Free from mere party motives of the Monarchist or the Commonwealth-man, for he gratified neither, Harrington was the greatest of political theorists; and his “political architecture,” with all his “models of government, notional and practicable,” still remains for us, and has not been overlooked by some framers of constitutions.
The psychological history of Harrington combines with his works. His was a thoughtful youth, like that of Sidney, of Milton, and Gray, which never needed correction, but rather kept those around him in awe. Among the usual studies of his age, it was an enterprise to have acquired the modern languages, as entering into an extensive plan of foreign travel, which the boy had already decided on. The death of his father before his legal age enabled him to realise this project. Political studies, however, had not yet occurred to him; and when he left England, he “knew no more of monarchy, anarchy, aristocracy, and democracy or oligarchy, than as hard words for which he was obliged to look into the dictionary.”
In Holland, he first contemplated on the image of popular liberty, recent from the yoke of Spain; it was a young people rejoicing in the holiday of freedom. There he found a friend in the fugitive Queen of Bohemia: his uncle, Lord Harrington, had been the governor of that spirited princess. He passed over into Denmark with the crownless elector, soliciting for that aid which no political prudence could afford. He resisted the seductions of those noble friendships in pursuit of his great plan. He entered France, he loitered in Germany, and at length advanced into Italy. At Rome, he refused to bestow on his holiness the prostrate salutation, and when some Englishmen complained of their compatriot’s stiffness to Charles the First, who reminded the young philosopher that he might have performed a courteous custom as to a temporal prince, the reply was happy—“having kissed his majesty’s hand, he would always hold it beneath him to kiss any prince’s toe.”
Our future political theorist was deeply struck in his admiration of the aristocratic government of Venice, which he conceived to be the most perfect and durable government hitherto planned by the wit of man. Such was the prevalent notion throughout Europe concerning a government existing in secrecy and mystery! In Italy, he found Politics, Literature and Art, and provided himself with a rich store of Italian books, especially on political topics. Machiavelli with him was “the prince of Politicians;” but he has opened his great work with the name of another Italian, “Janotti (Giannotti), the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice.” Giannotti is a name which, though it has not shared the celebrity of Machiavelli, seems to have been that of a more practical politician, for Giannotti at length obtained that honourable secretaryship of Florence, the loss of which, it is said, so deeply mortified the lofty spirit of his greater rival, that the illustrious ex-secretary died of grief, which his philosophy should have quieted.
Harrington returned home an accomplished cavalier; but the commonwealth of Holland, the aristocracy of Venice, the absolute monarchy of France, imperial Germany, and what else he had contemplated in the northern courts, must have furnished to his thoughtful mind the elements of his theory of politics.
He returned home to the privacy of his studies, refusing any public employment; but that he kept up an intercourse with the court, appears by his personal acquaintance with the king. Many years form a blank in his life; once indeed he had made an ineffectual attempt to enter parliament, but failed, though his sentiments were well known in favour of popular government. It is probable, that in that unhappy period, when persons and events were alike of so mixed and ambiguous a character, our philosopher could not sympathize with the clash of temporary passions.
When the king was to be conveyed from Newcastle in 1646, Harrington was chosen to attend his person as “a gentleman well known to the king before, and who had never engaged with any party whatever.” He was then in his thirty-fifth year.
This appointment of Harrington was agreeable to the king. Charles found in Harrington the character he well knew how to appreciate. He conversed on books, and pictures, and foreign affairs, and found a ripe scholar, a travelled mind, and a genius overflowing with strange speculative notions. Their conversations were free; Harrington did not conceal his predilection for commonwealth institutions, at which the king was impatient. Neither could bring the other to his own side, for each was fixed in taking opposite views; the one looking to the advantages of monarchy, and the other to those of a republic. The only subject they could differ on, never interrupted their affections; the theoretical commonwealth-man, and the practical monarch, in their daily intercourse, found that they had a heart for each other.
In Charles the First, Harrington discovered a personage unlike the distorted image which political passions had long held out. In adversity the softened prince seemed only to be “the man of sorrows.” On one occasion Harrington vindicated the king’s conduct, and urged that the royal concessions were satisfactory. This strong personal attachment to Charles alarmed the party in power. Harrington was ordered away. He subsequently visited the king when at St. James’s, and was present at the awful act of the decapitation. Charles presented Harrington with a last memorial. Aubrey, who knew Harrington, may tell the rest of his story. “Mr. Harrington was on the scaffold with the king when he was beheaded; and I have ofttimes heard him speak of King Charles the First with the greatest zeal and passion imaginable; and that his death gave him so great grief, that he contracted a disease by it; that never anything did go so near to him.”
The agony of that terrible day afflicted Harrington with a malady from which he was never afterwards freed; a profound melancholy preyed upon his spirits; he withdrew into utter seclusion, not to mourn, but to despond. His friends were alarmed at a hermit’s melancholy; some imagined that his affection for the king had deranged his intellect; others ascribed his seclusion to mere discontent with the times.