Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

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 perused.

doubtedly 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.

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 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 clamoured, 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 Iphigénie 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, 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,

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 travelled 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 succes

sors on the throne of Assyria. The leau; and in his list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton.

moderns, Sir William owns, have found 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 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, Molière, Corneille, Racine, and Boi

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 reve

rence.

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 succeed 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.

Οὔτις ἐδυνήσατο ποιμένα λαῶν Οὐτάσαι, οὐδὲ βαλεῖν· πρὶν γὰρ περίβησαν ἄριστοι,

Πουλυδάμας τε, καὶ Αἰνείας, καὶ δῖος Αγήνως, Σαρπηδών τ ̓ ἀρχὸς Λυκίων, καὶ Γλαύκος

ἀμύμων.

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 genuine, supply the place of a little knowledge of Greek.

not

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 | honoured his studies and his profeat which Atterbury had the audacity fession, and degraded himself almost to undertake, and which, for a time, to the level of De Pauw. 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 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 find none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own luck, which he showed when he undertook to edite 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 dis

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 patriaï tempore iniquo

Possumus æquo animo, nec Memmi clara propago

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 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

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 to have suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sun-dial which still stands in his favourite 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.

offence. It is not unlikely that Temple,
who seldom went below the surface of
any question, may have been infected
with the prevailing scepticism.
that we can say on the subject is, that
there is no trace of impiety in his
works, and that the ease 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.

Of Temple's character little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him of holding irreligious opinions, and Temple, however, will scarcely carry corrupting every body who came near with him any great accession of auhim. But the vague assertion of so thority to the side either of religion or rash and partial a writer as Burnet, of infidelity. He was no profound about a man with whom, as far as we thinker. He was merely a man of lively know, he never exchanged a word, is parts and quick observation, a man of of little weight. It is, indeed, by no the world among men of letters, a man means improbable that Temple may of letters among men of the world. have been a freethinker. The Osbornes Mere scholars were dazzled by the thought him so when he was a very Ambassador and Cabinet counsellor; young man. And it is certain that a mere politicians by the Essayist and large proportion of the gentlemen of Historian. But neither as a writer nor rank and fashion who made their as a statesman can we allot to him any entrance into society while the Puritan very high place. As a man, he seems party was at the height of power, and to us to have been excessively selfish, while the memory of the reign of that but very sober, wary, and far-sighted party was still recent, conceived a in his selfishness; to have known better strong disgust for all religion. The than most people what he really wanted imputation was common between in life; and to have pursued what he Temple and all the most distinguished wanted with much more than ordinary courtiers of the age. Rochester and steadiness and sagacity, never suffering Buckingham were open scoffers, and himself to be drawn aside either by bad Mulgrave very little better. Shaftes- or by good feelings. It was his conbury, though more guarded, was sup-stitution to dread failure more than he posed 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.

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

« ElőzőTovább »