The advancement of general society out of its first exclusive circle became apparent when “the public” themselves were gradually forming a component part of the empire.
“The new learning,” as the free discussions of opinions and the popular literature of the day were distinguished, widely spread. Society was no longer scattered in distant insulations. Their observation was more extended, their thought was more grave; tastes multiplied, and finer sympathies awakened. “The theatre” and “the ordinary” first rose in this early stage of our civilization; and the ceaseless publications of the day, in the current form of pamphlets, were snatched up, even in the intervening pauses of theatrical representation, or were commented upon by some caustic oracle at the ordinary, or in Powles’ walk. We were now at the crisis of that great moral revolution in the intellectual history of a people, when the people become readers, and the people become writers. In the closer intercourse with their neighbours, their insulated homeliness was giving way to more exotic manners; they seemed to imitate every nation while they were incurring the raillery or the causticity of our satirists, who are not usually the profoundest philosophers. The satirists are the earliest recorders of manners, but, fugitive historians of fugitive objects, they only sport on the surface of things. The progressive expansion of social life, through its homeliest transitions, are more clearly discerned in the perspective view; for those who are occupied by opening their narrow ways, and by lengthening their streets, do not contemplate on the architectural city which is reserved for posterity.
It was popular to ridicule the finical “Monsieur Traveller,” who was somewhat insolent by having “swum in a gondola;” or to raise a laugh at him who had “bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, and his bonnet in Germany.” It did not occur to our immortal satirist that the taste which had borrowed the doublet and the bonnet, had also introduced to his happier notice the tales of Bandello and the Giuletta of Luigi Porto. The dandy of Bishop Hall almost resembles the fantastic picture of Horace, in illustrating a combination of absurdities. Hall paints with vigour:
| A French head join’d to neck Italian; His thighs from Germany, his breast from Spain; An Englishman in none, a fool in all. |
But if this egregious man of fashion borrowed the wordiness of Italian compliment, or the formality of the Spanish courtesy, he had been also taught the sonnet and the stanza, and those musical studies which now entered into the system of education, and probably gave delicacy to our emotions, and euphony to our language. The first attempts in the refinements of manners are unavoidably vitiated by too close a copy; and it is long before that becomes graceful which began in affectation. When the people experienced a ceaseless irritability, a marvelling curiosity to learn foreign adventures and to inspect strange objects, and “laid out ten doits to see a dead Indian,” these were the nascent propensities which made Europe for them a common country, and indicated that insular genius which at a distant day was to add new dominions to the British empire.
This public opinion which this sovereign was creating she watched with solicitude, not only at home, but even abroad. No book was put forth against her government, but we find her ministers selecting immediately the most learned heads or the most able writers to furnish the replies. Burghley, we are told, had his emissaries to inform him of the ballads sung in the streets; and a curious anecdote at the close of the reign of Elizabeth informs us how anxiously she pondered on the manifestations of her people’s feelings. The party of Lord Essex, on the afternoon before their insurrection, ordered the play of the tragical abdication of Richard the Second. It is one of the charges in their trial; and we learn, from a more secret quarter than the public trial, that the queen deeply felt the acting of this play at that moment as the watchword of the rebels, expressive of their designs. The queen’s fears transformed her into Richard the Second; and a single step seemed to divide her throne from her grave. The recollection of this circumstance long haunted her spirits; for, a year and a half afterwards, in a literary conversation with the antiquary Lambarde, the subject of a portrait of Richard the Second occurring, the queen exclaimed, “I am Richard the Second, know ye not that?” The antiquary, at once wary and ingenuous, replied, well knowing that the virgin queen would shrink were her well-beloved Essex to be cast among ordinary rebels, “Such a wicked imagination was attempted by a most unkind gentleman, the most adorned creature that ever your majesty made.” The queen replied, “He that will forget God will also forget his benefactors.” So long afterwards was the royal Elizabeth still brooding over the gloomy recollection.
In the art of government a new principle seemed to have arisen, that of adopting and guiding public opinion, which, in the mutations of civil and political society, had emerged as from a chaos. A vacillating and impetuous monarch could not dare it; it was the work of a thoughtful sovereign, whose sex inspired a reign of love. Elizabeth not only lived in the hearts of her people, but survived in their memories; when she was no more, her birthday was long observed as a festival day; and so prompt was the remembrance of her deeds and her words, that when Charles the First once published his royal speech, an insidious patriot sent forth “The Speech of Queen Elizabeth,” which being innocently printed by the king’s printer, brought him into trouble. Our philosophic politician, Harrington, has a remarkable observation on the administration of Elizabeth, which, laying aside his peculiar views on monarchy, and his theoretical balances in the State, we may partly adopt. He says, “If the government of Elizabeth be rightly weighed, it seems rather the exercise of a principality in a commonwealth than a sovereign power in a monarchy. Certain it is that she ruled wholly with an art she had to high perfection, by humouring and blessing her people.”
Did Harrington imagine that political resembles physical science? In the revelations of the Verulamian philosophy, it was a favourite axiom with its founder, that we subdue Nature by yielding to her.
[1] Spelman’s “History of Sacrilege.”