IF

BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES

APRIL, 1832

NOTE ON THE ESSAY

F the essay on Burleigh is conspicuously inferior to either of the essays on William Pitt, "a strange, rambling performance," as Macaulay himself termed it, the reason may be found in the writer's imperfect sympathy with his subject and in his still more imperfect knowledge of his materials. Macaulay seldom turned to the history of the English Reformation without the wish to contradict Southey on the merits of Queen Elizabeth, or to the politics of the sixteenth century without the wish to contradict Hume who had represented the Stuarts as suffering simply for having governed according to the tradition of the Tudors. In this essay he gives too much time and trouble to showing that the Tudor sovereigns were not really despots and that Elizabeth might with advantage have tolerated the Roman Catholics. Burleigh did not interest him and is therefore dismissed as curtly as possible. Some of his remarks upon Burleigh, indeed, show his strong good sense and forestall the judgment of Burleigh's latest and most competent biographer. Burleigh, he observes, "paid great attention to the interests of the state and great attention also to the interests of his own family." "The first cause he served," remarks Major Hume, "was that of the state, the second was William Cecil and his house.' Burleigh, according to Macaulay, never deserted his friends till it was very inconvenient to stand by them. "He was not generous or magnanimous," Major Hume tells us, "in his treatment of others when his own interests were at stake; and the sacrifice of Davison would probably appear to him a very small price to pay for helping England out of a difficult position and maintaining his own favour."

Equally acute is Macaulay's explanation of the popularity and success of Elizabeth as contrasted with the Stuarts. "She did not treat the nation as an adverse party, as a party which had an interest opposed to hers, as a party to which she was to grant as few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as much money as possible." But Macaulay has done meagre justice to the achievement of the Queen and her minister. England, when Cecil became Secretary, was hardly a second-rate kingdom. England, when Cecil died, held

the balance of Europe. Walpole, Pelham and Liverpool, whom Macaulay compares with Burleigh, came into office when England was at the height of power and had only to keep her there. The contest with Napoleon was in some respects as hazardous as the contest with Philip. But it was waged far more on the field and far less in the cabinet. Soundness of judgment in the degree in which it was possessed by Burleigh is a kind of genius. Indeed no other kind of genius is so indispensable in a ruler. Had Macaulay been less exclusively partial to Parliamentary government he might have appreciated more liberally so great a master of state-craft. Even so he scarcely had the knowledge of Burleigh's policy requisite to passing a final judgment, for most of the evidence upon which our estimate of Burleigh is based was then buried in enormous masses of unpublished and unsifted papers. Macaulay was also unfortunate in having to work upon so dull and diluted a book as that of Dr. Nares. Major Hume's Life has set before our eyes the real Lord Burleigh.

BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES

Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William Cecil Lord Burghley, Secretary of State in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, and Lord High Treasurer of England in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Containing an Historical View of the Times in which he lived, and of the many eminent and illustrious Persons with whom he was connected; with Extracts from his Private and Official Correspondence and other Papers, now first published from the Originals. By the Reverend EDWARD NARES, D.D., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. 3 vols. 4to. London: 1828, 1832.

ΤΗ

HE work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shalum. But unhappily the life of man is now threescore years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence.

Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini 2 and the

1 Spectator, No. 584.

2 Francesco Guicciardini, 1484-1540, a Florentine, distinguished both in politics and in literature, wrote the history of Italy from 1494 to 1534. By the war of Pisa

galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing of writers, is a Herodotus or a Froissart, when compared with Dr. Nares. It is not merely in bulk, but in specific gravity also, that these memoirs exceed all other human compositions. On every subject which the Professor discusses, he produces three times as many pages as another man; and one of his pages is as tedious as another man's three. His book is swelled to its vast dimensions by endless repetitions, by episodes which have nothing to do with the main action, by quotations from books which are in every circulating library, and by reflections which, when they happen to be just, are so obvious that they must necessarily occur to the mind of every reader. He employs more words in expounding and defending a truism than any other writer would employ in supporting a paradox. Of the rules of historical perspective, he has not the faintest notion. There is neither foreground nor background in his delineation. The wars of Charles the Fifth in Germany are detailed at almost as much length as in Robertson's life of that prince. The troubles of Scotland are related as fully as in M'Crie's Life of John Knox. It would be most unjust to deny that Dr. Nares is a man of great industry and research; but he is so utterly incompetent to arrange the materials which he has collected that he might as well have left them in their original repositories.

man.

Neither the facts which Dr. Nares has discovered, nor the arguments which he urges, will, we apprehend, materially alter the opinion generally entertained by judicious readers of history concerning his hero. Lord Burleigh can hardly be called a great He was not one of those whose genius and energy change the fate of empires. He was by nature and habit one of those who follow, not one of those who lead. Nothing that is recorded, either of his words or of his actions, indicates intellectual or moral elevation. But his talents, though not brilliant, were of an eminently useful kind; and his principles, though not inflexible, were not more relaxed than those of his associates and competitors. He had a cool temper, a sound judgment, great powers of application, and a constant eye to the main chance. In his youth he was, it seems, fond of practical jokes. Yet even out of these he contrived to extract some pecuniary profit.

Macaulay means the struggle for freedom which the revolted Pisans maintained against the Florentines through fifteen years of petty sieges, raids and combats.

When he was studying the law at Gray's Inn,1 he lost all his furniture and books at the gaming table to one of his friends. He accordingly bored a hole in the wall which separated his chambers from those of his associate, and at midnight bellowed through this passage threats of damnation and calls to repentance in the ears of the victorious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and refunded his winnings on his knees next day. "Many other the like merry jests," says his old biographer, "I have heard him tell, too long to be here noted." 2 To the last, Burleigh was somewhat jocose; and some of his sportive sayings have been recorded by Bacon.3 They show much more shrewdness than generosity, and are, indeed, neatly expressed reasons for exacting money rigorously, and for keeping it carefully. It must, however, be acknowledged that he was rigorous and careful for the public advantage as well as for his own. To extol his moral character as Dr. Nares has extolled it is absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent him as a corrupt, rapacious, and bad-hearted man. He paid great attention to the interests of the state, and great attention also to the interest of his own family. He never deserted his friends till it was very inconvenient to stand by them, was an excellent Protestant when it was not very advantageous to be a Papist, recommended a tolerant policy to his mistress as strongly as he could recommend it without hazarding her favour, never put to the rack any person from whom it did not seem probable that useful information might be derived, and was so moderate in his desires that he left only three hundred distinct landed estates, though he might, as his honest servant assures us, have left much more, “if he would have taken money out of the Exchequer for his own use, as many Treasurers have done."

Burleigh, like the old Marquess of Winchester, who preceded

1 Cecil was entered a student of Gray's Inn in May, 1541. His latest biographer thinks that he did not study the law very seriously.

2 A faithful attendant of Cecil during the last twenty-five years of his life, who drew up a narrative of his career published by Peck in his Desiderata Curiosa and by Collins in 1732.

3 On one occasion Burleigh said to Queen Elizabeth: "Madam, you do well to let suitors, stay, for I shall tell you, Bis dat qui cito dat; if you grant them speedily, they will come again the sooner" (Bacon, Apophthegms).

The biographer above quoted.

5 William Paulet, first Marquess of Winchester, 1485-1572, served the Crown in various capacities, finally becoming Treasurer, an office which he held from 1550 until his death. When asked why he had so long thriven amid the fall of so many eminent persons, he answered: "Quia ortus sum a salice, non ex quercu."