Book I, would have a spice of truth if applied to the father. But their applicability is only partial; whereas the lines which SIR ROBERT follow are almost as true-a single word exceptedof the first Duke of Buckingham as they were of the second COTTON. GROWTH OF COTTON'S AND PUBLIC Stiff in opinions; often in the wrong; He's everything by starts, and nothing long. When Sir Robert COTTON perceived that James's new favourite would listen, in the morning, to grave advice on a grave subject, and affirm his resolution to act upon it; and yet, in the afternoon suffer himself to be carried from his purpose by the silly jests or malicious suggestions of youngsters and sycophants, unacquainted with affairs and often reckless of consequences, he saw the wisdom of standing somewhat aloof. He rarely, however, refused his advice, when it was asked. In regard to matters of naval administration,—the authoritative value of his opinion on which was now everywhere recognised, save in the dockyards and their dependencies, he gave it with especial willingness. But henceforward, to use AGARDE's words, he was 'no man's creature.' Five years passed on, marked by events which stirred England to its core, but to Sir Robert COTTON they were years of comparative quiet. He He was, indeed, very far from being a careless bystander. He observed much, and learnt much. Had it not been for the lessons which those publicly eventful years impressed on his receptive mind, he might have gone to his grave with no other reputation than that of a profound antiquary, and the Founder of the Cottonian Library. Meanwhile, his pen worked as hard in the service of scholars, both at home and abroad, as though he had been a CHAP. II. SIR ROBERT COTTON. Ms. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 239. (B.M.) Domestic Corresp Jas. I, vol. lxxxi, § 15. (R. H.) busy proof-reader in a leading printing-office. He supplied, BOOK I at the same time, on the right hand and on the left, precedents LIFE OF and formulæ, with a diligence and readiness which would have won both fame and fortune for a long-accustomed conveyancer. CAMDEN consults him, continually, for help in his historical labours. Ben JONSON puts questions to him about intricate points of Roman geography. William LISLE Seeks COTTON's aid in the prosecution of his studies of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons. PEIRESC Consults him on questions in Numismatics. If 16., fol. 288, great officers of State chance to quarrel amongst themselves seqq. about their respective claims to carry before the King the sword Curtana, at some special ceremony, they agree to refer the dispute to Sir Robert COTTON and to abide-without fighting a duel-by his momentous decision. If a courtier obtains for a friend the royal promise of an Irish viscounty he writes to COTTON, asking him to choose an appropriate and well-sounding title. Roger MAYNWARING begs him to determine the legal amount of burial-fees. Dr. LAMBE asks him to settle conflicting pretensions to the advowson of a living which, in old time, belonged to an abbey. Augustine VINCENT implores his help in a tough question about patents of peerage. WILLIAMS seeks advice on questions of parliamentary form and privilege. RALEGH writes to him, from that 'Bloody Tower' which he was about to turn into a literary shrine for all generations of Englishmen to come, by composing in of it a noble 'History of the World'-beseeching him to supply a desolate prisoner with historical materials. The Earl of ARUNDEL writes to him from Padua, begging that Ms. C. he would compile 'the story of my ancestors.' The Earl of DORSET entreats him to make out a list of the gifts which some early SACKVILLE had piously bestowed upon the r., fol. 820. Ms. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 378. ., fol. 252. Ib., fol. 229. The Lord Keeper ., fol. 379. Edwards' Life and Let Ralegh, vol. ii, p. 321. iii, fol. 204. Book I, LIFE OF COTTON. Salisbury to MS. Cott., Church-not, however, with the smallest intention of himself increasing them. And, anon, there comes to Sir Robert, SIR ROBERT from a third great peer, the second of the Cecil Earls of Salisbury, an entreaty-expressed in terms so urgent that one might call it a supplication- Permit me, I pray you, to see my Lord of NORTHAMPTON's letters. ... I will return them unread, and unseen, by anybody,' save himself. And then the Secretary of State writes to him in an impetuous hurry which made his letter scarcely legible :-' If you be not here' [i. e. at the Council Chamber] with those precedents for which there is present use, we are all undone. For His Majesty doth so chide, that I dare not come in his sight.' Julius C., iii. MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 57. Along with this busy correspondence of which, in these brief sentences I have given the reader but a very inadequate and scanty sample-the surviving records of these years of comparative retirement supply us with abundant notices of the growth and of the sources, from time to time, of the Cottonian Library. It would be no unwelcome task to tell that story at length. It would, indeed, be but the paying, in very humble coin, of a debt of gratitude to a liberal benefactor. But within the compass of these pages so many careers have to be narrated that the due proportions of some of them-and even of one so interesting as COTTON's-must needs be closely shorn. On this point it must, for the present, suffice to say that the acquisition of many Cottonian State Papers, and of such as carry on their face the most irrefragable marks of former official ownership, can be distinctly traced. The assertion is no hasty or inconsiderate one. It is founded on an acquaintance with the Cottonian MSS., which is now, I fear, thirty years old, and on the strength of which (when reading some recent assaults on the fair fame of their Collector), I have been tempted to put certain well-known lines into Sir Book 1, Robert's mouth :- If I am Traduced by o'er hasty tongues-which neither know The chroniclers of my doing-let me say 'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake Were it not, however, for one pregnant circumstance in Sir Robert COTTON's subsequent life, all this would have but a very meager attractiveness for nineteenth-century readers. The story of the growth of a great library has its charm, but the sphere of potency is of small dimension. Few but those who are themselves imbued with a spice of literary antiquarianism ever enter within the narrow circle. Just in like manner, that active literary and political correspondence-spreading from Exeter to Durham, and from Venice to Copenhagen would nowadays have but a slender interest for anybody (not belonging to the scorned fraternity of Oldbuck and Dryasdust), were it not for that great war between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, of which, in one sense, COTTON lived only long enough to see the gathering of forces, and the early skirmishes, but in which, nevertheless, he played a part second only to that played by ELIOT and by PYм. His close connection with the Parliamentarian leaders of 16251629 lifts the whole story of the man out of the petty circuit of mere curiosities of literature,' into the broad arena of the hard-won liberties of England. Chap. II. WITH THE All students of the deeds done in that arena now know COTTON'S -and their knowledge is in no slight degree due to the ALLIANCE persistent labours of a living writer-that the battle of the PARLIAMEN 'Petition of Right' was even a greater battle than Naseby TARIAN CHIEFS. BOOK I, LIFE OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. or Marston Moor. They know that the marshalling of the forces which, at a period antecedent to that famous Petition, succeeded in winning a safe place on the fleshy tables' of the hearts of Englishmen for those political immunities it embodied-after the first written record had been vainly torn from the Council Book-was a feat of arms not less brilliant, in its way, than was that arraying of Ironsides, on much later days of the long strife, which resulted in 'Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbued,' and placed Worcester's laureat wreath on the brow of CROMWELL. There are many senses in which we have all of us (or nearly all) learnt to see the truth of the familiar words, Peace hath her victories, not less renown'd than War,' but in no sense have those words a deeper truth than when we simply invert MILTON'S Own application of them. By him they were pointed at something yet to be done, and which, as he hoped, might be done by CROMWELL. Nowadays, the historian has good ground to point them at an earlier victory, won when the great soldier was but looking on at the parliamentary contest, which he could not much advance, and might very possibly have seriously impeded. The one thing which has transmuted Robert COTTON from the status of a dead antiquary into that of a living English worthy, is his close fellowship with ELIOT, RUDYARD, and PYм. His rights to a place amongst our national worthies is due-more than all else-to the fact that the services which he rendered in that strife of heroes were services which one man, and only one, throughout broad England had made himself capable of rendering. COTTON could no more have led the parliamentary phalanx, than he could have led the Ironsides. To stir men's minds as ELIOT or PYм could stir them was about as much in his power as it was to have invented logarithms, or to have written 'Lear.' |