FOOTNOTES:
[10] Sidney and his friends are frequently taxed with having accepted money from France. It is worth noting that their conduct in so doing is vindicated by so powerful and, in this instance, so unprejudiced a reasoner as Warburton, in an unpublished letter to Balguy now before us.
CHAPTER X.
HISTORIES AND MEMOIRS OF PUBLIC TRANSACTIONS.
History is one of the departments of literature in which it is easiest to approach the unsurpassable perfection of antiquity. Poets must in general be accepted as inspiring influences rather than as models; but the methods of historians may be studied and even copied without undue servility. This was soon perceived by the Latin races, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the vernacular literatures of Italy, Spain, and Portugal possessed many truly classical historians. It is difficult to understand why England should have been so backward. The Restoration found its historical literature in an intermediate stage, half way between the artless old chroniclers and the consummate examples of historical style and construction which the next century was to produce. It left historical composition, however, much more advanced than it had found it. The chief history of the age, though far from perfect, at all events was a history and not a chronicle. Clarendon’s great work, it is true, belongs to the preceding generation in everything but the date of its composition; and will, accordingly, be found to be treated in a previous section of this history. His successor, Burnet, on the other hand, was in literary matters a perfect representative of his own day, a man of his times; and their works taken together, while illustrating the mutations of taste and the gradual popularization of culture, may be regarded as the Iliad and Odyssey of the period, the former a high epical treatment of a tragic theme, decreed by the Fates and directed by the Gods; the second a bustling tragi-comedy true to human nature and crowded with domestic incident. The writers, moreover, have these things in common: that both are men of original and marked character, whose personality is vividly embodied in their productions; that both had been busy actors in many of the events which they detail; that both, therefore, had unusual means of information, and the narrative of neither could miss the liveliness imparted by actual contact with the transactions they relate. Both were inevitably prejudiced, but both were high-minded and conscientious; and the bias against which they vainly contended is too visible and too much a matter of course to detract seriously from the value of their histories.
Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh, September 18th, 1643. By the wish of his father he selected the Church as his profession, which placed him in the invidious position of an Episcopalian ministering amid a nation of Presbyterians. His moderation, nevertheless, gained the confidence of the dissidents, and his great influence with Lauderdale, the ruler of Scotland, was exerted in favour of the most conciliatory measures and the widest toleration possible. When at length Lauderdale had become hopelessly committed to a violent course, Burnet withdrew from Scotland, and settled in London as preacher at the Rolls and at St. Clement Danes. During Charles’s reign, though an object of great suspicion to the court, he maintained his ground, but at the accession of James found it expedient to go abroad. After travelling in France, and proceeding as far as Rome, he settled in Holland, returning with William III. in 1688. William’s proclamation was drafted by him, and he drew up the engagement signed by the nobility who joined the prince. These and many other services were rewarded by the bishopric of Salisbury, where, by the confession of his adversaries, he proved as charitable and exemplary a prelate as the Church had ever seen. He is especially memorable in this capacity as the author of the scheme for the augmentation of poor livings commonly known as Queen Anne’s Bounty. He died in 1715. His moral character was of the highest; his intellectual character was disfigured by some foibles, unimportant in themselves, but which, not being of the kind usually found in conjunction with first-rate abilities, have occasioned his powers to be considerably undervalued. The man, however, who was respected by the cynical Charles and trusted by the jealous William, cannot have been of ordinary mould; nor can it be said of many authors that they have produced three books which, after the lapse of two centuries, are still regarded as standard authorities. The History of the Reformation was published in 1679-1714; the Exposition of the Articles in 1699; the History of his Own Times in 1723-34.
Burnet’s History of his Own Times actually deserves the character which Clarendon incorrectly gives of his own; it is rather the material for history than history itself. This is not a consequence of crude treatment, for all is well arranged and lively, nor from the encumbrance of original documents, of which it is nearly destitute. It arises rather from the predominance of the autobiographic tone, much more marked than in Clarendon, though Clarendon also relates as an eyewitness, which almost brings the book down to the level of personal memoirs. It must nevertheless be classed with histories, and, if not one of the most dignified, it is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining. Burnet’s deep interest in the events in which he had taken so large a share insures vivacious and effective treatment; his personages breathe and move, and impress themselves indelibly upon the reader’s imagination, though he usually abstains from set efforts at the depicting of character. The defects of his method are no less apparent; in relating what he has not himself heard or seen, he relies upon hearsay, and sinks into a gossip. The extent, nevertheless, to which he speaks as an eyewitness, renders his work very valuable. Well acquainted with Charles and James, admitted to the favour of William and the full confidence of Mary, he is able to introduce us into their presence, and summon them as it were from the dead. His point of view, being so largely personal, is inevitably partial; he can tell us, for example, of the defects in Shaftesbury’s character, which he discovered from actual acquaintance, but nothing of the surprising enlightenment of the statesman, which could only be learned from speeches which he never heard and documents which he never saw. Impartiality is the last virtue to be expected from a busy actor in a troubled age, but Burnet approaches it as nearly as can with any reason be demanded. It is hardly in human nature that he should be entirely fair to adversaries by whom he had himself been maligned, but his intention of being so is very apparent. The most impartial and generally the most valuable portion of his work is his narrative up to the Revolution. When he wrote this, animosities had become mellowed by time; when he lived it his contact with affairs had been more intimate as the political agent than afterwards as the spiritual peer. Disappointment with the course of events colours his account of Anne’s reign, and renders him splenetic and querulous. His perspicuous and animated diction does not always attain the dignity of history; he hardly ever attempts eloquence, except in the noble and deeply-felt conclusion of his work, a portion of which must be cited, although it is no fair example of his ordinary style:
‘So that by religion I mean, such a sense of divine truth as enters into a man, and becomes a spring of a new nature within him; reforming his thoughts and designs, purifying his heart, and sanctifying him, and governing his whole deportment, his words as well as his actions; convincing him that it is not enough, not to be scandalously vicious, or to be innocent in his conversation, but that he must be entirely, uniformly, and constantly, pure and virtuous, animating him with a zeal to be still better and better, more eminently good and exemplary, using prayers and all outward devotions, as solemn acts testifying what he is inwardly and at heart, and as methods instituted by God, to be still advancing in the use of them further and further into a more refined and spiritual sense of divine matters. This is true religion, which is the perfection of human nature, and the joy and delight of every one that feels it active and strong within him: it is true, this is not arrived at all at once; and it will have an unhappy alloy, hanging long even about a good man; but, as those ill mixtures are the perpetual grief of his soul, so it is his chief care to watch over and to mortify them; he will be in a continual progress, still gaining ground upon himself; and as he attains to a good degree of purity, he will find a noble flame of life and joy growing upon him. Of this I write with the more concern and emotion, because I have felt this the true, and indeed the only joy which runs through a man’s heart and life: it is that which has been for many years my greatest support; I rejoice daily in it: I feel from it the earnest of that supreme joy which I pant and long for; I am sure there is nothing else can afford any true or complete happiness. I have, considering my sphere, seen a great deal of all that is most shining and tempting in this world: the pleasures of sense I did soon nauseate; intrigues of state, and the conduct of affairs, have something in them that is most specious; and I was for some years, deeply immersed in these, but still with hopes of reforming the world, and of making mankind wiser and better: but I have found that which is crooked cannot be made straight. I acquainted myself with knowledge and learning, and that in a great variety, and with more compass than depth: but though wisdom excelleth folly as much as light does darkness, yet as it is a sore travail, so it is so very defective, that what is wanting to complete it cannot be numbered. I have seen that two were better than one, and that a threefold cord is not easily loosed; and have therefore cultivated friendship with much zeal and a disinterested tenderness; but I have found this was also vanity and vexation of spirit, though it be of the best and noblest sort. So that, upon great and long experience, I could enlarge on the preacher’s text, “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity,” but I must also conclude with him; Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the all of man, the whole, both of his duty and of his happiness. I do therefore end all in the words of David, of the truth of which, upon great experience and a long observation, I am so fully assured, that I leave these as my last words to posterity: “Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”’
Burnet’s reputation as an historian also rests in considerable measure upon another important work, his History of the Reformation in England, published in 1679. This great subject, frequently, variously, and never successfully handled, may some day make a first-class reputation for an historian as yet concealed in the future. That a satisfactory history of it should be written in Burnet’s day was impossible, and it was equally impossible that his work should either exhibit the liveliness, or possess the unique value of his History of his Own Times. The theme is one for a graver and more eloquent historian than he, capable of rising to greater heights, and wielding far more absolute command over the resources of language. Nor can his laborious collections from state papers and former historians rival the importance of his narrative of transactions in which he was a busy actor, full of particulars only to be obtained from himself. With all these inevitable imperfections, his History of the Reformation is still an excellent book, eminently readable, just and accurate in its broad views, however needing correction on points of detail; and, considering that it was the work of a Scotch Protestant writing in the thick of the Popish Plot, surprisingly candid and impartial. It is of course the work of a partisan, but he who does not feel sufficient interest in the Reformation to be a partisan on one side or the other is not likely to write its history at all, and had better not. Probably no history of the English Reformation has since been written that does not exhibit more party feeling than Burnet’s, or that can reasonably claim to supersede it.
Burnet’s History of his Times, as we have seen, may be regarded as a connecting link between history and mémoires pour servir. The age of Charles II. was favourable to this latter class of composition, which is, indeed, the form which the narrators of public transactions in which they themselves have borne a leading part, naturally fall. The period was still more fertile in the diary, which may be defined as the autobiographic memoir in a rudimentary stage. One writer of the day, Samuel Pepys, has placed himself for all time at the head of this class of composition, by an achievement little likely to be repeated. Among memoir-writers proper the most important is Edmund Ludlow, the Cato of the Commonwealth (1617-1692).