In the closing chapter the Duchess gives Discourses Gathered from the Mouth of my noble Lord and Husband. These show both sound sense and a broad view of affairs. She writes:
"I have heard My Lord say,
I
"That those which command the Wealth of a Kingdom, command the hearts and hands of the People.
XXXIII
"That many Laws do rather entrap than help the subject."
Clarendon, who thought but poorly of the Duke's abilities as a general, gives the same characterisation of him: a man of exact proportion, pleasant, witty, free but courtly in his manner, who loved all that were his friends, and hated none that were his enemies, and who had proved his loyalty to his king by the sacrifice of his property and at the risk of his life.
Perhaps the Duchess of Newcastle has unwittingly drawn a true representation of the great body of English cavaliers, and has partly removed the stain which the immoralities of the court afterward put upon the name. These biographies give a story of marital felicity with all the characteristics of the domestic novel.
At this time the English novel was a crude, formless thing, without dignity in literature. The Duchess of Newcastle, who aspired to be ranked with Homer and Plato, would have spurned a place among writers of romance, although her genius was primarily that of the novelist. She constantly thought of plots, which she jotted down at random, her common method of composition. She has described characters, and has left many bright pictures of the manners and customs of her age. Her style of writing is better than that of many of her more scholarly contemporaries, who studied Latin models and strove to imitate them. She wrote as she thought and felt, so that her style is simple when not lost in the mazes of philosophical speculation. She had all the requisites necessary to write the great novel of the Restoration.