Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

The art of literary portraiture in the seventeenth century developed with the effort to improve the writing of history. Its first and at all times its chief purpose in England was to show to later ages what kind of men had directed the affairs and shaped the fortunes of the nation. In France it was to be practised as a mere pastime; to sketch well-known figures in society, or to sketch oneself, was for some years the fashionable occupation of the salons. In England the character never wholly lost the qualities of its origin. It might be used on occasion as a record of affection, or as a weapon of political satire; but our chief character writers are our historians. At the beginning of the seventeenth century England was recognized to be deficient in historical writings. Poetry looked back to Chaucer as its father, was proud of its long tradition, and had proved its right to sing the glories of Elizabeth's reign. The drama, in the full vigour of its youth, challenged comparison with the drama of Greece and Rome. Prose was conscious of its power in exposition and controversy. But in every review of our literature's great achievement and greater promise there was one cause of serious misgivings. England could not yet rank with other countries in its histories. Many large volumes had been printed, some of them containing matter that is invaluable to the modern student, but there was no single work that was thought to be worthy of England's greatness. The prevailing type was still the chronicle. Even Camden, 'the glory and light of the kingdom', as Ben Jonson called him, was an antiquary, a collector, and an annalist. History had yet to be practised as one of the great literary arts.

Bacon pointed out the 'unworthiness' and 'deficiences' of English history in his Advancement of Learning.[1] 'Some few very worthy, but the greater part beneath mediocrity' was his verdict on modern histories in general. He was not the first to express these views. Sir Henry Savile had been more emphatic in his dedication to Queen Elizabeth of his collection of early chronicles, Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam, published in 1596.[2] And after Bacon, somewhere about 1618, these views were again expressed by Edmund Bolton in his Hypercritica, or a Rule of Judgement for writing or reading our Histories.[3] 'The vast vulgar Tomes', he said, 'procured for the most part by the husbandry of Printers, and not by appointment of the Prince or Authority of the Common-weal, in their tumultuary and centonical Writings do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable Temple, whose Architect was not his Arts Master'. He repeated what he calls the common wish 'that the majesty of handling our history might once equal the majesty of the argument'. England had had all other honours, but only wanted a history.

But the most valuable statement on the conditions of English history at this time and the obstacles that hindered its progress was made by Sir John Hayward at the beginning of his Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England, published in 1613. Leaving aside the methods of the chroniclers, he had taken the classical historians as his model in his First Part of the Life and raigne of King Henrie the IIII. The interest of this work to the modern reader lies in its structure, its attempt at artistic unity, its recognition that English history must be written on a different plan, rather than in its historical matter. But it was no sooner published than Hayward was committed to the Tower because the account of the deposition of Richard II was held to be treasonable, the offence being aggravated by the dedication, in perfectly innocent terms, to the Earl of Essex. His work was thus checked till he met with encouragement from Henry, Prince of Wales, a patron of literature, of whom, though a mere youth, such men as Jonson, Chapman, and Raleigh, spoke with an enthusiasm that cannot be mistaken for flattery. Prince Henry saw the need of a worthy history of England. He therefore sent for Hayward to discuss the reasons with him:

Prince Henry … sent for mee, a few monethes before his death. And at my second comming to his presence, among some other speeches, hee complained much of our Histories of England; and that the English Nation, which is inferiour to none in Honourable actions, should be surpassed by all, in leauing the memorie of them to posteritie….

I answered, that I conceiued these causes hereof; One, that men of sufficiencie were otherwise employed; either in publicke affaires, or in wrestling with the world, for maintenance or encrease of their private estates. Another is, for that men might safely write of others in maner of a tale, but in maner of a History, safely they could not: because, albeit they should write of men long since dead, and whose posteritie is cleane worne out; yet some aliue, finding themselues foule in those vices, which they see obserued, reproued, condemned in others; their guiltinesse maketh them apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of our English historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues discredited by dealing in it….

Then he questioned, whether I had wrote any part of our English Historie, other then that which had been published; which at that time he had in his hands. I answered, that I had wrote of certaine of our English Kings, by way of a briefe description of their liues: but for historie, I did principally bend, and binde my selfe to the times wherein I should liue; in which my owne obseruations might somewhat direct me: but as well in the one as in the other I had at that time perfected nothing.

The result of the interview was that Hayward proceeded to 'perfect somewhat of both sorts'. The brief description of the lives of the three Norman kings was in due course ordered to be published, and would have been dedicated to its real patron but for his untimely death; in dedicating it instead to Prince Charles, Hayward fortunately took the opportunity to relate his conversation with Prince Henry. How far he carried the other work is not certain; it survives in the fragment called The Beginning of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth,[4] published after his death with The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt. He might have brought it down to the reign of James. Had he been at liberty to follow his own wishes, he would have been the first Englishman to write a 'History of his own time'. But when an author incurred imprisonment for writing about the deposition of a sovereign, and when modern applications were read into accounts of what had happened long ago, the complexity of his own time was a dangerous if not a forbidden subject.

There is a passage to the same effect in the preface to The Historie of the World by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, unlike Hayward, willingly chose to be silent on what he knew best:

I know that it will bee said by many, That I might have beene more pleasing to the Reader, if I had written the Story of mine owne times; having been permitted to draw water as neare the Well-head as another. To this I answer, that who-so-ever in writing a moderne Historie, shall follow truth too neare the heeles, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no Mistresse or Guide, that hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries…. It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to write of the eldest times: wherein also why may it not be said, that in speaking of the past, I point at the present, and taxe the vices of those that are yet lyving, in their persons that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge? But this I cannot helpe, though innocent.

He wrote of remote ages, and contributed nothing to historical knowledge. But he enriched English literature with a 'just history', as distinct from annals and chronicles.[5] 'I am not altogether ignorant', he said, 'in the Lawes of Historie, and of the Kindes.' When we read his lives and commendations of the great men of antiquity as he pictured them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the same overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not been employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another country. It is the History of the Turks by Richard Knolles.