Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875», sayfa 16
THE DEATH OF DOCTORS' COMMONS
On the 20th of last October a venerable London institution changed its quarters. Doctors' Commons may almost be said to be no more. Its heart is gone. The Principal Registry of the Court of Probate—the successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home par excellence of sinecures and monopolies, which culminated in the office of registrar of the Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury. This office was in the gift of the archbishop, and was at the time these attacks began held by the Rev. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore was a member of a family which had certainly good cause to stand steadfast in the faith of the Church of England, and not to waver one inch in attachment thereto. It may be doubted whether since its foundation any family—we except, of course, those to whom grants were made from abbey-lands—during the whole history of the Church has drawn such vast sums from it. His father, a singularly fortunate man, set the ball rolling. Having gone up to Christ Church, Oxford, as a sizar, or poor scholar, he happened about the time of taking his degree to cross the quadrangle at the moment when a nobleman of great position was asking the dean to recommend a tutor for his son. Young Moore at that moment caught the very reverend functionary's eye. There is the very man, thought he. He called him up, presented him to the peer, and an engagement was made. In those days the patronage of a powerful peer was a ready road to preferment. Young Moore gave satisfaction to his noble patron, and was pushed up the ecclesiastical tree until he reached its topmost branch, being created in 1783 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1770 he formed a very judicious marriage with Miss Eden. This lady was sister of Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland in 1776 (who married the sister and co-heir of the last Lord Baltimore), and of the first Lord Auckland, whom George III. very justly stigmatized as "that eternal intriguer." To the "eternal intriguer" the elevation of Moore to the archbishopric was probably mainly due. Lord Auckland was for many years as intimate a friend as Pitt ever had, and his daughter (afterward countess of Buckinghamshire) is the great minister's only recorded love. For twenty-three years Dr. Moore filled the archbishopric, and in those days it was a far better thing pecuniarily than it is now. He made hay whilst the sun shone, and then and for long after did his relatives bask in the sun. Registrarships, canonries and livings fell upon them in rich profusion, and the great prize of all, the registrarship of the Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury, fell to the luckiest of the lot.
Of course the registrar never came near his registry: his duties were discharged by three deputies. Not one penny, moreover, beyond what was absolutely necessary did he expend on the registry itself. Such a hole as it was! Cribbed, cabined and confined were the clerks who ran the reverend sinecurist's business in one of the most extraordinary rabbit-warrens, to use the epithet Bethell, Lord (Chancellor) Westbury, applied to it in the writer's hearing. In Great Knight Rider street—a name derived from the days of the Knights Templar—was a dingy passage-way leading into a yet dingier little court. Passing up a short flight of steps, you found yourself in a large room, with deep alcoves furnished with shelves, on which, above and on all sides, were ranged huge volumes with massive clasps. "What are all these books?" inquired a youthful visitor—"old Bibles?" "No, sir; they're testaments," was a waggish official's reply. They are, in fact, copies of wills. The originals are deemed too precious for exhibition except on special application, and the stranger who pays his shilling only sees a copy. Formerly, unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was proved, the process of finding it was very troublesome, because he had to search down indexes in Old English character arranged in order of date only; but now the registers have been put into alphabetical form.
The great change in Doctors' Commons took place in 1858, when the Probate Act came into operation. This was a very sweeping measure, which at a blow superseded the whole system of ecclesiastical courts, so far at least as wills were concerned. For them it substituted a Court of Probate, with jurisdiction over the whole of England. Attached to this court are about forty registries for wills. That in London is called the Principal Registry. A will must either be proved in the district in which a man dies or in the Principal Registry. The Principal Registry is a very large office, at the head of which are four registrars, who are also registrars of the Divorce Court, over which the judge of the Court of Probate presides, being styled "judge ordinary" of this latter. There are about forty registries scattered about the country, in most cases in places where formerly ecclesiastical courts existed for the proving of wills. The value of these registrarships ranges from three hundred to fifteen hundred pounds. They are all in the gift of the judge of the court, whose patronage is worth about sixty thousand pounds a year, and may be reckoned the best in England, inasmuch as he holds it continuously, whilst the lord chancellor and other political officers merely hold their patronage for the few years they may chance to continue in office. Moreover, the judge of the Court of Probate, not being a political officer, has no political pressure brought to bear upon him in the distribution of his patronage, and can dispense it precisely as he pleases. The registrars must, by the terms of the act of Parliament, be barristers, solicitors, or clerks who have served five years in the Principal Registry.
Doctors' Commons twenty years ago was a unique corner of the world. It lay so hid away that you might live for years in London, and be within a stone's throw of it, and yet never have its existence brought to your mind; and it had a life all its own. The ecclesiastical lawyers were called doctors and proctors, instead of barristers and attorneys; and although the former did not arrogate to themselves a higher rank socially and professionally than that of barrister, a proctor considered himself a great many cuts above an attorney, and indeed was, for the most part, the equal of the best class of attorneys. Proctors, it will be borne in mind, are sketched by Charles Dickens in the opening pages of David Copperfield, for Dora's papa, Mr. Spenlow, was in proctorial partnership with the reputably inexorable Jawkins. When the Probate Act came into force it was a frightful blow to the tribe of Spenlows. Not so much on account of the pecuniary loss. In that respect the blow was considerably tempered to the shorn lambs by a compensation all too liberal—for John Bull is unsurpassed as a respecter of vested interests—and the proctors were compensated on the basis of their incomes for the last five years, their returns proving in some instances curiously at variance with the amounts on which they had paid income-tax. But they regarded themselves as terrible losers in prestige and position by this rude invasion of the classic and aristocratic ground of the Doctores Commensales, and above all by being leveled down to the rank of attorneys. The clerks in the Prerogative Court—of which the registrars and head-clerks were all proctors, who, taking the cue from Chief Registrar Moore, executed their work by deputy, the deputies being clerks working long hours for small salaries—had kotooed to them with the most servile subserviency; but the Probate Office clerk was a government official, who could not be removed, even by the judge of the court, without the consent of the lord chancellor. What cared he, then, for Spenlow and Jawkins? "I am astonished, Mr. Spenlow," said a young clerk of the new régime, "that you should have made such a mistake!" Mr. Spenlow, in turn, was too much astonished to utter a word. Speechless with amazement and indignation, he left the "seat," as the different departments were called, to weep bitter tears in regret for the past in the solitude of his dingy sanctum in Bell Yard, leaving an emancipated clerk, who had served under the thraldom of the old régime, exclaiming, "Good Heavens! Only imagine any of us daring to use such language to a proctor two years ago!"
R.W.
THE LAY OF THE LEVELER
Among the less known writings of Francis Quarles, author of the once famous Emblems, is a volume, now become very scarce, entitled The Shepheards Oracles, delivered in certain Eglogues. The copy of it to which I have access was published in 1646, or two years after Quarles's death. This spirited poem must have been perused with intense interest by Quarles's contemporaries. But history is constantly repeating itself with more or less of modification, and The Shepheards Oracles, at least here and there, and with reference to England, reads, but for its quaintness of manner and idiom, like a production of the nineteenth century. In the course of it there occur some verses, put into the mouth of Anarchus, which are well worth resuscitating. These verses, to which I have supplied a title as above, are, in a sufficiently exact transcription, as follows:
Know, then, my brethren, heav'n is cleare,
And all the Clouds are gone;
The Righteous now shall flourish, and
Good dais are coming on.
Come, then, my Brethren, and be glad,
And eke rejoyce with me:
Lawn Sleeves and Rochets shall goe down:
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l break the windows which the Whore
Of Babylon hath painted;
And, when the Popish Saints are down,
Then Barow shall be Sainted.
There's neither Crosse nor Crucifixe
Shall stand for man to see:
Romes trash and trump'ries shall goe downe;
And, hey! then up goe we.
What ere [sic] the Popish hands have built,
Our Hammers shall undoe;
Wee'l breake their Pipes, and burn their Copes,
And pull downe Churches, too:
Wee'l exercise within the Groves,
And teach beneath a Tree;
Wee'l make a Pulpit of a Cart;
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l down with all the Varsities,
Where Learning is profest,
Because they practise and maintain
The language of the Beast:
Wee'l drive the Doctors out of doores,
And Arts, what ere [sic] they be;
Wee'l cry both Arts and Learning down;
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l down with Deans and Prebends, too;
But I rejoyce to tell ye
How then we will eat Pig our fill,
And Capon by the belly:
Wee'l burn the Fathers witty Tomes,
And make the Schoolmen flee;
Wee'l down with all that smels of wit;
And, hey! then up goe we.
If once that Antichristian crew
Be crusht and overthrown,
Wee'l teach the Nobles how to crouch,
And keep the Gentry down:
Good manners have an evil report,
And turn to pride we see:
Wee'l, therefore, cry good manners down;
And, hey! then up goe we.
The name of Lord shall be abhor'd;
For every man's a brother:
No reason why, in Church or State,
One man should rule another.
But, when the change of Government
Shall set our fingers free,
Wee'l make the wanton Sisters stoop:
And, hey! then up goe we.
Our Coblers shall translate their soules
From Caves obscure and shady;
Wee' make Tom T– as good as my Lord,
And Joan as good as my Lady.
Wee'l crush and fling the marriage Ring
Into the Romane See;
Wee'l ask no bans, but even clap hands;
And, hey! then up goe we.
By "Barow," named in the second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary leader contrived to evade. Browne himself is alluded to punningly in The Shepheards Oracles, where Philorthus, at sight of Anarchus approaching, asks whether he is "in a Browne study." Anarchus replies:
"Man, if thou be'st a Babe of Grace,
And of an holy Seed,
I will reply incontinent,
And in my words proceed;
But, if thou art a child of wrath,
And lewd in conversation,
I will not, then, converse with thee,
Nor hold communication."
Philorthus rejoins, referring by his "we all three" to Philarchus, with whom he had just been conversing:
"I trust, Anarchus, we all three inherit
The selfe same gifts, and share the selfe same Spirit."
Then follow the stanzas which I have first quoted. There is certainly ground to surmise that Lord Macaulay had in mind what I have called "The Lay of the Leveler" when in 1820 he wrote "A Radical War-song." In support of this opinion, I subjoin, for comparison, its last stanza but one:
Down with your sheriffs and your mayors,
Your registrars and proctors!
We'll live without the lawyer's cares,
And die without the doctor's.
No discontented fair shall pout
To see her spouse so stupid:
We'll tread the torch of Hymen out,
And live content with Cupid.
F.H.
THE PHILOSOPHER STRAUSS AS A POET
The writer of a sketch in a late number of a Leipsic journal presents the famous author of the Life of Jesus, David Friederich Strauss, in a new character. He mentions, first, that in the Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Heerde ("Conversations around the Homehearth"), published by Strauss in 1856, the latter makes, in the introduction, the following graceful reference to the deceased friend of his youth, E.F. Kauffmann: "If I were a philosophical emperor and wrote self-confessions, I would thank the gods for giving me, among other blessings, a poet and musician for an early friend. He is dead now, alas! the noble man whom alone I have to thank that my ear, though still unskillful, has been opened to the world of harmony. He was not a professional musician, but he had a thoroughly musical nature. The laws of composition he had studied theoretically, and he followed them practically. His position, in reality, was that of a professor of mathematics. But music was his secret love. He not only knew the great masters, but he lived in them. He thought little of playing on the piano the whole of one of Mozart's operas, note for note, without any written music before him. I have often seen him do this. How much I have owed to those hours! How he could draw his hearers into the right mood! How he could illuminate the groping mind with the lightning flash of thought!"
To this friend Strauss sent from Munich in 1851 ten sonnets. They were accompanied by a versified dedication to Kauffmann himself, and they constitute his claim to be considered a poet as well as a philosophic theologian. The sonnets are all on musical subjects, and may be taken as the natural outgrowth of that cultivation of his musical taste which he owed to his intimate association with Professor Kauffmann. The metrical dedication and the first five sonnets are given in the sketch before referred to. The writer of that article looks upon the tendency, thus displayed by Strauss, to "drop into poetry," as Mr. Wegg was accustomed to say, as another strong proof of the affinity—elsewhere noticed—between the genius of Strauss and that of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; who, it will be remembered, sometimes diverted himself with the composition of light poetical pieces, such as his famous song, beginning "Gestern, Brüder, könnt ihr's glauben?"
The first sonnet is on Händel, the second on Glück, the third on Haydn, the fourth on Don Juan, and the fifth on Figaro.
The following attempt at a translation of the fourth sonnet may serve to give some idea of how far the world-renowned philosopher and skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume the anomalous rôle of a sonneteer:
DON JUAN
How joyously life's fountains here are flowing!
In crystal cups the purple flood is foaming;
Through dusky myrtle-groves are lovers roaming,
The dance begins in halls all bright and glowing.
Be watchful, though! Here treachery is hiding.
Wild passion naught for truth or ruth is caring:
As hawks do doves, mild innocence 'tis tearing,
And human vengeance lightly is deriding.
But now, once more alive, the slain appear!
They speak, with awful voice, the words of doom:
Death his cold hand is silently extending.
Now sinks the daring mood in ghastly fear.
The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom;
The silent grave brings on the bright joy's ending.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other language the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original this sonnet is far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of Don Juan very artistically, and displays a combination of force with harmony and grace which gives the impression, in connection with the other sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted his mental energy to poetry alone, he would not have taken a low rank among the poets of Germany.
W.W.C.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY
The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books, his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John Eglinton Bailey. London: Pickering.
By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is hardly prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about Thomas Fuller without formally introducing him. Coleridge and Southey and Lamb were, to be sure, familiar with his writings, and prized them extremely. But they did the same by the writings of many another old worthy now undeservedly slighted; and, for all their eulogies on him, the great bulk of readers were still content to continue in ignorance of the treasures he has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his Church History; and Heylin's elaborate impugnment of its accuracy appears to have had great weight, as with Fuller's contemporaries, so with the generation which immediately followed, and onward almost to our own time. To Heylin succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its character has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His matter quite apart—and it is always interesting—and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols, an editor of his Worthies, timidly hazarded the observation that, as against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson, there might be much said in "vindication of the language of Dr. Fuller"—a comment which excited Coleridge to a high pitch of exasperation. "Fuller's language!" he ejaculates. "Grant me patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!—a painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth."
Of Fuller's ancestry nothing is known, on the paternal side, beyond his father, a college-bred clergyman, who died in 1632. His mother was a Davenant, of an ancient and respectable family. Fuller was born in June, 1608, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, at his father's rectory. When only about twelve years of age he was entered at Queen's College, Cambridge, his progress in his studies having been such as to authorize this unusually early transfer from school to the university. In 1628 he exchanged Queen's College for Sydney-Sussex College, and in the following year he was presented by the master and fellows of Corpus Christi College to the curacy of St. Benet's, Cambridge. Within a twelvemonth after—namely, in 1631—HE made his first appearance as an author. His Davia's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, Heavy Punishment, which came out in that year, was his sole adventure of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he certainly testified his discretion in choosing thenceforward to be satisfied with writing prose. A valuable prebend attached to the Salisbury Cathedral was bestowed on him at this time, near about which he is supposed to have delivered, in discourses, his so-called Comment on Ruth. Next we hear of him as rector of Broadwindsor, where, probably, he composed his History of the Holy War, published in 1639. His Holy State was given to the world in 1642. Having just before this removed to London under circumstances which are involved in some obscurity, he was there appointed lecturer to the Inns of Court and to the Savoy Chapel. But trouble awaited him, as it then awaited all other loyalists whom it had not overtaken already, and 1643 found him a refugee at Oxford. There he was warmly welcomed by the king and his adherents, but on his imprudently daring to urge lenient counsels, his moderation gave as much dissatisfaction to the court party as it had previously given to the Parliamentarians, and he fell into temporary disgrace. Nevertheless, he suffered, at the hands of the anti-royalists, the same spoliation which would have been visited on a malignant of the extremest stamp. To fill up the measure of his misfortune—as if it were not enough that he should be deprived of his stated means of livelihood—he was despoiled of his library. For a while, also, his loyalty was held, though without the slightest grounds, in considerable suspicion. On coming to be better known, however, he was restored to favor, and was enrolled among the royal chaplains. If the doubts as to the sincerity of his adhesion to Charles were ever actually thought to have good foundation, they must have been dissipated by his voluntarily exposing himself to danger, as he did at one of the sieges of Basing House. Like Isaac Barrow, he would at need have done duty militant just as effectually with carnal weapons as with spiritual. No longer required at Basing House, he repaired to Oxford again, and then to Exeter, where he was nominated chaplain to the princess Henrietta Anne. But he held his new post for only a short period. Leaving Exeter, he once more sought Oxford, and thence went to London. Forbidden to preach there, he retired to Northamptonshire, and then reappeared at the metropolis, where he was sojourning in the memorable year 1649. Becoming in that year curate of Waltham Abbey, he enjoyed an interval of quietude while all around him was turbulence. Yet he was soon in London afresh, lecturer at various churches from 1651 till near the end of his life. In 1658 he was appointed rector of St. Dunstan's, Cranford, but we read of him as subsequently journeying to The Hague and to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel. It must have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably surmised to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August, 1661, and lies buried in the chancel of the church to which he last ministered, at Cranford, Surrey.
Considering the unsettled and wandering life which Fuller led for many years, it may seem almost a marvel that in those very years he should have accomplished such laborious—nay, all but gigantic—enterprises as are to be referred to them; for it was then that he composed his voluminous Pisgah-sight of Palestine, Church History and Worthies, not to speak of many minor writings. But the secret of his prolificness amidst surroundings which would have paralyzed most men into stark sterility admits of ready elucidation. Besides being endowed with great physical vigor and enjoying uninterrupted health. Fuller never wasted a moment, was an unweariable student at odd hours, and moreover supplemented the advantage of a matchless memory by the strictest observance of method. Taken for all in all, he was without question one of the most remarkable of Englishmen—not of his own age merely, but of all bygone ages. "Next to Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvelous.... Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men." Others among his countrymen have been more learned, and others have surpassed him in this or that special faculty, but the whole that we have in him it would be hard to find a parallel to. Culeridge emphasizes the equity of his judgment; and this point is one regarding which there can be no diversity of opinion. As to his wit, granting that its quality may here and there be somewhat inferior, still, it has probably never been surpassed in quantity by any one man. It has the laudable character, too, of being nearly always impersonal, and while it amuses it almost in equal measure instructs. Had Fuller, with his mental agility and his mastery of incisive diction, been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, we know of few writers whom we can point to with more confidence as calculated, in antidote to the fret and chafe inseparable from existence in our day, to induce a tone of repose and resignation in ourselves, and a disposition to take charity as our watchword in our dealings with others.
From Fuller we pass to Fuller's new biographer, the only biographer he has hitherto had that at all deserves the appellation. A completer life-history than that which Mr. Bailey has produced is of rare occurrence in English literature. There was no motive for his keeping back anything that is known of Fuller; and he has really enabled us to form wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications in which Fuller indulged; and, in truth, it strikes one as rather singular to find, as in his Church History, not only every book, but every section of a book, prefaced by a long string of compliments addressed to a separate dedicatee. But these dedications meant money, and Fuller was poor. Furthermore, if in his necessity he flattered, his flattery was, for the most part, of a kind not irreconcilable with due self-respect on the part of the flatterer. It is a very different thing from the nauseous adulation to which Dryden—to name but one out of numerous kindred offenders—consented to abase himself. As auxiliary to a full understanding of Fuller in his social relations, his dedications are now of prime value. Though many of them are inscribed to persons else quite unknown to fame, with a good number of them it is otherwise; and they serve, by the information which they embody, to show that Fuller was on terms of familiar intimacy with a whole host of notabilities in Church and State. Of these personages, and so of many others with whom Fuller associated, Mr. Bailey, heedful of the adage noscitur a sociis, has compiled very satisfactory sketches, derived in all cases from the most trustworthy authorities. In addition to a Life of Fuller, he has thus gone far to give us a sort of biographical dictionary of the leading men, political and ecclesiastical, who rallied round the unfortunate First Charles, and who used their most strenuous diligence to save his desperate cause from shipwreck.
One who has already made acquaintance with Fuller's writings must feel animated, under the guidance of the new light now thrown upon them, to renew that acquaintance; and he to whom the wise and witty old worthy is as yet a stranger must, unless obdurately insensible, be moved to a suspicion that he ought to remain a stranger no longer. To Mr. Bailey we are beholden alike for a biography of the first excellence, and for a sterling contribution to the history of an era which possesses undying interest for every Englishman, be he conservative, liberal or republican; and for every intelligent American as well. We are given to understand that the author has now in contemplation the publishing of Fuller's sermons, of which there has never been a collective edition, and of which several are among the rarest books in our language. The design is one which challenges the furtherance of every lover of good literature; and the Life, which, in parting, we emphatically commend to our readers, should avail to secure for it the encouragement it unquestionably merits.
The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV. By Charles C.F. Greville. Bric-à-Brac Series. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.
The distillation from Mr. Greville's copious memoirs which Mr. R.H. Stoddard has made for his interesting series is perhaps quite enough of a good but not very noble thing. Our gossip-loving part is not the proudest part of our nature, and Mr. Greville has but two crowned kings of gossip to celebrate, so far. It is amusing enough to see the disgusted clerk of council coming out of the audience in a fret, and hear him saying, as he does in good set terms, that the Fourth George is a spoiled, selfish, odious beast. What must inevitably strike the republican mind is that, after all, this sceptered beast was allowed to govern the country and defend the faith through a long, peaceful and stupid reign, and that his company was, on the whole, thought preferable to his room by a free people. As for the next monarch, William, never was there such a Roi Carotte, and Offenbach seems to have been born to immortalize him in one of his peculiar versions of history. He was not exactly a king in a pantomime, for he talked incessantly, but he was such a vulgar, malapert, meddling, fatuous squireen of a king that etiquette lost its raison d'être in his presence, and government ministers and foreign ambassadors laughed almost openly at his folly—all except Talleyrand, who sat with composed face through his dinner-speeches, and said softly that they were "bien remarquable." We cannot but think, however, that in this delineation of two nursery-rhyme kings the artist has put a bit of himself. If Mr. Greville had been really in the current of the social and political questions of the day, which included some wonderful reforms, instead of the born bureaucrat that he obviously was, he would perhaps have got a little more rational human nature into his portraits, or at least have given more importance to their background and surroundings. He writes himself down very clearly as a watcher of scandals and lover of backstairs history; a man of elegance and gentlemanly instincts in a rather small way; a person very easily shocked at social maladdress; a reading man intensely fond of literary company; and a racing man who periodically laments that he cannot cure himself of his love of the turf. Amiable, frank, and of that graceful mental bearing that bespeaks good blood rather than good marrow, he is keen but superficial in what he notices, and tries his tooth constantly on the really great figures of the day, Brougham and Wellington, who are objects of his dislike. It is harsh to say so, but, in fact, Mr. Greville completes a triad with his pair of vicious and narrow monarchs as he sails down the same stream, snarlingly protesting, but quite unconscious of the currents that are modifying the age. At present, as we know, nous avons changé tout cela. British Virtue in person is on the throne, and she disarms satire by handing her memoirs in person for revision to the Greville of the day, who happens to be Sir Arthur Helps; and this secretary is no turfman, never in his voluminous writings betraying the least acquaintance with a horse; but he is what is a great deal better, a sort of burgher Lord Bacon, a philosopher replete with the wisdom of the nineteenth century, and able to give it out in genial chapters for the use of schools. From Greville to Helps—both attached to one single monarchy—we see what a step has been made, and how short a time now-a-days will change types completely: Greville, padded, full of deportment, devoted to the great, with simple faith in the institutions of family, and criticising royalty with that petulant ease of a valet which, in its way, is adhesion and adoration; and Helps, a pamphleteer in six easy lessons, a pedagogue in guise of an essayist, a man in the current of all our reforms—above all, the meek editor of the queen's diaries.
