render homage, aids, reliefs, and all were the defenders of the moderns better other customary services to his lord, informed. The parallels which were avows that he cannot give an opinion instituted in the course of this dispute about the essay on Heroic Virtue, be- are inexpressibly ridiculous. Balzac cause he cannot read it without skip- was selected as the rival of Cicero. ping; a circumstance which strikes us Corneille was said to unite the merits as peculiarly strange, when we con- of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripisider how long Mr. Courtenay was at des. We should like to see a Promethe India Board, and how many thou-theus after Corneille's fashion. The sand paragraphs of the copious official Provincial Letters, masterpieces uneloquence of the East he must have doubtedly of reasoning, wit, and eloperused. quence, 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, Flato far excelled all men, and in which Pascal, great and admirable in other respects, is notoriously very deficient.

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 This childish controversy spread to controversy had arisen in France touch. England; and some mischievous dæmon ing the comparative merit of the an- suggested to Temple the thought of cient and modern writers. It was cer- undertaking the defence of the antainly not to be expected that, in that cients. As to his qualifications for age, the question would be tried ac- the task, it is sufficient to say, that cording to those large and philosophi- he knew not a word of Greek. cal principles of criticism which guided But his vanity, which, when he was the judgments of Lessing and of Her- engaged in the conflicts of active der. But it might have been expected life and surrounded by rivals, had that those who undertook to decide the been kept in tolerable order by his dispoint would at least take the trouble cretion, now, when he had long lived to read and understand the authors on in seclusion, and had become accuswhose merits they were to pronounce. tomed to regard himself as by far the Now, it is no exaggeration to say that, first man of his circle, rendered him among the disputants who clamoured, blind to his own deficiencies. In an some for the ancients and some for the evil hour he published an Essay on moderns, very few were decently ac- Ancient and Modern Learning. The quainted with either ancient or modern style of this treatise is very good, the literature, and hardly one was well matter ludicrous and contemptible to acquainted with both. In Racine's the last degree. There we read how amusing preface to the Iphigénie the Lycurgus travelled into India, and reader may find noticed a most ridicu- brought the Spartan laws from that lous mistake into which one of the country; how Orpheus made voyages champions of the moderns fell about a in search of knowledge, and attained passage in the Alcestis of Euripides. to a depth of learning which has made Another writer is so inconceivably ig-him renowned in all succeeding ages; norant as to blame Homer for mixing how Pythagoras passed twenty-two the four Greek dialects, Doric, Ionic, Eolic, 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,

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 succes

sors on the throne of Assyria. The | leau; and in his list of English, Chaucer, moderns, Sir William owns, have found Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. out the circulation of the blood; but, In the midst of all this vast mass of on the other hand, they have quite lost absurdity one paragraph stands out the art of conjuring; nor can any pre-eminent. The doctrine of Temple, modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, not a very comfortable doctrine, is that and serpents by his performance. He the human race is constantly degentells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, De- erating, and that the oldest books in mocritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, every kind are the best. In confirmaand Epicurus made greater progresses tion of this notion, he remarks that in the several empires of science than the Fables of Æsop are the best Fables, any of their successors have since been and the Letters of Phalaris the best able to reach;" which is just as absurd Letters in the world. On the merit as if he had said that the greatest of the Letters of Phalaris he dwells with names in British science are Merlin, great warmth and with extraordinary Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and felicity of language. Indeed we could Lord Bacon. Indeed, the manner in hardly select a more favourable speciwhich Temple mixes the historical and men of the graceful and easy majesty the fabulous reminds us of those classi- to which his style sometimes rises than cal dictionaries, intended for the use of this unlucky passage. He knows, he schools, in which Narcissus the lover says, that some learned men, or men of himself and Narcissus the freedman who pass for learned, such as Politian, of Claudius, Pollux the son of Jupiter have doubted the genuineness of these and Leda and Pollux the author of the letters; but of such doubts he speaks Onomasticon, are ranged under the with the greatest contempt. Now same headings, and treated as person- it is perfectly certain, first, that the ages equally real. The effect of this letters are very bad; secondly, that arrangement resembles that which they are spurious; and thirdly, that, would be produced by a dictionary of whether they be bad or good, spurious modern names, consisting of such ar- or genuine, Temple could know ticles as the following:-" Jones, Wil- nothing of the matter; inasmuch as he liam, an eminent Orientalist, and one was no more able to construe a line of the Judges of the Supreme Court of of them than to decipher an Egyptian Judicature in Bengal-Davy, a fiend, obelisk. 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 Örpheus led beasts with his lyre, which we have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or that Alexander conquered Darius.

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.

He manages little better when he comes to the moderns. He gives us a catalogue of those whom he regards as Christchurch at Oxford was then the greatest writers of later times. It widely and justly celebrated as a place is sufficient to say that, in his list of where the lighter parts of classical Italians, he has omitted Dante, Pe-learning were cultivated with success. trarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; in his list of French, Pascal, Bossuet, Molière, Corneille, Racine, and Boi

With the deeper mysteries of philology neither the instructors nor the pupils had the smallest acquaintance. They fancied themselves Scaligers, as

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.

honoured his studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Pauw.

account that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beautiful prayer for peace with which his poem opens:

"Nam neque nos agere hoc patriaï tempore iniquo

Possumus æquo animo, nec Memmî clara propago

Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat of his The illusion was soon dispelled. champions. He died, indeed, at a Bentley's answer for ever settled the fortunate moment, just after the apquestion, and established his claim to pearance of Boyle's book, and while all the first place amongst classical scho- England was laughing at the way lars. Nor do those do him justice in which the Christchurch men had who represent the controversy as a handled the pedant. In Boyle's book, battle between wit and learning. For Temple was praised in the highest though there is a lamentable deficiency terms, and compared to Memmius: not of learning on the side of Boyle, there a very happy comparison; for alis no want of wit on the side of Bent- most the only particular information ley. Other qualities, too, as valuable which we have about Memmius is as either wit or learning, appear con- that, in agitated times, he thought it spicuously in Bentley's book, a rare his duty to attend exclusively to polisagacity, an unrivalled power of com- tics, and that his friends could not bination, a perfect mastery of all the venture, except when the Republic weapons of logic. He was greatly in- was quiet and prosperous, to intrude debted to the furious outcry which the on him with their philosophical and misrepresentations, sarcasms, and in-poetical productions. It is on this trigues 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 rail-junctures, to be Secretary of State; and ing of his enemies. In almost every thing 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 We must not omit to mention that, find none of that besotted reliance on while the controversy about Phalaris was his own powers and on his own luck, raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal which he showed when he undertook and attachment, wrote the Battle of the to edite Milton; none of that perverted Books, the earliest piece in which his ingenuity which deforms so many of peculiar talents are discernible. We his notes on Horace; none of that dis- may observe that the bitter dislike of dainful carelessness by which he laid Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to himself open to the keen and dex- Swift, seems to have been communicated terous thrust of Middleton; none of by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to that extravagant vaunting and savage others, who continued to tease the scurrility by which he afterwards dis-great critic, long after he had shaken

Talibus in rebus communi deesse 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 con

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.

All

hands very cordially both with Boyle | subtle speculations, sometimes prompted and with Atterbury. him to talk on serious subjects in a Sir William Temple died at Moor manner which gave great and just Park in January, 1699. He appears offence. It is not unlikely that Temple, to have suffered no intellectual decay. who seldom went below the surface of His heart was buried under a sun-dial any question, may have been infected which still stands in his favourite with the prevailing scepticism. garden. His body was laid in West- that we can say on the subject is, that minster Abbey by the side of his wife; there is no trace of impiety in his and a place hard by was set apart for works, and that the ease with which he Lady Giffard, who long survived him. carried his election for an university, Swift was his literary executor, super- where the majority of the voters were intended the publication of his Letters clergymen, though it proves nothing and Memoirs, and, in the performance as to his opinions, must, we think, be of this office, had some acrimonious considered as proving that he was not, contests with the family.

as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the

Of Temple's character little more re-habit of talking atheism to all who mains to be said. Burnet accuses him came near him. of holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting every body 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 VOL. II.

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 counsellor; 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 E