have about Memmius is that, in
agitated times, he thought it his duty to attend exclusively to politics, and
that his friends could not venture, except when the Republic was quiet and
prosperous, to intrude on him with their philosophical and poetical productions.
It is on this account that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beautiful prayer
for peace with which his poem opens.
"Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo Possumus aequo animo, nec Memmi
clara propago Talibus in rebus communi de esse saluti."
This description is surely by no means applicable to a statesman who had,
through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing himself in
seasons of trouble; who had repeatedly refused, in most critical conjunctures,
to be Secretary of State; and, who now, in the midst of revolutions, plots,
foreign and domestic wars, was quietly writing nonsense about the visits of
Lycurgus to the Brahmins and the tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin.
We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about Phalaris was
raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal and attachment, wrote the Battle of the
Books, the earliest piece in which his peculiar talents are discernible. We may
observe that the bitter dislike of Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to Swift, seems
to have been communicated by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to others, who
continued to tease the great critic long after he had shaken hands very
cordially both with Boyle and with Atterbury.
Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in January 1699. He appears to have
suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sundial which still
stands in his favorite garden. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey by the
side of his wife; and a place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, who long
survived him. Swift was his literary executor, superintended the publication of
his Letters and Memoirs, and, in the performance of this office, had some
acrimonious contests with the family.
Of Temple's character little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him of
holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting everybody who came near him. But
the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Burnet, about a man with
whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is of little weight. It is,
indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a freethinker. The
Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young man. And it is certain that a
large proportion of the gentlemen of rank and fashion who made their entrance
into society while the Puritan party was at the height of power, and while the
memory of the reign of that party was still recent, conceived a strong disgust
for all religion. The imputation was common between Temple and all the most
distinguished courtiers of the age. Rochester, and Buckingham were open
scoffers, and Mulgrave very little better. Shaftesbury, though more guarded, was
supposed to agree with them in opinion. All the three noblemen who were Temple's
colleagues during the short time of his sitting in the Cabinet were of very
indifferent repute as to orthodoxy. Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as
an atheist; but he solemnly denied the charge; and, indeed, the truth seems to
be that he was more religiously disposed than most of the statesmen of that age,
though two impulses which were unusually strong in him, a passion for ludicrous
images, and a passion for subtle speculations, sometimes prompted him to talk on
serious subjects in a manner which gave grave and just offence. It is not
unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below the surface of any question, may
have been infected with the prevailing skepticism. All that we can say on the
subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in his works, and that the case
with which he carried his election for an university, where the majority of the
voters were clergymen, though it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we
think, be considered as proving that he was not, as Burnet seems to insinuate,
in the habit of talking atheism to all who came near him.
Temple, however, will scarcely carry with him any great accession of authority
to the side either of religion or of infidelity. He was no profound thinker. He
was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation, a man of the world among
men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world. Mere scholars were
dazzled by the Ambassador and Cabinet counselor; mere politicians by the
Essayist and Historian. But neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot
to him any very high place. As a man, he seems to us to have been excessively
selfish, but very sober, wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness; to have known
better than most people what he really wanted in life; and to have pursued what
he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity, never suffering
himself to be drawn aside either by bad or by good feelings. It was his
constitution to dread failure more than he desired success, to prefer security,
comfort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from
greatness; and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant
energy of the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes
appears to resemble the moderation of virtue. But we must own that he seems to
us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him, we do not say with
any high ideal standard of morality, but with many of those frail men who,
aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong passions and
strong temptations, have left to posterity a doubtful and checkered fame.
Previous |
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume I, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|
Add/Correct a Link