UC-NRLF 
 
 iiniiii 
 
 $B Mbfi t,3E 
 
 
 MEN 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
EPOCH MEN 
 
LIST OF WORKS 
 
 SAMUEL NEIL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "epoch MEN." 
 
 THE ART OF REASONING. 4s. 6d. 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC. 4s. 6A 
 
 COMPOSITION AND ELOCUTION; Or, How to Speak and 
 Write the English Language Correctly, is. Twelfth Edition. 
 
 THE YOUNG DEBATER. A Hand-book for Mutual Improvement 
 and Debating Societies, is. Fourteenth Edition. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : A Critical Biography, is. 
 
 LUTHER : A Monograph, is. 
 
 CULTURE AND SELF-CULTURE, is. 
 
 DICTIONARY OF DATES, is. 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF BRITISH HISTORY. With Introduction by Pro- 
 fessor Creasy. 2s. 
 
 HANDBOOK OF MODERN HISTORY. With Introduction by 
 Lord Brougham. 5s. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. From the Reformation to the 
 Indian War, forming Vol. 35 of the ENCYCLOPiEDiA Metropoli- 
 
 TANA. 53. 
 
(DISIAIRLIE i:fli^(5H]S 
 
 From in Original lUumiaaUon preserved in the Monastery 
 of S' Calioto_Rome^ 
 
EPOCH MEN, 
 
 AND THE RESULTS OF THEIR 
 LIVES. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL NEIL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF •' SHAKESPEARE : A BIOGRAPHY;" "THE YOUNG DEBATER," ETC. 
 
 EDINBURGH : 
 WILLIAM P. NIMMO, 
 
 i86.^. 
 
Ballantyne^ Roberts^ ^ Com^any^ Prinieis, Edinburgh 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 ISTORY," says E. Bulwer-Lytton, ''is rarely 
 more than the Biography of great men." 
 With this idea in view, the author of the 
 following papers has attempted to narrate some of 
 the more striking events of History, through the 
 medium of the lives of the great men of each Epoch. 
 The subjects have been chosen from various periods 
 and countries, and from different ranks and pursuits. 
 They exhibit forcibly, it is hoped, the power of per- 
 sistent purpose in the world, and prove that there is 
 ample scope in human life for the display of indivi- 
 dual effort and energy. 
 
 M360374 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Charlemagne— Modern Europe. — a.d. 742-814^ . i 
 
 CHAPTER I. — PROLUSION, .... 3 
 CHAPTER II. — CHARLEMAGNE, HIS EARLY LIFE, TIMES, 
 
 AND CHARACTER, .... 9 
 
 CHAPTER IIL — HIS REIGN AND LABOURS, . . l6 
 
 CHAPTER IV. — THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF EVENTS, 32 
 
 Gregory VII. — The Papacy. — a. d. 1020-1085, . . 49 
 
 Roger Bacon — Experimental Science. — a.d. 1214-1294, 89 
 Dante — Nationality. — a.d. 1265-1321, . . .123 
 
 Chaucer — English Literature.— a. d. 1 328-1400, . 151 
 
 Copernicus— Modern Astronomy. — a.d. 1473-1543, . 187 
 
 Lord Clive — The Conquest of India. — a.d. 1725-1774, 211 
 
 James Watt— The Utilisation of Steam.— a.d. 1736-1819, 271 
 
Charlemagne — Modern Europe. 
 
 A.D. 742-814. 
 
" There never ceases in this world of ours 
 
 Work for the good and noble. God decides 
 The issues and the limits of all powers. 
 
 O'er history and hfe He, sole, presides ; 
 He penetrates with organising force 
 
 Epochs and institutions; every change 
 Receives from Him the order of its course ; 
 
 And states derive their sovereignty and range. 
 Creative conquest built old Empires up 
 
 Which could not bear the moral analyst ; 
 They filled the measure of their granted cup, 
 
 Then God's true civiliser rose in Christ. 
 States vivified by faith in Him are strong, 
 
 And such a State was built by Charlemagne.' 
 — L. U. Masilene. 
 
 "Charlemagne laid the first solid foundation for a permanent system 
 of Christian government and institutions. " — Fred, von Schlegel. 
 
 ** The name of Charlemagne has come down to us as one of the 
 greatest in history. Though not the founder of his dynasty, he has 
 given his name both to his race and his age." — Guizot. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROLUSION. 
 
 HN the olden ages of the world the various forms of 
 mm government arose singly — " at sundry times and 
 ^ in divers manners." The patriarchal, the kingly, 
 
 the sacerdotal, the oligarchic, and the democratic systems 
 of sovereignty may not have manifested themselves in dis- 
 tinct and chronological succession ; but they did not develop 
 themselves in parallel order, neither did they attempt to 
 work together in harmony and union. The grand purpose 
 of the period, included in the term. Ancient History, seems 
 to have been to give rise to those differing schemes by 
 which men may be governed, and by a process of "progress 
 by antagonism" to raise each of these to its highest powei 
 and noblest individual development. This purpose being 
 fulfilled, the kind and degree of each being so tried, tested, 
 and known, and each in its turn having failed to maintain 
 pre-eminence, and produce the highest and holiest good to 
 the people, a new problem arose — viz.. How, by a due 
 admixture of these, to secure the greatest possible amount 
 of stability in government, and the highest possible state of 
 civilisation in all classes of the people ? This integration 
 and harmonious union of all the possible varieties of govern- 
 
4 Charlemagne, 
 
 ment appears to us to have been and to be the legislative 
 problem, if, indeed, it is not the life problem, of Modern 
 History. Accordingly, we find that in passing from the 
 records of ancient to those of modern times, the object of 
 contest and dispute is changed. It is no longer the self- 
 existent supremacy of any one form of government which is 
 aimed at, but rather the degrees, the times, the manners, 
 and the circumstances in which each shall be supreme, yet 
 each subordinate in turn. Individual, continuous, and un- 
 shared dominion is found to be irapoHtic, if not impossible, 
 for any; and hence a system of collocation, mutually agreed 
 upon for each, has become a desideratum. We believe that 
 the true era of this change may be safely regarded as be- 
 ginning with the Carlovingian dynasty, and as finding its 
 articulate and definitive place in modern policy during the 
 reign of Charlemagne. 
 
 To make this evident, it will be advisable to throw back 
 our thoughts in'to the past, and by a comprehensive review 
 of the tendencies exhibited there, prove that his reign consti- 
 tuted a true Epoch, and that he who led the van in its 
 accomplishment imparted a new impulse to human life. 
 
 Rome inherited from the great empires of pre-Christian 
 times a knowledge of those forms of government which had 
 influenced, combined, and divided the various political as- 
 sociations or <r^;/sociations of antiquity — the imperial mag- 
 nificence of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, the theocratic or 
 sacerdotal mysteries of Judea, the municipal and civic inde- 
 pendence of Greece, and the military renown of Macedonia. 
 By the conquest of Gaul and Germany a rude and hardy 
 personal independence had been added to the experiences 
 of tlie past; and now, on this vast stage, the grand drama 
 of civiHsation was to reach its proiusio, the curtain was to 
 
Early State of Modern Europe. 5 
 
 fall at the close of a contest between the forces of Imperial- 
 ism and Personality. 
 
 The banks of the majestic Rhine were then most singular 
 in the contrast of their inhabitants. Want and barbaric 
 rudeness possessed the one, while wealth and all the dis- 
 cipline and pomp of imperial civilisation occupied the other. 
 The natural result of such a state was war. Disciplined 
 skill for a time held the turbulent forces of barbarism in 
 subjection and fear : at length, however, need gave birth to 
 leagues and combinations, and well-knit confederacies of 
 the Germanic barbarians were arranged,* in which chieftain- 
 hood speedily passed into kingship. The civil contentions 
 in Rome during the third and fourth centuries afforded 
 ample scope for disciplining those barbaric hordes in the 
 arts and practices of war. The overthrow of the Mistress 
 Empire of the world by Alaric, 405 A.D., gave unbounded 
 licence to experiment and change in all things except such 
 as the Church had managed tio acquire the mastery of 
 Even the memories and traditions of the past were endang- 
 ered in the inebriety of conquest ; but luckily (or shall we 
 not, in preference, assert providentially ?) the greed of acqui- 
 sition overpowered the bonds by which the aggressors had 
 been held in union, and the divisions which ensued made 
 it impossible to effect a thorough overthrow of all that 
 deserved to be cherished in ancient civiUsation. It is a 
 singular illustration of the power of strong passions working 
 in the souls of men intent on personal independence, that 
 in all the contests of this period, the least united and the 
 least advanced in the arts of life or the pohty of nations 
 were most successful in their efforts. The Goths vanquished 
 the Romans, and in Gaul, the Franks, rude, restless, and 
 loosely held together, eventually subdued the firmly con- 
 
6 Charlemagne. 
 
 federated Goths and Burgundians. In the early part of the 
 fifth century each Frankish town, territory, or band, had its 
 petty and independent temporary chief They had no 
 common capital, no universally acknowledged head. The 
 chieftaincy was the prize of the man most skilled in manag- 
 ing other men ; he who could most advantageously plan and 
 conduct schemes of plunder or projects for settlements ; he 
 who could assemble around him the greatest number of 
 roving bands, and subjugate them most entirely to his con- 
 trolUng will. Such a one was Clovis, the founder of the 
 French monarchy. He was the chief of a small band of 
 Franks settled at Tournay. By guile and perfidy he con- 
 trived to entrap and overcome many of the rival chiefs of 
 the Franks, often assassinating whole families in his jealous 
 ambition. The Merovingian kings who succeeded him 
 pursued much the same plan. Gross indulgence of the 
 criminal passions and mutual murder thinned their race, and 
 weakened it. Relationship became a cause of enmity, and 
 seldom did a monarch live to see a son of age to succeed 
 himself. Regencies first became frequent, then perpetual. 
 The possession of a shadowy royalty could not content 
 those who felt themselves intrusted with all the essential 
 duties, responsibilities, and cares ^ of kings. Usurpation 
 transferred the name and title to those who had long worn 
 the dignity and exercised the power. Pepin, the major- 
 domo of the palace, threw aside the hypocrite's pretensions, 
 and claimed the kingdom by the tenure of power and pos- 
 session. Childeric III. was dethroned, and France ex- 
 changed a mock for a real monarch. 
 
 The Franks, and indeed the Goths, in general, were not 
 fitted for national life. They were accustomed to soldierly, 
 but not to civic and municipal, restraints. It was requisite 
 
The Growth of Modern Europe. 7 
 
 that they should be brought under national institutions, led 
 within the scope of the magnificent imperial traditions of 
 the mother-city of nations, and educated to united obedi- 
 ence, action, and finance. To efiect such purposes, the 
 Western Empire must renew its youth, resume for a time its 
 former vigour, and weld together, by the strong force of 
 military prowess, the disjunct nationalities, or rather chief- 
 taincies, which abounded in the misrule resulting from the 
 fall of Rome. 
 
 It may be observed, as a general law, that in the infancy 
 of civihsation vast imperial organisations are necessary. 
 Luxury riots in courts, and invention is bribed into activity. 
 Each new pleasure, as it palls upon the court, is welcomed 
 to the homes of the class below. The strong, the indepen- 
 dent, and the dangerous, are drafted off into the army ; the 
 weak are subjected to the mere will of their masters ; and 
 the middle classes live on the bounty of the courts, the 
 spoils of the army, or the gains of commerce. For a time 
 these co-operate and co-exist. So long as a sovereign with 
 a clear head and an energetic hand holds the government 
 in his grasp, the latent elements of discord are repressed in 
 their activity : but the vitality of self-interest at length asserts 
 itself. If a weak monarch, a divided or disputed sover- 
 eignty succeeds a strong, united, or uncontested one, class 
 after class appears ready to try any change, in the hope 
 that it will lead to betterment. The aspirants to dominion 
 throw baits to each class, or at least to such classes as are 
 powerful and clamorous enough to be annoying, and thus 
 by natural processes of growth and decadence do vast em- 
 pires advance to the maturity of extended rule, then dehisce^ 
 for the production of other and younger nations. 
 
 To compound, to blend, to amalgamate, all that was good 
 
8 Charlemagne. 
 
 in the sublime organic governments of olden times with the 
 youthful impetuosity, the hardy independence, the rude 
 effervescence of personal being, and the undeterred experi- 
 mentalism of modem times ; to suffuse the noble endurance 
 and manly heroism of barbarism with the holy influences of 
 civihsation, and to impregnate an effete civilisation with 
 new life and energy, the Western Empire of modern Europe 
 was essential. The hour came, and the man. The land- 
 marks of civihsation had been swept away ; colossal crime 
 infested Europe ; anarchy, confusion, and ignorance reigned 
 over the territories of the Caesars. A steadfast and heroic 
 man is wanted. Who is he who accepts the crown and 
 government, resolved tO quiet, by resolute and indomitable 
 perseverance, the noisy wranglings of many classes and 
 many kings % Charlemagne, the restorer of social order, 
 letters, and rule. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE, HIS EARLY LIFE, TIMES, AND CHARACTER. 
 
 HARLEMAGNE, the eldest legitimate son of 
 Fepin-k-bref, mayor of the palace under Childeric 
 III., one of the Merovingian nominal kings of 
 the Franks, was born April 2, 742 a.d. There is a con- 
 siderable discordance among historians regarding the pre- 
 cise place of his birth. Aix-la-Chapelle, Ingelheim, Carl- 
 stadt, and Salzburg, have each been named as entitled to 
 that honour. There is no sufficing proof of any of these 
 assertions. All that can be regarded as certain is, that he 
 was bom sotnewhere near the banks of the Rhine, whither 
 his mother. Bertha, daughter of Caribert, Count of Laon, 
 had followed her husband, who was at this period in Aqui- 
 tania, engaged in suppressing a revolt which was headed by 
 the duke of that territory. As the civil contest then waging 
 lasted for some years. Bertha and her young son must have 
 passed a somewhat wandering Hfe. In 744, when his father 
 had gained the victory, they would return to court, and he 
 would doubtlessly be brought up after the manner of the 
 age, in the company of the young people whose parents 
 held office near royalty or under the mayor, in the know- 
 ledge and practice of all the military arts, and some of the 
 
lo Charlemagne. 
 
 elements of civil polity. At this time, however, genius had 
 withered, and learning was at the point of death. The im- 
 perial schools in which the scions of the Roman nobility 
 had received that culture which fitted them for the exercise 
 of power, and enabled them to adorn society, were destroyed 
 by the irruptions of the barbarians, and long years of ne- 
 glect, discouragement, and opposition, had chased learning 
 and literature into obscurity, where it lingered sicklily in 
 grief and prostration. To the youth of Charles the chivalric 
 accomplishments and the notes and exercises of war were 
 well and thoroughly explained ; but the grace of letters, the 
 refinement of thought, the means, the taste, the power, or 
 the opportunity of reading, were almost wholly denied. 
 
 We can form but an imperfect idea of a life from which 
 the schoolmaster is excluded, or of the dense ignorance of 
 the times when the priests of religion themselves, in too 
 many instances, had sunk into deplorable machines, who 
 uttered a round of uncomprehended worship, and had little 
 or no acquaintance w^th the language of Roman literature 
 and of Church legislation. Yet we can scarcely express re- 
 gret that Charlemagne was not brought under the mental 
 disciphne to which youth is usually subjected, but that he 
 spent his early years in the pursuits of the chase, of war, and 
 of political intrigue. Had he been exposed to the former, 
 his o^vn mind and will would have been somewhat effemin- 
 ated ; he would have lost the resolute, unresting, practical 
 energy of his nature ; the breadth of theoretic thought, which 
 would then have stretched before him, would have stayed 
 his hand when the stroke required to be given ; and the 
 widening of the horizon would have weakened the intensity 
 and clearness with which he saw and did the one thing 
 that seemed best in any exigency. Had he been deprived 
 
Early Life and Training. 1 1 
 
 of aught of the latter, he would have lacked the ready skill 
 and the powerful influence which could curb and check, 
 outwit and brave, resist and conquer danger, revolt, or op- 
 position. We do not grieve, then, but rather rejoice, that, 
 in his case, the practical and the real in life were the earliest 
 educative influences amid which he grew up, and that the 
 attractions and pleasures of scholarship were recognised by 
 him as weapons of polity, as well as occasions of true and 
 lasting enjoyment only in the latter part of a life whose first 
 duty was to effect the inauguration of a new empire by the 
 power of the sword, which should be afterwards established 
 by the power of thought — an empire which should unite in 
 itself power and intelligence. 
 
 Pepin, Charlemagne's father, was a consummate politician 
 and intriguant, as well as a notable warrior. He inherited 
 the ambitious schemes of Pepin d'Heristal and Charles 
 Martel, his grandfather and father, and doubtlessly educated 
 his son in all the traditions of his house and lineage. They 
 were the parties who introduced the fashion of shadowy and 
 do-nothing royalty, a plan by which, without the nominal 
 honours of regal state, they exerted its real powers, and yet 
 escaped the odium of their own abuses of those powers. 
 This scheme had at length produced its intended results; 
 the regal power had been totally severed from the regal 
 title, and the attentions and regards of aspiring courtiers were 
 turned from the nominal to the virtual dispensers of place, 
 patronage, and pay. Love, affection, and interest, had been 
 diverted from the king to the mayor, and the time seemed 
 ripe for a bold attempt to seize the nominal, as well as re- 
 tain the real, sovereignty of the Prankish empire. The 
 Church was greedy of power, and was already corrupted by 
 a love of wealth, splendour, and rule. Pepin saw this, and 
 
1 2 Charlemagne, 
 
 by a craftily framed question obtained the papal sanction 
 to the moral legislation, which enacts that " it is better that 
 he who exercises regal power should also possess the regal 
 title.''' The sanction of the Pope having been gained to this 
 axiom, Pepin speedily placed himself at the head of the dis- 
 affected nobility, and by a cunningly-devised and well- worked 
 revolution, dethroned Childeric III., and "reigned in his 
 stead." This happened in 750, when Charlemagne was about 
 nine years of age. He who was but a courtier's son had 
 now become a crown prince, and his mother and sister were 
 ennobled, in fact^ by the success of Pepin. Though this 
 was accomplished, however, there is little doubt that great 
 art and care required to be exercised, lest those lately ac- 
 quired honours should lead to the manufacture of new 
 enemies and new rebellions. Even in childhood, therefore, 
 Charlemagne would be trained to practise a conciliating 
 policy, and to conceal deep-laid and boldly-planned schemes 
 by an artless demeanour and blandness of manner. In 
 March 752, Archbishop Boniface, the apostle of Germany, 
 solemnly, in the name and by the authority of the Pope, con- 
 secrated and anointed Pepin King of the Franks, at Soissons, 
 the very place where, two hundred and sixty-six years be- 
 fore, Clovis, the first of the Merovingians, by a victory over 
 Syagrius, the Roman provincial governor, established the 
 Frankish sovereignty. Of this pageant Charlemagne and 
 Carloman, with their sister Gisla, would form no unattractive 
 part, and the prince-made youth would observe, with keen 
 tact and evident relish, the potency of ceremonial pomp. 
 A subsequent lesson would teach this even more impressively. 
 The -wise courage of Pepin having subdued opposition and 
 silenced discontent, — having consolidated his power and 
 vanquished his foes, — had time left him to be courteous, 
 
Early Life and Circumstances. 13 
 
 affable, and kingly. The popedom at this period had got 
 enmeshed in great difficulty. Aistulph, King of Lombardy, 
 had invaded and conquered Ravenna, and now sought tri- 
 bute and submission from the reigning pontiff. Such a hu- 
 miliation was in nowise compatible with the schemes of the 
 pontificate. Pope Stephen III. bethought him, in this 
 extremity, of the Rome-sanctioned usurper of the dominion 
 of the Franks, and besought his friendly aid. This Pepin 
 granted, on condition that he, the Pope, should re-anoint 
 him king, as well as baptize and consecrate his two sons. 
 Stephen accordingly crossed the Alps in 753, and sojourned 
 at Miinster, where, during the winter of that year, Pepin held 
 his court. Here Pepin was re-consecrated ; here his children 
 were baptized, and declared to be the only legitimate succes- 
 sors to the throne and dominion of Pepin. On this occasion 
 the Pope lifted the crown prince from the font with his own 
 hands, so specially did he desire to mark his favour to the 
 new dynasty. There can be little doubt that Charlemagne, 
 in the spring of the following year, 754, accompanied his 
 father in his march towards Italy. Pepin, having crossed 
 the Alps with a numerous army, encountered Aistulph, King 
 of Lombardy, near Susa, and overcame him. This done, he 
 compelled him, by treaty, to resign all claim to sovereignty 
 over the see of Rome, to deliver to him the Exarchate of 
 Ravenna, and all the cities he had seized belonging to the 
 Roman dukedom, whose powers the Popes exercised. Ais- 
 tulph agreed, but, shortly afterwards, infringed the conven- 
 tion ; then Pepin returned, severely chastised his duphcity, 
 and made a formal grant of his conquests to the Pope and 
 his successors in the apostolic chair. The Pope having 
 sanctified his usurpation by the forms of religion, he sancti- 
 fied the Pope's domination by the power of the sword. A fair 
 
14 Charlemagne. 
 
 and goodly exchange, equally advantageous to each of the 
 contracting parties. On Charlemagne, of course, these forms 
 of policy could not be lost. As Pepin intended to convey 
 the empire to his children, he would make a point of sedu- 
 lously instructing them in all the diplomatic arts of the age, 
 in all the strategies by which power might be gained and 
 retained, and in all the punctilios and observances by which 
 outward homage may be paid, while the realities of dominion 
 are laid hold of and appropriated. 
 
 The renown of Pepin speedily rang through the world. 
 As he seemed dangerous, his neighbouring princes sought 
 to propitiate him by gifts, favours, and treaties. Even Con- 
 stantine. Emperor of the East, observing the rise of a rival, 
 found it politic to send ambassadors, and to open negotiations 
 with him. By this act, Charlemagne was brought into con- 
 nexion with the magnificent traditional despotism of the East, 
 learned its method, and became acquainted with its practices. 
 
 Deprived, as Charlemagne' was, by the necessities of his 
 times, of any defined, intentional, mental training, we can only 
 form an idea of what his early life must have been, by con- 
 sidering the circumstances amid which he lived, the history 
 enacted before his eyes, and shedding its influences into his 
 mind. We know little or nothing directly of his "youth's 
 doings," and can only estimate, from what we know was 
 passing around him, the nature of the thoughts and aspira- 
 tions which were growing up within him, training him for 
 empire, and fitting him for working out, however unwittingly, 
 the purposes of Providence. Hence, though we are relating 
 no definite and well-ascertained fact regarding the early 
 years of Charlemagne's life, we are tracing the progress of 
 that practical education which made him what he was, and 
 led him to do what he did. 
 
Home and Married Life. 1 5 
 
 We have seen that he was well versed and trained in 
 military and chivalric arts, in the manoeuvres of diplomacy, 
 and in the practices of government ; that he had seen court, 
 camp, and church life ; that he had been specially taught 
 to look upon himself as destined to rule ; that he had been 
 introduced to an acquaintance with forms of etiquette and 
 systems of sovereignty of various kinds, despotic, sacerdotal, 
 kingly, and ducal; and that he had been practically instructed 
 to use any or all of these, whichever seemed most likely to suit 
 him at the time, for the elaboration of his own purposes, 
 and the defeat of the intentions of others. More than this, 
 he had enjoyed in the love of his mother Bertha, the affec- 
 tion of his sister Gisla, the fraternal competition of his 
 brother Carloman, and the earnest counsels of his father, a 
 considerable share, such as it was, of that too uncommon 
 blessing — home education. To be sure, some portion of 
 this instruction, and that which belongs to the sacredest ele- 
 ments of human life most of all, was not by any means of 
 the best kind. We may specially instance Charlemagne's 
 low estimate of marital relations. He had espoused, while 
 yet young, a lady of good family, named Huniltrude. B.ut 
 when Pepin saw that the Lombardine king could only be 
 managed by a marriage connexion, he advised, and his 
 mother Bertha joined in the advice, that he should contract 
 a politic marriage with the daughter of Desiderius, who had 
 then become King of Lombardy. Desira did not reHsh the 
 position in which she was thus placed, and the union was, 
 as might have been expected, unhappy. Pepin died in 768, 
 and Charlemagne became king. A new era began in his 
 Hfe. The hero-king and scholar had a work to perform. 
 We shall follow him, in the next chapter, to empire and 
 greatness. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 HIS REIGN AND LABOURS. 
 
 HE empire over which Pepin had borne sway, and 
 to which Charlemagne ultimately succeeded, — 
 for in this place we need say nought of the brief 
 and eventless co-reign of his brother Carloman, — was very 
 extensive. It consisted of three states, — viz., (i.) Ausirasia^ 
 or the Eastern Empire, comprising within itself the north- 
 east of Gaul and the south of Germany, so much, at least, 
 as lies between the Tyrol and the Thuringerwald, the Rhine^ 
 and the Inn. (2.) Neustria, or the Western Empire, which 
 included the north-west of Gaul, between the Waal and the 
 Loire. (3.) Burgundy, or the Southern Empire, in which 
 were comprehended Provence and parts of Aquitania, Swit- 
 zerland, and Alsace. In other words, it extended from the 
 Pyrenees to the Rhine, and from the English Channel to the 
 Noric Alps. The monarch of such a territory could not but 
 be, in the then unsettled state of the European powers, im- 
 portant as an ally, formidable as an enemy, and worthy of 
 jealous watching as either. Northern Europe was, as yet, 
 only the cradle of valiant emigrant races, unconsolidated 
 under any form of government except that of mihtary 
 
His Accession to the Th7^07ie. 1 7 
 
 leaders. The south-west peninsula was peopled by a tribe 
 of Visigoths, who zealously held out against the farther pro- 
 gress of the Saracens, whose religious ardour had carried 
 them into Spain. Italy was, as it has too long unfortunately 
 been, a divided country; the Longobards possessed the 
 upper part, the Romans the middle, and the Greeks the 
 lower portion and Sicily. Rome itself was in a state of 
 semi-anarchy, the Pope, the senate, and the people being 
 at variance with each other, at the same time that Charle- 
 magne held the rank of a Roman patrician, wielded the 
 war-legions of France, and was linked by marriage with the 
 Longobards, the fiercest enemies of Rome. In Austria and 
 Hungary the Avari, effeminate through luxury and indo- 
 lence, had their treasure cities encircled by walls and moats, 
 but undefended by strong arms or stout hearts. Eastern 
 Germany was inhabited by various disunited and often con- 
 tentious tribes of Sclaves and Vandals ; in the north of Ger- 
 many, the Saxons, a free and manly race, dwelt under the 
 government of self-elected chiefs, and worshipped in the 
 primeval forests their fathers' ancient gods ; but South Ger- 
 m.any was considerably under his dominion, and, with the 
 exception of the Bavarians, seemed inclined to take kindly 
 to the foreign yoke. England was a secluded and unin" 
 fluential island, subject to the incursions of the Danes, and 
 not yet harmonised and united into one kingdom, under 
 one king. There was no great empire near him, no for- 
 midable power around ; for the Greek empire, although it 
 still existed, was, at Charlemagne's accession, great in name' 
 only, not in reality ; it was no longer the empire of Con 
 stantlne, but an effete life-simulating State. 
 
 Such, in brief terms, was the condition of Europe when 
 Charlemagne, in his twenty-sixth year, succeeded to the 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Charlemcio^ne, 
 
 ^> 
 
 throne of his father, as before stated, in a.d. 768. At Pepin's 
 death, the empire was divided between Charlemagne and 
 Carloman, the former being sovereign of Austrasia and Neu- 
 stria, the latter of Burgundy. The brothers had married 
 sisters, daughters of Desiderius, king of the Longobards. 
 Charlemagne had, however, repudiated his wife, arid her 
 father had immediately resented the rejection of his daugh- 
 ter by exciting and encouraging revolt in his son-in-law's 
 kingdom. Some of the nobles were, of course, anxious to 
 be independent, and this favoured the design of Desiderius. 
 The seeds of sedition are easily sown ; and though no rising 
 of importance took place in Charlemagne's allotment, the 
 nobles and people of Aquitania made an attempt to throw 
 off their allegiance to the empire. Carloman besought the 
 aid of his brother, which was readily granted, as it might 
 read a lesson to his own nobility of the power and deter- 
 mination with which he would resent any infringement of 
 the regal dignity, any neglect of a subject's duty. While 
 Charlemagne was in the field his brother fled, and left him 
 to maintain the conflict alone against superior odds. The 
 valour with which he pursued his purpose, and the firmness 
 with which he continued the dubious contest, convinced the 
 nobility of the whole empire that he possessed mihtary skill, 
 energy, and resources sufficient, not only to curb revolt, but 
 to extend conquest. Nor was he slow in perceiving that, 
 on his part, some means should be adopted by which the 
 nobles might be employed in foreign war, rather than in the 
 fomenting of domestic discord. 
 
 On Carloman s death, in a.d. 771, he was invited to ac- 
 cept of the sovereignty of that portion of his late father's 
 possessions, of which he would doubtless have made himself 
 master, even though uninvited. Carloman's wife fled, with 
 
Discord, War, and Enmity, 19 
 
 her two sons, to her father j and now the court of the Lon- 
 gobards contained two women whose wrongs called for ven- 
 geance on the head of Charlemagne. Desiderius set himself 
 to gratify at once their anxious thirst and his own ambi- 
 tion in a somewhat circuitous manner. Pope Stephen IV., 
 w^ho had been opposed to the union of the regal families of 
 Pepin and Desiderius, died in the early part of 772, and 
 was succeeded by Pope Adrian I. Desiderius seized the 
 opportunity of this new accession to demand from the 
 Popedom the anointment of Carloman's two sons as the true 
 and real heirs to their father's kingdom, threatening war as 
 the consequence of a refusal. Adrian did refuse, advised 
 Charlemagne of the course pursued by his father-in-law, and 
 sought help to maintain the papal authority, and to mar the 
 designs of his enemy, whose defeat would, of course, serve 
 Charlemagne's interest as well as his own. Charlemagne 
 promised that as soon as possible he would devote himself 
 to the humiliation of the haughty claimant of his dominion, 
 and the insubordinate enemy of the Pope in Upper Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, he had provided full occupation 
 for himself, his nobles, and his armies, by declaring war 
 against the Saxons. This he did at an imperial diet, held 
 at Worms in 772, where he enlarged upon the predatory 
 character of the Saxons, the shamefulness of the heathen 
 worship they practised, and the merit which would be due 
 to the Prankish empire if they could be converted to Chris- 
 tianity. Conversions were then more frequently made by 
 the sword of a temporal king than by " the sword of the 
 Spirit ; " as if a religion which could be donned to order 
 might not as easily be doffed by a countermand from a 
 stronger power. Having declared war ostensibly to bring 
 the Saxons under the dominion of "the true and saving 
 
20 Charlemagne. 
 
 faith," he made his first irruption into their territories about 
 the middle of that same year. It was a short, successful, 
 and briskly conducted campaign. Leaving Worms, he 
 entered Hesse, advanced to the banks of the Weser, took 
 Eresberg, [Statberg,] destroyed the statue of Irmin, an 
 object peculiarly venerable in the eyes of the Saxons, and 
 compelled them to conclude a peace, giving twelve chiefs 
 as their hostage for its fulfilment. 
 
 At the very moment of his victory, omjnous tidings 
 reached him from Rome. The plot on which Desiderius 
 had resolved had begun to effect 'its purpose; the Pope be- 
 ing embroiled, had asked Charlemagne for such help as he 
 needed, and as it was easy to see that it was his own quar- 
 rel forced upon a third party, he could not refuse. Girding 
 up his loins, therefore, he determined upon graciously aid- 
 ing the Pope to maintain his supremacy, at the same time 
 that he would settle his own dispute with his father-in-law, 
 and might mayhap extend his own influence, if not his own 
 dominion, in the Itahan peninsula. 
 
 Desiderius, on hearing of the hostile approach of Charle- 
 magne, — who, having hurried from Germany, had crossed 
 the Alps by the pass of Susa, and entered Italy, — resolved 
 to employ tactics more than valour in the attainment of his 
 end. He accordingly retreated towards Pavia, and fortified 
 himself there, in the hope that sickness, scarcity, and im- 
 patience would cause all the evils of a defeat to his enemy. 
 Charlemagne, however, had no notion of being so readily 
 fatigued ; so, leaving orders for the preservation of a strict 
 blockade, he set out to attend the Easter festival at Rome, 
 A.D. 774. There he was received by the Pope with the 
 highest honour and the most lavish sycophancy. In return, 
 he confirmed the gift of the Exarcliate oi Ravenna and the 
 
Early Difficulties. 2 1 
 
 Pentapolis, which Pepin his father had made to the Pope, 
 and obtained, on his part, the right of confirming the elec- 
 tions to the papal chair. These things having been ar- 
 ranged, Charlemagne returned to Pavia, which soon after 
 capitulated, and Desiderius, being made prisoner, was im- 
 mured in the monastery of Corvey, in France, where he, 
 not long thereafter, died. The conqueror claimed the 
 Longobardian crown, and annexed its territories to his own 
 dominions. 
 
 "Wliile Charlemagne was employed in Italy, the Saxons, 
 presuming upon his finding occupation there, invaded his 
 empire. Calling a diet at Duren, near Aix-la-Chapelle, he 
 decided upon proceeding against them at once, made an 
 incursion beyond the Weser, and thoroughly discomfited 
 them for a time. No sooner was this matter somewhat set- 
 tled, than he required to repair to I.ombardy, where his 
 viceroy, Duke Rotgand, had revolted; This insurrection 
 he quelled almost in the hour of its birth — so sudden and 
 energetic were the measures adopted by him — and he imme- 
 diately set out again to Saxony, driving the inhabitants be- 
 fore him, compelling submission, and demanding promises of 
 adhesion to Christianity. At this time he built a fortress on 
 the Lippe, where many of the Saxons consented to be bap- 
 tized. So well had he overrun the country, that in 777, 
 the majority of the people had pledged their allegiance, 
 and he was able to hold the meeting of his warriors {Champ 
 de Mai) in Paderbom. Here he received as petitioners the 
 governors of the Spanish cities of Saragossa and Huesca, 
 who sought protection from the tyranny of the Saracen 
 King Abderam. He hated, although — perhaps we should 
 say because — he imitated, the Islamites, and was much re- 
 joiced at finding a plausible cause of offence. He declared 
 
22 Charlemagne. 
 
 war against them, and expressed his determination to use 
 their own weapon of conversion — the sword — upon them- 
 selves. Many independent Christian chiefs attached them- 
 selves to his standard, and having crossed the Pyrenees, he 
 in a short time, 778, subjugated the whole country as far as 
 the Ebro, which he thereafter adopted as the march or 
 boundary of the Frankish empire. It was on his return 
 from this expedition fliat the ambuscade of Roncesvalles, so 
 famous in legend and song, occurred. While the main 
 army, like a huge serpentine monster, wound its way 
 through the defiles of the Pyrenees, the rear-guard became 
 disjoined from it, and was mercilessly massacred. The 
 hero of Ariosto — Roland — the nephew of Charlemagne, the 
 Warden of Brittany, together with many of the nobles of 
 the empire, fell that day, and have had their names em- 
 balmed in the lays of the troubadours and the romances of 
 later times.* It can scarcely be said that this expedition 
 was, on the whole, a decided success, while its fatal termina- 
 tion saddened Charlemagne's heart, and dispirited his nobles. 
 But " uneasy is the head that wears a crown." Wittekind, 
 the celebrated Saxon leader, — who had fled, dismayed by 
 the prowess and skill of the armies of Charlemagne, — had 
 returned from his refuge in the Danish court, and had re- 
 excited his compatriots to renew their attempts to avoid the 
 yoke of the Frankish King ; and several " passages of arms" 
 had taken place between the nobles of France and the chiefs 
 of Saxony, in which the former were seldom victorious. Ex- 
 asperated at last, when, in 782, the latter had despoiled the 
 whole country as far as Cologne, Charlemagne set out him- 
 
 * See Pulci's Morgante Maggiore ; Boiardo's Orlando Inamorata; 
 Ariosto's Orlando Furioso ; Merivale's Orlando in Roncesvalles in 
 " Poems," Vol. ii. &c. &c. 
 
Domestic Troubles. 23 
 
 self again, with the design of securing the total extirpation 
 of these stubborn Pagans j and after several campaigns, so 
 harassed and assailed them, that they again promised sub- 
 mission, and he unwillingly granted peace, taking the pre- 
 caution, however, of erecting a chain of fortresses along the 
 banks of the Elbe, as points of strength and resort in case 
 of another rebelHon. 
 
 Indulging the hope of security which these proceedings 
 had a tendency to excite, and desirous of surrounding him- 
 self with vassal kings likely to submit to his orders, and pro- 
 tect the outskirts of the empire, he set off to Rome with 
 Louis and Pepin, his two sons by his second wife, to have 
 them consecrated sovereigns of Aquitania and Italy. This 
 was done. But Charlemagne had another son Pepin, by 
 his first wife, who did not relish this supplantment, and so 
 far resented it, as to head a conspiracy against his father ; 
 this was, however, discovered before any overt act had been 
 attempted, and Pepin (the elder) was consigned to the 
 living grave of a monastery, in which he ended his days. > 
 
 The Saxons had no great reverence for treaties when the 
 power of enforcement seemed to be wanting. While the 
 governors of Saxony were met upon Mount Suntel, near the 
 Weser, to organise an excursion against the Serbians, who 
 had carried off some booty in a foray, the Saxons fell upon 
 them, and destroyed almost the whole arrhy assembled there. 
 Charlemagne's patience was exhausted \ rage and fury over- 
 came prudence, and he burst into the country, laid it deso- 
 late far and wide, and caused 4500 imprisoned Saxons to be 
 massacred near Verden-on-the-Aller. For a time despair 
 paralysed the foe ; but gradually the voice of vengeance was 
 heard screaming its sibillations in the ear, and rage and 
 madness urged them on to make one last great effort for, 
 
24 Charlemagne. 
 
 freedom, revenge, religion, and victory. In 783, the entire 
 strength of the tribes was simuUaneously united for this 
 final and desperate affray. An engagement took place at 
 Detmold, which ended doubtfully; but in a second encounter, 
 at Hase in Osnaburg, the gods of battle decided so clearly 
 in favour of Charlemagne, that the leaders, Wittekind and 
 Alboin, accepted the omen, and submitted. They even 
 took an oath that they would appear in France to be bap- 
 tized ; and accordingly, at Attigny, Wittekind and his wife 
 Gera, were introduced to the multitude of the faithful, Charle- 
 magne himself being sponsor. But the lesson he had learned 
 of their infidelity made Charlemagne distrustful, and he de- 
 ported great bands of "Saxons from the neighbourhood of the 
 Elbe to the interior of the Prankish territories, thus securely 
 producing that division which is weakness. At the same 
 time, he displayed his own uprightness and consistency by 
 taking means for the evangelisation of the conquered coun- 
 try, by appointing prelates over certain districts, and devel- 
 oping a scheme of Christian institutions through the whole 
 of Saxony, that the people might learn, not only to serve 
 Charlemagne, but also to worship Christ. 
 
 Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, and brother-in-law to Charle- 
 magne, being married to Luitberga, a daughter of Desi- 
 derius, having been guilty of treasonous practices, by con- 
 niving at the incursions of the Saxons, and privily exciting 
 the Avari to revolt, Charlemagne invaded the ducal province, 
 defeated the soldiery, captured Tassilo, and brought him, in 
 787, for trial, before a diet of the great lords of the empire, 
 met at Ingelheim, one of Charlemagne's own court cities. 
 He was condemned to death, but pardoned by Charlemagne, 
 on condition that he and his son Theodore should retire to 
 
His Grand Designs. 25 
 
 a monastery, then the usual retreat of the unsuccessful, for 
 the remainder of their natural lives. 
 
 In Lower Italy the Emperor made such an impression, 
 that Arechis, Duke of Benevento, acknowledged him as his 
 superior, and consented to do feudal service to him within, 
 and a league around his own sovereignty ; and, as a reward 
 for this voluntary humility, Arechis was graciously permitted 
 to do homage by deputy at Salerno, instead of in Germany. 
 
 In a life of continuous bustle, activity, intrigue, and con- 
 tention, we find Charlemagne bearing himself in all points 
 heroically, and exhibiting personal greatness, both by the 
 prowess of his arm, and by the swift decisiveness of his 
 judgment. Bold, rapid thought, followed by instantaneous 
 and eflfective action ; wise hardihood and bravery, as well 
 as a keen perception of ways and means ; a stern potency of 
 will, and a fine relish for honour and courage, seem to dis- 
 tinguish him, and mark him out as one destined to be 
 enduringly great. Now he is almost cro^vned with success 
 — the effectual working out of the grand creative idea of his 
 epoch, viz., the union and concentration of all the Western 
 nation into one Christianised confederacy. Will the time 
 yet come when national homage shall re-echo the thought 
 of his own soul, and receive him as worthy of the "All hail !" 
 of Christendom ] 
 
 After twenty years spent in almost uninterrupted warfare, 
 a breathing time of peace was not only much required, but, 
 one might almost say, well worked for. In 790, this was 
 for the first time possible. In this same year he seems first 
 to have seriously reflected on and determined about his 
 future purposes. The grand design of a world-empire, 
 which the traditions of ancient Rome, the lives of Constan- 
 
26 Charlemagne, 
 
 tine, of the Ostrogothic Theodore, and of his own ancestor, 
 Charles Martel, suggested, seems to have entered with per- 
 sistent and thoroughly considered force into the plans he 
 now laid before himself. At this very period, the sovereignty 
 of the Eastern Empire was held by Irene, a bold, ambitious, 
 unscrupulous woman, possessed of great powers of fascina- 
 tion, of intense energy of mind, wonderful administrative 
 talents, and inspired by a perfect madness for intrigue. 
 About the same time as Charlemagne had been contending 
 for the interests of his empire against the Saracens, she was 
 also employed in repulsing their encroachments. Commu- 
 nity of object led to the entertainment of ambassadorial 
 relations. Irene proposed a union of the Eastern and 
 Western Empires by the marriage of her children with those 
 of Charlemagne. Charlemagne felt little disinclined to ac- 
 cede to the proposal. But Irene's ambition increased with 
 her success; she deposed her son, assumed the imperial power, 
 and then, as an empress in her own right, suggested that 
 in their own persons the union should be effected. Ne- 
 gotiations were actually entered into for the accomplishment 
 of this design, when Nicephorus, the head treasurer of the 
 Eastern Empire, originated a revolt, which resulted in Irene's 
 deposition; and neither Charlemagne's policy nor love seems 
 to have incited him to take part in favour of the almost 
 bride-elect of his power. Perhaps he thought that when 
 divided the empire might be acquired by a less inconvenient 
 process. 
 
 Perhaps, as an excuse for his ungallant desertion of Irene's 
 cause, he carved out labour for his own armies, by marching 
 against the Avari, to avenge himself on them for the incur- 
 sions by which they had disturbed the early portion of his" 
 reign. He might also reckon, that by having his soldier)' 
 
Policy at Home and A broad. 2 7 
 
 engaged near the rebellious empire, he could take advantage 
 of any circumstance which appeared likely to favour his 
 aspirations after universal dominion. The Franks advanced 
 on the south bank of the Danube, the Saxons and other 
 feudatory tribes on the north, whilst a flotilla on the river 
 itself, bore himself, his generals, his body-guard, and per- 
 sonal retainers. The mere spectacle of the immense masses 
 thus arrayed against them terrified the Avari into flight, and 
 their nine treasure-cities became his, without even the shadow 
 of resistance. 
 
 It was in this expedition that Charlemagne conceived, 
 and instantly began to work out, the gi-and idea of uniting 
 the Baltic and the North Sea with the Black Sea and the 
 Mediterranean, by the construction of a gigantic canal 
 between the Maine and the Danube, a project rich in its 
 promises of utility to Europe ; but the difficulty of the work, 
 and the want of skill in his soldier-workmen, as well as 
 unfavourable weather, led to the abandonment of the 
 scheme, and Germany has not yet found a means of com- 
 pleting it, or even of producing a substitute. 
 
 The Saxons, disliking the forced labour, the long marches, 
 and the protracted expeditions in which Charlemagne 
 engaged, mutinied and revolted. This disturbed his plans. 
 Leaving the vanquishment of the Avari to his generals, he 
 set out to suppress the risings in Saxony, and to superin- 
 tend the forcible transplantation of their tribes to other por- 
 tions of his empire. His generals effected their part, and 
 Charlemagne, by his judicious system of colonization, suc- 
 ceeded in bringing the turbulent Saxons to submission, and 
 even, in some measure, to contentment ; for he permitted 
 them still to retain, as far as possible, their old traditionary 
 customs, their laws, and municipal government, ennobled 
 
28 Charlemagne, 
 
 their own leaders, and attached them to him by distributions 
 of booty as well as assignments of land. These gifts, how- 
 ever, he made personal and not hereditary and thus retained 
 in his own hand the power of ejection, and consequently of 
 punishment, in the event' of any cause being given for 
 displeasure. 
 
 The reality of western empire was now his, and he longed 
 to bear a name by which that reality might be indicated. 
 But his friend and co-labourer in the extension and consoH- 
 dation of his empire, Pope Adrian I., died in 795, and a 
 new Pope, I.eo III., required to be managed, and humoured, 
 and patronised, into consenting, or at least assenting, to his 
 wish. Luckily for his purpose, a revolt arose in Rome, the 
 holy father was maltreated, and he fled to the court of 
 Charlemagne at Paderborn for protection. Charlemagne 
 not only received him gladly and kindly, but also promised 
 to punish his assailants. This promise he fulfilled in a.d. 
 800. At the magnificent festival of the church on Christ- 
 mas of that same year, as Charlemagne knelt at the high 
 altar, the Pontiff brought forth an imperial crown, and 
 much to Charlemagne's apparent surprise, placed it on his 
 head, saying, " Charles Augustus, crowned by the Almighty, 
 the great and peace-bringing Emperor of Rome. All hail 
 and victory ! " This greeting the multitude repeated after 
 him, while the Pope knelt before him as the regent of true 
 religion. The height of his ambition was now gratified, 
 and even Nicephorus I. acknowledged him as his co-equal 
 — the Emperor of the West. The Saxon kings of England, 
 and the caliphs of Bagdad, recognised him by embassage, 
 and in the magic of a new name, rights, dignities, prece- 
 dency, and authority were seized, which did not enter into 
 the logic of the ceremony. Caesar was re-established in 
 
His Ambition and Sticcess. 29 
 
 Charlemagne. So much importance did he attach to the 
 new title — so much did he regard as underlying its adop- 
 tion — that he commanded all his subjects above twelve 
 years of age to renew their oaths of allegiance to his person 
 and dynasty. 
 
 The extension of his kingdom towards Bohemia; the 
 consolidation and protection of its eastern boundary; the 
 fortification of the coast-line of his extensive dominions, so 
 as to enable him to repel the invasions of the Normans and 
 Danes ; and the estabhshment of political relationships with 
 other powers, now occupied much of his energy and thought. 
 The general improvement and elevation of his people, the 
 extension of commerce, the establishment of new and more 
 equitable laws, the promotion of education, the furtherance 
 of science, the purification of the church, and the internal 
 regulations of his empire, also received much attention. 
 
 In the midst of all his activity, all his planning and schem- 
 ing, all his exertions in the combined characters of monarch 
 and statesman, the great grief of death broke into his family. 
 In 810, his son Pepin, King of Italy, died, and in 811, his 
 other son Charles, who was his constant confidant and as- 
 sistant in all his manifold undertakings, and who had thus 
 become the centre of many hopes, died also ; leaving of his 
 legitimate sons only Louis, surnamed Le Debonnaire, the 
 weakest and least promising, alive : his eldest son being, as 
 we have said, immured within monastic walls. 
 
 Charlemagne, in his prime, was of kingly presence. His 
 iron cuirass shielded a capacious chest, and bra-vvny arms 
 swung from his broad shoulders. His stalwart frame was 
 surmounted by a round head, whose iron-grey locks bore the 
 mark of his helmet. His cheerful face was lit up by full 
 bright eyes; and his features, though worn with war and 
 
30 Charlemagne, 
 
 care, were knit together by a stern will when occasion re- 
 quired ; while his shrill voice could employ the whole va- 
 riety of intonation in which love, friendship, and sovereignty 
 can be expressed. He was capable of intense emotion, — 
 bursts of grief and fits of passion. His temper was readily 
 chafed, but his will was not easily changed by obstacles. 
 Even the habit of empire aided the impression of kingliness 
 which his presence produced. But the inroads of death, 
 the effects of time, the hidden workings of disease, the 
 undermining influences of care, and a growing sense of lone- 
 liness, began to disorganise the sinewy body and to weaken 
 the strong mind of Charlemagne. Feeling made him reahse 
 the feebleness of flesh, and the untrustworthiness of life. 
 Hence, in 813, feeling the gradual on-creeping of senility, 
 he named Louis his colleague in the Empire, and nominated 
 his grandson Bernard, King of Italy. On the Sabbath in 
 which he called his son Louis to the co-emperorship, he 
 publicly exhorted him, in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 regarding the duties of a good sovereign, conjured him to 
 love his people, and to labour and pray for their welfare and 
 advancement ; at the same time showing his independence 
 of the pontifical power, by commanding Louis to take the 
 crown from the altar, and place it on his own head. There- 
 after Charlemagne presented the self-crowned Louis to the 
 Franks as their future Emperor. The act of the venerable 
 old man received the unanimous sanction of the public 
 voice. 
 
 After the part he took in the magnificent spectacle of the 
 coronation of his son, Charlemagne jetired from the public 
 performance of the duties of sovereignty, fixing his residence 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle. Not long thereafter he was seized with 
 pleurisy. He had never before been subjected to illness. 
 
His Illness and Death. 3 1 
 
 and had a contemptuous distrust of drugs. He rejected 
 medical aid, and his body, now weakened by age and exer- 
 tion, succumbed to the power of disease. On the 28th of 
 January 814, he felt the certain premonitions of death. 
 'Raising his right hand with characteristic energy and im- 
 petuosity, despite of emaciation and exhaustion, he piously 
 crossed himself on the forehead, the chest, and the feet ; 
 then stretching himself out, clasping his arms over his breast, 
 and closing his own eyes, he murmured, " Now, Lord, into 
 Thy hands I commit my spirit ;" and with this semi-sighed 
 prayer, he yielded himself up to the conqueror of all, even 
 the greatest of men — Death. On that very day, his body 
 being thoroughly cleansed, laid out, and embalmed, he was 
 carried, amid lamentation and tears, to the vault of the 
 church of Aix-la-Chapelle, and there, being dressed in his 
 imperial robes, having a piece of the original (?) cross of 
 Christ placed on his head, an open Bible on his knee, and 
 his sceptre and shield at his feet, he was put in a marble 
 chair. The vault was then completely filled with frankin- 
 cence, balms, spices, and costly scent-giving herbs and gums, 
 closed, and sealed up. Over this sepulchre an arch was 
 erected, which bore these words as an inscription : — ^" Here 
 repose the mortal remains of Charles, the great and orthodox 
 Emperor, who gloriously enlarged, and for forty-seven years 
 happily governed, the Empire of the Franks." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF EVENTS. 
 
 ^NCIENT civilisation was wanting in spirituality- 
 religiousness. It attained its acvi'e when the Ro- 
 man Empire had concentrated under its own do- 
 minion the whole culture of the ages, and had developed to 
 their utmost all those principles of government which operate 
 by external pressure on the subject, and derive their autho- 
 rity ixQV£i force rather than conviction. Modern civilisation is 
 altogether distinct, especially in its primal element, viz.. 
 Christian culture. The former made men fear, reverence, 
 and obey, the might and majesty of law ; the latter makes 
 man " a law unto himself" There is therefore a vigour, 
 dignity, and spontaneity in modern national life, which was 
 completely wanting in earlier states of citizenship. The 
 one vital defect of ancient times being supplied, there arose 
 also a necessity for amalgamating and intertexturing the 
 civic life of former ages with the religiousness and conscien- 
 tiousness of the new culture. Fortunately for humanity, the 
 realm of antique culture was under one sovereignty, so that at 
 once the possibility and the practicability of proselytism was 
 provided for. Apostolic zeal and Christian energy carried 
 the new thought-seed of the gospel widely and freely through 
 
His Work and Mission, 33 
 
 the length and breadth of civilised society. At first, like all 
 new truths, it assumed the destructive form, and entered 
 into contest with the old and the effete. Conservatism rose 
 in arms, resisted, persecuted, and — failed. Antagonism de- 
 veloped the strength of the new principles of action and 
 life, and proselytism was exchanged for predominance. That 
 which had been foreign, even aUen, attained mastery, and 
 by an intricate and singular concourse of circumstances, ex- 
 changed the prison-houses, persecution, and contempt, of 
 its early years, for might, dominion, and homage. So far 
 the work seemed to speed well, and to promise a favourable 
 issue. But whosoever shall look narrowly into the causes of 
 these eventful phenomena, will not fail to observe that this 
 also became an external and authoritative power, instead of 
 an inward, personally effective, moral influence, and there- 
 fore could not then, and so manifested, fulfil all the purposes 
 of God. It was needful that a spiritual empire should arise, 
 not seated in Constantinople or Rome only, but in each 
 human soul. This grand theocratic republic, it seems, could 
 not advisably assert itself until all possible forms of incorpo- 
 ration with, or imitation of, past forms of polity had been 
 attempted. Hence there arose a need-be for the Christian 
 empire of Constantine, and the Gregorian attempt to estab- 
 lish a rtdi?ig Papacy. And not these only, but, as we believe, 
 the bold and gorgeous monotheistic imposture of Mahomet, 
 whose mission, among other mightier issues, it was, to exhi- 
 bit the power of the sword to subjugate without subduing, 
 to vanquish without convincing, to compel outward con- 
 formity without a reform of the inner life, and yet, by dint 
 of continuous training, to evolve habit and educe faith. All 
 these spiritualising forces being arrayed upon the field of 
 history, what mode of Christian statecraft was possible be* 
 
 c 
 
34 Charlemagne. 
 
 sides % One only, and that the highest of all, that, namely, 
 in which Christianity should receive into itself, and cultivate, 
 by its holy agencies, all developable forms of nationality, 
 encourage and foster every possible species of citizenship, 
 and graft itself into every kind of polity, until, at last, each 
 should be thoroughly, yet self-cognisantly, embued with the 
 spirit, the life, and the purity which it imparts, " leavened " 
 by " the same mind that was also in Jesus." This, the great 
 work of the civilisation of modern Europe, Charlemagne 
 inaugurated, and in part accomphshed ; and this forms his 
 grandest and holiest title to a place amongst " Epoch 
 Men." 
 
 The peculiar condition of Europe in itself, as well as in 
 its relationships with the Eastern Empire and Islamism, 
 must never be forgotten in forming an estimate of the reign 
 and character of Charlemagne. In itself it was divided 
 between the civilisation of the ancient empire and the bar- 
 barism of the northern tribes ; and, more disastrously still, 
 a struggle for supremacy was either active or imminent be- 
 tween the State and the Church. In its relationship to the 
 East, it required to maintain rivalry, cope in diplomacy, and 
 out-manoeuvre in arms the great empire of which Constan- 
 tinople was the capital; while, in regard to Islamism, it 
 found itself in the twofold antagonism of interest and faith. 
 To oppose the well-knit organisation of Mohammedanism, 
 without succumbing to the anti-national organisation of the 
 Papacy ; to maintain the faith of Christendom, without 
 espousing too thoroughly the cause of its asserted head ; to 
 hold together the various states of Europe, in opposition to 
 the blind obedience of the Eastern world, without tyranny, 
 amid continuous intrigue and evasion, — this was Charle- 
 magne's work and mission. Not only did '' the dignity of his 
 
His Worth and Greatness. 35 
 
 person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, 
 the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant 
 nations," but also the important purposes he, in God's pro- 
 vidence subserved, ''distinguish him from the royal crowd;" 
 and it is chiefly because of these latter that " Europe dates 
 a new era from his restoration of the Western Empire." * 
 
 The saying of the illustrious historian, from whom we 
 have extracted some portion of the closing terms of the pre- 
 ceding paragraph, is undoubtedly true, viz., " The appella- 
 tion of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes de- 
 served, but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favour 
 the title has been indissolubly blended with the name ;" but 
 we must form a less depreciatory estimate of the life and 
 doings of the Frankish monarch than Gibbon has done, 
 before we can justify the enthusiasm of contemporaries, or 
 the traditions of ages. We do not think it necessary to pare 
 down the grandeur of ancient fact to the prosaic mediocrities 
 of present actualities ; nor do we regard it as advisable to 
 garment in the indefiniteness of myth all heroism and great- 
 ness. We can accept the concurrent testimony of many 
 mtnesses without depreciation, and yet reject the fabulous 
 stories of enthusiastic minstrels, without permitting our ad- 
 miration of their object to decrease, or adopting the disen- 
 chanting solvents of inapplicable criticism to dissipate the 
 renown which ages have hallowed and time has embalmed. 
 We must believe that it has been by more than "a rare 
 felicity" that his name was the object of contemporary 
 esteem and admiration, and even yet " is crowned with the 
 praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlight- 
 ened age." 
 
 Greatness is a quality at no time so superfluously plentiful 
 * See " Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap, xlix. 
 
36 Charle^nagne. 
 
 in the world as to be easily mistaken ; its characteristics are 
 too well marked and too conspicuously evident to be erro- 
 neously attributed, with such singular unanimity and en- 
 thusiasm, to any one who had not, in an undeniable manner, 
 "gained his spurs" in the very face of difficulty. We do 
 not now mean that greatness which is measured merely by 
 the object accomplished, without regard to the manner of its 
 accomplishment. We believe there is no true greatness — 
 RO greatness worthy of being perennially remembered — ex- 
 cept that which embodies noble thoughts working towards 
 a worthy end, recognising at once the dignity of humanity 
 and the worshipfulness of God, and endeavouring to co-en- 
 twine, in the execution of some purpose, both of these ele- 
 ments of contemplation, both of these incentives to action. 
 " Greatness," says the learned and ingenious Arthur Helps, 
 " is not in the circumstances, but in the man ;" and it pos- 
 sesses these as its prime and all-important qualities. He says 
 — " openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, 
 and courage to pursue it." 
 
 Let us proceed now to review the life-doings of Charle- 
 magne, with continual reference to the foregoing ideas, and 
 let us observe wherein he seems to be possessed of the " per- 
 fect stature" of true greatness, and appears deserving or 
 undeserving of the adnomen which the ages have bestowed 
 upon him. 
 
 As a ruler^ Charlemagne first introduced into a wide cir- 
 cuit of loose and disorganised tribes a full sense of the utility, 
 the value, the importance, and the need of the monarchical 
 principle, and gave strength and potency to that principle 
 to those who acknowledged its necessity for others, but felt 
 its burden inconvenient to themselves. On " the decHne 
 and fall of the Roman Empire " the idea of the state was 
 
Wis do 771 as a Ruler. 37 
 
 greatly altered — antiquity, permanency, and indefensible 
 power were no longer numbered among its attributes. It 
 had become a matter of convenience and convention, and 
 did not seem an eternal and inevitable condition of nation- 
 ality. Self-hood, developing into feudaHsm, was uniting 
 families, bands, or tribes, under one lord, but separating 
 them from each other and from the State. Municipality, 
 opposing the fiscal restrictions of government, and the en- 
 croachments of feudal chiefs, knit men together by the ties 
 of commercial interest, rather than bound them in unques- 
 tioning obedience to law. The Church, claiming dominion 
 over the faith of the soul, yet making that claim the pretext 
 for a universal empire and all-controlling power in matters 
 terrestrial, held believers in bonds more tyrannous than those 
 which statesmanship the most crafty had yet been able to 
 introduce. It was no light weight with which to burden 
 one's soul, the attempt to colligate and condition these 
 several discordant and discord-causing elements, and so to 
 co-ordinate each and all, that the enginry of government 
 might use them all, and be itself subservient to none, though 
 in harmony with the best and truest interests of each. This 
 Charlemagne tried \ this he proved, in some measure, to be 
 possible, and so far may be said to have succeeded. 
 
 It was one of the praiseworthy peculiarities of the policy 
 of Charlemagne, that though desirous of maintaining the 
 dignity of the State as the highest tribunal of earthly law, he 
 did not attempt to cramp, coop up, and circumscribe the 
 whole of the subjects of his realm to one uniform, unbend- 
 ing, legislative code, one rigid set of customs, and one mode 
 of speech. He honoured and appreciated the distinctions 
 which nations felt among themselves, marking them off from, 
 and, in their own opinion, setting them above, others. All 
 
o 
 
 8 Charlemagne. 
 
 those laws, therefore, which were based on ancient and im- 
 memorial usage and special modes of life, and were thus 
 intertwined with the affections and inner thoughts of men, 
 he permitted to be regarded as sacred and unalterable, till, 
 in the process of civilisation, and after the acquirement of 
 new habits, the people were ripe for a change and anxious 
 to receive it. Those manners to which, by the continued 
 repetition of ages, the inhabitants of particular places had 
 become accustomed, he allowed, though he did not en- 
 courage ; and those languages in which the thoughts and 
 emotions of the- soul had been wont to find utterance, he 
 did not feel at liberty, even if it had appeared politic, to 
 prohibit. He did not choose to weld into one vast des- 
 potism the disjunct and inharmonious masses who submitted 
 to his imperial sceptre ; nor did he compel and constrain 
 his subjects to adopt a unity which they could not but 
 hate and despise ; but he endeavoured to make them feel, 
 that in the unity of the kingly power each state had its 
 safest protection from the antagonism or encroachment of 
 the other, and all had the surest hope of succour in the 
 hour of need. 
 
 It was well for humanity that this noble policy was ob- 
 served, for from this fact arises the general prevalence of 
 true domesticity. The Saxon nations were ever conspi- 
 cuous for their venturous daring in war; but far more cha- 
 racteristic of that great section of Europe's ancestral tribes 
 were the exercise and play of the sanctifying influences of 
 home. Not in the nomad life of the East, among the city- 
 pent Greeks, or the stately and impassible Romans, were 
 the tenderness and love which tones and tempers modern 
 society originated or developed, but amid the native woods 
 in which the German tribes wandered, yet dwelt. From 
 
Genius as a Warrior. 39 
 
 ♦them, too, the love of justice, freedom, and individuality- 
 has been mainly derived, — feelings which might have been, 
 in a great measure, eliminated from modern society, had 
 Charlemagne enforced, wherever victory crowned him, the 
 adoption of a uniform, rigid, and unbending code of" laws, 
 which permitted no deviation, and repressed all individual 
 and social development or progress. He did not seek a 
 unity destructive of the very prime of manhood's character- 
 istics — self-manifestation, — but a unity of aim, progress, 
 personal, social, and national influence — a unity which re- 
 cognised the sovereign as the embodied will of the people, 
 and, at the same time, reverenced the will in each indivi- 
 dual unit of the mass, whensoever consistent with the gen- 
 eral welfare, and in agreement with the higher purposes of 
 national existence. As a ruler, then, Charlemagne deserves 
 the name he bears, because, while he knit the most varied 
 races and tribes together under his sovereignty, he secured 
 to all the freedom of varied and spontaneous development, 
 without limit of direction, extent, or means, except in so far 
 as imperial necessities demanded their abnegation or with- 
 drawal 
 
 As a warrior^ Charlemagne exhibited at once the highest 
 military genius and the most scrupulous conscientiousness, 
 so far as regards the 7?ian?ier of accomplishing his ends. 
 Whether his purposes were in all cases thoroughly defen- 
 sible, we will not undertake dogmatically to assert ; but we 
 may express our conviction, that in all his schemes and 
 aims he was penetrated with an earnest desire to elevate 
 humanity, and to extend civilisation and Christian enlighten- 
 Tnent over the earth. It is quite true that now-a-days we 
 beheve that the gentle force of persuasion, and the graceful 
 courtesy of expositive conversion, are the only heaven-per- 
 
40 Charlemagne. 
 
 mitted means of gospel extension. It was otherwise in his 
 age and in his nation. The terror of arms had succeeded 
 in converting the Franks themselves, and they felt equally 
 justified in using the tumult of battle and the excitement of 
 war as the forerunners of " baptismal regeneration." The 
 Saracens, too, had used the same agencies with success. It 
 is Charlemagne's great glory, that though he conquered 
 tribes as a soldier, he governed them as a Christian king ; 
 and that though he compelled submission by force, he en- 
 deavoured to retain it by instruction. And that he was not 
 altogether in error, the results, under Divine Providence, 
 show; for this self-same Saxon race, who did anything 
 rather than " receive the truth with gladness," became the 
 most zealous for the honour of Christ, the most devoted 
 adherents of the Church, and the most faithful, in the after 
 ages, in maintaining purity of worship and freedom of 
 thought. 
 
 When Charlemagne's doings are looked upon in the light 
 of his purposes, we see no reason for surprise " that he so 
 often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the 
 south." Let us say, rather, that if there is honour due to 
 the resistance of temptation, he is entitled to it. " The 
 weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory;" 
 and then the wealth, influence, and renown of a wider em- 
 pire than had ever been subjected to one sceptre might 
 have been his : but he turned from the enticing thought, to 
 devote himself, in numerous conflicts, amid many difficulties, 
 to the subjugation and civilisation of the Saxon tribes, not 
 only because he was intent on the diffusion of " the light 
 that lighteneth the Gentiles," but perhaps also to secure the 
 safety, integrity, and stability of his empire, by the conquest 
 of the enemies of civil life. The intense, continuous, and 
 
His Intelligence and Energy. 4 1 
 
 multiform activity of his mind and body during the thirty- 
 three campaigns which he headed in Germany — the march- 
 ing, counter-marching, and fatigue which he endured — the 
 boldness, vigour, and rapidity of his thoughts, his resolu- 
 tions, and his actions — the instantaneous decisiveness which 
 his presence gave to a contest — the resistless on sweep and 
 the breathless energy of all his expeditions — the impetuosity 
 of action preceded and accompanied by coolness and so- 
 briety of thought which he displayed, mark him out as one 
 of nature's warriors. He had the heroism of creative 
 thought, and he exhibited valour in the execution of his 
 designs. It may be true that his thundering legions never 
 encountered " an equal antagonist ; " but we must recollect 
 that the Saxons had defied, and succeeded in defying, the 
 mighty armies of Rome, and that Charlemagne overcame 
 where both the sword and the sceptre of the Caesars were 
 impotent. 
 
 As a legist^ he was far in advance of his age. The irrup- 
 tion of the barbarians had upset the gigantic imperialism of 
 Rome ; its magnificent codes — Theodosian and Justinian — 
 had become powerless ; its greatness was thoroughly abased. 
 The hesitancy shown to obey the commands of the wearers 
 of the imperial purple manifested itself, in its ultimate re- 
 sults, in the almost universal diffusion of a spirit of antago- 
 nism to law. The individual had become almost all, the 
 state almost nothing. From this condition of afiairs there 
 was a natural recoil and revulsion, wliich became incorpo- 
 rate in feudalism, clanship, chieftaincy, &c., in divers forms, 
 giving consolidation to the landed interest or military leader- 
 ship ; while, in opposition to that again, arose municipali- 
 ties as securities for commerce, trade, and manufactures, or 
 rather, for industrial pursuits. Monastic institutions may 
 
42 Charlemagne. 
 
 liave had some such poHtically conservative principle im- 
 parted to them too, in the progress of time ; but the Papacy 
 certainly clutched at imperial dominion, more because there 
 was no great imposing force capable of being brought against 
 it, than because of any right — scriptural, hereditary, or 
 traditionary — which it was able to show. The empire of 
 Charlemagne arose amongst such contending influences as 
 these, and it is some renown to have been the earhest to 
 attempt the " correction of abuses," and " the reformation 
 of manners," in a time of this sort. The merit of this be- 
 comes greater, when we reflect on the cautiousness with 
 which it was tried, and the success with which it was at- 
 tended. His Capitularies, though sometimes over-minute 
 and finical, are enlightened, liberal, and extensive, calcu- 
 lated, however, rather to soften the hardships and suspend 
 the evils of his own age, than to form enduring enactments, 
 from which the legists of all countries and times might draw 
 the great and overruUng principles of equitable legislation 
 and generous government. He called together, so fre- 
 quently as to give the assurance of formal right to their 
 legislative advice, assemblies of nobles and bishops, — the 
 only estates of the realm then capable of affording counsel 
 m difficulty or help in emergencies, — and may thus be said 
 to have initiated the system which afterwards resulted in 
 representative, popular, legislative councils, in which the 
 permanent estates were recognised as possessed of certain 
 privileges in regard to legal enactments, financial arrange- 
 ments, and the conduct of wars. 
 
 Of Charlemagne as a scholar we have not hitherto had 
 occasion to speak; and yet, even in this character, he 
 appears in a most favourable light. By him, most certainly, 
 knowledge was pursued under difficulties which few have 
 
His Literary Talents. 43 
 
 encountered. There is something truly noble in the assi- 
 duity and regularity with which, among all the irregularities 
 of time and place which, during his campaigns, tended to 
 disturb and unsettle both mind and habits, he studied, and 
 read, and conversed with the learned. Late in life, he 
 undertook to acquire the art of the scribe ; he toiled most 
 energetically, even in the years of mature manhood, at 
 tables of declensions and paradigms of conjugations, that he 
 might become skilled in the usage of the classic tongues of 
 antiquity. Over the dull mnemonics and formulae of logic, 
 and upon the synoptic tables of rhetorical treatises, he spent 
 much thought, listening with care and delight to expositions 
 of their hidden meanings, and garnering the sayings of his 
 teachers in his memory. Books were rare, so he collected 
 around him an association of learned and thoughtful men, 
 and from their conversation, as the best and most readily 
 accessible mode of attaining knowledge, he acquired the 
 rudiments of all the sciences of his time. It may be that 
 his " studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect f but how 
 few are there who, with the riches, influence, and pleasures 
 of the Western Empire at their feet, would have turned from 
 all the modes of joy they proffered, to seek a higher gratifi- 
 cation than they could bestow in the teachings of astronomy 
 grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, &c. ! Nor was it his own 
 improvement alone he looked after : he had books read to 
 his courtiers during the seasons of dining, and in hours of 
 leisure, when haply they were to be found. He attended 
 carefully to the education of his children, insisted on the 
 attainment of their tasks, and taught them not only to love 
 learning, but to honour the learned. He himself took great 
 delight in literary intercourse, and among his learned cour- 
 tiers he received the flattering mm de plume of David, in 
 
44 Charlemagne, 
 
 allusion to the literary, victorious, and holy king of Israel. 
 On them also playful surnames were bestowed ; e.g.^ Al- 
 cuin, his friend, adviser, and preceptor, was called Flaccus 
 Albinus ; Riculf, Archbishop of Mayence, Damoatas ; Arno, 
 Aquila ; and Angilbert, Homerus. This fact gives us a 
 pleasing peep into the kindly character of the intercourse 
 between the Frankish monarch and his literary friends, and 
 shows him in a most amiable light. Neither do his merits 
 under this head end here : he established scholastic institu- 
 tions throughout his dominions, patronised the arts, and in 
 various other ways laboured for the furtherance of the intel- 
 lectual welfare of his people, the progress of national instruc- 
 tion, and the promotion of true civilisation. 
 
 As a churchman^ Charlemagne was at once sincere and 
 independent. He wished to be, as well as to be regarded, 
 not only the guardian of justice and peace, the protector of 
 civilisation, and the dispenser of culture, but also the regent 
 of religion, the temporal head of the Church, and the patron 
 of the Papacy. He aimed at seeing " the seed of the word" 
 sown in fresh fields, the safe development of true piety 
 among the nations, and the hosts of the Church united under 
 one sovereign sceptre, yet having its own august spiritual 
 administrator, guide, and head. He clearly foresaw the 
 grasping at dominion which then lay latent in the assump- 
 tions of the Popedom, and by a wise and vigorous stroke of 
 poHcy, on the occasion of the coronation of his son, took 
 care to mark, clearly and decidedly, the distinction between 
 the hereditary, temporal right to the crown and privileges of 
 the empire, and the acknowledgment and consecration of 
 that right by the occupant of St Peter's chair. Farther even 
 than this did his cautious policy extend ; for he maintained 
 that the act of acknowledgment at least was reciprocal, and 
 
His Church Policy. 45 
 
 that the Emperor had a just right to be made acquainted 
 with the ground of the claims of any Pope for accession to 
 the powers and honours of the Vatican. On this account it 
 was determined that the election of the Pope should be 
 examined and confirmed by the crowned head of the empire. 
 Thus far we see that he drew a clear line of division between 
 the temporal powers of a monarch and the spiritual potency 
 of a pope^ confessed himself a sincere servant of the Church, 
 yet maintained a thorough independence. He did not arro- 
 gate inconsistent privileges to himself, nor did he suffer 
 inconsistent encroachments to be made upon himself, his 
 subjects, his laws, or his dominions. 
 
 The honest performance of duty is the noblest heroism, 
 the truest manliness. In " the mighty strife of time," we 
 have each — ^kings, thinkers, artisans, merchants, &c. — to 
 bear our part. If it be well and bravely done, whatsoever 
 be the form thereof, it is sacred and noble. Charlemagne 
 must be tried by a loftier standard as a man than as aught 
 else, for man is, in reality, a holier title than king, which 
 is only a manifestation, in one form, of human energy and 
 thought, and is partial, not complete. Judged as a man, he 
 seems to become amenable to other laws, and to assume a 
 deeper responsibility. To keep one's own soul free from 
 taint of sin is less easy than to sit in the centre of the springs 
 of policy, and work them to the wonder of the world. 
 Charlemagne was passionate, sensual, proud, and we might 
 almost add, dishonegt. Most probably his irascibility pro- 
 ceeded from his pride, and gave itself freest vent when 
 anything opposed his wishes or resisted his control, guidance, 
 or government, as in the case of that reprehensible massacre 
 of the Saxons on the banks of the Aller, mentioned in 
 Chapter III. He was certainly somewhat addicted to 
 
46 Charlemagne. 
 
 gluttony ; and though not, in the large sense of the word, 
 intemperate, he drank of the juice of the grape in con- 
 siderable quantities ; he relished the fasts of the Church 
 little, and was more sedulous of having seemed to conform 
 to its requirements on these points, than to give an honest, 
 hearty, and concurrent obedience to its mandates. In his 
 general policy, though it was undoubtedly governed by a 
 great and illustrious idea, there was a considerable degree 
 of self-seeking and hankering after renown, personal and 
 national. In his domestic relations, he was not so pure, 
 refined, and regular as might have been desirable; though 
 we must recollect that it is but a short time since the 
 opinion, that one of the grandest of the royal prerogatives 
 was to dispense with the exercise of the virtues, has been 
 abandoned in countries boasting of a high civilisation. We 
 may attribute, therefore, some, at least, of Charlemagne's 
 moral delinquencies to the accident of his position, and 
 regard them more in the light of the venialities of a king than 
 the transgressions of a man. Not that we mean to assert 
 that greater licence should be permitted to the fountain of all 
 law, but that we desire to state and to remember that such 
 licence has been most usually granted, and very commonly 
 taken advantage of. In a full estimate of all the difficulties 
 with which his pathway through life was beset, we may con- 
 clude that he used his best endeavours to live a life of manly 
 and honourable industry and usefulness ; that as a man, he 
 strove to regulate his temper, control' his thoughts, and 
 govern his conduct, according to the highest conceptions of 
 the morality of his age in his circumstances ; that he, like 
 most men, often failed in the interval of resolve and execu- 
 tion, and had frequent need of patient perseverance, peni- 
 tence, and prayer, to support, comfort, or re-inspire him. 
 
His Personal Character. 47 
 
 It is impossible to bring together into the compass of a 
 sentence or two the merits of Charlemagne in all the 
 various points of view in which we should look at his 
 doings and their results. The man who checked with vigour 
 and success the turbulence of an unsettled state, compelled 
 the recognition of national law, inspired a wide circuit of 
 Europe with a common interest and common objects, and 
 led men to pursue these interests and maintain these objects 
 with collective counsel as well as with united resources 
 and efforts — the man who, while using Christianity as the 
 instrument for widening his dominions and strengthening 
 his throne, made it subservient to the quickening of national 
 life, the diffusion of peaceful habits, and the encouragement 
 of civilisation — the man who used the Papacy as a poUtical 
 agent, without lessening its dignity or influence as a reli- 
 gious institution, and restrained its inordinate ambition 
 while he aided its development in all useful modes — the 
 man who controlled the clergy, the nobility, the soldiery, 
 the merchantry, and the mass, while he was popular with 
 all — the man who compelled acknowledgment from the 
 potentates, not only of the Greek, .but of the Persian 
 empires, founded the original of all royal societies and 
 academies, and who was the first to combine in one a mili- 
 tary monarchy, a feudal nobility, a somewhat free com- 
 merce, and a kind of constitutional assembly of states — has 
 many claims to be regarded, not only as the father of the 
 modern policy of Europe, but also to the regard and vene- 
 ration of the ages which have benefited from his doings and 
 by his hfe. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that his personal reign was only a 
 transitory good, and that in the progress of after events his 
 masterful poUcy was abandoned, encroached upon, or suf- 
 
48 Charlemagne. 
 
 fered to fall into inaction. But great men live more truly 
 in their thoughts than even in their deeds j for the latter 
 can never be reproduced, the former can. It was not his 
 vast empire, with all its pomp, circumstance, and state, that 
 survived to tell succeeding times of the real grandeur of 
 Charlemagne ; it was his wide schemes of policy, his decided 
 imperial authoritativeness, combined with his popular mode 
 of effecting his designs, and that nameless something which 
 one involuntarily feels when in the presence, actual or ideal, 
 of a strong, true, genuine man. These survived, and do 
 survive him still. Insensibly, it may be, but surely, his 
 spirit pervades the thoughts and politics of all modern 
 nations, teaching them, in the hereafter of time, how best 
 
 "To pursue 
 The gradual paths of an aspiring change." 
 
Gregory VII — The Papacy- 
 
 A.D. 1020 — 1085. 
 
* Slow-paced but sure, Soana's village-lad 
 Clomb to the loftiest height of human power. 
 He knew to halt ; but never learn 'd to cower — 
 
 So firm the faith in his own fate he had. 
 His was a blanchless cheek, a wily heart, 
 
 A soul unhesitant in thought or act. 
 
 He mapp'd his life out like an explored tract 
 Before the passage of its earlier part. 
 
 To place Religion on an awful throne, 
 Whence kings and nations should receive with awe, 
 Guidance, rebuke, and life's resistless law — 
 
 An earthly semblance of a heavenly one. 
 Such was the purpose which inspired the hand 
 And stirr'd theplotful brain of Hildebrand." 
 
 — Eu, N. Lisle, M.A. 
 
 '* There was a carpenter of Tuscany, 
 "Whose son, from a cowl'd monk, made himself Pontiff. " 
 
 i?. //. Hornis ''Gregory VJV 
 
 •* Gregory VH. became the founder of papal pretensions, and of 
 spiritual despotism." — Z. R. de Vericotir. 
 
 "In the course of tire eleventh century the Church became theo- 
 cratical and monastical. The creator of this new form assumed by 
 the Church, so far as it belongs to a man to create, was Gregory VII." 
 — Giiizot. 
 
 " Under Gregoiy "VII. the ideas, hitherto for the most part unde- 
 veloped, of the supremacy of the Pope over the Church, and of the 
 Church over the State, first assumed the form of a perfectly organised 
 system."— y. C. L. Gieseler. 
 
PAPAL SUPREMACY. 
 
 HE growth of the Church into a great and durable 
 power, spiritual in its aims and functions, as much 
 as may be, detSLchtd from earth, dz/tached to heaven, 
 is one of the most singular of that series of phenomena 
 which constitutes history. Its story is an exhaustless and 
 perennial source of instruction and interest. Having its 
 origin in heaven, it seeks to rise, and raise again to that 
 resplendent height. And amidst manifold vicissitudes it 
 has, during the eventful ages of the past, held its course 
 right onwards and upwards with unslacking perseverance 
 and undelaying energy. It is, as it was designed to be, the 
 moral educator of the race. It was instituted at the giving 
 of the first promise ; it overlived the Deluge ; it was enshrined 
 in the Abrahamic covenant ; it was manifested in the Sinaitic 
 law; the Jewish people became its conservators; and type and 
 prophecy were given as its handbook and guide. In the evo- 
 lutions of history " the fulness of time" arrived. The known 
 nations of the earth were brought under one empire, that // 
 might have " free course." T/ze Incarnation and f/ie Death 
 occurred ; but Resurrection followed, and the commission 
 of the Church was granted. From the hills of Judea it 
 passed, with prompt diffusiveness, into the chief seats of the 
 
52 Gregory VII. 
 
 world's idolatries, and subdued them. The tenfold wrath 
 of persecuting Rome was braved and borne. Its adversity- 
 was great ; and it was great in its adversity. It lurked in 
 the catacombs of Rome, an outcast \ it emerged a victor, 
 and avowed itself in the temples of Constantinople. The 
 Empire that failed to awe it, fell before the barbarous hordes 
 of the northern nations ; but th^ Church made the foes of 
 Rome its subjects. Amid the wars and changes of ages it 
 kept its place, and so secured predominance. It held the 
 balance of power in Europe in its hands j and it ultimately- 
 seized the helm of the world's progress, that it might steer 
 it whithersoever it determined. Then it issued a claim to 
 an undisputed supremacy over all thoughts, feelings, rights, 
 customs, properties, powers, dominions, material civihsation, 
 and intellectual efforts. With the intense sincerity and ab- 
 sorption of a passion, its hierarchy sought power, privilege, 
 and permanency ; and endeavoured to obtain recognition as 
 an absolute and independent moral sovereignty, entitled to 
 influence and guide persons, peoples, and princes ; to wield 
 an unopposed dictatorship aver minds, lives, actions, and 
 events. It aspired to be regarded as the one single source 
 and fountain of the civilising principle, and to hold in its 
 grasp the spiritual guarantees of moral progress. It pro- 
 fessed to garner up in its comprehensive purposes all the 
 elements which co-operate in the determination of the great 
 and permanent interests of humanity, and the final destinies 
 of individuals and nations. Social influences, secular insti- 
 tutions, moral schemes, political life, personal being, the 
 very inner soul of man, conscience itself, were to be subject 
 to its sway, and touched to their issues by its direction. 
 These inordinate powers it claimed for behoof of humanity, 
 as well as arrogated for the successful all-prevailingness of 
 
Papal Stipremacy, 53 
 
 its own schemes. The world was in those days tossed about 
 and torn with change. The savage syllogisms of war alone 
 decided the fate of peopled, and the reign of blood seemed to 
 be acquiring permanency, and to have become chronic. To 
 bring man out of this bondage to material force, and to 
 make him susceptible of the influences of the spiritual world, 
 was an aim in itself noble and holy ; and if the end could 
 ever sanctify the means, a grander cause was never brought 
 within the scope of historic development. 
 
 In the course of the evolution of these far-reaching plans, 
 many mighty men co-operated towards their ultimate suc- 
 cess. There was one man, however, in whose person the 
 unbounded ascendancy of the Church may be said to have- 
 culminated. A man sprung from the workshop, and emerg- 
 ing from the cloister, persistently pursued purposes matured 
 in the monastic cell and under the prior's cowl, until at 
 length he was able to assume the mastery of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, to direct all its affairs, and control all its 
 decisions; to push on its ambitious purposes until kings 
 and emperors became the subjects^ almost the serfs, of the 
 occupant of St Peter's chair ; a man who made hierarchy 
 and pontiffs alike the tools and instruments of his policy, 
 and who, by inflexible determination, subtle suggestion and 
 conception, unshaken courage, extensive learning, persuasive 
 eloquence, and a long, life's devotion, managed the Papacy 
 under many different Popes, until at length — his self-restraint 
 rewarded by success — he was able to take his seat upon a 
 throne to which empires seemed the footstools, and of which 
 kings gladly accepted the ministry, — a spiritual Caesar, 
 sitting in Rome, yet swaying the world with a potency no 
 Cassar ever wielded ; for he claimed supremacy, not over 
 act only, but also over thought 
 
54 Gregory VII . 
 
 Hildebrand, (aftenvards Pope Gregory VII.,) was boru 
 about A.D. 1 020, in Soana, a city of Etruscan origin, situated 
 in that low, marshy tract of land, called La Maremma, which 
 margins the Tuscan coast of the Mediterranean Sea. His 
 father — Bonicius, a carpenter — was a native of the Republic 
 city of Orvieto, to which Soana was subject. Hildebrand, 
 though of low birth, was of noble extraction. He was de- 
 scended from the family of the Aldobrandeschi, and dis- 
 played, in his after life, many of the characteristics of his 
 kindred.* Both his father and himself were patronised by 
 the Counts of Tusculum, a family which exercised great 
 power over, if not in, the Church. This patronage, rather 
 than his own desire, seems to have determined his destiny ; 
 for in one of his letters to the Romans, he says, " Ye know 
 that, contrary to my inclinations, I was brought up to holy 
 orders." In his early years, he gave signs of great ability 
 and love of learning ; he was diligent, patient, capable, and 
 intelligent. In the monastery of Calvello, near Soana, he 
 received his boy-training, and was thereafter removed to the 
 monastery of St Mark, on the Aventine Mount, of which, 
 at that time, his uncle was abbot. Here he underwent 
 ecclesiastical disciphne, and was initiated into the order of 
 the Benedictines ; here, too, he pored over the laws and the 
 traditions of the ancient ages of the Church. Being diligent 
 and studious, his mind ripened rapidly. He was noted, by 
 his instructors and among his fellows, as a youth of quick 
 and penetrating intellect, of determined character, of religious 
 disposition, and of noble demeanour. He excited at once 
 love and respect. Rome afforded ample opportunities for 
 becoming acquainted with the doctrines, traditions, and cus- 
 toms of the Church, but supplied no facilities for the acqui- 
 * Dante's " Purgatorio, " xi. 5^65, 
 
His Early Years. 55 
 
 sition of secular knowledge ; and of this Hildebrand's soul 
 was greedy. With his uncle's leave, at the age of sixteen, 
 he became an inmate of the famous monastery of Clugni, in 
 Burgundy, where he proceeded, with unwearying industry, 
 to study canon law, moral philosophy, rhetoric, the Scrip- 
 tures, and the political machinery of the Church. The holy 
 leisure of seven years was thus spent, and at the expiry of 
 that period he had acquired that wide range of information, 
 that eloquent and vigorous style, that wise wiliness, that 
 powerful self-command, that determinate resoluteness, and 
 that skill in managing men, which he afterwards displayed. 
 Even then, too, he seems to have been imbued with that 
 zeal for reform, that arrogant energy, that calculating pru- 
 dence, that craft, sagacity, and foresight, and that bold, per- 
 sistent, and wide-reaching ambition, which made him, in 
 the after-time, the leading man of his age. These were 
 years of intense and earnest self-formation. 
 
 St Odilo, the originator of the " Truce of God," an influ- 
 ential, praiseworthy man, was then abbot of Clugni, and 
 Casimir I., king of Poland, was Hildebrand's companion. 
 Casimir was recalled to his throne in 1041 ; and in the 
 same year Hildebrand was commissioned by St Odilo to 
 reform his old convent, St Mark's, on the Aventine. He 
 forced the monks to discontinue their practice of allowing 
 shepherds to pen their flocks in the churches to save them 
 from midnight thieves ; and dismissed the women who, in 
 nominal servitude but real uncleanness, waited upon and 
 ministered to the monks, to the scandal of their profession. 
 He became a man of mark for austerity, gravity, and learn- 
 ing. He did not cease to increase these in his new posi- 
 tion. Under Lorenzo, bishop of Amalfi — with Pope Bene- 
 dict IX., and Gratian, archbishop of St John, (afterwards 
 
56 Gregory VII. 
 
 Pope Gregory VI.,) as fellow-pupils — Hildebrand studied 
 science, — which the superstitious then looked on as magic. 
 Benedict IX., whose own name was Theofilatus, was the 
 son of Albericus, Count of Tusculum, and had been nomi 
 nated and consecrated Pope in 1033, before he was ten 
 years old : he was exceedingly licentious. The Romans 
 revolted, and drove him from his throne in 1044; and a 
 new Pope (Silvester III.) was elected ; but his election was 
 speedily set aside. Benedict re-entered Rome by the aid 
 of the swords of his father's retainers. By the negotiation 
 of Hildebrand, however, it was arranged that Benedict 
 should transfer the papal chair to his friend Gratian, for 
 fifteen hundred pounds of gold. This being settled, 
 Gratian, as Gregory VI., donned the purple, and Hilde- 
 brand was appointed to the office of his secretary. Gregory, 
 on pretext of clearing the highways near Rome from free- 
 booters, surrounded himself with an army, and thus awed 
 the people into acquiescence in hjs simoniacal advancement ; 
 while the arch-schemer, Hildebrand, who formed the plan, 
 was made subdeacon of the Church, and bishop of his 
 father's native city, Orvieto. 
 
 Henry III., emperor of Germany, a man of firm will, 
 good talents, extensive information, and some eloquence, 
 was displeased at the turbulence of the idle and restless 
 Romans, and determined to endeavour as their temporal 
 superior, to purify and pacify the Church. He set out for 
 Italy. Gregory, attended by his secretary, met him on the 
 way. He received them politely ; and they retired, flatter- 
 ing themselves upon the success of their policy. On 
 arriving at Sutri, eleven miles from Rome, Henry called a 
 council, at which he deposed, as all irregularly elected, 
 either by intrigue, interest, or simony, the three existent 
 
Rapid A dvancemeni. 5 7 
 
 popes, — Benedict IX., Silvester III., and Gregory VI. 
 Benedict retired to his estate, and Silvester to his bishopric, 
 but Gregory was banished to the convent of Clugni, whither 
 Hildebrand accompanied him. On the death of St Odilo, 
 Hildebrand was chosen prior of Clugni ; and here, after 
 having left him heir of all his wealth, and, (by a sort of 
 Hannibal's oath,) bound him to pursue his enemies with 
 unslacking vengeance, Gregory VI. died in Hildebrand's 
 arms. 
 
 Henry, at the Council of Sutri, appointed a new Pope — 
 — Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who assumed the title of 
 Clement II. He was immediately enthroned, and on 
 Christmas 1046, he with all due solemnity crowned the 
 Emperor, Henry III. In 1047, Clement, at the instigation 
 of the Emperor, issued a decree, that no future Pope should 
 be acknowledged till he had obtained the imperial sanction. 
 Clement accompanied Henry across the Alps, and on his 
 return, died — it is said by poison — at Ravenna, after an 
 occupancy of the papal chair of nine and a half months. 
 The old Pope, Benedict, the suspected poisoner, then reas- 
 sumed the pontifical seat. In July 1048, the Emperor 
 raised Poppo, bishop of Brixen (Damasus II.) to the papacy; 
 but he died in Palestrina — by poison, too, it is thought — 
 twenty-three days after his elevation ; and so Benedict re- 
 mained in the chair. No sooner did the news of the de- 
 mise of Damasus II. reach Clugni, than Hildebrand set off 
 to Germany, with the design of taking part in, and perhaps 
 of influencing, the choice of a new Pope. Henry was, 
 however, too rapid. Bruno, bishop of Toul, a relative of 
 the Emperor's, was, on his nomination, elected at the Diet of 
 Worms. The news reached the hurrying Hildebrand, but 
 he pressed on, and met the Pope on his way Romeward. 
 
58 Gregory VII, 
 
 He invited Bruno to Clugni, and there unfolded to him a 
 part of the grand scheme for elevating the papacy with 
 which his own soul was filled. He inveighed with saga- 
 cious eloquence and urgent earnestness against the subjec- 
 tion of the sacred to the secular power, and maintained that 
 the imperial election was an invasion of the rights and in- 
 stitutions of the Church. The calculating craft of Hilde- 
 brand wrought upon the mind of Leo IX. The former 
 undertook to manage everything successfully, if the latter 
 would consent to follow his advice. This was agreed to ; 
 and Leo accordingly divesting himself of the externals of 
 dignity, reassumed the poor habiliments of a monk, and re- 
 fused to be called Pope until the voice of the cardinals and 
 people of Rome should welcome him as such. Barefooted 
 and humbly clad, meek and lowly in seeming, Leo, the 
 shepherd of the Church, walked in modest pilgrimage to the 
 loftiest eminence the world afforded. Hildebrand accom- 
 panied him. But his political foresight and intriguing spirit 
 had forerun his own presence, and, by his contrivance, an 
 extraordinary ovation rewarded the obedient Leo for his few 
 weeks' abstinence from glory and applause. Enthusiasm 
 seemed to have run wild, and re-echoing acclamations ac- 
 companied Leo from beyond the gates of Rome to the 
 (then humble) church of St Peter's. Leo heaped benefac- 
 tions upon Hildebrand. He was made Sub-deacon of St 
 Paul's, Cardinal, Abbot, Canon of the Holy Roman Church, 
 and Custodier of the altar of St Peter. Success favoured 
 his daring. On the altar of the founder-apostle of the 
 Roman Church were laid the annual offerings of every 
 count, duke, abbot, prince, and king, to the holy apostle 
 who — through his successors and deputies — held supremacy 
 in the Church militant, and possessed " the power of the 
 
His Crafty Designs. 59 
 
 keys " in heaven and hell. Besides these, the payments of 
 the people, for the maintenance of the state and the services 
 of the Church, were deposited on the same altar, and Hilde- 
 brand was the keeper of them all. He speedily became 
 the head and soul, the animating spirit, of the movement 
 party in the Church. Leo's simple, unsuspicious honesty 
 made him a fit tool for working out unpopular purposes. 
 Hildebrand was constantly engaged in prompting him to 
 some new reform, and some stirring change. He kept 
 Leo, however, as much from Rome as possible, that he 
 might retain in his own hand, the real, though not the 
 ostensible, management of that city and its intrigues. 
 Hildebrand, therefore, kept up a continued succession of 
 pilgrimages, processions, synods, and councils, and a con- 
 stant moving to and fro between Rome, France, Germany, 
 Hungary, &c., in most of which he accompanied and as- 
 sisted the Pope, at the same time that he held the princes 
 and ecclesiastics under his own curb, by rapid movements 
 and bold measures. Simony, and the immorality of the 
 clergy, were cursed and fulmined against, and those guilty 
 of either were anathematised and excommunicated. At the 
 Council of Rheims, in this Pope's reign, it was first decided 
 that the Church of Rome should be recognised as chief, 
 and paramount over all churches, and that the Pontiff, as 
 primate, should rule and overrule all others. At a council 
 in the church of St Lateran, in Rome, the doctrine of tran- 
 substantiation was affirmed, in the act which condemned 
 Berengar — ^who denied the corporeal presence of Christ in 
 the symbols of the Eucharist — as a heretic. Hildebrand, 
 though admiring the acute and subtle genius and the learn- 
 ing and sanctity of Berengar, opposed him, but urged a 
 compromise of tenets, which was agreed to. Leo also, by 
 
6o Gregory VI L 
 
 Hildebrand's advice, declared war against the Normans, and 
 even led the fight himself. 
 
 Hildebrand, now longing for the downfall of the Pope 
 he had used as his puppet, began to intrigue with the de- 
 posed Benedict \ and these two, conspiring together, bribed 
 the Italian troops into defection, so that Leo IX. was taken 
 prisoner by the Normans, and confined in Civitella and 
 Beneventum. 
 
 ** Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, 
 Quite vanquish'd him;" — 
 
 and when released by the pity of his captors, he returned 
 to Rome overcome with sorrow, and died of a broken heart, 
 April 19, 1054. 
 
 Hildebrand had taken his measures cunningly. Bene- 
 dict re-ascended the papal chair, and persecution and re- 
 venge occupied all his thoughts. This created a storm of 
 fury and insurrection. Hildebrand fomented the rage, be- 
 cause it formed his best excuse to his former ally for taking 
 part in the choice of a new occupant of the apostolic 
 primacy. He managed to get the appointment of plenipo- 
 tentiary of the Roman clergy and people, with unlimited 
 authority in this matter. He insinuated himself into the 
 confidence of the Emperor, and, by his singular address, 
 secured the nomination of the very man of his heart's desire. 
 This was Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstadt, the most influ- 
 ential of Henry's counsellors — a man of wealth, prudence, 
 and ambition. Gebhardt hesitated ; Hildebrand insisted ; 
 and the tiara — glittering temptation — overcame him. He 
 was consecrated — April 13, 1055 — as Victor II. Bene- 
 dict was enraged, and resisted ; but the masterly intrigues 
 of the Canon of the Roman Church secured a peaceful 
 
His Insatiable Ambition. 6i 
 
 accession — indeed, ex-Pope Benedict IX. died (?) in a con- 
 vent about the same time. 
 
 The choice of Hildebrand displayed great tact He 
 weakened the imperial council, and yet strengthened his 
 own party : for Gebhardt, who had passed all his lifetime 
 in Germany, and in the imperial court, as he was unac- 
 quainted with Italian laws and customs, could not materially 
 interfere with the working-out of the plans of the Cardinal 
 who had helped him into power. His art was that of An- 
 tony with Lepidus : — 
 
 " And though we lay these honours on this man, 
 To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads, 
 He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold — 
 To groan and sweat under the business — 
 Either led or driven as we point the way ; 
 
 To wind, to stop, to run directly on, 
 
 His corporal motion govem'd by my spirit." 
 
 Victor II. was acute enough to see that a strong ambi- 
 tion guided the views of Hildebrand, and he contrived to 
 rid himself of his personal control, by sending him as his 
 legate to France, to outroot simony. Hildebrand went, 
 full of outward obedience and inward wrath. But he was 
 an earnest man, and gave himself to the work, though he 
 did not leave means unarranged to maintain and further his 
 interests at Rome during the politicly-planned exile to 
 which the astute Pontiff had at once promoted and con- 
 demned him. On this mission, his fame was magnified by 
 popular ignorance, fanatical adulation, and cunning prelat- 
 ism. Stern and uncompromising in his Legatine functions, 
 he yet mingled such private suavity with his public arbitre- 
 ments, that admiration and love waited on his progress. 
 Short as he was in stature, his intrepidity and imperiousness 
 
62 Grego7y VII. 
 
 lent a dignity to his form ; and his keen, decisive intellect 
 left nothing unmoved which lay between his intentions and 
 the results he wished. Miraculous powers of spiritual dis- 
 cernment were attributed to him. It was said he had " that 
 curious skill which, comparing looks with words, could 
 pluck out the lie though guarded round about with subtlest 
 phrase — could see and tear a falsehood from the heart, 
 though it lay hidden like the germ of blight within a 
 flower." At a council held in Lyons, he accused the whole 
 assembled bishops of being disciples of Simon Magus, not 
 of Simon Peter. One bishop denied the charge. " Recite 
 the Doxology 1 " thundered Hildebrand. " Glory be to the 
 
 Father, the Son, and the ." A sudden alarm seized 
 
 the prelate as he attempted to name the Holy Spirit, and 
 confessing his guilt, he was deposed then, though afterwards 
 re-installed. Other eighty bishops, beHeving — or pretending 
 to beheve — in his supernatural prescience, confessed, and 
 were forgiven by the crafty legate. " Ceremony is a scare- 
 crow to awe-strike fools." 
 
 In this ambassadorial tour, Ferdinand of Castile and 
 Henry III. of Germany agreed to abide by the decision of 
 Hildebrand, as to which of them should bear the*exclusive 
 title of Emperor. The legate gave his voice in favour of 
 Henry's claim, and so made the sovereign of Germany the 
 bearer of a designation and supremacy, the right to which 
 was founded on the judicial decree of a Churchman. 
 
 Leaving Lyons, Hildebrand repaired to Clugni — now 
 governed by Abbot Hugo — and began the reform of the 
 monks there, by condemning to death many of the most 
 licentious, indolent, and ignorant, asserting that he did so 
 by the inspiring suggestion of Jesus Christ. At Tours he 
 called Berengar before him, and by sheer threats compelled 
 
Sttccess of his hitrigues. 63 
 
 him to abjure his doctrines. After these displays of zeal, 
 Victor recalled him to Rome. But here his influence was 
 too manifest, and he was sent to Florence, and kept under 
 surveillaftce — an unavailing measure; for he was too well 
 versed in intrigue, and too firmly determined on working 
 out his designs, to abstain either from secret efforts or open 
 acts. The winning card seemed always in his hand. 
 
 In 1056, the Emperor, Henry III., died, leaving Agnes, 
 his wife, regent of the kingdom, and the Pope guardian of 
 the person of his son, Henry IV. — a child six years of age. 
 This was a fresh chance for effecting the papal supremacy, 
 and the sleepless mind of Hildebrand foresaw that new 
 moves on the chess-board of European politics were pos- 
 sible. Victor, Henry's guardian, died in 1057. But the 
 master-builder of the Pontificate was not yet prepared to 
 place (and be) the key-stone of his finished work ; and 
 though he coveted the Papacy, he employed his influence 
 to put the tiara and the purple on another. He restrained 
 his own ambition, only as huntsmen pull the red-eyed 
 mastiff in, " to let it slip with deadlier certainty" at last. 
 Policy, as usual, dictated the choice, and the manner of 
 expressing it. Frederic of Lorraine was the brother of 
 Godfrey, duke of Tuscany, whose power, as a barrier 
 between the Papal states and the empire, would be advan- 
 tageous. Though Hildebrand was nominated, to keep his 
 name and position before the Church, Frederic was elected, 
 apparently by a tumult, really by Hildebrand's consummate 
 management. The new Pope was styled Stephen IX. 
 New honours were showered upon his helpmate, and Hilde- 
 brand was delegated to represent the Church at the imperial 
 court of Germany. Pursuing the directions of the prime 
 minister and dictator of the apostolic see, Stephen decreed 
 
64 Gregory VII, 
 
 that ecclesiastics should not be cited before civil tribunals, 
 and that they should not be taxed by the secular power. 
 He also projected bestowing upon his brother Godfrey the 
 imperial crown, and of employing him to expel the Normans 
 from Naples and Sicily. But death, after an eight months' 
 reign, stayed his unaccomplished intent at the very moment 
 of its initiation. Before his death, he caused the assembled 
 clergy- and people of Rome to swear that they would delay 
 the election of a successor till Hildebrand's return from the 
 German court. The Romans naturally hated Germanic 
 popes, and, taking advantage of Hildebrand's absence, not- 
 withstanding their oath, they chose John Mincius, bishop of 
 Villetri, nicknamed the Stupid; and, under the title of Bene- 
 dict X., had him consecrated by the Archbishop of Ostia. Hil- 
 debrand posted rapidly to Rome, bearing with him the letters 
 patent of the Empress-Regent, Agnes, for the enthronisation 
 of Gerard, bishop of Florence, a native of Burgundy, related 
 to the duke of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, accom- 
 panied by whose armies he marched to Rome. Benedict X. 
 resigned through fear, and Gerard (Nicholas II.) was con- 
 secrated on 6th January 1059, in the church of St Peter's, 
 Rome. The Romans were riotous, and tumults broke out 
 against the new Pontiff. He retired to Pisenum, and left 
 the control of the revoltful factions to Hildebrand. In this 
 emergency, his courage and cunning did not forsake him. 
 Threats and bribes were freely employed to still or soothe 
 the insurgents, and before Easter the Pope— now rivalless 
 by the death, fraudful and violent, of Benedict X.— was 
 supreme, in seeming, at Rome. 
 
 In 1059, at a council, in the Lateran at Rome, consisting 
 of 113 members of the hierarchy, it was resolved, at Hilde- 
 brand's instigation, that no one should be placed in the 
 
' Plot and Counterplot. 65 
 
 Apostolic Chair except by the consent and choice of the 
 College of Cardinals — reserving to the German Emperor 
 the right of assent Thus the Roman clergy, the Emperor, 
 and the people were at once denuded of their several rights 
 in the election of the Primate of the Church. Hildebrand 
 was now the acting governor of the whole machinery of the 
 Papal Court, and the invariable companion and confidant of 
 the father and shepherd of Christ's flock. By his energetic 
 plots, Robert Guiscard, the leader of the Normans, was made 
 the shield of the Church against the resistant counts and 
 barons, whose rights the new resolves of the hierarchy had 
 infringed ; and the services of this adventurer in putting down 
 the refractory aristocracy of Italy, were rewarded by the title 
 of duke, and by an investiture of the lands of Apulia, Cala- 
 bria, Sicily, &c. He, in return, swore allegiance to the Holy 
 See. The grasp of the Papacy was gradually more and 
 more tightened round the sceptre rather than the crook, and 
 step by step did the ardent and ambitious Hildebrand 
 advance the occupant of St Peter's chair from shepherd-like 
 oversight to sovereign supremacy. 
 
 This purpose was fatally pursued, even to extermination, 
 against the partisans of Benedict X. The Norman troops 
 were "let slip'^ upon the counts and barons in the Cam- 
 pagna, and with insatiable and sanguinary eagerness they 
 attacked and destroyed them. This temporal overthrow of 
 his enemies did not content the arrogant audacity which 
 Hildebrand had evoked in the soul of Nicholas. He sent 
 an embassage, armed with full powers of excommunication, 
 against the simoniacal, wedlock-loving priests of Milan. 
 Many contumacious bishops were deposed, and the offend- 
 ing and penitent were threatened and warned. So much 
 further was the great scheme evolved ; and a new machinery 
 
 £ 
 
66 Gregory VII. 
 
 was requisite to carry on the schemes of the progress party. 
 On the 4th June 1061, Nicholas 11. died at Florence, in 
 circumstances not quite free from suspicion. 
 
 Hildebrand knew that the sanctity of helplessness was 
 thrown over the interest of Henry IV. during his minority, 
 and that no final struggle could be managed until he was 
 able himself to hold the reins of empire. The time was not 
 yet white for his harvest, and hence he determined again to 
 set another in the forehead of his party, while he should 
 move and animate the government. He offered to compro- 
 mise the difference between the Empire and the Church, 
 by undertaking to secure the election of any ecclesiastic the 
 Empress-Regent would fix upon, provided cardinals alone 
 were, according to the new electoral law, allowed to give 
 their votes. This, on behalf of her son, she refused to agree 
 to; and at a congress of bishops at Basle, Cadolaus was 
 chosen by the Imperialists to fill the papal seat. He took 
 the title of Honorius II. Hildebrand — determined not to 
 be foiled in the mighty achievement on which he had set 
 his heart, and towards the accomplishment of which he had 
 toiled with such eager intensity — called together an opposing 
 council, and, as Cardinal-Archdeacon of Rome, proposed 
 the elevation of Anselmo, bishop of Lucca, to the headship 
 of the Apostolic See. This was agreed to with acclamation, 
 and Alexander II. became the rival of Honorius. Hilde- 
 brand intimated to the emperor that he was prepared to 
 maintain the validity of the election made by the cardinalate 
 with the sword, if requisite. Henry decided on appealing to 
 arms against this usurpation, and preparations for war were 
 made by both parties. Meanwhile, Hildebrand hastened 
 the consecration and enthronisation of his nominee. But 
 his fiery temper, roused to desperation at the occurrence of 
 
Assaulting the Pope, 67 
 
 such a crisis, for once outran discretion, and made him for- 
 get his usual tactics — a mingling of audacious daring, fore- 
 thoughtful caution, and well-veiled cunning. 
 
 It happened thus: — In 1061, in that old church which 
 now forms one of the vaults of the Vatican, and is, as fable 
 reports, reared over the spot where the remains of the apostle 
 Peter repose, the magnificent ceremonials usual on the 
 consecration of a new pontiff had, despite the protest by 
 Benzone, bishop of Alba, against the legitimacy -of the 
 inauguration, because it wanted the specially reserved sanc- 
 tion of the emperor, just been completed. Alexander II., 
 Vicar-General of the Church, and the earthly representative 
 of its heavenly head, was preaching in the ordinary humble, 
 " nolo episcopari" style, in presence of a conclave of cardinals, 
 ambassadors, and people. In his sermon he lamented the 
 divided state of the Church, and expressed so earnest a 
 desire for the peace of Zion, that he even proffered to sus- 
 pend the exercise of his holy functions till he had received 
 the assent of the imperial power to his appointment. This, 
 Hildebrand could not brook. It seemed to him yielding 
 up to kingly sway a power of which the Church ought never 
 now to quit its hold. He dashed up to the papal throne, 
 and there struck the Pontiff on the cheek with his closed 
 fist, and ejecting him fi-om the church, locked him up in 
 his chambers to fast and repent. Even to such a height of 
 imperious domineering had this prelate raised himself — 
 even thus did he then lord it over God's heritage ! The 
 Pope, like a flogged cur, was thereafter submissive to his 
 master. Hildebrand ruled and overruled everything. Risk- 
 ing the arbitrement of war, he was, on the plains of Nero, 
 14th of April 1062, defeated by Cadolaus, who entered 
 Rome in triumph. But it was short. Duke Godfrey of 
 
68 Gregory VII. 
 
 Tuscany and Hildebrand besieged him there, and he was 
 compelled to fly. Blood, pillage, and horror prevailed 
 everywhere, and the enemies of Alexander II. were fain to 
 lick the dust before the unquailing Chancellor of the Holy 
 See, for to that office Hildebrand had been raised by the 
 insulted Pope. By the aid of Bishop Annone, Hildebrand 
 contrived to kidnap the youthful Emperor Henry. Agnes, 
 his mother, resigned her functions, withdrew her sanction of 
 Cadolaus, was absolved, and ended her days in the city of 
 Rome, an humble devotee of the Holy See. 
 
 At a council in Cologne, with the boy-emperor, a prisoner, 
 at its head, Alexander II. was declared legally elected. This 
 decision was re-pronounced at Rome in the Lent of 1062, 
 and Cadolaus was excommunicated. He was not subdued 
 though. He determined to run the gauntlet with his foes, 
 especially with that inexorable prince of plots who had 
 tricked him out of the purple and fine linen of the Papacy, 
 — Hildebrand. 
 
 The Lombardese army of Cadolaus met the Tuscan 
 soldiers of Godfrey in the Leonine portion of Rome, and 
 was defeated. Cadolaus fought with the courage of despair, 
 and having, with one Cencius, cut his way through the Hilde- 
 brandists, reached the Castle of St Angelo, where he defi- 
 antly sustained a siege of two years, and whence he at last 
 escaped. He continued the war during his hfe, though he 
 was again deposed at Mantua in 1064. At the same council, 
 Alexander 11. was solemnly proclaimed to be legally elected, 
 and all his acts were confirmed. 
 
 The victorious Pontiff, less mindful of the duties of his 
 dignity than the power of enjoyment, and the pomp and 
 grandeur it conferred, left the management of the tempoial 
 and spiritual affairs of the Papacy to the secret begetter of 
 
The Philosophy of Intrigue, 69 
 
 all those schemes which tended to the overshadowing of the 
 whole world by one gigantic institution, which should per- 
 vade and permeate all — should not only rule all princes, but 
 enforce obedience from all people. Hildebrand unhaltingly 
 pursued his course, strong in the invincibility of his cause, 
 and in the inflexibility of his own character, and by the 
 mighty chemistry of his own passionate persistency, regu- 
 lated the results of the co-operatmg activities of rivals to the 
 productions of his own ends — the union of the priesthood 
 into one interest-linked phalanx ; the attainment of entire 
 supremacy for the Popedom ; the organisation of a grand 
 central authority in Rome, whose behests should control 
 the haughtiest monarchs and the most indomitable peoples j 
 the institution of a permanent and invulnerable ecclesias- 
 tical State j the aggrandisement of the Church, so that it 
 might be the unopposed tutor of humanity in Christian 
 civilisation. 
 
C^SARISM IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 I HE hurry of events continued. Hildebrand pur- 
 sued his purpose with the swerveless intensity of 
 conviction. The age required an inflexible and 
 energetic spirit, filled brimful with a thought new to the 
 world and history ; and success had hitherto authenticated 
 the mission of that premier of the Church. To erect, amid 
 the ceaseless turmoil of war, a durable power, capable of 
 authoritatively acting as the champion and guardian of 
 civilisation, intelligence, and morality, against military licence 
 and the tyranny of force — to rear, among, and yet above, 
 the thrones of kings and emperors, a supreme Regality, 
 wielding a superintending and controlling sway over all life 
 and all the issues of life, over potentates and people, law- 
 givers and laws, noble and serf, priest and proselyte — to 
 establish an organisation whose influences were woven into 
 the innermost tissues of society, and whose ruler was armed 
 with the might of a godlike irresistibihty — whose foremost 
 man held kings as thralls, and emperors as vassals — whose 
 chief was empowered to direct, advise, reprimand, denounce, 
 and even depose monarch or minister — seemed to him a 
 noble and a holy aim. With the devoted absorption of a 
 
The Celibacy of the Clergy, 71 
 
 passion, he had given himself up to its accomplishment. 
 The gleam upon the ultimate heights of effort was already- 
 becoming visible. The sword and sceptre were waning 
 before the crosier. To halt now in his great life-task would 
 have been traitorous alike to the past and to the future. 
 Hesitance seemed to be a crime — the greatest crime he 
 could commit. If he must tarnish the most fine gold of 
 the papal tiara with intrigues, warfare, craft, and fraud, and 
 mix its divine metal with a human alloy, the statesman's 
 ready plea, necessity, formed an ample justification — 
 
 ** The cause exacts it, and I may not shrink — 
 That cause which makes of all this mortal world 
 But one vast engine for its purposes ; 
 And still works on, and pauses not, nor spares, 
 Though every strained and shrieking cable were 
 Spun out of human fibre." 
 
 To bind together the whole priesthood in one inviolable 
 unity, strong in its indivisibility — to abstract all family and 
 national feeling from the soul — to sacerdotalise the clergy — 
 to keep them a class apart and separate — to knit them to- 
 gether into one specific organisation — to converge all their 
 feelings, desires, ambitions, interests, and efforts towards 
 one object, the permanency of the order to which they be- 
 longed — it was requisite that they should be individually 
 brought into an exceptional position. In one way only 
 could this be effectively attained — priests should be mar- 
 riageless. A life of entire celibacy sunders at once the ties 
 of kindred, those closely-entertwining fibres of the soul 
 which join society into a mass. In becoming a priest, the 
 novice required to unlink himself from the world, and to 
 fasten himself into the ecclesiastical brotherhood; to re- 
 linquish all sonship, except to the Church ; all fatherhood, 
 
72 Gregory VII, 
 
 except that of spiritual parentage ; all bondage of the heart's 
 vows, save to his order. Every avenue of pleasure, hope, 
 profit, ambition, or success was sealed to the priest but one 
 — unquestioning submission to the Church. Hereditary- 
 place and power were thus made to them impossible, and 
 the Church became an oligarchy continually resistive of the 
 overweening domination of kings and nobles — an oligarchy 
 in which, for the most part, talent secured eminence. Hence 
 the ardent pertinacity with which Hildebrand insisted on 
 priestly celibacy, and hence the vigour with which he di- 
 rected his energy to the accomplishment of this hierarchi- 
 cal necessity. 
 
 Simony was scarcely less hurtful to the Church than 
 marriage. The sale and purchase of preferment and power 
 in the Church made its prelates little else than the tools of 
 the sovereign who nominated the holder of office — the in- 
 struments by which his purposes were to be worked. There 
 was no anchor of safety for the Church in a priesthood 
 whose place and power depended on Imperial sanction. 
 The cables were sure to slip under any strain. It must be 
 felt by every piiest and prelate that he was the servant of 
 the Church alone ; that he was situated where and as he 
 was for its sake ; and that in its danger his own fate was 
 jeoparded. Celibacy and the Papal investiture of the 
 members of the hierarchy were co-ordinate modes of effect- 
 ing the sacerdotahsm of the priesthood; of maintaining 
 the clergy as a separate caste, having an interest in a vast 
 spiritual organisation and institution, which claimed pre- 
 eminence in power, and held the kingdoms of the world in 
 subserviency to its designs. Claiming to be a divinely 
 substantiated authority, the Church necessarily held that 
 all earthly dignity derived its legitimacy from it, and was 
 
Force, Fraud, and Insurrection. 73 
 
 dependent upon and amenable to it. The balance of power 
 Hildebrand held to be the will of the Cliurch. 
 
 Purposes such as these, interfering with Imperial domina- 
 tion, social life, civic institutions, state poHcy, national feel- 
 ings, family interests, and personal liberty, met indeed with 
 little acceptance in the stormy youth of civilisation, and 
 required an unyielding austerity, a decisive energy, an in- 
 tense zeal, and an overbearing persistency, to bring them 
 into a workable condition. These quaUties Hildebrand 
 possessed ; and that he exercised them, the narrative of his 
 acts amply shows. This we now resume : — 
 
 Alexander II. deputed Hugo, cardinal of Silva-Candida, 
 to go, as his legate, to Spain, to persuade Sancho, the new 
 King of Arragon and Castile, to adopt the ritual of the 
 Romish Church ; while he, accompanied by Hildebrand, 
 went to his native city, Milan, to quell a disturbance between 
 its citizens and their ecclesiastical superiors. Hildebrand 
 had stirred up the whole excitement and revolt, that he 
 might press the Pope to decisive action against simony and 
 the marriage of priests, which he stigmatised as concubinage. 
 Of simony the Milanese clergy proved their guilUessness ; 
 and they defended their right to marry. Archbishop Guido, 
 though himself unwedded, maintained the justice and legahty 
 of priestly marriages. Ariold, a tool of Hildebrand's, op- 
 posed him. Guido was excommunicated \ and Ariold^ in 
 revenge, was drowned by the populace in the Lago Maggiore. 
 Hildebrand sent an armed force against Guido, who was 
 compelled to succumb. Henry IV. invested one Godfrey 
 with the vacant dignity. Hildebrand opposed the Imperial 
 nominee, and, by excommunication, procured his retirement, 
 whereupon Guido was re-instated. 
 
 Hildebrand's watchful eye was everywhere. The Pope 
 
74 Gregory VII. 
 
 enjoyed the delights of life at Lucca ; but he, intent on 
 effecting his great scheme, pursued the war against the de- 
 posed Pope, Cadolaus ; set Duke Godfrey to keep the Nor- 
 mans in check ; gave the Bohemian King the right to wear 
 a mitre ; sent legates to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark ; 
 kept a continual watch upon the German Emperor; and 
 fomented or originated quarrel, usurpation, and conquest 
 everywhere. He unsettled all, that in the re-settlement his 
 schemes might have a place. 
 
 The Cerdic dynasty, which for five centuries had mled in 
 England, had at last run its course. Edward the Confessor 
 was childless. Two claimants aimed at the sovereignty : 
 Harold, the chosen of the EngUsh people, and William, 
 (afterwards the Conqueror,) the nominee of Hildebrand, who 
 secured the Pope's sanction to his attempt to acquire the 
 throne of England. Harold was crowned in St Paul's, 
 London, on the day of Edward's death, (5th January 1066,) 
 with general acceptance; but on the 14th October of the 
 same year he was, after a dauntless fight, slain at Senlac, 
 near Hastings, in a war against the invasion of William. 
 So perished 
 
 *'The noblest and the last 
 
 Of Saxon kings ; save one, the noblest he — 
 
 The last of all;" 
 
 and Duke William, under the banner of St Peter, was hailed 
 as conqueror and as king. He presented Harold's battle- 
 flag and a portion of the spoil to his patron the Pope ; and 
 was crowned on Christmas - day, 1066, in Westminster 
 Abbey, by Aldred, archbishop of York. Hildebrand praised 
 the Conqueror enthusiastically ; but politicly endeavoured 
 to subjugate the clergy of England to the Romish Church. 
 To effect this, he sent legates from Rome, who deposed 
 
Britain's Opposition to Papacy, 75 
 
 curates, abbots, bishops, and archbishops, on the plea of 
 illegal ordination ; but really with the intent of substituting 
 clergy devoted to WilHam's cause, and so to preserve by 
 wrong what had been won by war. On the deposition of 
 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, 1070, Lanfranc, at the 
 urgent solicitation of Hildebrand, accepted the appointment, 
 and did his best to Romanise the English Church. Hilde- 
 brand felt considerable complacency in reflecting on this 
 signal victory of his astutely laid plans, for Lanfranc was 
 one of the most notable controversialists of that age. On 
 going to Rome to receive the pallium, — a short white cloak 
 of lambs' wool, with a red cross over the shoulders and down 
 the back, which was given by the Popes as the outward 
 symbol of ecclesiastical dignity, — Alexander II. and his 
 archdeacon conferred on Lanfranc double honours, and suc- 
 ceeded for a time in procuring homage to the Primate ot 
 the Catholic Church from a people who had been more 
 remarkable for resistance than submission to the Pope. By 
 force, fraud, connivance, or intrigue, Hildebrand generally 
 gained his object : no difficulty could daunt, and no impedi- 
 ment arrest him in his course. His position about this time 
 is indicated in these lines, from a satire by his friend, Petrus 
 Damianus, viz. : — 
 
 •' Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro ; 
 Tu facis hunc dominum, te facit ipse Deum." * 
 
 This Damianus was a man of singular genius, ability, and 
 power; of great activity of mind and vehemence of thought. 
 He was almost the rival of Hildebrand, who, however, held 
 him in leading-strings. They had sworn to co-operate in 
 making the Papal throne the greatest of all earthly powers. 
 
 * I worship the Pope ceremoniously, but I adore thee submissively. 
 Thou makest this man lord : he makes thee God. 
 
76 Gregory VII, 
 
 They often quarrelled, but always became reconciled. In 
 early life he had, in cloistered monkhood, as Dante says, 
 
 •* Fed his soul with thoughts contemplative ;" 
 
 but in his latter years he stood before kings. He was de- 
 puted by the ever -vigilant Hildebrand to preside at the 
 Council of Mayence, and to decide upon the proposed di- 
 vorce of Henry IV. from his wife Bertha, who, after four 
 years of married life, was childless. Damianus denied the 
 suit, and Hildebrand declared marriage indissoluble from 
 any cause except incestuous intercourse. The Archbishop 
 of Ravenna, who had withstood the papal usurpations, died 
 under the severest excommunications, and his people rose 
 in revolt against this harsh treatment. Damianus was sent 
 to appease the tumult, and to absolve the people from the 
 anathemas under which they were laid. He successfully 
 accomphshed his duty, and then died. Hildebrand by this 
 event was rivalless. 
 
 Of one tool, Annone, the abductor of Henry, he got rid 
 by relegating him to his office of bishop of Cologne, with 
 such extraordinary powers as made him, in effect, the Pope 
 of Germany. Hildebrand was as unscrupulous, when it 
 suited his own ends, in giving as in taking. 
 
 About this time, too, (107 1,) Hildebrand inaugurated a 
 great architectural reform at Rome, by repairing, restoring, 
 and decorating the ancient churches, and building new ones. 
 The Pope embraced the same idea, and built the cathedral 
 of Lucca ; and Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, erected 
 there the earhest Gothic church. This the Pope consecrated 
 as soon as completed : and then journeyed, for pleasure, 
 along the borders of the Neapolitan territory, while Hilde- 
 brand went off, sword in hand, to oust the usurping Normans 
 
Passion and its Consequences. "jj 
 
 irom the Papal dominions. In this object, by the aid of the 
 troops of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, Hildebrand was 
 entirely successful, and compelled the checkmated invaders 
 to retire from the Holy See. In return for the help Matilda 
 gave him, he nominated Guibert, the Itahan chancellor of 
 Henry IV., to the archbishopric of Ravenna, a man at once 
 ambitious and crafty, and therefore dangerous ; but Hilde- 
 brand could not yet afford to despise the possessor of an 
 army, and a lady devoted to his service. Things were now, 
 however, ripening apace for a change. 
 
 Henry IV., released from ecclesiastical tutelage, became 
 rampant against the aggressions of the Church. His de- 
 spotic tendency developed itself in perverse opposition to 
 the priesthood ; and he exercised a haughty tyranny over 
 his subjects. Hildebrand delightedly saw the workings of 
 this alienating and impolitic absolutism, and hinted to his 
 subjects the possibility of gaining redress by an appeal to 
 Rome. The princes of Saxony complained to the Pope 
 about his arrogance. Hildebrand persuaded Alexander to 
 threaten the King. This made him furious. Wrath blinded 
 him to consequences, and he cast aside the yoke of the 
 Church. In actual stubbornness, he compelled the clergy 
 of Saxony and Thuringia to pay him one-half of the tithes ; 
 and he repudiated the election of Anselmo, bishop of Lucca, 
 which the Pope had confirmed. These resolves brought on 
 a crisis. The passions which drove Henry blindly on to his 
 purposes, roused the resentment of his Saxon subjects to 
 inveteracy and revolt. The all-subduing schemes of Hilde- 
 brand had been successful everywhere. This reckless con- 
 duct on the part of Henry alone was wanting to give him 
 cause of quarrel with apparent right upon his side. There was 
 now no object to be gained by further delay. It was the last 
 
78 Gregory VII. 
 
 act in the drama, whose denouement was to be the elevation 
 of the Papacy to the pinnacle of earthly power, prerogative, 
 and administration. At that hour, no one should occupy 
 the supreme chair except him who possessed the inexorable 
 will by which all things had been so arranged and subdued 
 — the master soul of the history of that age. The hour for 
 striking the last blow, and of stepping upon a throne to 
 which the world was subject, had now come, and on 21st 
 April T073, Pope Alexander II. died- the instrument was 
 cast from the hand that had wielded it. 
 
 Amid the palpitating of all hearts, intrigue and gold did 
 their work. A shower of largesses fell throughout Rome ; 
 a tumult arose among the people ; and the cardinals, in 
 terror, chose the favourite of the mob — and their own 
 master — Primate of the Church ; and " being assembled in 
 the church of St Peter in Vincuhs," did, "in the year 1073 
 of the incarnation of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, on 
 the 2 2d of April, the day of the burial of Pope Alexander 
 Second, of blessed memory," there and then " elect as shep- 
 herd and high Pontiff, and true Vicar of Christ, the arch- 
 deacon Hildebrand, a man of great learning and true piety; 
 of prudence, justice, and constancy in religion; modest, 
 sober, chaste ; master in his own house ; hospitable to the 
 poor; and nobly brought up in the bosom of the holy 
 Mother Church, from his tenderest years to his present age ; 
 learned ; whom we wish, in truth, to preside, with the same 
 power which Peter once exercised, over the Church of God." 
 So runs the decree. Hildebrand, escorted by the soldiers 
 of Tuscany, and greeted with the acclamations of the 
 populace, accepted the tiara, and (to imply the legitimacy 
 of the Pontiff — his friend and patron, Gregory VI. — whom 
 Henry III. had exiled) he assumed as his pontifical title 
 
Rome the Centre of Europe s Politics. 79 
 
 Gregory VII. The unflinching, earnest, and crafty labours 
 of a hfetime of poHtic statesmanship and unscrupulous 
 worldly obstinacy gained their reward ; the long coveted 
 purple swathed his form ; and, " after having prepared every- 
 thing to suit his wishes, he stepped into the papal chair the 
 moment he was ready," determined no longer to allow the 
 Church to be regarded as the handmaiden of the empires of 
 the earth, and to claim for her the supreme right of being 
 head over all — the sun in the firmament of potentates — the 
 president in the great theocracy of the universe. 
 
 Henry was exceedingly wroth at this unauthorised election, 
 and sent his faithful adherent, Count Eberhard, to protest 
 against any election to which he was not a consenting party. 
 Gregory pleaded that the Papacy had been forced upon 
 him ; and that he had delayed his consecration till he had 
 received the approval of the Emperor, to whom he had sent 
 an envoy. Henry, knowing his opponent's energy and 
 power, and being then engaged in attempting to suppress 
 the Saxon revolt, was contented with this acknowledgment 
 of his Imperial claims, and sent a representative to assist 
 at the consecration of Gregory VII., which took place 29th 
 June 1073. 
 
 Rome was again the centre of European politics. It had 
 before conquered and reigned ; it was now to overrule — to 
 diffuse the animation of its influence throughout the kingdoms 
 of the earth, itself peerless, companionless, and irresistible. 
 The very pulses of poHcy were in her acts. The theory of 
 a theocracy is sublime ; but with earthly agencies it is a 
 visionary impracticality. The power of a universal spiritual 
 supremacy, seconded in its ascendancy by the most eminent 
 secular sovereignty, may be omnipotently but can scarcely 
 be beneficially wielded. For the management of the secular 
 
8o Gregory VII, 
 
 concerns of his theocratic domination Gregory had sedu- 
 lously prepared, and he had girt himself up to the height of 
 his great purpose. He had Norman feudatories in the 
 south ; Tuscan auxiharies in the north ; France was sub- 
 missive ; England respectful, though resistant ; Spain tacitly 
 subject. He had brought about revoltful complaints from 
 Suabia, Bavaria, and Carinthia against his chief secular an- 
 tagonist, Henry IV. j and he had subjugated, by a free be- 
 stowal of power and place, many of the Lombardese clergy. 
 So far, intrigue had given his policy hopefulness. He saw 
 his way clearly to the effecting of his life-long aim, and in- 
 stantly set about it. 
 
 In a few weeks subsequent to his consecration, Gregory 
 summoned a council at the Lateran. It was a success. 
 Never, since the palmy days of the old Empire, had so 
 many grandees of Church and State assembled in council. 
 His machinations were effectual. A decree was passed, for- 
 bidding marriage to priests, commanding the wedded to put 
 away their wives, and ordaining that no layman should 
 assist at, or regard as sacred, any act of worship performed 
 by a married priest. Rebukes, menaces, excommunications, 
 ruthless persecutions, compelled obedience to this austere 
 edict. Simoniacal traffic in ecclesiastical dignities was also 
 prohibited, under similar disabilities ; and lay investiture was 
 strictly forbidden. Churchmen were to be the lieges only 
 of the papal sovereignty, and the right to benefices was to 
 be vahd on receipt of ordination from an ecclesiastical supe- 
 rior ; so that the whole Church was brought under vassalage 
 to the Pontiff. 
 
 Against Robert Guiscard, Gregory marched with 10,000 
 men, and Guiscard retreated in fear. He next projected 
 an attack upon the Saracens, to win Jerusalem in a crusade, 
 
Ths Wisdom of the Serpent. 8 1 
 
 and to unite the Eastern and Western Churches. With this 
 ostensible object, he gathered an army of 50,000 men, and 
 thus flattered his friends and terrified his enemies. The 
 Church was filled with tumults. The Milanese clergy, the 
 Gallic bishops, the Synods of Erfurth and Lucca, resisted the 
 anti-marital enactment — blood flowed, and internal disorder 
 abounded. Groans and curses were heard ever)rvvhere, 
 and every combustible material was aggravated into flame. 
 France was threatened, England soothed, Venice flattered, 
 Denmark patronised, Robert Guiscard anathematised, Rus- 
 sia temporised with, Hungary received a sovereign from 
 Gregory, and Spain was taken under the care of the papal 
 hierarch. To humiliate and depress all before the 
 Church was the one constant and unvarying aim of Gregory. 
 In the determination to effect submission, he was inex- 
 orable. He was intent on regulating at will the polity of 
 Europe. 
 
 The weakness of the Empire was the opportunity of the 
 Church. Otho of Nordheim, the Cromwell of Saxony, 
 had defeated Henry, and his crown had been offered to 
 Rudolph of Suabia. In his anxiety to subdue the revolt of 
 the Saxons, Henry was wilHng to purchase the neutrality of 
 Gregory at any price; — he paid too dear a one. He sub- 
 mitted, unremonstratingly, to every encroachment. This 
 much was gained for the Popedom, but no countervailing 
 help was vouchsafed. Indeed, Gregory knew that only 
 while the combatants were actually engaged in hostilities to 
 the death could he hope to take his next move in the intri- 
 cate game of papal diplomacy. 
 
 This move was another Lateran Council. There the in- 
 vestiture question was emphatically settled. Henry treated 
 all resistance with contempt. Complaints hurried in to the 
 
82 Gregory VII. 
 
 Romish Vicar of Christ, regarding the crimes, public and 
 private, of Henry, towards and among the Saxons, and 
 Gregory summoned Henry to appear to answer to these 
 charges. On Christmas Eve, 1075, an attempt was made 
 to assassinate Gregory while he was on his way to worship 
 at the shrine of the Holy Mary. Cencius, the assassin, con- 
 fessed, and was (magnanimously ?) forgiven. It was asserted 
 that Cencius was Henry's tool. It is far more likely that 
 it was a prearranged plot of Gregory's own. It imparted 
 the bitterness of personality to the contest between the Va- 
 tican and the Empire. Gregory's citation was disregarded 
 by Henry; but to the indictment of sacrilege, personal 
 uncleanness, and assassination, made against him by the 
 Pope, Henry answered by a countercharge of base birth, 
 murder, simony, demon-worship, profligacy, and profanity, 
 against Gregory ; and on these counts carried a decision of 
 the Synod of Worms against the Vicegerent of God. This 
 decision was greedily countersigned by numerous sufferers 
 from Gregory's recent anti-marital imperiousness. 
 
 In Lent, 1076, Gregory sat on his throne in the Vatican, 
 among the clerical and lay supporters of his august claims. 
 Before this new senate, Henry had been called to attend as 
 a criminal. Roland, an ambassador from the Synod of 
 Worms, appeared instead, and thus addressed the Pope : — 
 " The sovereign and the prelates of Germany and Italy 
 send through me this command, — Descend, without delay 
 from St Peter's chair, and abandon thine usurpation over 
 the Church. To such honour none can be admitted with- 
 out imperial sanction." Then, turning to the assembly, 
 he said : — " To you, brethren, it is commanded that, at the 
 l^east of Pentecost, ye appear before the King, and from 
 him receive a Pope and father for the Church, — this same 
 
The Church Overawes the Empire, 83 
 
 Gregory being a wolf only." The Prefect of Rome arrested 
 the intruder, but Gregory saved him from the rage of the 
 convention. Henry was thereafter solemnly and unani- 
 mously deposed, and his subjects released from their oaths 
 and allegiance. Europe was astonished at the doctrine 
 and its application. Hildebrand was too politic to take a 
 false step. He knew the state of Saxony, Henry's weak- 
 ness, and the general discontent of the subjects of the 
 Empire, and he had calculated on the awe with which such 
 a decree would be received. Henry was deserted every- 
 where, and treated as an outcast. His soul was fevered 
 with hate and vengeance. With the audacity of despair, 
 he flung himself on the loyalty of his people, and the 
 burghers and peasantry rallied to his standard. Henry's 
 contumacy excited the ire of the Pope, and he issued a 
 rescript for the election of a new Emperor. In October 
 
 1076, a Diet met at Tribur, or Oppenheim, at which it was 
 resolved by the princes of the Empire that if by February 2, 
 
 1077, Henry did not present himself submissively before 
 the Pontiff, confess his sins, and gain absolution, the elec- 
 tion of a new king should be immediately expedited. The 
 Lombard bishops excommunicated Gregory at the Council 
 of Pavia. Henry resolved on appearing before the Pope 
 in Italy, rather than in Germany — in private, rather than in 
 public. He set out, accompanied by his faithful wife, 
 Bertha, his son Conrad, and a few attendants, in Novem- 
 ber, and journeyed during winter, in most disastrous wea- 
 ther, from Spires, through by-paths over the summits of the 
 Alps, and into the intricacies of the Apennines, that he 
 might intercept Gregory on his way to the Diet of Augs- 
 burg. He found him at Canossa, in Apulia, the favourite 
 residence of the Countess Matilda. Here a number of 
 
84 Gregory VII. 
 
 German bishops were doing penance in cells, on bread and 
 water, for their insubordination to the Holy See; and hither, 
 unarmed and unattended, came Henry as a supphant to the 
 spiritual despot. A cold January frost chilled the blood 
 when Henry toiled up the rocky footway to Canossa's walls. 
 As he approached, the outer gates of the fortress opened to 
 him, but the door of the third entrance was moveless. In the 
 bitter cold— less bitter than Gregory's tyranny— stiff, faint, 
 and weary, Henry stood in the court for three days. At length, 
 tamed for a time by hunger, cold, and degradation, on the 
 fourth day he was admitted to the presence of the haughty 
 and dominant Pontiff, to cry for mercy. What a thrill of 
 ecstasy swept along the tense cordage of that old man's 
 frame when at his feet— the feet of another carpenter's son — 
 the hereditary lord of the mightiest Empire in Christendom 
 knelt, crushed and awed, before him ! It was a hfetime's 
 recompense. Having exposed him to the contempt of men, 
 Gregory restored Henry to the communion of the Church, 
 but meanwhile held him bound to abstain from the exercise 
 or enjoyment of any kingly prerogative. He took the con- 
 secrated bread of the Eucharist, and, protesting his own 
 blamelessness, partook of it, saying, " May Almighty God, 
 this very day, strike me with sudden death if I be really 
 gililty!" and then challenged Henry to do likewise. Henry 
 recoiled from the test, but was absolved. The iron had, 
 however, entered Henry's soul ; rage, shame, dishonour, 
 stung him to effort, and he determined upon being once 
 again " every inch a king." His illusory awe had departed, 
 and with no enervation of will did he pursue his future 
 designs. 
 
 The German princes, at Gregory's instigation, elected 
 Rudolph as Emperor. Henry returned to maintain his 
 
The Calamities of War, 85 
 
 rights, and for three years a devastating war was kept up, 
 with alternating success. Gregory, glad to see Germany 
 humbled, temporised between the parties, pretending me- 
 diation, but giving none, until, in 1080, at Miilhausen, the 
 arbitrement of the sword declared for Rudolph ; and then 
 he re-excommunicated Henry, and sent his opponent a 
 crown, with the inscription, "Peter gives this crown to 
 Rudolph." 
 
 Henry, at a council held in Brixen, again also deposed 
 the Pope, and caused Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, to 
 be chosen in his stead, with the title of Clement III. Two 
 pontiffs and two emperors now contested for power. On 
 the banks of Elster, Henry, in 1080, encountered Rudolph, 
 whose army was led by the illustrious Otho of Nordheim. 
 Rudolph's cause unambiguously triumphed, but it was a 
 bootless victory. On the field, Tasso's hero, Godfrey of 
 Bouillon, thrust the spear of the imperial banner into Ru- 
 dolph's side. His right hand was hacked off, and he died 
 exclaiming, "That was the hand with which, uplifted, I 
 swore fidehty to Henry." This was looked on as a judg- 
 ment of God against him. 
 
 The victorious and exultant Henry marched to Rome 
 three times in three successive years, besieged it, and re- 
 duced his implacable enemy, Gregory, to such straits, that 
 he was compelled to shut himself up in the castle of St 
 Angelo, and to apply for help to William of England, who, 
 however, excused himself. In these contests, cities were 
 destroyed, lands devastated, churches spoiled, convents 
 ravaged, and all the districts around Rome were subjected 
 to grievous calamities. Though a new king of Germany 
 was crowned and consecrated, Henry, with a bloodhound's 
 pertinacity, remained in Italy, resolved to subdue the Pope, 
 
86 Gregory VII. 
 
 Pride and pity strove for the mastery in Gregory's heart ; 
 but his strong beUef that 
 
 " 'Tis not the iron arm, 'tis the strong will 
 Gains in that game wherein we mortals 
 Play life against life," 
 
 made him hold out, even when, on the 30th Nov. 1083, a 
 pontifical synod strove to persuade him to recognise Henry, 
 that there might be peace. He spoke eloquently, humbly, 
 yet boldly, and refused. He dismissed the synod with his 
 benediction, but resolved to bear the " hazard of the die," 
 and "endure unto the end." 
 
 Fate did not now delay. On 2ist March 1084, Henry 
 entered Rome in triumph. He took possession of the 
 Lateran, the bridges, and the strongholds. Gregory fled to 
 his fastness, St Angelo. Henry was crowned in Rome by 
 Guibert, who was also consecrated Pontiff there. The 
 Caesar of the Church alone was defiant ; in the very crisis 
 of his life foiled and baffled, he was yet unsubdued in spirit. 
 He could not be the craven to supplicate mercy from 
 Henry. A few hours, and St Angelo must yield to inner 
 discord and to outward siege. A shout arose. Robert 
 Guiscard, now reconciled to Gregory, approached. Henry 
 fled — his thirst for vengeance unslaked. Rome was burnt 
 and sacked; but the Pontiff was released, though at the 
 cost of two-thirds of the pontifical city. 
 
 Gregory reassumed his sway ; called a new council ; re- 
 fulmined against Guibert and Henry, and then left the scene 
 of the late heartrending devastation for Salerno, under the 
 safe conduct of Guiscard. The civil wars having been 
 brought to a truce, a pestilence supervened upon a famine. 
 The ordination. Death, went out against Gregory. He 
 sickened of the plague, and died on 25th May 1085, with 
 
His Character and Work. Sy 
 
 this epigram upon his lips, — " I have loved righteousness, 
 and hated iniquity; and therefore I die in exile." The 
 cardinals and bishops who stood around his couch had pre- 
 vailed upon him to pardon all his enemies, except Guibert 
 and Henry. He had given his mitre to Anselm of Lucca, 
 and named him successor to the primacy. Enclosed in a 
 marble urn, after a papal reign of nearly twelve years, and 
 in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he was buried in the cathe- 
 dral church of St Matthew, at Salerno, and there he lay, 
 memorialless, till John of Procida, the enactor of "The 
 Sicilian Vespers," two- centuries thereafter, built over his 
 urn a magnificent chapel named St Michael. Gregory was 
 canonised in 1584 ; a statue of him was erected at Salerno, 
 1 6 10; and his name was razed from the catalogue of saints 
 by Napoleon I. It has since been reinscribed. 
 
 Thus passed away a man of singular courage, zeal, and 
 genius ; the vanquisher of feudalism and imperialism ; the 
 creator of that triple-crowned dominion which claimed 
 power in heaven, on earth, and in hell. A great, world- 
 centralizing spirit, who was quickened with a Divine 
 thought of strange significance, but who, in the sublime 
 yearnings of a mighty purpose, forgot that it is not given to 
 man " to do evil that good may come." In the very means 
 adopted to attain his great end, the seeds of failure were 
 implanted. In the celibacy of the clergy, and the power 
 of excommunication and indulgence, the Reformation lay 
 like a germ. In the flourishing outgrowth of the Church, 
 and in the supereminent claims over all sovereignties on 
 which Gregory staked the very being of the Church of 
 Christ, there were embedded the causes which, in our own 
 day — eight centuries after — have led to many changes in 
 European life, — the unity of Italy, the fall of the Pope's 
 
88 Gregory VII, 
 
 temporal power, the , patriotic grandeur of Garibaldi. So 
 true is it that God's purposes underlie and yet control all 
 human action ; that " the lot is cast into the lap, but the 
 whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." Those who com- 
 prehend the true philosophy of history have no fear for the 
 future j they know that 
 
 * ' The hour shall come, 
 When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit — 
 Who, like the eagle cowering o'er his prey, 
 Watch with quick eye, and strike and strike again, 
 If but a sinew vibrate — shall confess 
 Their wisdom folly. Even now the flame 
 Bursts forth, where once it burnt so gloriously, 
 And, dying, left a splendour like the day ; 
 That, hke the day, diffused itself, and still 
 Blesses the earth : — the light of genius, virtue. 
 Greatness in thought, and act, contempt of death, 
 Godlike example." 
 
 Dante, Wycliffe, Luther, Loyola, Calvin, Pascal, Wolsey, 
 Philip II., and even Garibaldi, are, in a great measure, in- 
 explicable enigmas of life, unless we know and recognise 
 the life-work of the first wearer of the triune diadem of a 
 Supreme Papacy, Gregory VII., and acknowledge his place 
 in history as an Epoch Man, 
 
Roger Bacon — Experimental 
 Science. 
 
 A.D. 1214-1294, 
 
** I had a virion. — In an antique dome 
 
 A holy man I saw, with cap and gown ; 
 Around the walls were many a ponderous tome 
 
 With hasp and hinge — all schoolmen of renown. 
 Alembics, crucibles, metallic ores, 
 
 And wondrous things from air, and earth, and sea, 
 "Were hung on high, or strewn upon the floors ; 
 
 As if he wished combined with him to be 
 All miracles of matter and of mind ; 
 And he did study wisdom till behind 
 His fellow-men were left ; and then they knew 
 
 That he had leagued with demons — knew it well ; 
 And, fearing him, condemn'd ; then, reckless, threw 
 
 His aged limbs to wither in a cell." — D. M. MoiR. 
 
 •* Bacon. Men call me Bacon. 
 
 *• Vandermast. Lordly thou look'st, as if that thou wert leam'd 
 Thy countenance, as if science held her seat 
 Between the circled arches of thy brow." 
 
 Robert Greenes ** Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ^''^ I59i- 
 
 '* That proto-martyr of science in Christendom — Roger Bacon." 
 
 Samuel Brown. 
 
 Roger Bacon, by far the truest philosopher of the middle ages." 
 
 Hallam. 
 
 ** The Franciscan — Roger Bacon^stood alone in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, on account of his taste and genius for physics, optics, and astro- 
 nomy." — Cousin, 
 
 ** Look at the history of the lives of our great philosophers, and you 
 will find that their progress has usually been a struggle against the pre 
 iudices of those by whom they were surrounded." — Robert Hunt, 
 
EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE. 
 
 XPERIMENTALISM is the name of the act and 
 art of testing thought that it may become know- 
 ledge. Its first step is observation. Things, on 
 being noticed, excite the activity of the mind, and call into 
 working the inner necessity of the soul — inquiry. The way 
 at first is " dim and perilous." The apparent and accidental 
 mingle so constantly with the real and the inherent — the 
 enveloping and concomitant so frequently cause us to pass 
 unheeded the essential and the central, that cognition is 
 puzzled, and knowledge becomes difficult of attainment 
 To see what is rather than what see^ns^ is the highest and 
 noblest exercise of the intellectual faculties. It may be — 
 ay, it is — possible to construct fine systems of nature out 
 of pure thought, excited by experience, but they will rarely 
 bear the test of methodical investigation ; i.e.^ gradual, suc- 
 cessive, and forethoughtful induction — the only true means 
 by which transient external experiences can be seen, and 
 known, and submitted to the understanding. Thus only 
 can the restless, shifting, changeful, and phenomenal be 
 steadied before the gaze of the soul, and brought to reveal 
 their secrets. The union of thought and action is the 
 highest hfe; it yields also the most exalting and exalted 
 truth. When the logic of pure thought harmonises with and 
 
92 ' Roger Baco7i. 
 
 explains the phenomena of nature or mind, and the oft 
 and properly -tested phenomena of nature sustain and 
 bear witness to the decisions of logic, then there is a cer- 
 tainty of truth j wherever there is an absence of either there 
 is a probability of error. Fads^ even when rightly observed, 
 are not truths ; they only yield them ; they are the words of 
 a sentence which thought translates and embodies. Truth 
 is shaped, moulded, evolved by the conjoint working of 
 reason and fact. Phenomena project a flowing stream of 
 sensations into the mind j 
 
 *' And when the stream 
 Which overflow'd the mind has pass'd away, 
 A consciousness remains that it has left 
 Deposited upon the silent shore 
 Of memory images and precious thoughts.''^ 
 
 The true meaning of facts is ascertained by experiment — by 
 trying whether the thoughts supposed to represent them 
 really do so in the very sense in which the mind conceives 
 them. The systematised facts of experience and reason are 
 science. 
 
 Science, like theology, has had its martyrs. Nor have 
 they been the less truly sufferers for God and truth because 
 they have striven to read the first volume of the Divine re- 
 velation, while others have pursued the study of the second. 
 All truth is of God, and leads to Him. To know nature in 
 her causes and her ends is to know God in one of His 
 manifestations, and needs neither preclude nor supersede 
 Scripture, in which the soul must trust. Nature is no surly 
 step-sister to the soul ; she rather encourages and entices 
 man to give full play to those 
 
 " Few traces 
 
 Of a diviner nature which look out 
 
 Through his corporeal baseness." 
 
Time and Circumstance. 93 
 
 And as she feels " the need of linking some delight to 
 knowledge," she makes all true cognition impart " a sense, 
 a feeling that he loses not" — the bHss of learning. 
 
 "Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure 3 
 No plot so narrow, be but nature there, 
 No waste so vacant, but may well employ 
 Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 
 Awake." 
 
 To such " fine issues" did she work in Roger ^Bacon to 
 incline him to a course of learning and ingenious studies. 
 
 Man's greatest hindrance to the acquisition of true know- 
 ledge has been man. The unswerving pursuit of truth, 
 though it is his highest calling, has seldom been man's fa- 
 vourite employment. Nor have those who devoted them- 
 selves to the thorough investigation of the true been often 
 made the subjects of the world's homage or its love. The 
 plight of humanity would have been woeful indeed had the 
 sages of the olden time " ne'er eyed the fruit nor clomb the 
 tree'^ of knowledge, that they might pluck thereof and give 
 to their co-mates in life. To be the first who systemati- 
 cally taught and practised the active, watchful, and careful 
 examination of nature by keen-eyed, curious, and determin- 
 ate observation, or well-planned, accurately-adjusted experi- 
 ment and precise and definite registration, is an honour of 
 no mean kind. To this place Roger Bacon, though long 
 misrepresented and uncared for, has now been found worthy 
 of elevation ; and it is the purpose of the following bio- 
 graphy to show the processes by which time and circum- 
 stance formed this man to become one of the marvels of his 
 own age, and a worthy inheritor of the world's fame. 
 
 In the year 12 14, Roger Bacon was born near Ilchester, 
 an ancient town in Somersetshire, known as the IscJialis of 
 
94 " Roger Bacon. 
 
 the Romans. Of his boyhood we know, and can now leam, 
 nothing. Most probably he was "set apart" for the Church 
 from his infant years, as he seems to have been early so well 
 educated as to receive admission to Oxford in his youth. 
 His family was of yeomanry degree. Oxford was at this 
 time, according to Hallam, " a school of great resort," 
 " second only to Paris in the multitude of its students and' 
 the celebrity of its scholastic disputations." Anthony-^- 
 Wood enthusiastically exclaims, regarding these " good old 
 times" of his Alma Mater^ "What university, I pray, can 
 produce an invincible Hales [died 1245], an admirable 
 Bacon, an excellent, well-grounded Middleton [died 1304], 
 a subtle Scotus [i 265-1308], an approved Burley, a resolute 
 Baconthorpe [died 1346], a singular Ockham [died 1347], 
 a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound Bradwardin 
 [died 1349], all which persons flourished within the com- 
 pass of one century."* The chief teachers in Oxford were 
 Franciscans (/.<?., followers of Francis of Assisi [i 182-1226], 
 founder of a mendicant order of friars 1209,) whose vows 
 required poverty, submission, manual labour, study, and 
 self-mortification. These orders of friars added greatly to 
 the number of the Church, and to the intensity with which 
 the scholastic philosophy was studied. The Franciscans 
 did not lay so much stress, at their origin, upon their learn- 
 ing and philosophy, as on their sanctity, spirituality, and 
 humihty ; but when the competition of orders became 
 keener, they were fain to elaborate a form of speculation 
 too,t and were desirous of enlisting in their brotherhood as 
 
 ♦ Vol. i.,p. 159, A.D. 1168. SeeHallam's "Literature of the Middle 
 Ages," vol. i., p. 16. 
 
 t Read on this point Maclean's "Monks and Monasteries." l.on 
 don : Hall, Virtue, & Co. 
 
Doctor s Degree and Lectureship. 95 
 
 many of the rising thinkers of the day as they could. Bacon 
 seems to have been early regarded as a person hkely to 
 bring renown to the order ; and on his departure from Ox- 
 ford to Paris — whose university, as we have stated before, 
 was highly famed — he was recommended to a Franciscan 
 convent as a residence. In Paris he applied himself dili- 
 gently to the acquisition of all the attainable knowledge of 
 his time, and distinguished himself so much as to have 
 gained a doctor's degree at Paris before the completion of 
 his twenty-sixth year — an honour which Oxford willingly 
 and at once confirmed. 
 
 On his return, the consideration of the future would natu- 
 rally suggest itself, and he would seek the best advice upon 
 the subject. The Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grostete 
 (Greathead), a learned man, and author of a poem entitled 
 " The Handlynge of Sinne," was his friend. As the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford was ecclesiastically subject to him, he 
 counselled his entrance into the brotherhood of St Francis, 
 of which Grostete was himself a member. To this Bacon 
 agreed, and was accordingly admitted on taking the requisite 
 vows. Just about this period (1244) the earUest known 
 statute or charter of privileges granted to the University of 
 Oxford as a corporate body was passed — usually quoted as 
 "28 Hen. III. Lihertates concesscB Chancellario Universitatis 
 Oxon.'^ The chancellor or rector of the schools at that 
 time derived his authority to teach from the Bishop of Lin- 
 coln, and we may suppose that through Grostete's influence 
 Bacon received his appointment as a lecturer at Oxford. 
 
 To the duties of this lectureship he devoted himself most 
 assiduously. His zeal at first procured him friends, cele- 
 brity, and honour. Belonging to that body, "whose [to 
 quote their own words, use.d in 1362] profession it is to pos- 
 
96 Roger Bacon, 
 
 sess no wealth," he was obhged to depend upon the libe- 
 rality of friends for the means of carrying out his course of 
 instruction j but the aristocracy of that time were, according 
 to the testimony of Anthony-k-Wood, — 
 
 " Moribus egregii, verbo vultuque venusti, 
 Ingenio pollent, consilioque vigent : " 
 
 Distinguished in manners, winning in speech and mien. 
 They were powerful in intellect, and they increased in wis- 
 dom ; and the enthusiasm for war engendered by the era of 
 the Cirusades had transferred itself to the encouragement of 
 study. Hence deserving persons found patrons able and 
 willing to assist, not only in founding and endowing " col- 
 leges" and " halls," but in granting aid to scholars to gain 
 books or acquire instruments. Bacon's genius inclined to 
 truly realistic studies more than to the nominalism of mere 
 syllogistics, and for the sake of pursuing these he required 
 money as well as learning and leisure. He looked upon 
 the appearances presented to the senses by nature as ^^ par- 
 ables'^ intended, to have their inner meaning read by the 
 soul and transmuted into trutli. To know when the mind 
 had attained the right and true interpretation of any phe- 
 nomenon or set of phenomena, the mind must have a test — 
 that test must be constructed by the intellect, capable of 
 being operated on by nature, and yet give intimations to 
 the senses — be, in fact, experiment. " There are," says he, 
 ^'-four principal stumblingblocks in the way of knowledge — 
 I, authority ; 2, habit ; 3, appearances as they present them- 
 selves to the vulgar eye ; and 4, concealment of ignorance, 
 combined with ostentation of learning." He set about 
 overcoming these by refraining from ostentation himself 1 
 by asking no belief in his dogmas without proof, by pro- 
 
Range and Extent of his Studies, 97 
 
 ducing such proof as he could, he altered the vulgar concep- 
 tions of nature, changed the habits of thinkers, and repudi- 
 ated authority. That the labours of this great man were 
 not unappreciated we learn from the fact that by the kind- 
 ness of friends, despite of his Franciscan vow of poverty, 
 he had been enabled, in twenty years, to expend in books, 
 experiments, and instruments, no less than 2000 French 
 livres, a sum equivalent to ;^6ooo of our present money, 
 but in effective value in purchases worth many times that 
 amount. Such a contribution to the success of experimen- 
 tal philosophy, in such an age, deserves, indeed demands, 
 special remark, and leads one to reflect how powerfully 
 Bacon must have influenced his contemporaries to receive 
 so significant a mark of their confidence, and such a tribute 
 to his ability, as is implied in the placing of such a sum at 
 his disposal. 
 
 During these twenty years of teaching and experiment, 
 gaining not applause and fame only, but substantial evi- 
 dences of favour. Bacon must have seemed to his fellow- 
 Franciscans a living testimony to their worthlessness. He 
 had made himself intimately acquainted with the Hebrew, 
 Arabic, and Greek languages. Indeed, he wrote a grammar 
 of the latter tongue, which yet exists in MS. among his 
 works, and he was a most accomplished mathematician at 
 a time when most students of that science never crossed 
 the pons asinorum. Logic, metaphysics, ethics, and theo- 
 logy he had minutely investigated, and had treated on many 
 matters pertaining to these branches of thought with ability, 
 acumen, and originality. Chronology and geography had 
 met with an ardent student in him, and he wrote Latin, 
 though not with high classicality, yet with an ease, grace, 
 and perspicuity uncommon in his age. It was in the depart 
 
98 Roger Bacon, 
 
 ment of scientific research, however, that he specially vindi- 
 cated his right to a name and place among the heirs of 
 memory. Astronomy, astrology, medicine, alchemy, optics, 
 magic, and physical science generally, received attention, 
 augmentation, and illustration from the copious resources 
 of the Ilchester friar. " So passionate an instinct had he 
 for what is positive in science, that in the department of 
 nature he actually claimed an equal rank for observation with 
 reason; a claim which was advanced again and achieved 
 nearly four hundred years after by his more illustrious, but 
 not more sagacious namesake, Francis Bacon, the liberator 
 of the sciences."* "Roger Bacon distinctly and loudly 
 proclaimed the rights of observation ; and in truth, his whole 
 school of experimentalists were the accredited and natural 
 enemies of the scholastic wranglers." + 
 
 How, indeed, could it be otherwise % Monkery, in too 
 many cases, had canonised sloth ; he had glorified industry. 
 Spinning, spider-like, the meshes of disputation out of their 
 own being, they could never advance beyond the circle of 
 repetitive dogmatisms, while Bacon toiled, and sweated, and 
 dug into the deep quarries of fact, and with most revolu- 
 tionary submission to the swart genius of labour, first watched, 
 with meditative deference, the processes of nature, and then 
 endeavoured to compel from her an articulate and trust- 
 worthy authentication of the conceptions which his soul 
 had formed from the suggestions which phenomena excited 
 in him. Honest, painstaking, and determined, he legislated 
 in thought upon results, and thereafter set to work to bring 
 forth from nature that obedience which he sought. Con- 
 tinued resistance did not daunt or intimidate him ; it only 
 
 ♦ ** Lectures and Essays," by Samuel Brown, vol. i., p. 161. 
 t Ibid., p. 117 
 
Barren Scholasticism. 99 
 
 made him doubtful of the accuracy of his own views, and 
 caused him to reinvestigate the determinations of his theo- 
 retic faculty concerning phenomena, their causes, opera- 
 tions, and effects. To the compiling, annotating, commen- 
 tating, authority-worshipping crowd who filled the cloisters 
 of Franciscan convents, or waved their gray gowns within 
 the precincts of collegiate halls, this devotion to high pur- 
 suits, this toilsome career, this unresting activity in the 
 search after truth, and this self-denial of those enticing plea- 
 sures which interest other men, could scarcely fail to be 
 distasteful, not to say detestable. Their blank idleness, or 
 dull stagnation, or interminable labour after trivialities ; 
 their painful ponderosity of thriftless thought ; their careless 
 scorn of solemn aims and aspirations ; and their distrustful 
 or perplexed interpretations of nature, its phenomena, sig- 
 nificance, and author, were put to shame, and virtually 
 rebuked by the fierce energy and persevering striving with 
 which he grappled with the mysteries and difficulties of 
 investigation, and held to his purpose of informing himself, 
 if possible, of the secrets, and processes, and ongoings of the 
 universe. His supernatural consciousness of strength tacitly 
 convicted them of cowardice or treachery — cowardice in 
 failing bravely to dare all labour to gain truth, or treachery 
 in surrendering the choicest and most gratifying right of 
 humanity for the enjoyments of sloth, ease, pride, pomp, 
 power, or momentary glory. Hence it happens, as he 
 says, that " both in science and in common life we see a 
 thousand falsehoods for one truth." Men have hitherto 
 neglected " to search, discover, and dissect, and prove," 
 and hence they do not and cannot learn or know the spirits 
 rapt communion with the verities of science, the joy of moral 
 being, or the blest delight of holy feeling and religious thought. 
 
lOO Roger Bacon. 
 
 The continuous sarcasm of a well-spent life excited hate 
 and envy. Besides, he was the friend of Robert Grostete, 
 the superior prelate of the diocese, a man not only learned 
 himself, but the liberal patron of a studious life in others. 
 But though a brother of the order of St Francis, bound by 
 oath to ecclesiastical submission, Grostete had hardily and 
 stoutly opposed the aggressions, secret or open, of the Pope 
 upon the rights and liberties of the British Church, and had 
 made himself conspicuous as a terrible resistant of the undue 
 exertion of the fatherly power of him who held the headship 
 of Christendom. This strong-nerved prelate would not suffer 
 the installation of the boy-nephew of Pope Innocent IV. as 
 a prebend of the diocese of Lincoln, and endured the wrath 
 of his Holiness in the shape of excommunication. Yet for 
 all this. Bacon's friendship did not halt, nor did his grati- 
 tude stop short at the command of his papal Holiness. Did 
 he not, then, more than sympathise with him in his antagon- 
 ism to the Pope? nay, did he not, in all probability, coin- 
 cide in heart and soul with Grostete in his abominable 
 hostility to the Father of the Church % Room for suspicion 
 there certainly was; but Bacon soon gave more, for he bore 
 testimony to the vileness of life and character of many of 
 his confreres, and accused them, in plainly-spoken terms, of 
 practices excessively alien to the purposes of their order, 
 and the vows they had taken. 
 
 In 1253, when Bacon was verging on his fortieth year, 
 Grostete, his protector, patron, friend, and fellow-witness 
 against the crimes and follies of his order, died. The hate 
 entertained for his late friend was added to the envy which 
 they felt towards himself; the brethren of his order became 
 Bacon's chief foes. Another superior arose, who knew not 
 Bacon, except as the exposer of the vices of his order, and 
 
Causes of Scientific Error. i o i 
 
 as the object of malignity on account of his strange studies, 
 singular learning, gigantic laboriousness, free speech, pecu- 
 niary gainings and spendings, wonderful reputation, admir- 
 able skill, and voluminous writings on all subjects, sacred, 
 secular, and profane, if not, as it now began to be whispered, 
 absolutely suggested by that wicked one who spell-binds the 
 sou! by jugglery, cheats the senses, mocks the resolves, and 
 wraps up men's thoughts in the impervious veil of sorcery. 
 What could such an official do, as an honest man bent on 
 upholding the reputation of his order, except interdict the 
 lectures of Bacon, prohibit the circulation of his writings, 
 and zealously guard against the publicity of his inventions 
 or discoveries % The austerities of the order were then put 
 in force, and fetters bound the body of this man of chainless 
 mind. In his prison he was denied intercourse with any of 
 his friends, and was frequently exposed to such privations as 
 with difficulty to have escaped death from the combined 
 effects of hunger and cold. He endured patiently, yet not 
 hopelessly, the priestly persecution to which his love of 
 science and of truth had made him captive, and continued 
 to "bide his time" in trust and calmness. 
 
 Nor was it much to be wondered at that, in the thirteenth 
 century, the person who could assert, in the face of the 
 highest authority in Christendom, that " we must not stick 
 to what we hear and read, but must examine most strictly 
 the opinions of our ancestors, that we may add what is 
 lacking, and correct what is wrong, but with all modesty and 
 consideration," should be regarded as a dangerous person ; 
 but when he added to this the grievous accusation of his 
 age contained in these and other similar expressions — viz., 
 " Men presume to teach before they have learnt" . . . 
 " Appearances alone rule them, and they care not what they 
 
102 Roger Bacon. 
 
 know, but what they are thought to know by a senseless 
 multitude," — what howling and gnashing of teeth and ex- 
 haustless rage was too little for the reprehension of the 
 hardy man, who suffered from no glut of friendship ] And 
 so they gave him the first fruits and fair sample of the scorn 
 which the saintly churchmen of the middle ages felt for 
 truth, and all truth's worshippers. But he walked valiantly 
 along under the guardianship of Captivity, keeping Medita- 
 tion as his solitary friend, and being enriched by ripe and 
 rich reflections on the observations he had made, and the 
 experiences he had garnered in his soul during the days of 
 his activity and freedom. Thus was he ready, when a bet- 
 ter day dawned upon his fortune, to pour forth profusely the 
 ideas, suggestions, and details which fill so marvellous a page 
 in the literary and scientific annals of the century in which 
 he lived, and could offer to a friendly Pope, on brief notice, 
 the Opus Majus — at once his defence and highest glory. 
 
 The ostensible charge preferred against Bacon was the 
 study of magic, probably coupled with a vague assertion of a 
 violation of his vow of poverty, borne evidence to by his ap- 
 parently extravagant expenditure in pursuing his experimental 
 studies. In reply to the first, he issued his tractates, " Con- 
 cerning the Wonderful Power of Art and Nature," and 
 " Concerning the Secret Operations of Art and Nature, and 
 the Absurdity of Magic." Regarding the second, St Bona- 
 ventura, the seraphic doctor, who was then general of the 
 Franciscans, having published an expository treatise on that 
 portion of a friar's vow, intended, most probably, as an in- 
 direct condemnation of Bacon, we are informed by Vossius 
 that he wrote a book, in which the reasonings of St Bona- 
 ventura were controverted, thus indirectly also maintaining 
 the rightfulness of his conduct in this matter, and justifying 
 
The Church Dislikes Science. 103 
 
 himself before the jury of the learned of his time. The 
 general ignorance of the clergy then was so great, that any 
 rumour of devil-doings received instant credence, and Bacon 
 shared the odium of a charge of magic with William of Au- 
 vergne and Albert the Great of his own era — an era in which 
 Anthony-k-Wood characterises the clergy as "men who knew 
 no property of the circle except that of keeping out the 
 devil, and imagined that the angles of a triangle would 
 wound religion." It is scarcely credible, however, that the 
 acute minds who governed these Orders and the Church 
 could have failed to perceive that Experimentalism, by its 
 appeal to reason as the ultimate judge of truth, was likely 
 to undermine the entire fabric they had so painstakingly 
 raised ; and they but accepted of the popular rumour as the 
 foundation of their charge, and as a cloak for their deeper 
 cause of detestation. He who gave it as his opinion that 
 we must with all our strength, prefer reason to custom, and 
 the opifiions of the wise and good to the perceptions of the 
 common herd, while he admonished his pupils and readers 
 to hear freely " opinions contrary to estabHshed usage," 
 could not but be a perilous friend or a terrible enemy. And 
 the mere fruits of Experimentahsm would seem, or could be 
 made to appear, as the very snares of Satan to allure the 
 soul from her repose in the bosom of the Church to self- 
 thought and natural investigations. Strong cause, therefore, 
 was there for crushing, if possible, the first who ventured to 
 step out of the harmless circle of scholasticism into the 
 wider, freer region of phenomena and nature ; seeking by 
 reason, helped as best it might be, to unfold to the gaze of 
 triumphant thought the true secrets which underlie the 
 appearances around man, and quieting the tumult and 
 anxiety of thought by caUing nature herself to bear witness 
 
I04 Roger Bacon. 
 
 to the accuracy of the deductions of reason. With such 
 apprehensions as these, it is scarcely matter for wonder that 
 even works bearing such titles as " Some Contributions to 
 the Art of Chemistry," " The Mirror of Alchemy," " The 
 Mathematical Mirror," &c., when written by a person of 
 dubious orthodoxy, like Roger Bacon, were looked on 
 with suspicion, and restrained from circulation. Had he 
 not aided and abetted the resistance to the Pope by Robert 
 Grostete, defamed his order, controverted the opinions of 
 his general 1 and did he not elevate reason above all other 
 powers, and assert its supremacy in all investigations, while 
 by his example, labours, and life he brought discredit on 
 others, by aiming at becoming more than they were willing 
 to zvork to become 1 Let the Church set its heel at once 
 on the atrocious offender who ranks independence among 
 the virtues, free thought among human duties, and reasoned 
 experiment among the pleasures of Hfe. So, during part oi 
 the pontificate of Innocent IV., the whole of that of Alex- 
 ander IV., and Urban IV., he was held " in durance vile," 
 thinking, but in silence ; reasoning, but constrained to keep 
 to his own counsel j and building up a system of thought, 
 but without the probability of being able to bring it before 
 his compeers, or bequeath it to posterity. 
 
 Such things could not remain unknown, nor could think- 
 ing minds avoid feeling interested in the man who was bear- 
 ing the brunt of papal wrath, and the jealous guardianship 
 of his order, that his thoughts might not be breathed upon 
 the still, stagnant atmosphere of learning. An excellent 
 and accomplished man, Cardinal Fulcodi, bishop of Sabina, 
 and papal legate in England, had heard of his life, thoughts, 
 doings, sayings, and sufferings, and had expressed an earnest 
 wish tcf see his inventions and to become acquainted 
 
A Popes Favour and the Hate of Monks, 105 
 
 with his opinions. The prohibition, however, was im- 
 perative and unexceptional, and he was denied permis- 
 sion to hold intercourse with Bacon at all. Times 
 changed, the papal chair became vacant, and Fulcodi 
 was chosen to don the triple crown as Clement IV., in 
 the very year of Dante's birth, 1265. Here was Bacon's 
 opportunity ; and though he had now crossed the middle 
 arch of Ufe, he set himself industriously to the production of 
 a work in which he might concisely recite and explain his 
 views, his theories, his experiments, and their results. In 
 less than two years he had completed his Opus Majus, and 
 it was conveyed direct to Clement IV., most probably by 
 John Peckham, a metropolitan Franciscan, who afterwards 
 became archbishop of Canterbury. Clement knew well the 
 circumstances of Bacon, and had commanded him to send 
 this exposition of his system to him, notwithstanding any 
 restrictions of his superiors; and in the year 1267 it was in 
 his hands. Such a fact could scarcely fail to quicken the 
 pulse of the active authorities of his order ; so we find 
 that, knowing well its real groundlessness, the charge of 
 magical consorting with Satan was now exchanged for the 
 ever ready one of heresy. A man who knew Bacon could 
 not entertain such a charge for a moment, but it would 
 surely go hard with the professors of sophistries if they could 
 not, out of the hastily-written production of their pope-fa- 
 voured brother, squeeze so much as, if plausibly argued, 
 might be construed into proof of heterodoxy in thought or 
 expression. But things never came to this issue, for Clement 
 IV. was called to the higher tribunal of God in the Novem- 
 ber of 1268. For nearly three years the contest for the 
 occupancy of the chair distracted attention, and prevented 
 a settlement of the question, though it did not diminish the 
 
io6 Roofer Bacon, 
 
 «b' 
 
 rigorous exactness of the friars. But Bacon retained his in- 
 tegrity, and went on with his studies and his writings, revis- 
 ing his Opus Majus^ and no doubt preparing his defence 
 for the time when trial should at last arrive. During ten 
 years he received no open molestation, but immediately 
 thereafter events took a turn adverse to Bacon, and the 
 rancour of his brethren flamed out anew. 
 
 Though it was chiefly as a ^^ori^^x-worker that the fame 
 of Roger Bacon spread and lingered in the minds of men, 
 it is as a thinker that we feel most concern for him — as a 
 helpful searcher for the right way of attaining truth, and so 
 enabhng us 
 
 "To fertilise our earthly root, 
 And make our branches lift a golden fmit 
 Into the bloom of heaven." 
 
 To jH-ove that he was such, we shall endeavour to lay be- 
 fore our readers a succinct r'esumi of his Opus Majus. This 
 will show better, we opine, than aught else, " what manner 
 of man he was." This work — which, after remaining in 
 manuscript in the Oxford library for nearly five centuries, 
 was pubhshed in London so recently as 1733, under the 
 editorial care of Dr Samuel Jebb, a non-juring physician — 
 is written in the form of a letter to Pope Clement IV., and 
 consists of a series of discourses on the diflerent topics to 
 which the friar had directed his attention, and consequently 
 repeats in many parts the same facts, reasonings, and ex- 
 pressions as we find in other works of his ; thus proving 
 that it is the most complete, authoritative, and authentic 
 account of his philosophical studies, inventions, and system 
 we can rely upon in seeking to cast into a few paragraphs 
 such an abridgment of his ideas as may serve to make his 
 position as an epoch man clear and indubitable, and by so 
 
Science a7id Religion 7iot Enemies. 107 
 
 doing, fortify our own estimate by the best witness in the 
 case — himself. In doing so, we shall follow, as nearly as 
 we can, the course of thought and the method of treatment 
 pursued in the work. 
 
 The Opus Majus begins with a few remarks upon the 
 need of advancement in knowledge, the right of human 
 reason to exert a strict regulating power over all thoughts 
 submitted to it for behef, or as motives to activity. Perfec- 
 tion is rare j to none has the capacity of knowing the true 
 without admixture of error been given ; it is the extreme of 
 folly, therefore, to beUeve on the witnessing of one only ; 
 still more is it foolishness thrice-essenced to accept as veri- 
 ties the judgments of the passionate, ignorant, and hasty 
 mob. Common7tess of acceptation is no infallible sign of 
 any opinion's being true and right ; neither is antiquity. 
 Science is the pyramid the ages build. The early thinkers 
 have given currency to grave errors, which it is the duty of 
 their after-comers to revise and correct. No thought should 
 be banished beyond the control of reason, or set itself apart 
 as superior and unique. Though the fathers of the Church 
 withdrew some subjects from investigation, they were in- 
 competent, so far as jurisdiction went, to do any such thing 
 rightly. They were men. Ill-will and false knowledge, as 
 well as false reasoning, betrayed or deceived them. Science 
 and religion are aUies \ units of one whole — wisdom. Both 
 should be studied ; one ought not to overmaster the other, 
 neither ought one to succumb or enslave itself. Authority 
 and reason are shown to coincide in \hQ possibility of ortho- 
 dox knowledge — the co-existence in one soul of " the true 
 faith of a Christian" with the scientific acquirements of a sage. 
 
 These theoretical views being propounded and enforced, 
 the details next receive his attention. The grammatical 
 
io8 Roger Bacon. 
 
 and mathematical sciences, as they were then understood, 
 being those in which the chief deficiencies of his age were 
 manifested, receive his special attention. The sacred books 
 being written in Hebrew and Greek, their expounders re- 
 quire an extensive and accurate acquaintance with the 
 genius, the vocables, and the phraseology of these lan- 
 guages; Latin, being the official language of the Church, 
 demands careful culture and sedulous regard. Scholastic 
 philosophy — based, as it is, on the writings of Aristotle and 
 the commentators of Arabia — can only nourish itself by 
 feeding on the true and genuine fruits of the indigenous 
 trees which they have respectively planted. He was him- 
 self a good and skilful linguist, and his work here, often 
 unwittingly, reveals the sad state of scholarship in the 
 Church of the thirteenth century ; as, for instance, where 
 he, gravely, and in all seriousness, proposes that each bishop 
 in consecrating a church should inscribe on its floor, as a 
 proof of his learning, the letters of the Greek alphabet, or at 
 least, the three first letters, giving their value in notation at 
 the same time. Bacon wrote a grammar of the Greek 
 tongue, and his Latin style is easier, simpler, and more 
 graphic than any other writer of his time. If we are not 
 much mistaken, Roger Bacon is, more than any other 
 author, the man to whom we can trace the enrichment of 
 the Saxon language by the introduction of Latin vocables. 
 In his works, at least, most of our Latinisms appear in the 
 significations which they retain in modern English. This 
 can be asserted, so far as we know, of no one more certainly 
 than of the Oxonian friar ; and if our judgment is right, it 
 would prove that a mighty agency had been set in operation 
 by Bacon in his remote age, which permeates human 
 thought even now, and influences the world in all its 
 
Analysis of the '' Opus Mapts!' 109 
 
 tenderest interests. If to him we ascribe the initial influ- 
 ence by which Latino-Saxon passed into EngUsh, we shall 
 say Httle less than is his due — and yet how much is that ! 
 About a twentieth of the Opus Majus consists of the gram- 
 matical sections. In these grammatical books, too, ethics, 
 logic, rhetoric, metaphysics, &c, receive notice, and some- 
 times discussion. Besides this, however, they receive ad- 
 mirable exemplification in his own writing. Of his style we 
 have already spoken j of his reasoning we may remark, that 
 it is almost always strictly and fairly syllogistic in the best 
 sense ; i.e.^ in its formal exactitude of dependence of conclu- 
 sions on premises. Of his opinions on the Art of Reason- 
 ing, the following is a fair specimen : — There are two modes 
 of investigation ; viz., argument and experiment. Argu- 
 ment closes and makes us close any doubtful matter, but 
 does not assure — nor remove the doubt, so that the soul 
 may rest in the beholding of the truth, unless it should get 
 at that by the pathway of experience, since there are many 
 who have arguments about knowable things, but because 
 they have not experience, neglect those, and do not avoid 
 the hurtful — nor follow after the beneficial If, indeed, any 
 man who had never seen fire has proven by sufficient argu- 
 ments what things fire burns, injures, and destroys, never, 
 on account of this, can the mind of the hearer rest, nor 
 would he avoid the fire before that he had laid his hand or 
 some combustible article on the fire, in order that by expe- 
 rience he might prove what argument had taught ; but ex- 
 perience being assumed, the mind is assured of the com- 
 bustion, and rests in the shining of the truth which not 
 argument satisfies, but experience. {Opus Majus, p. 446.) 
 These well-expressed opinions prove him to have been no 
 mere quibbler, but a genuine and honest thinker — a de- 
 
I lo Roger Bacon. 
 
 spiser of mere authority, custom, prejudice, or art — a de- 
 fender of the sovereignty of reason as the single judge of 
 true and false, though not of right and wrong — a partisan of 
 forethoughtful experience against the random mill-working 
 of theoretic methods and artificial systems of logical thought. 
 It is true that with all his might of mind, he did not remain 
 exempt from errors in thought and practice. Who else 
 has ? Without these clearly-entertained notions on reason- 
 ing, could he have been the father of experimentahsm — as 
 he was % 
 
 So far, then, we see that in his writings Bacon approves 
 himself to be one — 
 
 " Not the utter fool of show — 
 Not absolutely form'd to be the dupe 
 Of shallow plausibilities alone, " — 
 
 but wise and bold enough to take the foreseen perilous path 
 of giving himself up to painful study and the patient search 
 for lore — hidden in nature, though un found in books. 
 
 In his remarks on mathematics, however, Bacon is greater 
 and grander, more persistently original and brave, than any- 
 where. This was the department in which there was the 
 greatest danger, and this is the subject on which he displays 
 the utmost daring. Here he gives full vent to his love of 
 realism, and exhibits the fullest independence of thought. 
 The utility and grandeur of mathematical science are proven 
 by the fact that it is the postulate and prime principle of 
 almost eveiy department of knowledge, without the accept- 
 ance of which fruitful study is impossible ; that it renders 
 the solution of many questions in natural philosophy easy ; 
 and that it is highly advantageous to the theologian when 
 he wishes to employ the principles of chronology in the 
 explanation of Holy Writ. Some of the queries which ma- 
 
Reasoning and Experiment, 1 1 1 
 
 thematics is said by Bacon to be useful in solving may here 
 be mentioned, as indicating the grasp of thought he took, 
 and the width of vision he displayed; e.g.^ Is matter infinite? 
 Do bodies touch each other at one or many points % What 
 is the form of the earth? Are there one earth, sun, and 
 moon, or many? What is the cause of heat? &c. Mathe- 
 matical science is the basis of astrology, medicine, geogra- 
 phy, optics, &c. A treatise on perspective and on the mul- 
 tiplication of figures or appearances gives indication of his 
 acquaintance with spectacles, the principles of the micro- 
 scope and the telescope, &c. In other portions of his work 
 we find specific illustrations of the vast range of his investi- 
 gations, the indefatigable persistency of his mind, and his 
 far-stretching knowledge of the science, art, and literature 
 of his era ; but in the closing book of his Opics Majus he 
 rises to the dignity of a true philosopher, and discourses with 
 fluent ease and accurate logic upon the conditions of 
 sciences, the principles of scientific investigation, and of the 
 correlation of reasoning and experiment. The domain of 
 theoretic thought and practical induction he clearly bounded 
 off from each other. He added example to precept, and 
 exercised, in presence of his contemporaries, the methods 
 he propounded. He discerned with true philosophic pre- 
 science the dim splendour of a future for which humanity 
 was scarcely prepared, and with unswerving and unfaltering 
 step walked on himself, and called upon his fellows to follow 
 the method which lay before him in the unchronicled history 
 of human aspiration, as full of success, glory, and good. In 
 an age of mental torpor, he, in the might and energy of will, 
 struggled to escape the endless multiplicity of mazes into 
 which scholasticism had enticed all human inquiry, and 
 attempted to look beyond the prescribed circles of thought 
 
112 Roger Bacon. 
 
 in which the soul was imprisoned. In the midst of men 
 unlearned and heedless of learning, he burned as a lamp, 
 lustrous in a fog, and cast upon the dark surroundings of 
 his age a light unpleasing, because revealing the oilless 
 vessels of the foolish, who bore no light, and exclaimed 
 that light was needless, if not absolutely injurious. Custom, 
 authority, prejudice, and envy rained their heaviest upon 
 his head, and persecution shot her venomed fang into his 
 soul. Yet did he stand dauntless and unfearing in the 
 grasp of captivity, before the judgment-seat of the earthly 
 vicegerent of Omnipotence, and plead his cause and that 
 of science and truth in opposition to the cavils of slander 
 and the haughty virulence of bigotry. For a time the 
 upstored thunderbolts of prejudice were unlaunched, but 
 they were only all the more effectively arranged in the quiver 
 of the Franciscan monks, for being used when the hour and 
 the opportunity came, in which vindictive craft and cunning 
 meanness might again freely wield the instruments for 
 defending " things as they are." What better, 
 
 " After tempestuous hours, than deep repose?" 
 What more certain to succeed a calm than storm and danger ? 
 So it was with Bacon. Gregory X. had too much in hand 
 in the correction of discipline, the patching up of an alliance 
 with the Greek Church, the convoking and management of 
 the Council of Lyons, the attempt to stir up a new crusade, 
 and in the settlement of the mode of electing popes, to 
 be, in his brief rule, able to note and control the innovations 
 of the scientific Franciscan. Pope Innocent V. had scarcely 
 time to feel the tiara on his brow ; still less had Adrian V. ; 
 and John, his successor, was little favoured by fate or for- 
 tune either. One year saw all these men chosen, crowned, 
 and dead, as if some strange disease had lurked within the 
 
His Trial ajzd Condenmation, 1 1 
 
 J 
 
 emblematic circlet that placed all things — save death — under 
 the government of the inheritors of Peter. These successive 
 brief glimpses of authority — scarcely exerted before laid 
 down — weakened the papacy, and enabled the generals of 
 the several orders to wax strong. Hence, in 1278, Jerome 
 of Ascoli in the Marches, a bigoted and austere theologian, 
 being vicar-general of the Franciscans, and papal legate to 
 the court of France, the members of the order deemed it 
 a well-fitting time " to whip the offending Adam out" of 
 their misguided brother. Informations having been duly 
 lodged, a council of the brethren of St Francis was called at 
 Paris. To this council Bacon was cited. He appeared. 
 There seem to have been two accusations ; or rather, an 
 alternative indictment appears to have been prepared — ist, 
 Innovation in thought, form, doctrine, and spirit ; 2d, The 
 theoretical maintenance of astrological opinions and the 
 practice of magic and incantations. Jerome sat at the head 
 of the council board. Bacon, now sixty-four years old, bent 
 with much study, yet resolute and untired in spirit, pleaded 
 at the lower end. Those writings which he had issued in 
 despite of the vow of obedience to his official superiors in 
 the order — though at the request of a Pope — were con- 
 demned ; he was declared to be not only heterodox, but 
 contumacious, and was sentenced to close incarceration. 
 A confirmation of the proceedings of the council of Paris 
 was speedily gained — for now the order could overawe its 
 lord — from Pope Martin III., and Bacon's doom was sealed. 
 That the real object of the trial was to restrain and silence 
 Bacon, not to give fair and free judgment upon the evidence 
 adduced, we infer from the significant fact that the whole ad- 
 judication was completed without the then usual opportunity 
 of retractation and repentance being given to the accused, a 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 Roger Bacon. 
 
 proceeding never omitted by the clement Church, unless 
 when^cting on a foregone conclusion for the attainment 
 of a pr^etermined end, which an offer of pardon on such 
 conditions might disappoint or render futile. It had been 
 decided upon that Bacon's free speech, free thought, and 
 advocacy of the rights of reason and the legitimacy of ex- 
 periment as a proof of truth or falsehood, made him dan- 
 gerous ; and with a show, without the reality of a trial, they 
 endeavoured, by the old and time-honoured expedient of 
 imprisonment, to convince him of the poUcy of conformity. 
 Bacon believed that he had been unjustly used ; he ex- 
 hausted every possible means of gaining his freedom ; but 
 the jealousy and galled pride of his order were too active 
 and powerful ; all his efforts were unavaiHng. Nicholas III. 
 required, as Dante makes him confess, " to enrich his 
 whelps," to simonise and nepotise, and must not interfere 
 with the enjoyments and wishes of those who wrapped him 
 with *' the mighty mantle," or waste his labour upon nicely- 
 balanced questions about the good of the Church and the 
 personal inconvenience to another^ occasioned by imprison- 
 ment for the good cause of its internal peace, security, and 
 permanence. Martin IV. was too far sunk in the sensual 
 gratifications of gluttony, too much occupied by the Sicilian 
 vespers and their results, too hotly interested in hunting 
 from his throne Michael of Byzantium, to disquiet his soul 
 about the discomforts of prison diet, discipline, and restric- 
 tions on free thought, or to interest himself in the distribu- 
 tion or exaction of just and honest dealing . between the 
 members of an order bound by laws of their own choosing, 
 and approved of by former popes. Honorius IV. had the 
 nepotising vices of Nicholas IIL, and the excitement of an 
 attempt to get up a crusade against the Arragonese in Sicily, 
 
Papal Hate and Noble Generosity. 115 
 
 as occupation during his three years' reign. On his death, 
 the intrigues of Bacon's judge, Jerome of Ascoh, resulted in 
 his being invested with the purple. Looking upon self-de- 
 fence as honest and right, Bacon, who, in his attempts to 
 be heard amid the din of the sensuality, avarice, contention, 
 and hierarchical pride of former popes, found no ear inclined 
 to listen, did not fail in energy or hope, even in these his 
 latter hours, when seventy-four years had waved their change- 
 ful magic over his Hfe, but appealed to Jerome, his former 
 judge, for remission of the unjust sentence he had passed 
 on him while Franciscan general at Paris. He, now Ni- 
 cholas IV., felt not the beatings of a generous heart agitate 
 his bosom. On the contrary, his former hate was increased 
 at the haughty insolence which could demand as a right 
 that he, the Pope, should convict himself of partiality or in- 
 capacity, and claim as due from him what he had sued for 
 from his predecessors. He added to the severities of his 
 fate, increased the rigours of his confinement, and caused 
 his bonds to be more scrupulously tightened round him. 
 The spite of the monk overcame the clement spirit which 
 should reign in the soul of the chief magistrate of God's 
 earthly Church. 
 
 Private solicitation and interest at length effected what 
 the papal sense of justice could not yield to bestow. Some 
 of the noblest peers of England, in this act truly noble, com- 
 bined to beg for Bacon what he could not stoop to suppli- 
 cate for on his own account. Politic adulation of the men 
 in power and station led to a remission of the punishment 
 of Bacon; he was released from his Parisian conventual 
 prison-house, and permitted to return to Oxford, and, amid 
 his old associates and associations, in the scene of his for- 
 mer labours, lecturings, and sufferings, to drag on an old 
 
1 1 6 Roger Bacon, 
 
 age which anxiety, confinement, disappointment, and the 
 superhuman industry which work, theorised and experi- 
 mented on even in the grasp of persecution, had rendered 
 no smooth-laid passage to the inevitable resting-place of 
 man. He had written for Pope Nicholas IV. a book upon 
 the means of retarding the infirmities of old age, in the 
 belief that such a proof of his sanity and the efficacy of his 
 discoveries might work in his favour, and win him a little of 
 that gratitude which might be felt by one on whom a much- 
 desired benefit had been conferred. The Pope died in April 
 1292, and Bacon survived him nearly two years. The na- 
 tural strength of his mind seems to have been httle abated, 
 for during the latter years of his residence at Oxford he 
 wrote a compendium of theology, an indirect protest against 
 the alleged heterodoxy of his opinions, doings, and dis- 
 coveries. On his death, which took place in 1294, the 
 monks of his fraternity, fearing some magic-working revenge 
 for their brotherly attentions to his spiritual state and con- 
 cerns, placed his writings, &c., under lock and key, that no 
 opportunity might be given for any exertion of their powers 
 of injury. For many years they lay undisturbed, save by 
 the insects, who found them pleasant food ; and the parch- 
 ments on which the grand revelations of a God-sent mind 
 were written suffered as much injury from their close con- 
 finement as did the writer from his personal trials. 
 
 That Bacon's fame was not evanescent, we have good 
 proof in the numerous MS. copies of his works, or parts of 
 them, which occupy places in the various university and 
 national libraries at home and abroad, and from the careful 
 way in which his correspondence with Pope Clement, and 
 the holy Father's replies, are preserved in the Vatican lib- 
 rary. The monks, to conceal the true nature and char- 
 
Legends regarding Him. 117 
 
 acter of his opinions, circulated numerous strange and mar- 
 vellqus tales among the people, which became embodied in 
 legends, and gave him a notoriety among the commonalty- 
 resembling that of Michael Scott in Caledonia, Faust in 
 Germany, and Albertus Magnus in France; Yet there was 
 always a feeling " akin to love" prevalent in the popular 
 mind, and hence when, in the days of Queen Ehzabeth, 
 " The Famous Historic of Fryer Bacon" was written, we 
 find that, unhke other magicians, he is not represented as in 
 league with, but as a constant foil to, the works of the prince 
 of the powers of darkness, and at the close is allowed to 
 repent, become an anchorite and a true divine ; and in 
 Greene's highly popular play of " Friar Bacon and Friar 
 Bungay" he is represented as saying, — 
 
 "It repents me sore 
 That Bacon ever meddled with this art. 
 * -jfr * * 
 
 Sins have their salves ; repentance can do much. 
 
 Think ! Mercy sits where Justice holds her seat, 
 
 And from those wounds the bloody Jews did pierce, 
 
 "Which by thy magic oft did bleed afresh, — 
 
 From thence, for thee, the dew of mercy drops, 
 
 To wash the wrath of high Jehovah's ire, 
 
 And make thee free as new-born babe from sin. 
 
 Bungay, I '11 spend the remnant of my life 
 
 Ii^ pure devotion, praying to my God 
 
 That he would save what Bacon vainly lost." 
 
 These things show that the kindly feeling of English hearts 
 could not be turned even by the " sweet deceiving tongues" 
 of "the monks of old" from doing such justice as they 
 could to the memory of the deserving; and prove how in- 
 capable even ill-natured, though " pious frauds," are to serve 
 the ends of their originators when opposed to plain, sturdy 
 honesty of thought and the instinct of true hearts, even 
 
1 1 8 Roge7' Bacon. 
 
 when they are rude and unlettered, not much given to the 
 sifting of evidence, or the logical determination of true and 
 false. 
 
 One or two observations regarding matters which did not 
 seem capable of being wrought into our narrative without 
 making it too digressional may now be offered to the reader, 
 viz. — 
 
 Bacon is the reputed discoverer of gunpowder, and in- 
 ventor of the telescope, spectacles, &c. That he discovered 
 a sort of detonating mixture resembhng, if not really, gun- 
 powder, is certain ; for he describes not only its effects but 
 its ingredients, though, after the manner of his time, he 
 conceals the special poiijit of his own discovery in an ana- 
 gram which, strange to say, baffled ingenuity for some 
 centuries. "This substance is composed," says he, "of 
 lurv mope can ubre — i.e., pulvere carbonum, or powder of 
 charcoal, of saltpetre, and of sulphur." It is one of those 
 strange things which he mentions that " strike terror on the 
 sight, so that the flashings of the clouds are beyond com- 
 parison less disturbing," which gives us an " imitation ot 
 thunder and lightning," and constitutes " a fire which will 
 burn to any distance." That he had thought out the whole 
 theory of a telescope is also quite true, though whether he 
 constructed one maybe doubted; unless we accept as evi- 
 dence the tradition of his " glass prospective," " wherein he 
 could see anything that was done within fifty miles about 
 him," coupled with his assertion that " we can so shape 
 transparent substances, .... that objects may be seen far 
 off or near, and thus, from an incredible distance, we may 
 read the smallest letters, and number the grains of dust and 
 sand." Leonard Digges, writing of his father in 1590, says, 
 " He was able by perspective glasses .... to discover 
 
Discoveries, Inventions, and Character. 1 1 9 
 
 every particularatie of the country round about, wheresoever 
 the sunne's beames might pearse, .... which partly grew 
 by the aid he had of one old-written book of the same 
 Bacon's experiments ^ Though Bossuet says the invention 
 of spectacles belongs to the close of the thirteenth century, 
 and that we are indebted for them to a Jacobin friar, and 
 Smith in his "Optics" asserts that incontestable proofs 
 exist that the first glasses of this kind were constructed by 
 Alexander de Spina, a Jacobin friar, who died at Pisa in 
 13 13, we know that Bacon, in his Opiis Majus, 1267, 
 describes and explains them, remarking, as if they were 
 already in use, " hence this instrument is useful to old per- 
 sons and those who have weak eyes." 
 
 With geography and chronology Bacon was so conversant 
 that he gives a lengthy and learned account of the inhabited 
 world, the chief portions of which are drawn from the writ- 
 ings of preceding and contemporary travellers, including 
 Marco Polo ; and he suggested to Clement, his patron, that 
 very reform in the Calendar which Pope Gregory XIII., 
 300 years afterwards, did himself honour by adopting. 
 
 Bacon's acquaintance with optics enabled him to explain, 
 in some degree approximating to the canons of modem 
 science, the phenomena of the rainbow, while his mechani- 
 cal knowledge was such, that Dr Freind calls him "the 
 miracle of his age, and possessed, perhaps, of the greatest 
 genius for mechanical science that has been known since 
 the days of Archimedes." 
 
 All these facts prove that Bacon was a man freed from 
 the enthralling despotism of traditionalism in thinking, one 
 who, though he stood in the shadow of superstitious rever- 
 ence for, and submissiveness to, authority, yet looked be- 
 yond the shadow, and caught glimpses, at least, of truths 
 
1 20 Roger Bacon, 
 
 and facts which lay beyond the t)orderland of then per- 
 mitted thought or speech : a man who would not, like a 
 bruised snail, shrink himself to endure and suffer, and 
 remain a memorial of the blasting weight of the oppressor's 
 foot, or lower his life's aims and efforts by prescription ; or 
 for the pleasure of being patted, like a pet of the kennel, 
 now and then, fawn, and cringe, and crouch, and flatter, 
 only to gain a more distinct application of the whip when 
 he should fail in any point implied in the monkish lesson of 
 subserviency. He had a praiseworthy stubborn uprightness, 
 a rightful confidence in his own powers of thought and 
 action, a knowing acquaintance with the fallacies of the 
 soul as well as the sophistries of his sect, and a firm-set faith 
 in the truth of God, when read aright either in word or 
 work. How sad to think that such a one as he should feel 
 necessitated to complain that he was held back from pur- 
 suing his researches into nature by " the rumours of the 
 vulgar !" How refreshing it is to find him, even when beset 
 by his enemies, asserting, regarding one of his new discover- 
 ies, that it is " of more satisfaction to a discreet mind than 
 a king's crown." There is a depth of feeling in the phrase 
 as uttered by him, which gives it emphasis. These are the 
 words of a simple, single-minded, benevolent,, philosophi- 
 cally-inclined man, whose heart was grieved that aught else 
 should be preferred to " divine philosophy." Like an early 
 ripe fruit in a surly spring, he was used frostily, and the 
 flavour of his life was somewhat lost; enough, however, 
 remains to make us feel that he was one of Time's favourite 
 children — a foreshadower of the future. He did not give 
 actual being to experimental philosophy, but he did, more 
 than an}' other man of his own or any other single age, 
 compared with his surroundings, to establish the principle 
 
Experimental Science, 121 
 
 that experiment is the test of theory, and the touchstone of 
 thought, the handmaiden of truth, and the chief foe to self- 
 deception in investigation. He is the earHest consistent 
 theoretical and practical inquirer into the realities of natural 
 phenomena; the noblest advocate in his own age of the 
 right of private judgment on matters of science, of the need 
 of reform in study, teaching, and thinking. The sorrows he 
 bore for his beloved's sake — Truth — endear him to our 
 heart, and warm up our sympathies to the highest. We 
 know not if we have so thought and expressed ourselves as 
 to make this plain to others, as it seems to be to us. We 
 sincerely hope that this, at least, has been made palpable — 
 that even amid the greatest difficulties of the saddest times 
 in the world's history, the truly gifted man can work the 
 work given him to do, and leave his memory green in the 
 hearts of the people, in spite of ignorance, misunderstand- 
 ing, misrepresentation, and malice, and that truth is stronger 
 than persecution, neglect, contumely, and death. 
 
 The remarkable monk of whose life we have presented a 
 summary so brief, did not fail in the great work to which he 
 devoted himself through any deficiency of will or worth. 
 The times were not ripe for the great step forward he pro- 
 posed. Life was too unsettled ; thought was too torpid ; 
 the ignorance, even of thinking men, was too profound ; 
 reason too submissive, and custom too strong. In his great 
 mind the germ was planted which another Bacon cultured " 
 till it bore fruit — fruit for the blessing of all nations. To 
 pursue the path of true philosophy in an age of ignorance 
 and error j to incur, endure, and brave the displeasures of 
 his co-friars and the Church; to persevere in the specula- 
 tions, experiments, and endeavours which occupied his soul 
 in opposition to Custom, Authority, Prejudice, and Perse- 
 
12 2 Roger Bacon, 
 
 cution, indicate a nobleness superior to that of his illustrious 
 namesake and successor, even though we free his memory 
 from many Of the reproaches that have been cast upon it. 
 That in an age when any attempt to promote the ex- 
 pansion of the human intellect alarmed the Church with 
 thoughts of heresy, Bacon maintained the right of man to 
 free thought in science, forms a claim to the respect of all 
 ages which is undeniable : for as the late Professor John 
 Playfair said, " It is but fair to consider persecution, in- 
 flicted by the ignorant and bigoted, as equivalent to praise 
 bestowed by the liberal and enlightened." 
 
D ante — N ationality . 
 
 A.D. I265-132I. 
 
'* Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, 
 With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes, 
 Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, 
 Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. 
 Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom ; 
 Yet in thy heart what human sympathies. 
 What soft compassion glows, as in the skies 
 The tender stars their clouded lamps relume ! 
 Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks, 
 By Fra Hilario in his diocese. 
 As up the convent walls, in golden streaks. 
 The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease j 
 And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks. 
 Thy voice along the cloister whispers, ' Peace ! '" 
 
 — Longfelloxv. 
 
 '' Dante's great poem is at once a tomb and a cradle : the splendid 
 tomb of a world passing away — the cradle of a dawning brighter world 
 to come," — Abb'e Lameiinais. 
 
 " Both as a man and a poet, Dante stands first of that race of mighty 
 subjectives who may be said, in token of their conquests, to stamp the 
 impress of their own individuality both upon the actual world and upon 
 that which they create; that is to say, they derive all from within them- 
 selves or from the future, of which they are the prophets." — G2nseppe 
 Mazzini. 
 
 *• Weep not for the dead, but weep ye sore for him who goeth forth 
 from his place, and returns no more." — Jeremiah, 
 
DANTE— NATIONALITY. 
 
 |IME is not a unity only, but a continuity. No part 
 of it can be cut off or sectionalised — it is a whole. 
 The Past interpenetrates and pervades the Pres- 
 ent, which again contains the secret of the Future. A link 
 of mutual responsibihty joins in one the whole human race ; 
 a perfect chain of causation unites all change. History is 
 not only a tell-tale, but a prophet ; it has a two-fold life — 
 in memory and in hope. The past js not dead — it is im- 
 mortal. History contains the elements of evolution as well 
 as of revolution. The pith and marrow of its interest lies 
 in its record of the tireless labour of those from whom the 
 Present takes its form. Great men are the essences of their 
 epochs — men who give as well as receive impulses — men 
 who are not responsive only to the influences which sur- 
 round them, but who, by touching the mainsprings of events, 
 work their being into other ages. They are not mysterious, 
 incomprehensible exotics among men ; they are at once the 
 incarnated results of all that has preceded them, and the 
 centres of newer manifestations. Strange, wayward, fateful, 
 many-coloured, and motley as their several lives may seem, 
 there is that within them which effloresces through the cen- 
 turies, and seeks unrestingly for some development — a 
 
126 Dante, 
 
 super-vitality, if we may so speak, which, defying even 
 death, oozes forth, with subtle vigour, to diffuse in after 
 ages life, improvement, and hope. Such a man was Dante, 
 the mighty Florentine, Italy's master-mind, the first-born 
 singer of the modern world. The chief thought which fer- 
 mented in his mind is one which even now leavens almost 
 the whole of Italian thought. Amid all the miseries, strug- 
 gles, martyrdoms, and dismemberments of his native land, 
 the sublime aspirations of "the banished Ghibelline" with 
 glorious incorruptibihty have floated, ever-living seeds, in the 
 atmosphere of Italian thought, descending ever and anon 
 into some quickening soul, which takes the seed but to give 
 back the plant, and have at length ripened into the magni- 
 ficent idea of " nationality" — the nationality of that land to 
 which even yet Europe denies a name, an organisation, and 
 a fife. The time shall yet come when " the prophecy of 
 Dante" will be fulfilled; and his idea of the unity of Italy 
 shall be evolved into a fact. When the moral character ot 
 her people has been improved, her misfortunes and degrada- 
 tions — needful and purifying educational processes — shall 
 cease, and in la bella Italia, the destiny of which her noblest 
 poet dreamed, shall dawn and redden, until day-bright in its 
 glory. To the life of this epoch man, in so many ways a 
 type of his country's fate, let us devote a portion of such 
 thought and sympathy as is his due. Not that the true life 
 of such a one lies hid in the mere facts of time and space 
 which we can colligate about him, but because of the hu- 
 man interest we take in knowing the environments of such 
 a man, and estimating their effects upon the inner thoughts 
 which constitute and are his veritable fife. 
 
 It is not, indeed, our purpose, in these concise sketches, 
 to present elaborate and " long-drawn-out" details regarding 
 
Birth, Boyhood, and Edtccation. 127 
 
 the mhmtice of history. We strive to gaze rather upon 
 the thought which, hke the centre-light in a room, imparts 
 its radiance to the whole. This thought must indeed be 
 locahsed and circumstanced, for all life is conditioned ; but 
 to us thought seems matter of greater moment than its con- 
 ditions. Therefore, in so far only as the outward forms of 
 being affect the immortal love, the strenuous indignation, 
 the lofty patriotism, the misery-shadowed poetry, the severe 
 destiny, and the sublime hopes, which Dante represents to 
 us, shall we gather up historic facts, and, like the drapery 
 of a statue, wrap them round him. 
 
 Durante or Dante Alighieri, the son of Aldighiero 
 Alighieri, was bom at Florence, May, a.d. 1265. His 
 family was noble. His great-grandfather, Cacciaguida 
 Elisei, a Florentine knight, who had 'married a Ferrarese 
 lady named Alighieri, followed Conrad III., King of Italy 
 and Emperor of Germany, in the second crusade, was 
 knighted in the Holy Land, and died in battle in Syria, 
 1 147.* Dante's father died while he was yet a child, and 
 of his mother we know nothing, except that she took the 
 greatest care of and in his upbringing and his education. 
 By her he was placed under the tutelage of Brunetto Latini, 
 by whom he was initiated into all the branches of classical 
 learning, politics, and philosophy. It has been asserted 
 that he perfected his studies at the universities, of which 
 Padua, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford have been specially 
 mentioned ; but of this we are not aware that there is any 
 positive evidence. It is certain, however, that he was widely 
 read and deeply learned, and that he was an adept in music, 
 horsemanship, falconry, and drawing, besides being — a rare 
 accomplishment in those days — remarkable for the delicacy 
 * See "II Paradise," c. 15-17. 
 
128 Dante. 
 
 and beauty of his penmanship. He was therefore fitted on 
 all points — birth, education, accomplishments, and habits — 
 to take his place among either the men of the world, the 
 scholars, or the soldiers of his time ; and Beatrice speaks 
 truth of him when, in the " II Purgatorio," she says — 
 
 ' ' This man was such, that he 
 Might in himself have wondrously display'd 
 All noble virtues in supreme degree." — C. 30. 
 
 It is quite evident that in his youth he moved in genteel 
 circles, and was respected as a man of birth, honour, and 
 accomplishments. He was the companion of Guido Caval- 
 canti, a learned, inquisitive, and thinking youth, somewhat 
 skilled in verse-making ; his family was on terms of neigh- 
 bourly intimacy with that of Folco Portinari ; we have a 
 right to presume, from his sonnets, that he was the friend 
 of Cino da Pistoia, the most famous doctor and teacher ot 
 civil law in his day, and a much-esteemed poet ; as well as 
 an acquaintance, at least, of his " ladie lov6," Ricciarda del 
 Selvaggi ; and he was admitted to the parties given by the 
 noblest families in Florence. From these premises we infer 
 that there was no barrier in the state, condition, prospect, 
 appearance, or character of Dante, to prevent his aspiring 
 to the blessedness of marriage with any lady in Florence. 
 
 It was at a festival in " the merry month of May," that 
 month which is " the mother of loVe," that Dante, in his 
 ninth year, 
 
 " Ere boyhood yet had wholly pass'd away," 
 first observantly made the acquaintance of Beatrice Portinari. 
 On his active boyish mind she made a wondrous impres- 
 sion; but it is ante-dating passion altogether to call this 
 outburst of admiration for the beautiful, this instinctive ap- 
 perception of the poet's creed — " all that is good is beauti- 
 
Early Life and Love. 129 
 
 ful and fair," — by the name of Love. Let us rather say- 
 that this admiration, growing in intenseness as the lady 
 blossomed into womanhood and showed 
 
 *' A perfect body and a mind as fair,"* 
 transformed itself, about his eighteenth year, into that 
 strangest and strongest passion of man's nature, which gave 
 birth to the first sonnet of the " Vita Nuova." She appears 
 to have received his advances with maidenly reserve and 
 tender delicacy ; but this to an ardent, haughty, and some* 
 what melancholy mind, like his, whose whole being seemed 
 to concentre in this passion, so thoroughly did it entrance 
 him, could not but look like coldness, and be the cause of 
 "bitter sweet" complaints. The extreme sensitiveness of 
 his nature made him quiver at the slightest tinge of change 
 in her. There can be little doubt but that Beatrice saw in 
 his full black eyes' the evidences of such intense feeling as 
 no other Florentine could show ; but whether he ever ven- 
 tured to address her in such terms as could justify her in 
 considering herself pledged, is doubtful. He himself has 
 not withdrawn the veil of curious mystery that hangs around 
 his early and long-during love. That she married another 
 than he, we know. That she yV//^^ him, we cannot beHeve. 
 On no possible hjrpothesis involvmg her unfaithfulness can 
 we account for the haughty Dante's retaining his full, free, 
 glowing fervour to the last. Morbid and imbecile senti- 
 mentality did not lie in Dante's line ; and had she been 
 willingly false, nothing could have rescued his after conduct 
 from contempt. Why should the " worst construction " be 
 placed on all the obscure portions of a human Hfe ? J/kr/ we 
 convict Beatrice of disreputable coquettishness, Dante of mop- 
 ing and stupid romanticism, or Folco Portinari of miserliness, 
 * See Canzone xxiv. for a full description of Beatrice. 
 
 I 
 
1 30 Dante. 
 
 meanness, and domestic tyranny, to knit into historic unity 
 known facts % We think not. This rather let us suppose, 
 that, though burning with a fervent fever of soul, Dante, 
 with tremulous doubt of his own worthiness to claim the 
 fearful happiness of calling her his own, pent up within the 
 throbbing prison of his heart that anxious question which 
 might have secured for him the utterances of hope, for us 
 some happier history, perhaps, but not that poem at which 
 the world yet marvels. At last her father sickens, and with 
 a parent's natural zeal presses upon Beatrice — that he may 
 die happy in knowing that in the day of Italy's troubles she 
 will enjoy a husband's protection — the suit of Simon del 
 Bardi, a gentleman of fortune and position, who had sought 
 her hand. With true self-sacrificing, daughterly love, she 
 may have consented, and casting from her grief-fraught soul " 
 the memory of Dante in this crisis of her fate, may have 
 uttered an unrecallable promise by the bed of death on 
 which, in 1289, her father, Folco Portinari, lay. Among 
 those who paid the visits of condolence, customary 'on such 
 a bereaval, there was one who showed, by downcast eyes, 
 an inward grief, as he heard her speak amidst her tears, and 
 saw the cureless woe which her pale countenance expressed ; 
 his sincere avowal of an exquisite sorrow for her loss may 
 have wrenched from her the thrice woeful secret, and then he 
 may have felt — 
 
 *'The whole of love at once, and utter'd it, 
 Then bade ' adieu ' for ever. " 
 
 This, at any rate, we do know, that in that same year we 
 find him marching, with his fellow-citizens, in arms against 
 the inhabitants of Arezzo, a town thirty-four miles south- 
 east of Florence, from which the Ghibelhnes had expelled 
 the Guelphs ; and in the battle of Campandilo there fought. 
 
Inspiration and Aspiration. 131 
 
 we have the testimony of Leonardo Aretino that he was a 
 leader. At the close of the same year, too, Beatrice was 
 married ; but some secret unascertained yet soul-corroding 
 grief must surely have found a lodgment in the recently 
 vivacious heart of her on whom Dante had showered his 
 young life's love; for in a few months after, June 9, 
 1290, "the messengers of peace" came and carried her 
 " beyond the gates of hfe." At the request of her brother, 
 Dante wrote a lament for her. This, however it might 
 gratify her brother, could not solace his sorrow ; he became 
 as Boccaccio says, " a savage thing to the eye ; " he was, 
 by his own confession, "grief-stung to madness." The 
 anniversary of that sad day which had made his life " soli- 
 tary " with the solitariness of bereavement he kept as a day 
 -of sacred reflection, and on one of these days, 
 
 "Calender'd only in his aching heart," 
 
 the resolve to celebrate his Beatrice as no woman had ever 
 yet been, seized on his thoughts, and the seed which 
 ripened into the " Divina Commedia " was sown. In him 
 the true mission of woman and of love was fulfilled; it 
 purified, ennobled, and sanctified his life ; it shed unwonted 
 energy into his aspiring soul; it transformed desire into 
 worship ; and when Death came, he glorified the real into 
 the ideal, and as it were infused a double being into 
 Dante. Hereafter there was given to him a grander sense 
 of duty; a holier significance was imparted to life, and a 
 nobler and more exalted fervour animated every act and 
 thought. These heaven-sent agonies were not without 
 their use in enablmg him more worthily to wage the peren- 
 nial fight between the soul and sense to which mankind is, 
 in this earth-existence, called. Let us lower the earth 
 
132 Dante* 
 
 gently upon her, and say, Requiescat ! as we depart from her 
 tomb to rejoin the work-world once more. 
 
 In the year 1290, so woe-black to Dante, he again sought 
 in the hot activities of war a refuge from corrosive sorrow ; 
 he joined the Florentines in their attack upon Pisa, where 
 he gathered that incident of the hunger-death of Count 
 Ugolino and his sons, which is so appallingly described in 
 " The Inferno," and has been so grimly, yet grandly de- 
 picted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. At this time the towers of 
 the Porte Pisano were destroyed, and the Castle of Caprona 
 was taken. Returned from this useless attempt by physical 
 exertion "to pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow," 
 Dante threw himself into the excitement of political life, 
 and, though a Ghibelline himself, wedded, 1291, a lady of 
 the opposite faction. Gemma Donati ; perhaps this was, 
 as Leigh Hunt pleasingly suggests, the lady to whom, in 
 thankfulness for her pity, he addressed sonnets 18 — 21 of 
 the "Vita Nuova." We all know that "pity is akin to 
 love," and the truthfulness to nature of Othello's " round, 
 unvarnished tale " — 
 
 "She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, 
 And I loved her that she did pity them" — 
 
 has never been gainsaid. And why may not the elder bard 
 have been a case in point of what the younger says % Be 
 this as it may, we know that, regard mg some " pitying 
 spirit," there did arise in Dante's mind a contest between 
 inclination and reason \ that he did marry, and that he had 
 a numerous family, five sons and a daughter ; that he was, 
 with perhaps, two slight and brief derehctions, faithful to 
 his marital duties; that he loved his children; and that, 
 with becoming dehcacy, he has in the "Divina Commedia" 
 described only the purely pyschological development of his 
 
Sensationalism Rebuked. 133 
 
 early love, and has abstained from mentioning, what, indeed, 
 would have destroyed the artistic unity of the whole, either 
 his or Beatrice's marriage. We are prone to accept that 
 interpretation, as justifiable as any other, which accords 
 with a noble though troubled life, even although it discoun- 
 tenance the prurient fancies of those who support the thesis 
 that the wedded Hfe of genius is and must be always unhappy. 
 Of two suppositions, equally probable in themselves, we 
 incline to that which most honours the wife, and least dis- 
 honours the husband j which makes love possible, but duty 
 true and real. It is a sad evidence of the depravity of the 
 heart, how much more ready we are to deem that " roman- 
 tic" which gleams in the lurid briUiancy of vice, than shines 
 with the sober lustre of virtue. We believe that Dante loved 
 — not indeed with the impulsive earnestness of his earher 
 passion, but calmly, coldly,. and honestly — the Lady Gemma, 
 and that she was the "new and gentle spirit of love" to 
 whom he pays court thus : — 
 
 *' Lady, the gentle thought which speaks of you 
 Comes frequently to bear me company, 
 And then so sweetly reasons upon love. 
 It makes the heart consent to all it says."* 
 
 We have mentioned in our preceding paragraphs, the 
 names of two parties which, in Dante's age, divided Italy, 
 and we shall now make our transition from his private to 
 his public life, by proceeding to explain the nature of the 
 differences which then so often divided a house against 
 itself In 1 2 15, a young man of the family of Buondel- 
 monte, though betrothed to an Uberti, married a Donati. 
 The faithless lover was stabbed in the street by the relatives 
 of the lady. The frantic mode of seeking justice by appeals 
 * " Vita Nuova," sonnet xxi. 
 
1 34 Dante. 
 
 to arms was then in vogue, and the citizens took part in the 
 quarrel. The Uberti were adherents of the party who 
 favoured the temporal sovereignty of the emperors of Ger- 
 many, rather than that of the Popes. The secularists were 
 called Ghibellines ; the ecclesiasts, Guelphs. The private 
 feud just mentioned merging itself into the elder and wider 
 quarrel awoke these parties to active hostilities, and a series 
 of distressing civil contests, in which " twenty republics 
 made savage war upon each other within the bosom of the 
 Peninsula/' continued to bear witness to the intensity of 
 the hatred and jealousy of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, of 
 which Florence became, in consequence, the head-quarters. 
 In this strife of the factions we have seen that Dante engaged. 
 Not, however, as a partisan, as this marriage of his and 
 many of his subsequent acts prove, did he adopt the insig- 
 nia and the shibboleths of GhibelHnism. His genius was too 
 lofty to warp itself up in the littleness of sectional thought, 
 and he pursued his honest convictions wherever they led — 
 no matter to which party, for the time being, they attached 
 him. He acted upon the idea expressed in those words, so 
 often desecrated, — " measures, not men," — and rose superior 
 to the fractional egotisms of time-serving partisanship. It 
 could not but be gratifying to him, therefore, to find that 
 under the leadership of Giano della Bella some enactment 
 likely to restrain the violence of faction was about to be 
 introduced, and he must have been delighted at the appoint- 
 ment, in 1293, of a new officer, called il gofifaioniere di gius- 
 tizia, the standard-bearer of justice. No office was more need- 
 ful. Hitherto the citizens of Florence had been divided into 
 three classes — i, Grandi — feudal nobles; 2, Popolani Grassi 
 — wealthy citizens ; 3, jP/V^/^?// — "the lower orders." The two 
 latter classes found that in the contests of the factions they 
 
A Friendin Need. 135 
 
 chiefly suffered, and hence they claimed a new " constitu- 
 tion." This was gained, in 1282, by a law which classed 
 the citizens according to their occupations. The members 
 of the higher occupations elected six priori^ or councillors, 
 who were renewable every two months. They were the 
 executive of the republic. No one could hold this honour 
 unless he was an enrolled member of one of the " arti mag- 
 gioriy' or " higher trades ;" and Dante, when he decided on 
 pursuing politics, inscribed his name on the register of the 
 apothecaries. Even this safeguard failed in keeping peace 
 in Florence, and hence the new reform movement consum- 
 mated in 1293. Soon after the appointment of the adminis- 
 trator of justice, an unprincipled coalition of the nobles 
 €xpelled the reforming party, and secured to themselves the 
 right to destroy their neighbours' quiet and prosperity. The 
 Donati and the Cherchi took different parts in this issue of 
 events, and frequent affrays between their partisans disturbed 
 the streets. The Pope, of course, favoured the Donati. 
 About the same time, a family enmity arose in Pistoia 
 between two branches of the CancelUeri, called respectively 
 Bianchi and Neri. Florence was asked to arbitrate. It 
 ruled that the chiefs of the faction should be expelled from 
 Pistoia. This opinion being adopted, the exiles came to 
 Florence. There they naturally allied themselves to those 
 who most befriended them. The Neri attached themselves 
 to the Donati, the Bianchi to the Cherchi, and thus it hap- 
 pened that the factions of Florence received their desig- 
 nations from the Pistoians whom they patronised. The 
 state was embarrassed by this complication of quarrel within 
 quarrel, and some man, whose sterling qualities were indis- 
 putable by either party, was wanted to calm the storm of 
 anarchy, and be a pilot in the hour of need. Dante was 
 
136 Dante. 
 
 chosen. Like a strong-souled, honest man, he set himself 
 to do the duty of the hour. This he did, not by the flicker- 
 ing and unsteady lamp of the expedient, but by the ever- 
 beaming light of justice. He could not stoop to be the tool 
 of party ; he saw the merits and demerits of faction, and 
 decided accordingly. Hence, in June 1300, he proposed a 
 law, by which the leaders of both parties were, for a time, 
 exiled beyond the territories of the republic, in the hope 
 that by separation their hate might be appeased, and that 
 in their absence the people might enjoy prosperity. This 
 law, calculated to intensify the rage of his enemies, and to 
 turn even his own friends against him, he had the daring 
 hardihood and the patriotism to pass. In every age the 
 magnanimous man has been made the prey of meaner, though 
 more politic, spirits ; and it was now as it has ever been, 
 the slimy crawlers into place and power are too masterful 
 in their guile for the simple honesty of the true patriot. 
 The banished Neri, by their agents, whispered into the ear 
 of Pope Boniface VIH., a worldly-minded diplomatist, that 
 the Bianchi had gone over to the Ghibellines, and were 
 preparing, if they attained predominance in -Florence, to 
 join themselves to the Colonna, his personal foes. The 
 Pope decided on supporting the Neri, and sent Charles of 
 Valois, brother of Philip IV. of France, under the title of 
 " Peacemaker," to Florence. Dante was commissioned to 
 protest against this denationalization at the court of Rome, 
 and to endeavour to get justice and fair play ; thus placing 
 himself, in the interests of righteousness, in seeming oppo- 
 sition to his family party. During his absence, Charles 
 the Peacemaker, aided by 1200 soldiers, entered the city, 
 admitted the Neri to their former state and stations, called in 
 
The Woes of Exile. 137 
 
 an armed peasantry, caused Nerian Priori to be appointed, 
 and otherwise exhibited the favour he pretended not to feel. 
 Horrible instances of pillage, slaughter, and torture occurred ; 
 murders were frequent, extortion abounded, and all the 
 licence of brutality was exercised. Dante's house was 
 attacked and plundered ; he hastened from Rome, met the 
 fugitive Bianchi at Arezzo, and for the present threw in his 
 lot with them. This soon became known ; as a traitor to 
 his party he deserved, it was thought, no mercy. There 
 are no enemies like old friends. In Januar)^ 1302, a sen- 
 tence was passed, condemning him to exile for two years, at 
 the end of which period, on payment of a fine of 8000 florins, 
 he might return ; but failing that, his property was declared 
 " forfeit to the state." Such a sentence did not daunt him ; 
 he would not kneel, and fawn, and pray, and cry '■^ peccavV 
 to any men in Christendom, when he was conscious of the 
 rectitude of his own soul. But the recusant must be brought 
 to terms or humbled ; so he, along with others, on the evi- 
 dence of " public scandal," was found guilty of malver- 
 sation of the public trust-money, of usuiy and peculation, 
 and sentenced to perpetual exile; or, if it should so happea 
 that his longings should take him back to Florence, he was 
 to be burnt to death. Then began for Dante the Inferno 
 of Exile, differenced only by one immense item from the 
 spirits of Malebolge; for "these have not the hope of death'' 
 Death had already taken to his treasure-house the divine 
 Beatrice; Charles Martel, his friend; Forese Donati, his 
 well-beloved kinsman ; and Guido Cavalcanti, his soul's 
 brother, in this the year of his exile, had also departed. 
 "What sorrow is like unto my sorrow?" he might well 
 exclaim. Bereft at once of wife, children and friends, good 
 
138 Dante. 
 
 name, and property, — all that man values, except a proud 
 sense of his own innocence, and the consciousness of powers 
 yet undeveloped, at whose utterances even the hardiest shall 
 wince and writhe. Too truly, O Dante, is thy life one of 
 the most tragical which our world hath witnessed ! Yet 
 there is strength in thee to endure it all; let us together 
 thank God for that. The slow, bitter, lingering, self-con- 
 suming, sorrow-haloed death in Hfe to which thou art doomed 
 worketh in thee a newer and a nobler soul ; and though 
 now thou art cast into the Inferno, thou shalt yet pass 
 upward to II Paradiso, and be blest. Yes ! the decree is 
 uttered ; it is decided that you must 
 
 *'Bid 'adieu' to everything 
 Most dearly loved — this is the first shaft 
 • Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt learn 
 How salt the savour is of others' bread, 
 Shalt feel how weary to the homeless 'tis 
 To mount or to descend a stranger's stairs ; 
 But what to thee shall be most bitter gall, 
 Thou in those straits shalt be contacted with 
 Most dastard, vile, and worthless company." 
 
 — Jl Paradiso^ c. xvii. 
 
 Harsh reward this, too often given for patriot honesty ! 
 In the inner life, however, there is some recompense even 
 for those who stand unyieldingly, although successlessly, 
 before the threatening storms of circumstance, and with the 
 unfurled banner of principle strive to gather into one the 
 nobler children of a land, to aim at or maintain a nation's 
 freedom. There is more true pleasure in nursing, if only in 
 one's thoughts, a high ideal, than in the very whirlwind of 
 local passions to be driven from our moorings with regard 
 to the Eternal. Yea, verily ! Hence, even of thee, O Dante, 
 in this thine hour of dark trial, we may hear Hope saying — 
 
Sorrows Thicken as Time Passes. 1 39 
 
 ** To suffer woes darker than death or night, 
 To love and bear, till hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates — 
 This is thy glory / " 
 
 Dante had reached Sienna on his way from Rome when 
 the news of his exile, and the pillage and confiscation of his 
 property, reached him. The GhibeUine exiles who had 
 been driven from Florence met for consultation in a small 
 castle at Gorgonza, near Arezzo. Dante joined them there. 
 At this assembly it was resolved to retire, for a time, to the 
 neighbouring city of Arezzo, and — 
 
 ** Wait securely 
 For the atoning hour to come. " 
 
 Here they elected Count Alessandro da Romena for their 
 leader, and appointed a council of twelve — of which Dante 
 was made a member — to suggest, consider, and conduct 
 such plans as might lead to their restoration. Dante strove 
 to animate the souls of his co-exiles with the great thought 
 which occupied his heart's core — a united, regenerated, 
 nationalised Italy. They thought only of their lost posses- 
 sions ; he of his country's lost glory, and her true good ; so 
 he was unsuccessful. 
 
 Pope Boniface VIII., one of the most strenuous and un- 
 scrupulous assertors of the temporal supremacy of the occu- 
 pants of St Peter's chair, died in September 1303, and 
 Benedict XI. " reigned in his stead." This Pope was of a 
 milder and more conciliating temper than his predecessor. 
 He felt anxious to restore tranquillity to Tuscany ; for this 
 purpose he commissioned Cardinal de Prato to attempt the 
 reconciliation of the parties, and the adjustment of their 
 differences. The effort was unavailing. The ruling faction, 
 under the leadership of Corso Donati, expelled the Pope's 
 
1 40 Dante. 
 
 agent, and inexorably resisted restitution and pacification. 
 Elated by their success, the Florentines gave themselves up 
 to the wildest excesses. In May 1304 they prepared a 
 magnificent spectacle, entitled, the "Masquerade of Damned 
 Souls," in which hell and its torments were vividly repre- 
 sented. So vast were the crowds that flocked to see this 
 exhibition, that a wooden bridge over the Amo, which had 
 been overladen by the multitude, gave way, and many 
 persons were drowned. In the following month a dreadful 
 fire, which destroyed 1900 buildings of various descriptions, 
 broke out, and a great number of people perished. The 
 Bianchi and the Ghibellines, having sought and obtained 
 help from Arezzo, Bologna, and Pistoia, resolved on making 
 a joint attack upon their native city, thus weakened by 
 excess and death, with the intention of re-establishing them- 
 selves, if possible, therein. In this attempt, through the 
 jealousy and disunion of the leaders,* they failed, and 
 Dante despairingly began that sad series of wanderings which 
 make up the hereafter of his life. 
 
 It is impossible to give any distinct and reliable account 
 of his journeys. Nor is this needful, to enable us to know 
 how severely his powers of endurance were tasked, or the 
 heroic honesty with which he followed, to their direst con- 
 sequences, the opinions he had formed. So much, however, 
 as is known, or is fairly deducibJe from what is known, may 
 be with brevity outlined, that it may be seen how truly " he 
 learned in sufifering what he taught in song." 
 
 From " II Paradiso," xvii., it seems he found his earliest 
 
 place of rest in Lombardy, having been invited by Bar- 
 
 tolommeo della Scala to spend a portion of his exile there. 
 
 Here ht probably acted as tutor to his son. Can Grande della 
 
 * "II Purgatorio," xvii., iia-120. 
 
Division is Weakness, 141 
 
 Scala. In 1306 he was at Padua, /^r/^^/i- assisting Can 
 Grande with his studies at the University. In the following 
 year he was one of the members of a convention held in the 
 sacristy of a church belonging to the abbey of St Gaudenzio, 
 in Mugello, between the Ghibellines and the Bianchi, to 
 determine upon the measures to be adopted to attain the 
 success of their party. Selfish jealousy seems to have over- 
 powered all patriotism. Their own wounds irked them 
 more than the wounds their country suffered, and it does 
 not appear that any unanimous resolution was come to. 
 This failure affected Dante much ; he saw the hopelessness 
 of Italy's redemption, so long as internecine wars were 
 waged by city against city, nay, by factions of the same city 
 against each other; he saw that the divisions, the selfishness, 
 the faithlessness, of his countrymen, rendered them power- 
 less, and that so long as its inhabitants were swayed and 
 regulated only, or even mainly, by their egotistical passions, 
 and by considerations regarding their local well-being, no 
 greatness was possible for Italy. Hence the lonely wanderer, 
 now homeless and breadless, going about like a mendicant, 
 showing, against his will, the wounds with which fortune 
 had smitten him, bowed down by want, fatigue, and the 
 contestings of faith and doubt, when he knocked at the 
 wicket of the monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo, amid the 
 mountains of Lunigiana, presented in his Hneaments, hag- 
 gard, pale, yet resolute, a v/hole history of woe. To the 
 monk Hilario's query, " What seek ye here f Dante an- 
 swered, "Peace." That was a want most hard to be supplied 
 to him. Nor does the convent's quietude seem to have 
 yielded it j for we find that, in 1307, he had found another 
 resting-place for a season in the house of the Marchese 
 Morello Malespina, a Guelph, by whom he seems to have 
 
142 Dante. 
 
 been honourably entertained. In 1308 Corso Donati, 
 Dante's greatest political enemy and marriage relation, being 
 accused of aiming at the sovereignty of Florence, fled, but 
 was pursued, dragged from his horse, and slain. Albert I., 
 Emperor of Germany, was murdered on the ist of May in 
 the same year. These circumstances seem to have put 
 Dante on the move again. We find him wandering through 
 the valleys of Casentino, and in the mountainous regions 
 round Arezzo, but settling, towards the close of 1308, at 
 the court of the Signori della Scala at Verona. Alboino 
 della Scala at this time held the chief government here, 
 although he had associated Can Grande — whom we have 
 supposed to be a pupil of Dante's — in the rulership with him. 
 These Signori were the mightiest of the Ghibelline chiefs, 
 and there can be little doubt but that Dante went thither to 
 aid in the consultations which must have been entered into 
 in consequence of the changed position of parties after the 
 demise of Corso Donati, and the accession of Henry VII. 
 of Luxemburg. It was at the court of Verona that Dante 
 wrote, in the Latin language, his great prose work, " Con- 
 cerning Monarchy," an abstract of his theory of political 
 principles, and a defence of national government. 
 
 Of this work we present our readers with the following 
 abstract, that they may be able to form a judgment regard- 
 ing the politics of Dante, and the correctness of our esti- 
 mate of his influence on the national movement : — God is 
 one. The universe is an idea of God's, and is therefore one. 
 God is the source of all; all, therefore, partakes of His 
 nature. Man is the most excellent product of creation. As 
 such he must tmd continually to a state of perfectness, and 
 strive, by holiness and knowledge, to attain a likeness to, if 
 not a union with, God. Individual man is too short lived 
 
Italian Nationality. 143 
 
 to accomplish this; but man has an historic and collective 
 being, as well as an individual life. Humanity, aggregate 
 man, is long-lived and indefinitely progressive. Humanity, 
 like God, is one. Harmony and, as a consequence, asso- 
 ciation are the conditions of co-working unity. Unity must 
 be embodied and represented. To give embodiment to 
 human unity, there must be an outer form — government, 
 and an inner spirit — law. A people aggregated into an 
 organic whole, by a general agreement under the same laws 
 and government, constitutes a nation. Law and govern- 
 ment, however, must have means of enforcement, and hence 
 arises the need of an imperial or other head; not as a 
 superior to, but as an agent of, the law ; as the agent of the 
 people, the chief administrator of the law, and the repre- 
 sentative to other nationalities of the will of the incorporated 
 citizens of the state over which he bears rule. Here the 
 sovereign is clearly differentiated from the Fope, and the 
 essential greatness of individual man is not lost sight of in 
 the blaze of the grandeur of imperialism. 
 
 Such is the leading thought of Dante's book. Looking 
 at the distracted condition of Italy in his time, how much 
 difficulty seemed in the way of realising this vast conception! 
 In the midst of Italian anarchy, where was the unifier, the 
 consolidator 1 The popes had deserted the people so soon 
 as their power was estabHshed, and the petty princes of his 
 country bore the imprint of the holy father's heel in the 
 hollow of their necks. The German emperors struggled 
 against absorption into the pontificate, and fought for the 
 possession of temporal power, free from the papal yoke. So 
 far as the people were concerned, all virtue had departed 
 from the Papacy ; no trust could be reposed in it for the 
 upraising of an Italian nationality. Henry VII. alone 
 
144 Dante, 
 
 appeared capable of effecting these great ends. Having 
 finished his work, Dante addressed a circular letter " to the 
 kings, dukes, marquises, counts, the senators of Rome, and 
 the people of Italy," in which he strove to show that in the 
 temporal sovereignty of Henry VII. lay the only hope of a 
 peaceful, flourishing, and truly national Italy. This letter, 
 coupled with his exposition of the principles of monarchy, 
 seem to have had some effect, because in 13 lo, Henry VII. 
 having entered Italy, was crowned King of Lombardy. At 
 this time, Can Grande attended him with a body of troops, 
 and gave him efficient aid in overcoming his enemies at 
 Cremona, Brescia, &c. .For this the Emperor conferred 
 upon him the Imperial Vicariate of Lombardy. Henry 
 seems to have hesitated in his course, and Dante, burning 
 with impatience to re-enter his native city, addressed a 
 letter to him, dated Tuscia, April 13 11, requesting him to 
 tarry no longer by the " wandering Po," but passing the 
 Apennines, to approach in hostile array against the Guelphs 
 on "Arno's shelvy sides," and shatter the pride of the 
 Florentines. Henry did enter Tuscany, and threatened 
 Florence, but took no active measures to fulfil his menaces. 
 After being crowned at Rome, he seems to have attempted 
 a reconcihation between the different parties. From this 
 effort he was soon obliged to desist, because Robert, King 
 of Sicily and Naples, opposed Henry's attainment of the 
 royal honours of Rome. In an expedition against him, 
 Henry, having reached Buonconventi, near Sienna, sud- 
 denly died, it is suspected, of poison. This was a fearful 
 blow to Ghibellinism ; but to Dante, who had so enthu- 
 siastically advocated the claims of Henry, it was especially 
 disastrous. He took refuge again in Verona, but disap- 
 pointment had somewhat soured his temper, and broken the 
 
The Woes of Exile. 145 
 
 elasticity of his spirits. The services he had rendered to the 
 GhibeUine cause, though great, had now, from no fault of 
 his however, produced a reaction in favour of the Guelphs, 
 and he himself was ungenerously exposed to the sneers of 
 the courtiers of Verona. Dante's was not a spirit that could 
 brook such treatment j when, therefore, in a merry moment, 
 shortly after the court fools had been amusing a company, 
 Alboino, Prince of Verona, and elder brother of Can Grande, 
 turning full upon Dante, musing in moody silence on his 
 many woes, asked him why fools were so much more popular 
 at princes' courts than philosophers, Dante curtly answered, 
 " Like loves like," rose from the table, and not long there- 
 after bade farewell to Verona. 
 
 After this we have traces of his having visited Conte 
 Guido Salvatico, at Casentino; the Signori della Fag- 
 giola, in Urbino, and of his having been courteously enter- 
 tained in the castle of Colmollaro, by Busone da Gubbio, 
 a poet and patriot, whom he had met at Arezzo in the first 
 year of his exile. Besides these places of sojourn, we may 
 mention Udine, Trento, and Friuli. In the latter place he 
 dwelt with Pagano della Torre, the patriarch of Aquileia. It 
 is probable that in the castle of Lanteri Paratico, near Brescia, 
 he composed portions of his immortal poem. Many other 
 places have been named — e.g.^ Oxford, Paris, and several 
 places in Germany. Of these, however, little is known with 
 certainty. We believe that Dante's love of country was too 
 great to allow of his leaving the land which refused to ac- 
 knowledge him as one of her diviner sons. In these wander- 
 ings his distress must have been great ; for we find him, 
 with importunate persistency, petitioning for a recall of his 
 sentence, and permission to return to the sweet bosom of 
 Florence, " wherein," he says, " I had my birth and nourish- 
 
 K 
 
146 Dante. 
 
 ment, even to the ripeness of my age, and in which, with 
 her good-will, I desire, with all my heart, to rest this wearied 
 spirit of mine, and to terminate the time allotted to me on 
 earth." How grievously must his hopes have been crushed, 
 and all their blossoms have faded, when his strong soul, 
 bowed by the unblest weight of exile, could stoop to en- 
 treaty ! 
 
 But though willing to sue for release from an unjust sen- 
 tence, and to beg permission to lay his sorrow-tried dust 
 within St John the Baptist's Church in Florence, he was yet 
 unwilling to utter the cowardly lie by which alone he could 
 receive a revocation of the judgment which his victorious 
 fellow-citizens had passed on him. He would not confess 
 guilt when he felt none, or plead for pardon on such terms 
 as would imply the justice of the award from which he suf- 
 fered. Therefore when a friend, in 13 16, had so far suc- 
 ceeded as to gain a provisional rescindment of his sentence 
 on some such unholy conditions, he rejected the proffer in 
 these heroic terms : — " Is sitch an invitation to return to his 
 country glorious for Dante, after suffering in exile almost 
 fifteen years ? Is it thus, then, they would recompense inno- 
 cence which all the world knows, and the labour and fatigue 
 of unremitting study % . . . Far from the man who cries 
 aloud for justice be this compromise, by his money, with his 
 persecutors. No, my father ! this is not the way that shall 
 lead me back to my country. But I shall return with hasty 
 steps, if you or any other can open to me a way which shall 
 not derogate from the fame and honour of Dante ; but if by 
 no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I shall 
 never enter. What ! shall I not everywhere enjoy the light 
 of the sun and stars % and may I not seek and contemplate, 
 in every comer of the earth under the canopy of heaven, 
 
Where is Peace to be Foimdf 147 
 
 consoling and delightful Truth, without first rendering my- 
 self inglorious, nay, infamous, to the people and republic of 
 Florence] Bread, I hope, will not fail me." He rejected 
 those " sold and lying privileges," and went forth to front 
 his fate again, 
 
 ** As one 
 
 That makes no pause, but presses on his road, 
 
 Whate'er betide him." 
 
 The two succeeding years seem to have been given up 
 to wandering, "lean abstinence," the composition of that 
 "sacred poem" which had made 
 
 "Both heaven and earth copartners of its toil," 
 
 and the indulgence of the visionary hopes that his growing 
 fame would yet prevail with Florence to recall him, and enable 
 him to "claim," even at the Baptistery, — where,' in his younger 
 years, he had saved a child's hfe, — " the wreath due to the 
 poet's temples." It has been conjectured, and not without 
 probability, from many passages in the " Commedia," that 
 at this period he entered a Franciscan monastery in the 
 mountains of Umbria, and that having passed his novitiate, 
 he found himself unwilHng to draw "the shuttle to the 
 point," and forsook the brotherhood, convinced "it is not 
 the habit of St Benedict, St Augustine, St Francis, or St 
 Domenic that constitutes a religious life, but that God de-. 
 mands the worship of the soul." After this, he gained a 
 fitter refuge, where 
 
 '* Polenta's eagle broods, 
 And in his broad circumference of plume 
 O'ershadows Cervia." 
 
 Here, in the mansion of Guido Novello da Polenta, a muni- 
 ficent patron of literature, and himself somewhat distin- 
 guished as a poet, Dante found an ungrudged home. 
 
1 48 Dante. 
 
 congenial companionship, and honourable patronage. To 
 Guido's service Dante enthusiastically devoted all his ener- 
 gies and much of his affection. Guido, on his part, esti- 
 mated rightly the talents and the trustworthiness of his 
 guest ; for on a quarrel arising between the Ravennese and 
 the Venetians, he commissioned Dante as his ambassador 
 to conduct such negotiations as seemed necessary. The 
 Venetians obstinately refused to listen to any terms, and 
 Dante returned to Ravenna disheartened and successless. 
 At this he fairly gave way ; nothing could abate or restrain 
 his grief. This deep and serious soul, so sadly tried in the 
 very furnace of affliction, thought so intensely and felt so 
 keenly his powerlessness to effect the wishes of his bene- 
 factor, that the over-bent bow snapped, and his spirit quitted 
 its tenement of clay, September 13 21, aged fifty-six. Guido 
 Novello had him sumptuously interred, and ordered a monu- 
 ment to be erected over his resting-place ; but this he did 
 not live to see accomplished ; in a few months thereafter he 
 followed Dante to the tomb. Florence repented when it 
 was too late. 
 
 At the time of Dante's exile, his family consisted of five 
 sons and a daughter. The daughter, named Beatrice, in 
 memory of her who had created in him a 7iew life, became 
 a nun in Ravenna, the city where her father found a tomb. 
 Two of his sons survived him : one, Pietro, became a lawyer 
 in Verona, and rejected reinstatement in his father's posses- 
 sions with as much haughtiness as he could have wished. 
 Both sons inherited a portion of their father's genius, and 
 unitedly composed a commentary on the " Divina Comme- 
 dia." It is a sufficient rebutment of the charges brought 
 against the character of Gemma Donati, that she trained her 
 children to revere their father's name and value his honour ; 
 
His Life and his Life's Thoitght. 149 
 
 that she educated them well upon the scanty savings she 
 could glean from the wreck of fortune in which she was 
 involved ; and that even from Corso Donati, her kinsman 
 and her husband's foe, she would receive nothing that could 
 taint her name or Dante's with dishonour. There is a truer 
 romance in such honest endeavour and suffering than in the 
 prevalent whinings made upon the unpropitious nature ot 
 the married life of genius. 
 
 Such is an outline of the life of Dante. A sad and tra- 
 gical life, yet a true one. Faith, hope, labour, suffering, all 
 these have stamped their seal upon his fate; but, trium- 
 phant over all, his life and his life's thought still work their 
 influences through the world. The grand problem of Italian 
 organic nationality is not yet solved ; but many labourers 
 are engaged in striving to realise the ideal of the poet 
 Dante is the utterer of the initial thought of modern poli- 
 tics — the nation. In the ancient world we had the Patri- 
 archate manifested in Chaldea, the Empire developed in 
 Eg3qDt, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, and the City partially 
 organised in Greece. In mediaeval times, Germany and 
 France attempted to revive the Empire, while Italy endea- 
 voured to re-establish the City. But over all these the 
 Hierarchy reared its throne, and claimed supremacy; the 
 Church overstrode home, city, and empire, as infinitely less 
 than itself Dante saw that social and imperial life were 
 equally imperilled, and introduced that modification of 
 imperialism and citizenship which we now denominate a 
 Nationality. This nationality he asserted to be altogether 
 independent of the Papal rule, and established for other 
 purposes than the Popedom could accomplish. Surely there 
 is a moral sublimity in this life ! A breadleas exile, con- 
 sumed by the gnawing tortures of unjustly imposed woes, 
 
1 50 Dante. 
 
 the adviser of kings, the denouncer of Papal dishonesty, 
 the censor of morals, the advocate of orthodoxy, the avenger 
 of successful crime, the political teacher of Italy, the creator 
 of the language and the poetry of Tuscany, the prophet of 
 his nation, — when were so many seeming incompatibihties 
 ever before conjoined in one man ? 
 
 Such a sketch as we have now given, brief as it is, may 
 suffice to show that a man may work out a noble purpose, 
 even though the environments of his life are not such as he 
 would choose ; that amid difficulties and privations know- 
 ledge may be acquired and applied ; and that an unflagging 
 zeal for one's country may co-exist with expressed and 
 recorded dissatisfaction with the present state and doings of 
 that country. Who can fail to admire the stern decision, 
 the calm strength, the resolute heroism, the constant self- 
 sustainment, the grand inflexible honesty Dante always 
 exhibited? Like Milton's angel, 
 
 " Unmoved, 
 Unshaken^ unseduced, unterrified, 
 His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal ; 
 Nor numbers nor example with him wrought, 
 To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind." 
 
Chaucer — English Literature. 
 
 A.D. I 328- 1400. 
 
• Chaucer ! our Helicon's first fountain-stream. 
 Our nioming star of song, that led the way 
 To welcome the long-after coming beam 
 Of Spenser's lights and Shakespeare's perfect day. 
 Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay, 
 As if they ne'er had died : he group'd and drew 
 Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay. 
 That still they live and breathe in fancy's view, 
 Fresh beings fraught with truths imperishable true." — Campbell. 
 
 **The first finder of our language." — Occleve. 
 
 Of our language he was the lode-star." — Lydgate. 
 
 Dan Chaucer zt'^// of English imdefyled." — Spenser. 
 
 Chaucer, five himdred years ago, first set our English life to English 
 music. " — Brimley. 
 
 Chaucer, the Homer of our poetry, and the true father of English 
 literature.''— C;. L. Craik. 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 
 
 jN the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, one fine 
 old Gothic piece of ornamental sculpture stands 
 out, distinguishably from all others for its look of 
 hoar antiquity, though little more than three centuries have 
 elapsed since, as a labour of love, "one Nicholas Brigham," 
 erected it. That marks the burial-place of Chaucer, the 
 first distinctively English poet. Though " black oblivion's 
 rust" has played "fantastic tricks" with the singer's effigy, 
 it has Uttle dimmed his fame ; for the preservative magic of 
 genius has thrown^ around it undecaying spells, so that 
 "near it there may never come suspect or danger." This, 
 however, was not the earliest memorial of 
 
 "The noble rhetor poet of Britain, 
 That made first to distil and rain 
 The gold dewdrops of speech and eloquence 
 Into our tongue ;" 
 
 for Caxton (who collected, edited, and printed an issue of 
 the " Canterbury Tales") placed above his grave a slab with 
 this inscription, written by a learned Milanese : — 
 
 *' Gulfredus Chaucer vates, et fama poesis 
 Matemse, hac sacra sum tumulatus humo. " 
 
 Of one to whom such unwonted honours had been paid, it 
 would be fair to conclude that there was warrant in his life, 
 
154 Chaucer. 
 
 works, and influence for them all, and that those dear " re- 
 membrances of the dead'^ were but indications of the worth 
 of the living. Nor would the inference be uncorroborated by 
 the fact. Chaucer's life was eventful ; his works have even yet 
 a living interest for living men, and his influences pulsate 
 even now in the heart of modern civilisation. In the 
 morning of our English life this keenly nationalised poet 
 became not only the exponent of the buxom age of Edward 
 III., but also a marked leader in that party whose genius 
 insinuates the principles of development into their own 
 generation, and who thus become the progenitors of the 
 progress of after-times. He is a great, healthy, vigorous 
 soul, whose Norman nature had been thoroughly impressed 
 in the Saxon mint, and who issued the "coinage of his 
 brain" in the despised vernacular of actual life ; broke the 
 Latin moulds and the French dies in which language was 
 then cast or pressed ; and touched with everlasting nation- 
 ality the form and substance of our English speech. 
 
 To those who rightly comprehend the immense importance 
 of a pure and noble language in bringing about and sustaining 
 a healthy and generous nationality of thought and feeling ; 
 who look upon literature not only as one of the issues, but 
 also as one of the communicators of life ; who trace the 
 influence of words upon the natural and spiritual energies of 
 man ; — it will appear at once an invaluable service done to 
 our race, to suffuse and vivify the expressions which men 
 most use with the dyes of poesy and the formative activity 
 of genius. The testimony of centuries unanimously accords 
 to Chaucer the glory of having been the masculine factor 
 in the begetting of our present English speech; and he 
 merits acknowledgment as the creator of an epoch from 
 which men date the birth and uprise of an English language 
 
Early Life and Upbringing. 155 
 
 and an English nationality ; for then, indeed, did the anta- 
 gonistic forces which, since the invasion of the Norman 
 conqueror, had kept the races which peopled England 
 asunder, coalesce and co-operate, till they became a new 
 unity, and attained individuality and being — a being which 
 is one and indivisible with the rich traditions of our past 
 history, and the freshest facts in our present literature. To 
 the life and times of this " our morning star of song," a 
 little attention may be devoted, if we have hearts alive to 
 the admiration and emulation of the great forefathers of our 
 country's glory. 
 
 The name — Chaucer — is decidedly Norman 'mform, and 
 it occurs in Battel Abbey Roll, — a list of men of note who 
 accompanied William the Conqueror to England, 1066. 
 We read also of one Joannes Chaucer, cives Londinensis, 
 in 1299; and we know on the best authority — his own 
 statement — that Geoffrey Chaucer was bom in " the citye 
 of London," which, he says, "is to me so dere and swete, 
 in which I was forth growen; and more kindly love have I 
 to that place than to any other in yearth, — as every kindly 
 creature has to that place of his kindly engendure — and to 
 virtue, rest, and peace in that stede to abide." The date 
 of his birth, 1328, has been usually construed from the 
 inscription, said to have been placed on his earHest monu- 
 ment, which asserted that he "died in 1400, aged 72 ;" and 
 though an attempt has been made to upset, or at least inva- 
 lidate this chronology by reference to a document in the 
 Heralds' College, bearing date 1386, wherein Chaucer, upon 
 oath, inter alia, deposes that he was then " of the age of 
 forty years ajid upwards, armed for twenty-seven years," we 
 see no good ground for unsettling the concurrent behef of 
 centuries. The poet does not here seem to be attesting his 
 
156 Chaucer, 
 
 precise age, but to be merely and formally asserting that he 
 is above that age, below which testimony regarding points in 
 heraldry would be possessed of little reliability. If this 
 were his exact age, he must have borne arms when little 
 more than thirteen, and been then engaged in the French 
 wars, which is rather improbable. We accept, therefore, 
 the current chronology, that Chaucer was born seven years 
 after the death of Dante, and that he was the junior by 
 four years of the reformer WycHffe, (13 24-1384.) 
 
 It has been matter of dispute whether Chaucer's father 
 was a knight, a merchant, or a vintner — a matter of no 
 great importance to us. The balance of probabilities in- 
 clines to the conclusion that his parents were in easy 
 circumstances, within the then pretty wide limits of the 
 court circle, and that he was educated with a view to diplo- 
 matic, or at least civil service life — as if, indeed, his educa- 
 tion was to be his outfit for the world. We never hear of 
 his having any patrimonial inheritance, or other resources 
 than those conferred on him by state grant, or derived from 
 government appointments. That his education was care- 
 fully conducted, assiduously forwarded, and well taken advan- 
 tage of, we have the best of proofs — in the erudition which his 
 works display. He was early fitted for commencing a uni- 
 versity career, where "he might leren gentilesse aright," 
 which he began, it has been generally believed, at Cam- 
 bridge. This appears highly probable ; for in his poems 
 he is minute in his Cambridge localisation ; and he speaks 
 of himself in " The Court of Love," — his earfiest poem, 
 written in his eighteenth year, — as "Philogenet of Cam- 
 bridge^ Clerk ;" but we do not know whether at the 
 
 " Gret college 
 Men clepe the Soler Hall at Cantebrege," 
 
England in the Fourteenth Century. 1 5 7 
 
 or elsewhere. The universities were not in those days 
 frequented by the sons of the nobiUty, nor had they that 
 air of wealthy luxury which they now have and aspire after. 
 They were then the resorts rather of the middle classes, as 
 is manifest from the fact that in the youth of Chaucer — we 
 have the statement on the authority of Fitz-Ralph, Arch- 
 bishop of Armagh, before Pope Innocent VL, in 1357, at 
 Avignon — the University of Oxford had about 30,000 stu- 
 dents. The proverbial adjective of poor^ so often and so 
 truly predicable of scholars, was then an almost unexcep- 
 tionable connotative term. Chaucer's own maxim, " Sondrie 
 scoles maken subtil clerkes," may be one of those uncon- 
 scious autobiographic strokes which few writers have been 
 able altogether to avoid giving ; for Wood records a tradition 
 that he was a pupil of Wycliffe's ; and Leland — who is, 
 however, not over-trustworthy — talks of his being, on 
 leaving Oxford, " an acute, logical, and pleasant speaker, a 
 poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, and 
 lastly, a sound theologian." It is even stated that his 
 studies were finished at Paris, whence, after traveUing 
 through France and Holland, he returned about 1355, and 
 commenced, as is supposed, a course of reading in the law. 
 While spending so many years in the pursuit and acquire- 
 ment of knowledge, in a seemingly omnivorous gluttony of 
 books, and in the attainment of a manifold experience of 
 men and their ways, besides employing himself in the 
 making, 
 
 *' In the flowre of his you the. 
 In sondrie waies as he well couthe, 
 Of dytyes and of songes glad ;" 
 
 we cannot but suppose the poet, either consciously or 
 unconsciously, to have been engaged in suitable preparation 
 
158 Chaucer. 
 
 for the great tasks which lay before him in hfe. In his 
 power and inclination to work his own experience into verse, 
 Chaucer is quite Goethean, and the myriad phases of exist- 
 ence which he paints are our chief key to the peculiarities 
 of his age. He was implicated, complicated, and entwined 
 with much of the thought and action of his century, and he 
 touched and impressed it with a vigour and energy which 
 made a distinct and lasting mark on the future of the 
 nation. It was an age of rare vitality and variety of event. 
 There was a hearty, healthy, home-felt, emphatic enthusiasm 
 in it. The differing streams of race were now confluent 
 and neighbourly. The stripling king, — Edward III., — who 
 but a year before the birth of Chaucer had set his step on 
 the throne of his murdered father, as his years increased, 
 displayed a self-willed ambition, a chivalry and gallantry, 
 which endeared him to his subjects, while it added to the 
 glory of their country. The stout, stubborn, politic course 
 of his grandfather fired him to emulation, while the vanity 
 and luxuriousness of his nature led him to indulge in costly 
 pageantries and dainty banquets, in emblematic jousts and 
 well-consorted shows. In his court, therefore, there was a 
 sort of spring-tide life, — young, lusty, free, showy, though 
 unripe. Before Chaucer had reached his thirtieth year, the 
 king's crown was encircled with the laurels of Halidon Hill, 
 {^ZZZ^ Sluys, (1340,) Crecy, (1346,) Calais, (1347,) and 
 Poictiers, (1356.) His queen Philippa had shown the 
 heroism of her disposition at Nevil's Cross, (1346,) and the 
 kindliness of her heart at Calais. At this particular time, 
 wherever the British forces 
 
 " Do tread the measures of their tragic march," 
 victory smiles upon their "painful traffic," and bestows 
 
The Court and Court Life, 159 
 
 upon them the bloody glory of success. Though the fetid 
 vapours and putrific malaria of the Black Death had swept 
 with mysterious and relentless destructiveness through the 
 land, prosperity seemed to favour the sovereign who had so 
 encouraged industrial pursuits as to welcome and befriend 
 those skilled in the processes of textile manufactures. "The 
 Order of the Garter (1344) had been instituted within the 
 castle of Windsor, which, under the careful eye of William 
 Wykeham, had lately been built as a fit residence for an 
 English sovereign, with a pageant of unparalleled grandeur, 
 and a liberality and gorgeousness such as had never before 
 been seen in the memory of man. The Commons of Eng- 
 land were gaining a voice in public affairs, and, acting on 
 the maxim that " the sovereign's exigencies are the subjects' 
 chances," were striving after a constitutional form of govern- 
 ment, and the realisation of a distinct and self-contained 
 nationality. 
 
 Would we be far wrong, remembering the tradition of the 
 occasion of its origin, to suppose that " The Court of Tove" 
 was suggested to the young poet by the grand ongoings of 
 the institution of the Order of the Garter, and that it was 
 intended as a delicate allusion to, and celebration of, the 
 splendid ceremony with which it was inaugurated? We 
 know that the court was not entirely insensible to literary 
 merit ; for Queen Philippa was the patroness of Froissart, 
 (whose "Chronicles," extending from 13 26-1400, rather 
 more than cover the entire era of Chaucer's Hfe,) and that 
 he held an office in the household of Edward III. ; we have 
 besides good reason to believe that Chaucer, though mainly 
 valued on account of his excellent and rare business capacity, 
 was somewhat favoured, too, in consideration of his poetical 
 abilities. But of this more anon. 
 
1 6o Chatice7\ 
 
 Perhaps the next occupation of our author was the tran- 
 slation of the " De Consolatione Philosophiae" of Boethius, 
 — a work previously translated into Saxon by Alfred the 
 Great, and subsequently into modern English by EHzabeth, 
 — the favourite classic of that age, and a favourable speci- 
 men of the prose style of this " garnisher of EngHshe rude." 
 To this period, also, is generally ascribed the production of 
 " Troilus and Creseide," a work of singular excellence, the 
 irhythm and rhyme of which were imitated by Shakespeare 
 in "The Rape of Lucrece," and its subject in 1609 made 
 the foundation of one of his favourite plays. Chaucer af 
 this time diligently and purposely engaged in the polishing 
 and modulation of the English tongue. This is particularly 
 evident from the anxiety which the poet exhibits towards 
 the conclusion of that poem, regarding his work, and how it 
 might be transcribed or recited, saying, 
 
 ** And, for ; there is so great diversitie 
 
 In English and in writing of our tong. 
 
 So pray I God that none miswrite thee, 
 
 Ne thee njis-metre for defaut of tong. 
 
 And redde whereso thou be, or else song, 
 That thou be understood, God I beseech, 
 But yet to purpose of my rather [early] speech." 
 
 This poem is still further interesting, because it gives us 
 a glimpse of the companions of Chaucer, and shows what 
 sort of men he valued in his youth. This we learn from 
 the following dedicatory lines : — 
 
 "O moral Gower, this booke I direct 
 
 To thee and to the philosophical Strood, 
 To vouchesauf there need is to correct 
 Of your benignities and zeales good." 
 
 The friends here referred to were men of condition and 
 repute. The former is a famed contemporary poet, and 
 
Literary Aspiratio7is. i6i 
 
 the latter a " most excellent philosopher," whom, in after 
 days, Chaucer entrusted with the upbringing of his favourite 
 son. We may further infer, from the double and distinctly 
 specific ascription, that its author was pretty equally divided 
 between philosophy and poetry, at the same time that we 
 learn most expressly that a larger ambition animated his 
 breast ; for the following are the terms in which he dismisses 
 his literary labour : — 
 
 ** Go, litel booke ! Go, litel tragedie, 
 
 There God my Maker yet ere that I die, 
 
 So send me might to make some Commedie. 
 
 But, litel booke, make thou thee none envie, 
 
 But subject ben imto all poesie ; 
 
 And kiss the steps whereon thou seest pace, 
 Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, Stace." 
 
 Chaucer was acquainted with the best classics procurable 
 in his day; conversant with the works of many of the 
 Latin Fathers, the Schoolmen, and the mediaeval Romanti- 
 cists. The plot of "Troilus and Creseide" is, he informs 
 us, taken from Lollius, (an author of whom nothing is now 
 known.) It is similar in outline to the "FiHstrato" of 
 Boccaccio, who mentions the story as having its original in 
 Greek. Translation is almost invariably the form in which 
 art influences a language j and imitativeness, no less than 
 originality, belong to the true poet. Dante, addressing 
 Virgil, says, — 
 
 " It is from thee alone that I derive 
 The graceful style which gains me such applause. " 
 
 ^ Dante, (1265-13 2 1,) Petrarch, (1304-1374,) and Boccaccio, 
 (1312-1375,) undoubtedly influenced Chaucer and his con- 
 temporaries \ the Elizabethan writers were touched by the 
 music of Tasso (1544-1575) and Ariosto, (1474-1533.) Cor- 
 
1 62 Chaucer. 
 
 neille, Racine, and Moliere affected the age of the Restora- 
 tion ; the writers who flourished till the time "when George 
 the Third was king," stimulated the German school, which, 
 beginning with Klopstock, culminated in Goethe ; and these 
 again wrought upon Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron ; and in 
 all these ages translation preluded actual originaHty, and 
 transplanting preceded propagation. Chaucer was not, 
 therefore, singular -in the mode he took for working out an 
 acceptable national speech, by reproducing reputed and 
 reputable poems from the Latin, French, or Italian, rather 
 than by throwing the whole energy of his thought into new 
 poems of his own. By the former method he asked 
 acceptance for the language only, yet prepared the way for 
 the introduction, in good time, of a fresh and home-grown 
 literature, such as the age required, national in thought, 
 feeling, allusiveness, and speech. 
 
 It was a far-thoughted and patriotic purpose to detach his 
 native country from intellectual dependence upon France ; 
 to supply an instrument for the interchange of opinion, the 
 promulgation of knowledge, and the business wants of so- 
 ciety, which should be the nation's own, one not borrowed 
 from aliens and enemies; and to provide a vesture for 
 thought in which the bounding and abounding life, energy, 
 and intellect of his age might dress itself, and be known as 
 distinct and different from that country with whom England 
 was waging war. It was courtierly, too, thus to second the 
 desire of the king^s heart, by a move of so resistless a nature, 
 and by an agency so effectual. It was a wise and diplo^ 
 ftiatic scheme, furthering at once the best interests of the 
 nation, his own fame, and the policy of his sovereign. So, 
 for the promotion of his design, he translated into " num- 
 bers touched with harmony," some of the more popular 
 
Diplomacy and Courtier ship. 163 
 
 classic tales, that the language might be purified and indi- 
 vidualised ; and that the disjunction of the nations might be 
 facilitated, he took one of the most popular of French 
 poems, "The Romaunt of the Rose," and transferred its 
 wondrous allegories into the form of speech current in his 
 days. He thus not only complied with, but led and directed 
 the spirit of the time, gratified his own taste, and extended 
 his own fame, while he cultivated, by assiduous labour, the 
 power of expression, and the poHsh of diction. 
 
 It is probable that Chaucer kept always within the range 
 of court, and had a due diplomatic acquaintanceship with 
 its modes, fashions, and ongoings ; for about this time he 
 was the recognised friend and associate of King Edward's 
 third son, John of Gaunt, then Earl of Richmond, though 
 subsequently Duke of Lancaster, who married (Blanche, 
 afterwards mother of Henry IV.,) 19th May 1359. In 
 celebration of the courtship of this pair, Chaucer had pro- 
 duced a poem, entitled " The Parliament of Birds," a fan- 
 ciful allegory. "The Complaint of the Black Knight," a 
 defence of Gaunt from some aspersions thrown on his 
 character; and "The Dream of the Dutchesse," an epi- 
 thalamium on the union of John and Blanche, are also 
 referable to this period. The minuteness with which 
 Chaucer describes the localities of Woodstock has given 
 rise to the supposition that he resided there, — 
 
 " Within a lodge out of the way, 
 Beside a well in a forest," 
 
 and was a retainer of the happy bridegroom, whom he ac- 
 companied to France in the autumn of 1359, in a military 
 capacity, along with the army of Edward III., one of the 
 greatest and best which had then left the English coasts. 
 
1 64 Chaucer. 
 
 A hundred thousand men, in a thousand ships, left Eng- 
 land, — in the capital of which the King of France was ther. 
 a prisoner, — and landing at Calais, marched with triumphant, 
 though hardily resisted tread, as far as Rheims, in which 
 Edward III. hoped to place upon his brow the sovereign 
 circlet of France. The place was well fortified, and de- 
 fended bravely. Edward beleaguered it awhile, but ulti- 
 mately raised the siege and retired — losing prestige, however, 
 by the act — to try his success on Paris. Here the fates were 
 equally unpropitious, and he fell back towards Brittany. 
 Hunger, fatigue, superstition, and storm fought against him. 
 As he became depressed, the French got elated, and though 
 unable to venture into the open field, they endeavoured by 
 harassments in flank and rear to secure the chance of vic- 
 tory their new allies had given them. In one of these forays, 
 near the town of Retiers, in Brittany, Chaucer had the sad 
 hap to be taken prisoner. » This, in addition to his own 
 share of the former hardships, was a sufficiently bitter taste 
 of war's woes. How long his fortitude and powers of en- 
 durance were tried by captivity we cannot tell ; but we hope 
 that the peace of Bretigny, signed in 1360, would, among 
 other things, secure his freedom. 
 
 In " The Dream of the Dutchesse," Chaucer indicated 
 that a lady had charmed his heart ; and we learn that on 
 1 2th September 1366, a pension of ten marks (;£i2o) was 
 granted to Philippa Chaucer, one of the ladies of Queen 
 Philippa's household ; so that we must suppose he was 
 married prior to this dajte, and was now leaving, or had 
 already left, her Majesty's service. The wife of Chaucer 
 was, according to the best authorities, Philippa Pyckard, 
 daughter of Sir Payne Pyckard de Rouet, Guienne king-at- 
 arms, sister of Katherine Swyneford nk Pyckard of Rouet, 
 
Friejidship with Petrarch. 165 
 
 and subsequently wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
 and Regent of Guienne ; and of that Henry Pyckard, Lord 
 Mayor of London, who had welcomed the Black Prince 
 with the captive King John, on their arrival from France 
 after the battle of Poictiers. The duties he performed 
 meanwhile may be guessed at from the next notice we have 
 of him, as receiving — June 20th, 1367 — from the king, for 
 former and future service, under the designation of "our 
 well-beloved yeoman," (dilectus valettus noster,) an annuity 
 of twenty marks (,^240.) On Christmas 1368, his wife 
 received a robe in gift from the queen. In 1369 both 
 Queen Philippa and the Lady Blanche of Lancaster died, 
 and Chaucer wrote a lament for the latter, entitled " The 
 Death of Blanche the Dutchesse." On the 20th June 1370, 
 he received letters of protection from the king, that he 
 might go abroad, though for what purpose we know not, in 
 his ser\dce. In 1372, a more important commission for 
 him [and for us] was entrusted to him, viz. , to form, along 
 with John de Mari and James Pronam, a committee of 
 investigation in Genoa, regarding the English port, which 
 might be most advantageously used by the Genoese in 
 furtherance of their commercial pursuits. While occupied 
 with this mission, it is said that Chaucer had the good for- 
 tune to be introduced to 
 
 *' Frauncis Petrark, the laureat poet, 
 Highte this clerk, whose rhetorik sweete 
 Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie;" 
 
 and there to have heard from " the lover of Laura" the tale 
 of the patient " Griselda." This is neither impossible nor 
 improbable, — indeed quite the opposite. Petrarch was 
 then (1370-4) residing, an industrious invalid, at Padua, and 
 had completed his version of Boccaccio's famous story from 
 
1 66 Chaucer. 
 
 Italian into Latin — published under the title, "A Myth on 
 Wifely Obedience and Fidelity," — in June 1373. Nothing 
 could be more natural than that the chief poet of England 
 should endeavour to see " the first real restorer of polite 
 letters, — him who gave purity, elegance, and stability to the 
 Italian language." Now, as Chaucer was seemingly not 
 well versed in Italian, is it at all unlikely that their conver- 
 sation would be holden in Latin, of his proficiency in 
 which Petrarch prided himself, and Chaucer had no need 
 to be ashamed % In the currency of such talk, what more 
 probable than that Dante and Boccaccio should become the 
 subjects of mutual criticism, and that Petrarch should 
 reckon it a privilege to rehearse his version of his friend 
 yet rival's beautiful and unexceptionable story, and that 
 thus " he learned at Padowe" the tale he has embalmed in 
 ever-living verse, in his favourite metre, and with the utmost 
 elegance of style, regarding the patience and fidelity of 
 "Griselda?" The thought is too sweet to be lightly given 
 up, and we cling to the belief most fondly, though we trust 
 not irrationally. Chaucer returned to home and country in 
 February 1374, and on the 19th of July Petrarch was found 
 in his Hbrary, with a book before him, dead, " his wordes 
 and his work" done, and remembrance of him only left for 
 the world. There is surely some trait of personal grief in 
 the kindly way Chaucer speaks of him, and in the attach- 
 ment — to his notice of the interview — of the morale, which 
 reads like an involuntary and self-referring sigh : — 
 
 "But Dethe, that wol not suffre us dwellen here, 
 But as it were the twinkling of an eye, 
 Him now hath slaine, and alle we shal die. " 
 
 From the era of the Conquest (1066) till the days of 
 Chaucer the literature of England consisted almost entirely 
 
English L anguage and L iterature. 1 6 7 
 
 of translations or imitations of Norman chronicles and 
 romances. 
 
 The Normano-Franks — the haughty aristocracy of con- 
 quest — insisted on the general use of the Norman tongue 
 by the vanquished. The steady undercurrents of common 
 daily life, however, gave the Anglo-Saxons sufficient oppor- 
 tunity for keeping in living usage the speech of their fore- 
 fathers. Ceasing, by the gradual force of circumstances, to 
 be embodied in writing, or employed in popular public con- 
 verse, the strict grammatical forms of inflection and syntax 
 were neglected or forgotten : language became simpler and 
 loose/ in texture by becoming wholly oral. In this stage of 
 transition it is ?iow called semi-Saxon. For a time the exotic 
 tongue appeared likely to get acchmatised ; and great care 
 %vas taken to aid its dissemination and growth. Children were 
 taught in French, that they might know French, and that, 
 by this early training, their vernacular might be supplanted, 
 •not only in favour, but in use. 
 
 As a general summary of the history of language, it may 
 be affirmed that [ist] from the Conquest till the demise of 
 Stephen, (1154,) the French language was forcefully main- 
 tained as that of the court, the law, and the ordinary inter- 
 course of the conquerors with their vassals; [2d] from the 
 accession of Henry II. till the close of the long reign of 
 Henry III., (1272,) the native Anglo-Saxon existed in revolt 
 against, and in spite of, the Norman influence used for its 
 suppression ; and [3d] during the reigns of the three 
 Edwards, (1272-1377,) the "Dames' tongue" of England 
 regained its olden power. The French became thereafter 
 only a graff into, not the root-stock of, the speech of 
 Enghshmen ; and a free field was left for the careful culture 
 of the native language of England. 
 
1 68 Chaucer, 
 
 Chaucer was a far-seeing man, who kept his eye upon 
 causes, and was quick and sure at tracing their effects. 
 His contemporary, Gower, in the uncertainties of the time, 
 gave hostages to fame, and made appeal to posterity in the 
 three prevalent languages of the period, viz. — of the church 
 and learning, Latin j of the court and fashion, French ; of 
 the people and progress, English ; — but Chaucer had no 
 such hesitancy. Though skilled in the learned tongues, he 
 placed himself unreservedly at the head of the minstrels of 
 his native land, with his earliest poem, and he continued to 
 aim at and to seek popularity and influence throughout a 
 long life by distinctively English 
 
 "Bokes, songis, and dities," 
 
 by giving the colloquial forms of his own land's language 
 permanency, consistency, and literary existence ; by apply- 
 ing the conserving magic of genius to the speech of the 
 people, and by saturating and colouring the words of the 
 common vocabulary of his time with the imperishable 
 hues of thought, sympathy, life. Thus he became the 
 ancestor of that long line of descendants who have planted 
 "the seeds and pregnant forms" of thought in the fields of 
 English literature, and cause them to be fertile with " a life 
 beyond life." 
 
 Not long after that defeat which Edward III. endured in 
 France, the hostility of England took the form of an Act of 
 Parliament (1362) for the discontinuance of the use of the 
 French language in the pleadings and impleadings of the 
 courts of law. There can be little doubt that Chaucer — if 
 not as a courtier, at least as a poet, who had proven the 
 scope, sufficiency, and capability of English for the utter- 
 ance of the whole spirit of life — had considerable influence 
 
The Rush of Saxon Life. 1 69 
 
 in effecting this enactment of that recently-instituted but 
 essentially English body, the House of Commons. 
 
 English was no more to be the patois of serfs, but the 
 speech of freemen. Conquerors and conquered had now 
 grown into one people. The sturdy Saxon had risen from 
 the crush and pressure of foreign domination, and took 
 with him, into the spheres of his activity everywhere, that 
 rude mother-tongue, inflexible and rudely welded together 
 as it was, in his ascent. The fine, quickening impulses of 
 patriotism, the animation of martial enthusiasm, the far-fore- 
 cast shadows of a Reformation, the pomp of chivalry, the 
 grandeur of a mighty court, the intense activities of com- 
 merce, the thronging might of a fresh and active lifehood, 
 played in and upon the poet's heart with their mystic 
 influences, and stirred its depths of thoughtfulness to effort 
 and success. 
 
 Chaucer rung out the great thoughts of his intellect in 
 brave, bold, homely, hearty, vivid, vigorous words, — 
 
 " And as much as then 
 The English language could express for men, 
 He made it do," — 
 
 by following his own common-sense maxim, " Let us show 
 our fantasyes in such wordes as we learneden of our dames' 
 tongue." 
 
 Chaucer's practice agreed with the policy of the king 
 and the wishes of the people. He fused into one composite 
 mass the courtier's French, the scholar's Latin, and the 
 people's Saxon, and cast them into grace, beauty, and life- 
 like reality, in his ingeniously conceptive mind. If the 
 result is not unstainedly white and flawless, the gray lines 
 and the spotty graining of the amalgam only serve to 
 heighten our ideas of the genius which wrought into such 
 
1 70 Chaucer, 
 
 harmoniousness elements so diverse and inaffinite. In his 
 hands English ceased to be a dialect, and became a speech. 
 It was right that a mandate should go forth from Britain's 
 highest councils, that the laws of England should cease to 
 be appealed to or enforced in a tongue which had " become 
 much unknown in the realm." We can fancy the delight 
 with which he, 
 
 "Who first enriched our English with his rhymes," 
 
 would listen to the compliments of Petrarch upon this point 
 of comparison between Dante, " the great poet of Itaille," 
 and himself, viz., — his being the creator of the literary- 
 language of his country. 
 
 Chaucer's Genoese mission must have been managed to 
 the king's satisfaction ; for almost immediately after his 
 return, he received a grant — 23d April 1374 — from his 
 regal employer, of a pitcher of wine (about a gallon) daily ; 
 and in June of the same year he was appointed, by royal 
 patent, comptroller of the customs on wool, hides, &c., in 
 the port of London. And that it might be expressly seen 
 that this was not a "job" invented to provide a sinecure 
 ofhce for a needy, greedy hanger-on of courts, but a botid 
 fide transaction, acknowledging and requiring business 
 integrity, punctuality, and capacities, it is ordained " That 
 the said Geoffrey Chaucer write with his own hand his rolls 
 touching the said office, and continually reside there, and 
 do and execute all things pertaining to the said office, ii. 
 his own proper person, and not by his substitute." Here 
 we find it implied that there was some known quality in 
 Chaucer which rendered this injunction needful — not for 
 his discouragement, but for the maintenance of honest 
 conduct in the public service. This very prohibition is an 
 
L earning and L eiszn^e. 171 
 
 attestation of the court's knowledge of Chaucer's literary- 
 labours, and the popularity of his writings. In 1375 
 Edward III. conferred on him the wardenship of the heir 
 of Sir Edraond Staplegate, with a salary (;£"io4) equivalent 
 to ;£'i872 per annu7n. The Duke of Lancaster endowed 
 him with an annuity of (;^io) ;j^i8o; and in 1376 he got 
 a grant of forfeited wool to the amount of ;£i262 of the 
 present currency (;^7i, 4s. 6d.) Of his "manner of life" 
 at this period we get the following autobiographic glimpse 
 from the "Book of Fame," (which dates about this time,) 
 Book II., in which the living golden eagle says : — 
 
 " Thou wilt make 
 O' nights full oft thine head to acke ; 
 In thy study so thou y-writest 
 
 That no tidings comen to thee, 
 Not of thy very neighebores 
 That dwellen almost at thy doors. 
 
 For when thy labour all done is, 
 And t'hast made all thy reckonings, 
 Instead of rest and of new things, 
 Thou goest home to thine house anon, 
 And all so dumb as any stone, 
 Thou sittest at another book. 
 Till fully dazed is thy look." * 
 
 * To this extract may be added the following, from the prologue to 
 ** The Legende of Gode Women," viz. : — 
 
 *' On bookes for to read I me delight. 
 And to them give I faith and full credence; 
 And in mine heart have them in reverence 
 So heartily, that there is game none. 
 That from my bookes maketh me to gone." 
 
 In the " Dutchesse," he says that reading is 
 "Better play 
 Than either at chess or tubbes. " 
 
172 Chaucer. 
 
 Chaucer and Froissart were fellow-yeomen of the court 
 prior to 1368, when the latter quitted England. From the 
 French poet and chronicHst, the author of "The Flower 
 and the Leaf" ;;^^_yhave received the ground-thought of that 
 poem in a description of the floral games instituted in 1324 
 by Clementina Isaure, Countess of Toulouse. Chaucer, at 
 any rate, alludes to a song of that quaint, garrulous old 
 fellow's, in that poem, which was probably written about 
 this time of learned and leisurely competence, when daily 
 duty only gave zest to creative fancy. It is possible, how- 
 ever, that Chaucer, in his continental embassies, may have 
 been not merely a spectator of, but a sharer in, these 
 affected and at that time fashionable sports. 
 
 The dii)lomatic services of Chaucer were twice called 
 into requisition in the early part of 1377, on secret affairs 
 for his Majesty. We have it, on the authority of Froissart, 
 that one of these missions — for which letters of protection 
 were granted — was the negotiation of a treaty of marriage 
 between Richard, Prince of Wales, and Mary, daughter of 
 Charles V., King of France, (1364-1380.) The persons 
 employed in this important embassy were Sir Guichard 
 D' Angle, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Richard Sturry, 
 and Geoffrey Chaucer. The former were evidently the 
 show ambassadors, and the untitled gentleman was as plainly 
 the worker — the managing partner of the firm. During 
 these absences, he appointed his fellow-poet, Gower, and 
 one Richard Forrester, his legal representatives in matters 
 of business. 
 
 In this same year, (1377,) Edward III. died at Richmond, 
 June 2ist, and, though only in his eleventh year, Richard II., 
 his grandchild, son of the Black Prince, who had died in 
 the preceding year, succeeded him. A council of nine was 
 
The Dawn of Reformation. 173 
 
 appointed to manage the affairs of the nation, but his uncles, 
 the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, had the real 
 direction of affairs in their hands. Chaucer's annuities and 
 offices were confirmed to him by the new sovereign, and 
 his services were again employed as a diplomatist in Lom- 
 bardy in 1378. How long he was absent we cannot learn; 
 but we do know that, during the three following years, 
 England was in a strange religious and political ferment. 
 By Wycliffe's advice, the Commons had refused to pay the 
 papal toll called " Peter's pence." Five bulls had been 
 fulminated against the reformer; and he had successfully 
 resisted, by aid of Lancaster, Percy, and the Earl Marischal, 
 one attempt to subdue him at an episcopal tribunal. Another 
 attempt at coercive jurisdiction was quashed by the queen- 
 mother in 1378. In 1379 he was stricken by paralysis, but 
 he continued to toil on in the good work, and in 1381 pub- 
 lished twelve theses against the doctrines of the Church of 
 Rome. Chaucer's patron, Lancaster, was Wycliffe's chief 
 protector, and there can be no doubt that the poet ardently 
 sympathised with the reformer.* We know that he used 
 
 * Of this point the following may be regarded as the chief prools, 
 viz. : — (i.) The general anti-Papal tendency and tone of Chaucer's 
 poems. (2.) The story of his flogging a Franciscan friar in Fleet 
 Street. (3. ) The keen Wycliffism of his patron. (4. ) Cardinal Wolsey 
 (1471-1530) interdicted the publication of "The Pilgrim's Tale," and 
 objected to "The Ploughman's Tale." (5.) Fox, the martyrologist, 
 (15 1 7-1587,) says, "I marvel to consider this, how that the bishops, 
 condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises 
 which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet 
 authorise the works of Chaucer to remain. So it .pleased God to blind 
 then the eyes of them for the more commodity of the people." (6.) 
 The prevalence of the opinion that the monks foisted a retractation of 
 his " Enditings of Worldly Vanities" into the concluding paragraphs of 
 "The Canterbury Tales." 
 
1 74 Chaucer. 
 
 his brilliantest weapon, ridicule, against the errors of the 
 Church and its officials; and his noblest verses have been 
 given to the description of a " Poore Parson"* — of which 
 there was then only one illustrious living exemplar — 
 Wycliffe himself, although the " poore priests,'^ whose views 
 accorded with his, were even then well and numerously 
 scattered through the country. 
 
 In the same year, 1381, the Saxons thought the time to 
 " strike for freedom" had arrived, and under the leadership 
 of Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw, an agitation for 
 the abolition of serfdom and villenage, of imposts and tolls 
 obstructive to commerce, and for the maintenance of the 
 power of taxation among the Commons, was begun. Un- 
 fortunately, the mob was turbulent, and the leaders were 
 incapable of organising the insurgents effectually, or of 
 restraining their excesses, so that the movement, justifiable 
 in itself, was suppressed. It did, however, procure some 
 ameliorations, and it indicated the power and energy of the 
 peasant population. 
 
 It is quite possible that Chaucer, as Comptroller of the 
 Customs, and therefore personally, as well as officially, 
 interested in the matter, may have been present at the 
 conference in which the treacherous and lean-witted Wal- 
 worth, with the argument of a sword's point, answered the 
 complaints of Tyler, and left the mob leaderless, until the 
 young king, emitting one spark of fellow-feeHng, exclaimed, 
 " Tyler was a traitor ! — I myself will be your leader ! " — a 
 noble sentiment, the spirit of which was ignominiously 
 evaded. 
 
 " Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," had 
 
 * To this portrait, Dryden, Goldsmith, Cowper, Crabbe, &c., have 
 each been indebted. 
 
The Flow and Ebb of Fortune. 175 
 
 married, in 1372, Constance, eldest daughter of Peter the 
 Cruel, King of Castile and Leon, and had led an army into 
 Spain to assert his right, through his wife, to the sovereignty 
 of Castile ; during his absence a contest arose between the 
 court party and the commissioners of regency; and wary 
 steps were required to keep free from danger and loss. 
 Chaucer did not pass through the ordeal scathelessly. 
 
 Richard II. had married, 1382, the daughter of the 
 Emperor Charles IV., Anne of Bohemia. She, it has been 
 conjectured, is complimented in the character of Alceste, 
 the Queen of Love, the emblem of truth of womanhood, in 
 " The Legende of Code Women ;" and it has hence been 
 inferred that this poem was written at the suggestion of her 
 Majesty; and in the Prologue the poet is commanded to 
 present his composition to the Queen " at Eltham or at 
 Shene." At any rate, we know that, four months after the 
 royal marriage, Chaucer was made Comptroller of the minor 
 Customs of London, in addition to his former offices, and 
 with the further privilege of performing his duties by deputy. 
 He appointed a permanent substitute in 1383. 
 
 Thus high went the flow of the tide ; the ebb began at 
 last, however. In 1384 two candidates for the mayoralty 
 of London were proposed, one by the officials of the court, 
 headed by De la Pole and De Vere, another by the popular 
 or Lancasterian party. John of Northampton was a Wy- 
 cliffite, a man of integrity and ability, and under the patron- 
 age of the Duke of Lancaster. Chaucer took his patron's 
 side, and Lancaster's enemies included all his supporters in 
 their list of malcontents. By the use of a military force, and 
 after a city riot. Sir Nicholas Brember, the court candidate, 
 was elected, and Northampton was imprisoned, tried, and 
 (in August 1384) sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. 
 
1 76 Chaucer . 
 
 Chaucer fled first to Hainault, then to Zealand, taking his 
 wife and children with him. Here " berafte out of dignity 
 of office," in which he " made a gathering of worldly good," 
 he spent some time in difficulties, and " with dangers com- 
 passed round." On his return he was for a short time 
 exposed to persecution ; and he complains, " For richesse 
 have I povertie ; for dignitie now am I enprisoned; instede 
 of power, wretchednesse I suffre ; and for glory of renown, 
 I am now despised and foullie hated." In his durance he 
 wrote that imitation of Boethius, entitled, " The Testament 
 of Love." 
 
 His humiliation, however, did not last long, for in 1386 
 the men of Kent chose him as their representative in Parha- 
 ment, and as a knight of that shire he sat in Westminster. 
 In 1387 he lost his wife, perhaps outworn with the priva- 
 tions, the pinching pain of poverty, these years of woe neces- 
 sitated; and in 1388 he was obliged to sell his annuities to 
 one John Sealby. Gaunt returned to England in 1389, and 
 at his instance Northampton was released, and Chaucer was 
 repensioned, besides being appointed Clerk of the Works at 
 Westminster, Windsor, &c., in which office he materially 
 furthered the interests of architecture. In 1394 John of 
 Lancaster honours or favours him with a pension, and he is 
 still in receipt of his salary as one of the king's esquires, 
 but of other offices he seems to have been deprived. About 
 this period, however, he is believed to have been again 
 settled in poetic retirement near Woodstock, the place of 
 his manhood's early happiness, his dreams, ambitions, and 
 endeavours. This is rendered all the more probable by 
 the fact that his '* Astrolabie," written for the education in 
 astronomy of his favourite son, "litel Lowys," is com- 
 pounded for the latitude of Oxford, and was, therefore, most 
 
Fatherly Love and Labours. 177 
 
 probably written in the neighbourhood of that ancient seat 
 of learning. The composition of this work for the special 
 purpose assigned, seems to indicate the possession of learned 
 leisure and homely competence, as well as fatherly interest, 
 and the exercise of so many of the sweet domesticities ot 
 life as were possible to the widowed and work-worn poet. 
 He is at this time again made a pensioner of the king to 
 the amount of ;^2o, equal to ;^36o of our present currency 
 — enough, in addition to other revenues, for comfort, if not 
 for competency. This pleasing outgrowth of parental fond- 
 ness, written in " hthe English," does not profess to be 
 original. Its author says, "I ne assurpe not to have founden 
 this werke of my labour or of mine engin. I am but a 
 lewde compilatour of the laboure of old astrologiens, and 
 have it translated into mine English onely for thy doctrine, 
 and with this swerde shall I slay envie." It proves, how- 
 ever, that he "was well grounded in astronomie." There are 
 some kindly, fatherly phrases in the dedication which delight 
 us much — e.g., " I perceive by certain evidences thyne 
 abylyte to lerne scyences touching nombers and proportions, 
 and also well consider thy besye prayer in especyal to lerne 
 the tretyse of the astrolabye." He writes it in English, "for 
 Latine ne canst thou not yet but small, my litel sonne. 
 He prays "every person descrete that redeth or heareth 
 this litel tretyse, to have my rude entending excused, and 
 my superfluitie of wordes, for two causes. The first cause 
 is for that curious endyting and harde sentences is full hevy 
 at once for such a childe to lerne. And the second cause 
 is this, that soothely me seemeth better to written unto a 
 child twise a good sentence, than he forget it once." These 
 thoughts, this delicate considerateness, throb out of a fine 
 fatherliness of heart, and from a clear, well-furnished under- 
 
 M 
 
1 78 Chaucer, 
 
 standing. Sixty-three years of busy life had not cooled his 
 sympathy with boyhood, and even the pet little prodigy 
 which his wife had left him as a legacy of love, is sensibly 
 though kindly dealt with. There was sunshine in the old 
 man's soul. 
 
 We do not know that it has been before remarked that 
 the works of Chaucer, prior to the issue of "The Testament 
 of Love," are courtly, debo?tnaire^ fretted with fantastic fancies 
 relative to chivalric customs, and generally, in spirit, style, 
 portraiture, taste, and machinery, refer to and embody the 
 graces, habits, and finicalities of life among the upper grades 
 of society; but now, when leisure lay before him to make 
 his grand adventure for fame, he turned himself from the 
 circles of vague punctilio, bienseance^ and noble gentility, to 
 the whole breadth of life as it was in his age, and then in 
 
 "Legends blithe 
 He sang of love or knighthood, or the wiles 
 Of homely life ; through each estate and age 
 The fashions and the follies of the world 
 With cunning hand portraying " — 
 
 with all the spirit, zest, humour, facile changefulness, and 
 descriptive skill in picturing the motleyness of custom and 
 costume which then prevailed, of one who " in the original 
 perused mankind." 
 
 From Gower's mention of Chaucer's work, " The Testa- 
 ment of Love," in the " Confessio Amantis," published in 
 1393, and his speaking of him as being " in his dayes olde," 
 it has been generally inferred that " The Canterbury Tales " 
 were commenced about this date, and were not included in 
 those " dytyes and songes" of his with which, at this time, 
 Gower says — 
 
 " The land fulfilled is over all." 
 
" The Canterbury Tales!' 1 79 
 
 This, we believe, is a rather hasty conjecture, not supported 
 by fact, and scarcely supportable by inference. For instance, 
 in "The Legend of Good Women," (1382,) we find it 
 asserted that 
 
 '* He made the boke that highte * the House of Fame,' 
 Eke ' the Deathe of Blanche, the Duchesse,' 
 And * the Parliament of Foules,' as I guess. 
 And all ' the Love of Palamon and Arcite^^ 
 Of Thebes, though the story is knowen lite, 
 And many an hymne." 
 
 Now, "Palamon and Arcite," the Iliad of English literature, 
 (the original of which seems to have been derived both from 
 Statius and Boccaccio,) is the topic of "The Knight's Tale,'* 
 the first of the series ; it occupies no fewer than 2239 lines, 
 and we have no other work of Chaucer's in which it appears. 
 It seems far more natural, therefore, to suppose that the 
 plan had been gradually built up in his mind from the sug- 
 gestion afforded by Boccaccio's " Decameron," (1350,) and 
 that he interlaced in the grand web of his thoughts many of 
 those precious threads of narrative which had been circulat- 
 ing for years among his friends and fellows of the court. 
 That, however, the series had not attained its present form, 
 prior to 1393, is perhaps true; for in "The Man of Law's 
 Tale," after giving an index reru7n of his " Legend," he takes 
 up the story " Of thilke wicke ensample of Canace " from 
 the work of Gower, of which we have spoken. On this 
 supposition we have only to regard the prologue and the 
 jokes and conversations which so dramatically occupy the 
 spaces between the tales as fiecessarily new, though we may 
 acknowledge it as highly probable that, prompted by the 
 exigencies of the plot, he may have added many touches to 
 the old poems, and added several fresh, though winter- 
 
1 80 Chaucer, 
 
 flowered, products of constructive fancy to the garland he 
 was engaged in arranging. This inference seems to be 
 borne out by the fact, that the prologue is the most finished, 
 most delicately and characteristically managed, the broadest 
 in outline, freest in pencilling, and most minute in deline- 
 ativeness of the whole poem, and that the keeping of the 
 several members of the singular and varied pilgrimage are 
 Shakesperian in distinctness of characterisation and sustained 
 representativeness. It is too much to suppose that such 
 vastness of design and variety of executive skill, as well as 
 voluminousness of invention, could have been crowded into 
 the seven closing years of the venerable bard, whose life 
 and mind had been so active in youth and manhood, and 
 who bore the lines of nearly half a century of authorship 
 carved into his broad and thoughtful brow. We incline to 
 believe, then, that with an author's cherishing love for the 
 offspring of his thoughts, he gathered together all the 
 " storial thing " of his bygone and unarranged authorship 
 into one liberal offertory for posterity. The prologue is 
 immeasurably superior in taste, humour, interest, probability, 
 feeUng, and vraisemblance to that of its prototype, "The 
 Decameron :" the plot is better sustained throughout; there 
 is greater congruity between the narrations and the nar- 
 rators; the colouring and types of Hfe are more varied; the 
 classes, company, and individuals are better speciahsed; and 
 the whole plan is more happily and more artistically con- 
 ceived. The general form is copied, but the characters, 
 scenery, management, interest, sentiment, style, dramatic 
 pictoriality, and satiric bonhomie are all original; the glow 
 of personaUty, Hfe, sociality, station, and spirit — in one 
 word, Englishness — is upon them all, and the 
 
Character of the English Language. 1 8 1 
 
 ** Nine and twenty in a compagnie 
 Of sondrie folk by aventure y-fall 
 In fellowship," 
 
 in the Tabard, at Southwark, are brought before the reader 
 in the palpable reality of health, strength, and truth. 
 
 "Legends blithe 
 He sang of love or knighthood, or the wiles 
 Of homely life ; thnjugh each estate and age 
 The fashions and the follies of the world 
 With cunning hand portraying." 
 
 No exhaustive criticism of Chaucer's intensely picturesque 
 and vividly individuahsed poems can be undertaken in an 
 interpretative life-sketch such as this, in which it is chiefly 
 intended to indicate or suggest the special characteristics 
 which the man displayed in his age, and the peculiar in- 
 fluence he brought into such forceful activity, as to have 
 affected his own era, and to have impressed the future with 
 it. The chief aim of Chaucer's life we signalise in his 
 definite and persistent culture of the English tongue. How 
 great must be our debt to the first master-spirit who poured 
 the life of his soul into English with such sincerity, con- 
 tinuousness, straightforwardness, transparency, volubility, 
 earnest thought, and copious versatility. It was right that 
 the crowning work of his active life should be one in which 
 the capacities of the language should be tested to the 
 utmost by the width, scope, variousness, and multiplicity of 
 the matters brought into the harmonies of verse, and so be 
 proved to be wanting in nothing that pertained to the 
 genuine life of his nation. The flux and uncertainty, the 
 fitful literary usage of our speech was at once terminated by 
 its being shown that profound learning, chivalric fantasy, 
 true womanliness, perfect gentility, civic needs, and homely 
 
1 82 Chaucer, 
 
 wants, could all find expression in a national language 
 formed, like the people who spoke it, out of the prime 
 materials that all other nationalities could furnish, worked, 
 kneaded, vitalised by something more than even Promethean 
 heat — the breath of the soul of genius. 
 
 Through the changeful vicissitudes of a changeful time, 
 Chaucer held consistently to the political and religious views 
 of his mature manhood, and kept faith with his earliest 
 patron, John of Gaunt. During a number of years this 
 nobleman had held the aftections of Chaucer's sister-in- 
 law, the widow of Sir Hugh de Swineford — who had been 
 governess to the daughters of the Duchess Blanche — in 
 thrall. That he really loved her, though unlawfully for 
 some time, for she had borne him three sons and a daughter, 
 was shown by his taking her to wife in January 1396; by 
 acknowledging her children ; and by his securing their 
 legitimisation by Act of Parliament in the following year : 
 at which period Lancaster had recovered his influence both 
 with king and people. Chaucer was thus more closely allied 
 to the Lancasterian party, and was more likely to have 
 such influence as it possessed for the advancement of the 
 interest of himself and his children. In accordance with 
 these natural inferences, we find several antiquaries record- 
 ing a tradition that he resided in Donnington Castle, Berk- 
 shire, during the latter years of his life ; and Mr Grose, on 
 the authority of a MS. in the Cotton Library, asserts that 
 he was the purchaser. Perhaps the expense of this "romance 
 in stone and lime" hampered his means, or excited the 
 envious hatred of his enemies — persons whom successful 
 merit seldom wants. At any rate, we find that in 1398 he 
 received a grant of the king's protection from arrest and 
 prosecution for two years, as one engaged on urgent busi- 
 
Old Age and Death, 1 83 
 
 ness for his Majesty. In 1399, too, he got a grant of a pipe 
 of wine annually " in the port of London, from the king's 
 chief butler or his deputy." Thomas Chaucer, the poet's 
 eldest son, was at this time chief butler to the king. On 
 3d Februaiy 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Richard II. 
 appropriated his estates. Henry Bolingbroke, the young 
 duke, then in exile, determined to resist the confiscation, 
 and during the absence of the king in Ireland landed at 
 Ravenspur, in Yorkshire. He seized Richard on his return, 
 carried him captive to London, and extorted an abdication 
 on a charge of misgovernment and breach of constitutional 
 right. On Richard's deposition, September 29, 1399, he 
 claimed to be (and was) crowned, Oct. 13th. One of the 
 earliest acts of the young king was to confirm the grants of 
 annuity and wine to our poet, and to add (as a solatium for 
 the losses sustained by Lancaster's death?) an additional 
 annuity of forty marks. On 24th Dec. 1399, Chaucer took 
 a long lease of a house in Westminster, in the garden of the 
 old convent, on which the chapel of Henry VII. is now 
 built, from the Abbot, named Robert Humodesworth, and 
 there he appears to have resided till his death, Oct 15, 
 1400. 
 
 If we believe what Shakespeare makes Chaucer's patron 
 say, that 
 
 ** The tongues of dying men 
 Enforce attention like deep harmony : 
 Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain : 
 For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. 
 He that no more must say, is listen'd to more 
 Than th<iy whom youth and ease have taught to glose. 
 More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before." 
 
 How much ought we to value the " Code Council of 
 Chaucer," written on his death-bed, when that solemn hour 
 
1 84 Chaucer. 
 
 had come, in which resignation and composure are most 
 required, and the Hght of heaven enters the soul through 
 the chinks disease has made ! These are the sober, sen- 
 sible, impressive, but not sombre, thoughts which he left as 
 a parting legacy to his posterity, to us, and ours : — 
 
 " Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness, 
 Suffice unto thy good though it be small ; 
 For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness. 
 Press hath envy, and weal is blent o'er all ; 
 Savour no more than thee behoven shall; 
 Rede well thyself, that other folk canst rede, 
 And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede. 
 
 " Pain thee not each crooked to redress 
 In trust of her that turneth as a ball ; 
 Great rest standeth in little business ; 
 Beware also to spurn against a nalle : 
 Strive not as doth a crooke with a wall ; 
 Deem thou thyself that deem'st others' deed. 
 And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede. 
 
 ** That thee is sent receive in buxomness; 
 The yrestling of this world asketh a fall ; 
 Here is no home, here is but wilderness ; 
 Forth, pilgrim, forth, O beast out of thy stall ; 
 Look up on high, and thank thy God for all ; 
 Waive thou thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead, 
 And Truth thee shall deliver 'tis no drede." 
 
 He was the first of the "sovereigns of intellect" who 
 tenanted the south transept of Westminster Abbey, since 
 fittingly named Poets' Corner. Caxton, the earliest EngHsh 
 printer, erected a monument over the resting-place of the 
 first English poet, to 
 
 '* Protect his memory, and preserve his story." 
 
 Thomas Chaucer, his son, held many honourable offices, 
 and was highly successful as a diplomatist ; his daughter, 
 
Genius, Reputation, and Influence. 185 
 
 Elizabeth, became a nun in the Priory of St Helen's, 
 London; but of the fondling, "litel Lowys," we have no 
 history. It is to be feared he was too precocious, and faded 
 early, and that his virtue, worth, and sweetness were not 
 long held back, after his father's death, from the dull grave 
 that hushes all — " the fairest oft the fleetest." 
 
 Life's mutations, great and many though they were — 
 student, lawyer, courtier, soldier, prisoner, ambassador, 
 financier, exile, the friend of princes and kings, the com- 
 panion^ of noble, patriot, and reformer, but above and ex- 
 celling all, the poet — came to an end. A fadeless glory is 
 round his memory, and his words, like the soul they issued 
 from, are immortal. Imagination, humour, satire, sagacious 
 observativeness, the very ethereal essence of sociality and 
 song, were in him. The freshness of a May morning is over 
 all his works. They are prolific 
 
 ** Of more proverbs 
 Than in this world there growen grass or herbs." 
 
 The learning in them is deep, wide, and masterly. They 
 are quaint, naive^ and (if rightly read) musical. They are full 
 of the thought-life of a true man and Englishman, and they 
 are the " heirs of the invention" of the father of the language 
 of " nobleness and chivalrie " — the strongest, richest, most 
 elegant and valuable of the languages of men. 
 
 Chaucer was the " antecessor" of a noble race ; "the line 
 of English poets begins with him, as that of English kings 
 with William the Conqueror ; and if the change introduced 
 by him was not so great, his title is better. Kings there 
 were before the Conquest, and of great and glorious memory 
 too. But the poets before Chaucer are like the heroes 
 before Agamemnon ; even of those whose works have 
 
I S6 Chaucer. 
 
 escaped oblivion, the names of most have perished." It has 
 not been so with 
 
 " Him who left half told 
 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 
 Of Cambull and of Algarsife ; 
 
 And who had Canace to wife; 
 
 That own'd the wondrous ring and glass j 
 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass 
 
 On which the Tartar king did ride." 
 
 The preservative magic of genius more effectively than the 
 conservative consecration of sovereignty, has made us the 
 inheritors of 
 
 "Him who first with harmony informed 
 The language of our fathers. . . . Who in times 
 Dark and untaught, began with charming verse 
 To tame the rudeness of his native land. " 
 
 May we be worthy of the gift of this great and good 
 illustrator of life and literature ! 
 
Copernicus — Modern Astronomy. 
 
 A,D. I473-1543. 
 
** O best endowed and bravest Pole of Poles ! 
 Stupendous was thine insight into things ; 
 And things celestial too ; though stars not souls. 
 Thine more than any man's the skill that brings 
 The Truth that is from out the Truth that seems. 
 How free thy will, how plastical thy mind, 
 With love -like bands of light the sun to bind — 
 A wandering joy till then in all our dreams ! — 
 But bind in honour as a king is bound, 
 By holy law, to bless, sustain, and rule. 
 No wonder thou wert crush'd instead of crown'd ; 
 The. Church was frighten'd, and abash'd the school. 
 Oh for another error-quelling Mars, 
 To range the world of souls as well as stars ! " 
 
 — Satnuel Browtty 1852. 
 
 "Copernicus, vir maximo ingenio, et quod in hoc exercitio magni 
 momenti est, animo liber." — Kepler. 
 
 The great Columbus of the heavens." — Edward Everett. 
 
 "This Copernicus has done much more than he thought of." — 
 Hobbes, 
 
COPERNICUS— MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 O those who are acquainted with the grandeur and 
 sweep of modern astronomical speculation, the 
 sublime results of the far-stretching explorations 
 into the vast indefinitudes of space, which its cultivators 
 have accumulated and arranged, and the mightiness of the 
 masses and epochs regarding which the astronomer gives us 
 information, it cannot but be interesting to know something 
 of the " life and times " of that man by whom the central 
 thought of modern astronomy was initiated ; while to those 
 who have hitherto contented themselves with a faith in, 
 rather than a knowledge of, the facts of this science it may 
 be not useful only, but pleasing, to be taken to the centre- 
 thought from which all these facts out-radiate, that they may 
 trace out hereafter, with greater ease, in the subsequent de- 
 velopments and progress of the science, the influences set 
 a-working by the genius of that illustrious Pole, who "nature's 
 mystic lore and language " knew so well. 
 
 Nicholas Copernicus was born near the old gate in Thorn, 
 (Torunia,) a town on the right bank of the Vistula, in the 
 Palatinate of Masovia, in the ancient kingdom of Poland, 
 19th February, 1473. ^^ consequence of the name of the 
 great astronomer's grandfather being found in the register of 
 persons admitted to the privileges of citizenship in Cracow, 
 
1 90 Copernicus. 
 
 in 1396, under the Bohemian form Koppernig^ it has been 
 generally assumed that his paternal ancestors were Boii. The 
 father of Copernicus, who was a surgeon, came from Cracow, 
 and settled in Thorn in 1462. Three years afterwards, he 
 had* risen so much in popular estimation that he was elected 
 a member of the council of the town of his adoption. This 
 sufficiently defines his position in society to account for his 
 marriage with Barbara Watzelrod, a native of Thorn, a lady 
 connected by birth with the nobility of Poland. Copernicus 
 received his early education at home, and in the public 
 gymnasium or grammar school, founded 1350, of his native 
 place. He had the reputation, even in his youth, of being 
 "a scholar, and a ripe and good one." His father died 
 shortly after Copernicus had completed his tenth year, and 
 the bereaved mother placed the direction of his studies in 
 the hands of her brother, Lucas Watzelrod, Bishop of Erme- 
 land (Warmia.) It was decided that the youth should follow 
 his father's profession; so, after having advanced his elemen- 
 tary studies sufficiently at Thorn, he was entered as a student 
 of medicine in 1 491, in the then far-famed University ot 
 Cracow, founded 1364 by Casimir the Great. Here he 
 studied classics, medicine, and philosophy. He was here 
 placed under the private as well as the public instructions 
 of the celebrated Albert Brudzewski, afterwards tutor to 
 Alexander, King of Poland. The influence of such a teacher 
 on the mind of a pupil, both by inclination and interest apt 
 in study, could not but have been considerable. Brudzewski 
 was equally distinguished for his attainments in Greek 
 scholarship, his mathematical skill, and his astronomical re- 
 searches. He was the author of a work on the mathematics 
 of astronomy, which became, and long continued to be, a 
 text-book throughout Europe. For some time the rival in 
 
Home mid Foreign Education, 191 
 
 reputation of Purbach and Regiomontanus, he had now be- 
 come their successor. Under such a teacher Copernicus 
 was initiated into the mysteries of the astronomy of that age, 
 and made acquainted with the uses of the astrolabe — the 
 instrument then employed in making observations on the 
 stars. 
 
 The University of Cracow was at this time also world- 
 famous for the publication of an annual almanac, the pre- 
 paration of which was a task imposed on the mathematical 
 professor of that university on his appointment. That the 
 professors might have every facility afforded them for the 
 proper performance of this important duty, the university 
 collected, at great expense and trouble, all the Epheinerides 
 Astrovomicce, or almanacs, then published, so that it was well 
 furnished, for the time, with the conditions of successful 
 astronomical study. We cannot doubt that Copernicus 
 took due advantage of his opportunities, and that besides 
 making himself well acquainted with the usual branches of 
 a university curriculum, he had acquired a permanent taste, 
 if not a decided thirst, for knowledge. A special interest, 
 however, seems to have been excited in him for astronomical 
 investigations. 
 
 To gratify his intense desire for improvement, Corpernicus 
 left Poland, to visit the chief foreign seats of learning. In 
 1495, he entered the University of Padua, then one of the 
 most flourishing educational institutions in southern Europe, 
 as a student of the faculty of medicine. Here he studied 
 the peripatetic philosophy and medicine under Passaro and 
 Teatinus, varying his life by spending his vacations at 
 Bologna, in companionship with Dominico Maria, the most 
 celebrated Italian mathematician of his age, with whom con- 
 geniaUty of taste and studies had made him an intimate 
 
192 Copernicus, 
 
 friend. In 1499, Copernicus graduated in Padua as doctor 
 both of philosophy and medicine, the ceremony, as was then 
 usual, taking place in the magnificent cathedral of that city. 
 
 In the following year, on the recommendation of his 
 friend Dominico Maria, Corpemicus was appointed pro- 
 fessor of mathematics in Rome. His reputation had pre- 
 ceded him thither, and he began to expound his favourite 
 science, as well as continued to pursue his astronomical in- 
 vestigations, under the most favourable auspices. A crowd 
 of scholars, artists, and other eminent men, attended his 
 lectures ; great applause greeted his steps ; he was declared 
 to be nothing inferior to Regiomontanus ; and triumph 
 seemed to swell his sails. He had not long occupied this 
 notable position, till the novelty of his doctrines, no less than 
 the greatness of his fame, excited jealousy. The deplorable 
 government of Rome, under Pope Alexander VI., was not 
 of such a kind as to satisfy a Polish scholar. He resigned 
 his professorship in 1502, and returned to Cracow, with the 
 halo of fame on his brow, and the sting of envy in his heel. 
 
 During eight years — the eight years in which the Augus- 
 tan age of Polish literature brightened towards its dawn, 
 under the wisest, bravest, and most magnanimous of Po- 
 land's kings, Sigismund I. — Copernicus dwelt contentedly 
 in Cracow. He went little into company, was grave and 
 serious in manner and speech, delighted in quiet, learned, 
 earnest conversation, and was diligent in keeping up a 
 widely diffused correspondence with the first men of the 
 age. His tendency towards unusual and original specula- 
 tion had developed itself early; the calm daring of his 
 thoughts had won him many admirers ; and hence an inti- 
 macy with him was much sought after and highly valued. 
 Large masses of his epistles to the eminent scientific and 
 
Astronomy and Theology, 193 
 
 literary men of his time are still, we believe, to be found 
 among the MS. collections in the Hbrary of the University 
 of Cracow. 
 
 Copernicus was a man, not only of extensive erudition in 
 the science by which his distinction was gained, but also 
 profoundly thoughtful and extremely cautious in observation 
 and experiment. By the use of the Cracovian Ephemerides^ 
 and several instruments constructed by himself, he had 
 diligently noted the positions of the stars, and compared 
 them with the places assigned them in the systems of anti- 
 quity, till the multiplicity of discrepancies observed between 
 the theoretic and the real led him first to a doubt, and 
 afterwards to a disbelief, of the received canons of astro- 
 nomy. The date usually given, as that in which this disbelief 
 transformed itself into a new and definite theory, is 1507. 
 We see no reason for doubting this chronological statement, 
 although we know of no positive proof for the fixing of the 
 date. This, however, we may infer, that his devotion to 
 scientific pursuits must have impaired what resources may 
 have been left him by his father, have precluded him from 
 acquiring sufficient means of living from tutorial pursuits or 
 the practice of surgery, and have made him anxious to find 
 some position wherein the earnestness of study might ho. 
 made compatible with *' a competent portion of the good 
 things of this life." The example of his friends Konarski 
 and Zaremba, as well as the advice of his uncle, doubtlessly 
 led him to think of the Church, He took holy orders, was 
 consecrated a priest in Cracow, and was created Canon of 
 Frauenburg, in the diocese of Ermeland, of which Lucas 
 Watzelrod, his uncle, was the bishop. At first, however, 
 the change did not seem to be very advantageous, so far as 
 regarded the furtherance of those investigations which he 
 
194 Copernicus. 
 
 was desirous of engaging in, regarding the "jewellery 
 of heaven." His uncle being much engaged at the court, 
 the management of the business affairs of the bishopric 
 was confided to the care of Copernicus. The administra- 
 tive capacity required for the successful accomplishment of 
 these in the then state of the diocese was of no mean order. 
 Nevertheless, he manifested all the qualities of a consum- 
 mate adept in business, even while he pursued in private 
 the quiet and " even tenor" of scholarly research. 
 
 The business difficulties in which Copernicus suddenly 
 found himself immersed arose in this wise. In 1225, the 
 Teutonic knights having returned from Palestine to a retire- 
 ment in Venice, had been invited to convert Masovia to 
 Christianity. As a condition of, as well as a reward for, the 
 accomplishment of this desirable end, they had received a 
 grant of land. They succeeded, by the most horrid tyranny, 
 in reducing the inhabitants of that district to a nominal 
 recognition of Jesus, but a real subjugation to themselves. 
 Not contented with the territory with which their order had 
 been endowed, they stretched out their conquests and 
 oppressive domination greatly beyond their prescribed 
 limits. Tyranny invariably produces revolt. Resistance 
 was determined on, and hostilities, at first desultory, but 
 latterly combined, were commenced. The exigence at 
 length grew so alarming, that a convention was held, in 
 1454, in the native town of Copernicus, to devise and carry 
 out such means as seemed likely to be successful in enabling 
 the people to throw off the tyrannous yoke with which they 
 were enthralled by those knightly despots. In 1466, by a 
 treaty of renunciation signed at Thorn, the movement was 
 ostensibly finished by the vanquishment of the Teutonic 
 usurpers. This victory was more seeming than real, how- 
 
Divinity and the Drama. 195 
 
 ever ; for the oppressors substituted guile for force, and by- 
 stealthy and insidious encroachments on their neighbours 
 were rapidly regaining a complete though unapparent tri- 
 umph. They had begun to exercise their sly rapacity in 
 the diocese of Ermeland; and Copernicus, with all the 
 enthusiasm of a citizen of the town in which their defeat 
 had been determined on and sealed, set himself to cross 
 their designs, resist their machinations, and render their 
 efforts effectless. Bribes, menaces, and entreaties were all 
 vainly employed to move his firm and resolute will. Coper- 
 nicus conquered ; and the vanquished knights, with pitiable 
 malice, called in the aid of some obscure plagiarist from 
 Aristophanes to introduce him, Socrates-like, as one of the 
 dramatis perso7i(B of a comedy performed at Elbing, another 
 town which they had founded. Amid the buffoonery of 
 this comedy a burlesque of his astronomical theories was 
 presented, and the mob was excited to hissing, hooting, and 
 wonder at the priestly wiseacre who could, in opposition to 
 the plain teaching of his own eyes, suppose that the earth 
 moved round the sun.* The pleading of Copernicus against 
 
 * The following rhunit of the plot of this piece may not be unin- 
 teresting : — The stage exhibits the interior of an astronomer's study, 
 furnished with many ridiculous instruments ; in the centre stands an 
 old man, a burlesque representation, in appearance and dress, of 
 Copernicus. Behind him is Satan, and by his side a clown. Coperni- 
 cus devotes himself to the Prince of Darkness, burns a Bible, and — 
 more heinous still — tramples upon a crucifix. With resin torches the 
 face of the astronomer is lighted up to represent the sun, whilst he 
 juggles several apples round his ruddy face, in imitation of the revolv- 
 ing planets, after which he vends quack medicine and pomatum, and 
 the farce closes, amidst blue, green, and crimson lights, — melo- 
 drama's darlings, — by Satan seizing him, to drag him to a region 
 underlying human graves, whence issue belching, sulphurous flames, 
 declaring all the while that he would hang him head downmost during 
 
1 96 Coperniais. 
 
 the recording of a final judgment on such evidence, before 
 such a jury, was pithy and concise — '•'' Mathematica mathe- 
 maticis scribuniur" — mathematics are written for mathemati- 
 cians. His appeal has been successful, judgment has been 
 reversed, the satire and the science of the Teutonic knights 
 are now alike objects of contempt, while the name and fame 
 of Copernicus are brightened with the progress of the suns. 
 Though the Court had, by a royal decree, compelled the 
 restitution of the usurped estates, the contention between 
 the Canon of Frauenburg and the warlike missionaries of 
 the cross was not yet fully ended ; for when it became 
 known that at a diet to be held at Graudentz, in 152 1, the 
 subject of the debasement of the coin of the realm, 
 which had been extensively and systematically practised by 
 the knights, was to be taken into serious consideration, 
 Copernicus was chosen nuncio for the diocese of Ermeland, 
 and made earnest and valuable efforts for the correction of 
 this heinous political and moral crime. The definitive 
 settlement of this question being encumbered with many 
 difficulties, — amongst others, the infringement of rights 
 acquired by several towns, e.g., Dantzig and Elbing, to coin 
 their own money, — the consideration of the subject was 
 postponed till a future diet. Copernicus has left behind 
 him evidences of his interest in this matter in the tables 
 which he constructed to show the mode in which the 
 current coin of Poland, Prussia, and Lithuania might be 
 reduced to a common and uniform, yet standard issue. 
 
 eternity, for having ventured to disturb the settled earth. The humour 
 is made more telling by the appendix of asses' ears to his caput, the 
 jokes of the merry-andrew, and the vv^ondrous vision of the gateway of 
 the place of Fate, which blazed so triumphantly for the reception of the 
 destruction-deserving priest. 
 
Reform of the Calendar. 197 
 
 The incident of the Elbing comedy sufficiently shows 
 that the views which Copernicus entertained regarding the 
 solar system were somewhat widely known. Another cir- 
 cumstance still more signally proves that, though his opinions 
 were, as yet, formally unpublished, they were very far from 
 being either unknown or unnoticed. When the reform of 
 the Calendar was agitated in the Church, Bishop Paul, of 
 Middleburg, the president of the special congregation con- 
 vened for the consideration of that subject, besought, by an 
 autograph letter, the co-operation and assistance of Coper- 
 nicus. To this subject the attention of the Canon of 
 Frauenburg had been given from the time that Pope Leo X. 
 (1513-1522) had first mooted the question. He had early 
 arrived at the conclusion that the chief cause of the failure 
 of any scheme for effecting such a purpose lay in the inade- 
 quacy, if not the absolute erroneousness, of the results 
 obtained by the labours of former astronomers, " as regards 
 the length of years and months, on the one hand, and the 
 relative movements of the sun and the moon on the other." 
 To investigations upon these matters he accordingly devoted 
 himself When, therefore. Bishop Paul solicited his aid, he 
 was not only willing, but specially fitted to give good help ; 
 and he did not refuse compliance, but wrote a treatise on 
 the fixing of the exact length of the year, which was laid 
 before the congregation, and was undoubtedly employed in 
 the ultimate decision of that long-debated point. This is 
 clearly proven by the authority of Christopher Clavius, the 
 person appointed by Gregory XIII. to superintend the 
 reformation, finally accomplished in October 1582, who, in 
 his work "On the Calendar," says that "Nicholas Coper- 
 nicus, an illustrious mathematician of our age, by a most 
 diligent comparison of his own observations with those of 
 
1 98 Copernims. 
 
 Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Albategnius, and the Alphonsine 
 tables, has ventured, by an incredibly healthy shrewdness, 
 new hypotheses being attached thereto, to demonstrate this 
 increase and decrease of the solar year, and to reduce the 
 inequalities of the year to a certain and definite law ; and 
 has discovered, by a calculus derived from his hypotheses, 
 that the solar year, when it has increased to its greatest 
 extent, is a little greater than that which Ptolemy calculated, 
 viz., 365^- 5^- 55' 57" 40'", but that when it has decreased to 
 the utmost, it is a little less than Albategnius found it, viz., 
 365^ o^- 4' 55" 7'"; so that the medium magnitude of the 
 Alphonsine year is somewhat nearly an average between the 
 longest and the shortest duration." 
 
 The above quotation proves satisfactorily that although 
 Copernicus did not live to see his opinions adopted, they 
 were yet allowed silently to operate in the production of 
 important changes, and that though the efficient promoters 
 of the Gregorian calendar cautiously abstained from assent- 
 ing to the peculiar hypotheses implied in his suggestions, 
 they made such use of his labours as bore real testimony 
 to their value, virtual testimony to their truth. 
 
 Strange, that at this very time Providence should have 
 raised up two men in Europe whose genius should be sub- 
 versive of the past, and potent to upbuild the new — Luther 
 and Copernicus — the one the reformer of the theology^ the 
 other of the science of the age ! Strange, that in this era 
 there should be two protests, entered simultaneously, from 
 opposite hemispheres of thought, against the domination of 
 authority ! Stranger still, that those two men, working 
 towards the same end, — the emancipation of the human 
 soul from the trammels of a bigoted conservatism, — should 
 have had no brotherly sympathies, no links of communion ; 
 
Science and Theology. 199 
 
 that they seem to have risen up unrecognised by each other 
 as " fellow-helpers ; " and that each, absorbed in the work- 
 ing out of his own purpose, was shut out by the very energy 
 and concentrativeness requisite to the accomplishment of 
 that from sympathy with his co-labourer in the enfranchise- 
 ment of thought ! Yet so it was ; and these twin-born 
 children |of progress pursued each his own way, unwitting 
 that in the grand drama of history they were bringing about 
 the wonderful dhioue?fie?it of modern civilisation. 
 
 The pathway to the attainment of true science was blocked 
 up by the dogmas handed down, sanctioned, and authori- 
 tatively decided by the Church, and the " true and living 
 way " of access to a theology, potent over the whole faculties 
 of the human soul, had long exhibited a placard, whereon 
 was inscribed the fatal words, " No thoroughfare ! Tres- 
 passers will be prosecuted." But the ocean yielded up to 
 Columbus a new world ; the mechanism by which thought 
 becomes winged was discovered ; the idea of nationality had 
 been evoked ; Luther opened the Bible, and Copernicus un- 
 riddled the mysteries of the sky, notwithstanding the pro- 
 hibition which the papal hierarchy had issued against change 
 and progress. The dominion of the senses, and the tyranny 
 of tradition, had both been resisted, and the freedom of the 
 human understanding had been proclaimed as the necessary 
 condition of truth, holiness, and civiHsation. The calmly 
 studious life of the great astronomer has been somewhat 
 overlooked in the noise of the polemics of the great re- 
 former ; yet there is a heroism in the silent, though laborious 
 toilsomeness of a student's life not undeserving of its reward, 
 not effectless in human history, not forgotten of God, though 
 frequently disregarded by man. 
 
 We have noticed some events in the life of Copernicus, 
 
200 Copernicus. 
 
 which have carried us beyond the period at which his 
 theory of the planetary system had been elaborated, and, in 
 some measure, made known to his contemporaries. Alone 
 on the outposts of scientific conquest; undesparingly ten- 
 anting the solitary sentinel-house, erected on the utmost 
 verge to which intimidated inquiry had ventured to extend 
 her power ; self-concentred and self-upheld, although un" 
 cheered by sympathy of thought or companionship in study, 
 with the noble heroism of patient labour, he has been 
 engaged in waging an uncompromising warfare with doubt 
 error, difficulty, and distance ; and he now brings with him 
 the fruits of his victory, and the trophies of his conquests. 
 Let us now turn our attention to the modes and processes 
 by which, overstepping the wonted boundaries of human 
 thought, he substantiated a new and true explanation of the 
 majestic and slowly-evolving phenomena of the far-off firma- 
 ment. To effect this, we must turn back the pages of the 
 histoiy of science, and retroject our thoughts far into the 
 distance of former centuries, when experimental philosophy 
 scarcely existed, and authority had closed the doors of 
 further investigation. In going from the light into the 
 daikness there is little chance of acquiring distinctness of 
 vision. Let us rather voluntarily shut our eyes to the light 
 which the after centuries reveal, until we are able to turn 
 our faces towards the light thereof, and find some use for 
 the illumination which it can throw back upon the past. 
 
 Early in the history of our race the stars had attracted 
 the loving watchfulness of thoughtful men. They gazed on 
 them long and patiently as they sparkled in the intense blue 
 of an Oriental sky. They had grouped them into constel- 
 lations, traced their pathways, calculated their wanderings* 
 and determined the periods in which their journeys were 
 
The Progress of Science, 201 
 
 performed. 'Y\i^ phases of " the two great lights " had been 
 so scanned and studied, that their slowest changes were 
 marked, known, and registered. Almost all the facts ascer- 
 tainable by mere inspection had been placed in the treasuries 
 of science. Intellect, however, had not yet overleaped the 
 barriers of sensation, and secured a pathway to higher truths 
 than sense gives. Hence every effort made to explain the 
 phenomena of the stars accepted as real and true that which 
 was only apparent. The Greeks expended their grandly 
 theoretic intellects upon the scientific construction of astro- 
 nomy, and brought into being a multitude of hypotheses, 
 according t6 which the mystic motions of the heavenly 
 bodies anight be explained. These could not then be sub- 
 jected to any decisive test, but continued to retain the fas- 
 cination, as well as the indefiniteness, of dreams. Hippar- 
 chus saw this deficiency, and endeavoured to supply it, by 
 the institution of continuous, accurate, and constant obser- 
 vation. Following his example, Ptolemy closely examined 
 facts, and patiently pursued his researches into the secrets 
 of the motions of the orbs of heaven. At length, having 
 accumulated observations, he began to theorise, and, for a 
 time, by a most ingeniously-devised system of cycles and 
 epicycles, satisfactorily accounted for the phenomena of the 
 planetary motions. This system was recognised as true, 
 enjoyed the popularity of centuries, and eventually became 
 so tenaciously engrafted upon human thought, as to defy, 
 apparently for ever, any attempt at extirpation. Some few 
 rude remonstrances had been made, some concessions had 
 been granted, some trivial innovations had been introduced, 
 but in all its essentials the Ptolemaic system was that which 
 universally prevailed when Copernicus devoted himself to 
 the emancipation of science from the fetters of authority, and 
 
202 Copernicus. 
 
 the limitations of the single sense through which astrono- 
 mical phenomena become knowable. 
 
 Copernicus was well read in all that related to the doc- 
 trines of astronomy, a profound student, a bold thinker, a 
 patient investigator, an ingenious contriver of experiments, 
 and a truly pious man. During thirty years he observed the 
 varied processions of the heavenly bodies, compared their 
 positions with those resulting from the Ptolemaic theory, 
 which showed — 
 
 "The sphere, 
 With centric and ^jccentric scribbled o'er 
 Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb , " 
 
 computated their distances, motions, and relations, in the 
 hope of reconciling the complexity of the whole with some 
 simple idea, such as seemed worthy of the God of the 
 creation. The effort was vain. Each new experiment 
 showed only the superlative degree of intricate disorder. 
 There seemed no hope, unless he took '' a new departure," 
 changed his tact, and thus corrected the faulty reckoning of 
 those voyagers into the ocean of space who had preceded 
 him in the attempt to reach scientific truth. 
 
 Another hypothesis having become necessary, Copernicus 
 began to think over the various suggestions which had been 
 thrown out by the ancients for the explanation of the ap- 
 pearances which the sky presented to the sight. He 
 remembered that Pythagoras had supposed that the grand 
 central fire of the universe — the sun — was stationary, and 
 that the planets revolved in order and harmony round that 
 brilliant mass. Could this guess be the key to the truth ] 
 Thought might catch the secret upon due inquiry. Doubt, 
 prejudice, and difficulty stood before him to oppose his pro- 
 gress, but at last, conviction having been matured within 
 
The Mystery of the Skies. 203 
 
 him, he rises to new effort, and forsaking the useless and 
 untenable determinations of ignorant authority, set out on a 
 voyage of discovery into the far-distant spaces of the sky. 
 Borne away, in the pellucid car of imagination, after flashing 
 
 ** Through the midst of an immense concave 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 With shades of infinite colour, . . . 
 An ever- varying glory," 
 
 he reached the sun. There, in the azure canopy, he saw 
 the stars, no longer stationary, but floating along through 
 immensity; in the unimaginable harmony of regulated 
 motion, he beheld — 
 
 *' Each vi'ith undeviating aim. 
 In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
 Pursued its wondrous way." 
 
 All seemed explained. Complexity vanished, and simplicity 
 appeared. The sweep of those worlds which inhabited the 
 far splendours of space was periodical, calculable, and pre- 
 cise. They swirled along their diverse orbits in the same 
 direction, and filled the same belt in the radiance through 
 which they sped their ceaseless career. The earth was no 
 longer the monarch of motion ; his sceptre was given to the 
 sun, while the faithful moon, accompanying her lord in his 
 exile, seemed to devote herself to the task of comforting 
 him in hours of gloom, and to circle him with her love. 
 
 Not all at once did the simple beauty of truth attract and 
 charm. There were still moments when error retained its 
 power, and prejudice refused to yield ; but decision came at 
 last, and when experiment, frequently and carefully repeated, 
 had verified the deductions of reason, he announced, with 
 modesty, the new theory of astronomy, and became, by that 
 
2 04 Cop em icus. 
 
 announcement, the founder of a new dynasty of thinkers — 
 sealed up an old epoch, and unsealed a new. 
 
 A revolution was initiated. A few bold thinkers, struck 
 by the simple grandeur of the new conception, sought from 
 its author an explanation of his theory, proved by experi- 
 ment, and attested by results. Among the most noteworthy 
 of these was George Joachim, surnamed Rheticus, (15 14- 
 1576,) one of those enthusiasts for knowledge who follow its 
 track with unslacking zeal. Appointed at the early age of 
 twenty-three to be professor of elementary mathematics in 
 the University of Wittenburg, he laboured there with much 
 acceptance for about two years, when hearing — probably 
 from his superior, Reinhold (i5ii-i553)^of the changes 
 introduced into astronomical science by Copernicus, he left 
 his chair, repaired to Frauenburg, and became the disciple, 
 assistant, and friend of the father of modern astronomy. 
 This noble student, who forsook position and fame to 
 enlarge his own acquirements, found Copernicus an adept 
 in all kinds of knowledge. His enthusiasm was fired, and 
 despite of personal peril, he became the zealous advocate, 
 as well as the earliest public expounder, of the new tenets. 
 This he did in a letter addressed to Dr Schoner, entitled, 
 " Narratio de lihris Revolutionum Revdi. Doct. Nicolai Co- 
 fernici" printed at Dantzic in 1541, in which he asserted 
 that the rotation of the earth is not a probability, but a 
 truth, such a truth as Aristotle himself would have been 
 willing to acknowledge and adopt. 
 
 But the fame which brought Copernicus this whole- 
 hearted disciple and loving admirer had excited some envy 
 amongst those of his own order, as well as some displeasure 
 in the palaces wherein preferment is arranged and given. 
 In 1537, on the demise of Bishop Maurice, the successor of 
 
Genius Loses its Reward. 205 
 
 his uncle, he was nominated one of four candidates for the 
 bishopric of Warniia. There can be Httle doubt that Sigis- 
 mund I., when he appointed John Flachsbmder, surnamed 
 Dantzicus, (1484-1548,) was influenced by the desire of not 
 appearing to favour and reward the well-known contemner 
 of authority, if he was not even anxious to indicate his own 
 aversion to the promulgation of the new theory. Dantzicus 
 was indeed a most deserving person. He had been born a 
 peasant, was educated at Cracow, was made professor ot 
 poetry there, became the secretary of the king, and had held 
 the office of ambassador in England before his appointment 
 to the bishopric of Warmia. He had had his share of 
 honour and reward, yet he was preferred to Copernicus, who 
 thereafter neither received nor looked for worldly advance- 
 ment. Doubtlessly the successorship to his uncle would 
 have been most grateful to his feelings, and must have 
 seemed little more than a just reward for his powerful efforts 
 to diminish the power of the Teutonic knights. His rejec- 
 tion, therefore, seems to bear the import of a "vote of 
 censure" on his innovating philosophy, unless, indeed, we 
 are to believe that he was tinctured with Lutheranism, a 
 supposition which has been entertained, but which appears 
 to rest on far too narrow a basis. 
 
 If it be as we suppose, how galling must this pointed 
 dissent, if not dissatisfaction, have been to his noble soul ! 
 Already had his spirit travailed exceedingly in the task of 
 unravelling the intricate confusion of false science, and with 
 undaunted perseverance defied and overcome the difficulties 
 which beset the pathway of a new traveller in an untrodden 
 way. But now, as if the toils he had undergone had not 
 been enough to strain, with the exquisite torture of over- 
 tension, the sinews of human thought, just when the signal 
 
2o6 Copernicus. 
 
 whisper of success has been uttered, to the shout of derision 
 formerly mouthed by the multitude are added the piercings 
 of the malicious arrows of revenge, and the pain of the 
 wounds occasioned by the crown of thorns which envy loves 
 so well to plait for and to place on the brows of those who 
 bow not " to the world, nor the world's law." 
 
 It is gratifying to know, however, that in the meanwhile 
 Copernicus had the kindly offices of charity to withdraw his 
 thoughts from the pressure of life's cares, and the blessings 
 of the poor to weigh in the balances against the muttered 
 slanders of the superstitious or the silly, the laughter of the 
 prejudiced and ignorant, or the perverse zeal of the bigoted 
 and over-conservative. To vary his severer studies, he 
 amused himself with drawing, painting, and mechanical con- 
 trivances, devoted himself to the gratuitous attendance of the 
 sick, busied himself in superintending the water supplies of 
 the village, and in arranging the administrative concerns of 
 the canonry. However sedulously employed in investigating 
 the motions of those dazzling masses which wheel their 
 mighty circles through the convolved heavens, he did not 
 forget his duties as a denizen of earth, or neglect to add his 
 mite of help to the distressed or sorrowing. 
 
 Discouraged, but not disheartened, by his defeat in the 
 candidature for the bishopric, Copernicus laboured on. 
 Rheticus came, heard, examined, and was convinced. He 
 threw himself boldly forward as the claimant of public re- 
 cognition for the grand discoveries which the modest ex- 
 candidate had made. Not contented with this, he prevailed 
 on Copernicus to register his discoveries and to expound 
 his views. To this advice Tideman Gysius, Bishop of Culm, 
 and Cardinal Schomberg of Capua added their entreaties. 
 Copernicus had, indeed, completely determined, as we for- 
 
Progress through Antagomsm. 207 
 
 merly stated, the whole of the elements of his theory hy 1530, 
 but we do not believe, as some do, that his 7fiagnu?n opus was 
 composed and finished at that date. It is true that there 
 are traces of his having begun such a work while resident in 
 Cracow, but we know that he was naturally hesitant and 
 careful. We may well assume, then, that having determined 
 upon laying his speculations before the learned, he would 
 feel anxious to set them forth with all the care at his com- 
 mand, and that he would, at least, re-write his work, and 
 test its teachings, incorporating therein the latest light he 
 had received upon the subject. He would give the copy 
 forth slowly, and revise discreetly, thus loading his advanced 
 years with labour they were ill fitted to bear. Amidst dis- 
 appointment and anxiety the work was at length done, and 
 under the editorship of Rheticus, and the superintendence 
 of Andrew Osiander, of Nuremburg, it was consigned to the 
 press. Messengers were despatched from the printing-office 
 to carry the proofs safely into the hands of Copernicus him- 
 self, for jealousy tracked his doings, and the voice of enmity 
 had been heard muttering, like the prelude to a storm. 
 " May God have pity on us," writes Gysius, of Culm, "and 
 avert the blow which now threatens thee ! Thine enemies 
 and thy rivals combined — those who charge thee with folly, 
 and those who accuse thee of heresy — have been so success- 
 ful in exciting the minds of the people of Nuremberg against 
 thee, that men curse thy name in the streets ; the priests 
 excommunicate thee from their pulpits ; and the university, 
 hearing that thy book was to appear, has declared its inten- 
 tion to break the printing-press of the publisher, and to 
 destroy the work to which thy life has been devoted. Come 
 and allay the tempest ; come quickly, or thou shalt be too 
 late ! " The threatened riot assumed a most formidable 
 
2o8 Copernicus, 
 
 aspect. Thrice an attempt was made to enter the premises, 
 and once the power of fire was tried. The printers wrought 
 with their pistols at hand, and the friends of Rheticus, Gysius, 
 and Copernicus kept watch and ward by day and night. 
 The manuscripts of the book were stolen by a compositor 
 from the office, and the leaves were burnt in the public 
 market-place. Such were the dangers which overhung the 
 issue of the revolutionary work. As day by day the know- 
 ledge of all these doings reached the ears of Copernicus, his 
 soul became more and more subjected to excitement, 
 and his anxiety became intense. Alas ! too intense, as the 
 issue proved. He had received notice that in three days 
 more a messenger would be sent with the finished volume. 
 His frame, already strung to the highest pitch, yielded ; he 
 burst a blood-vessel; to the hemorrhage a stroke of 
 paralysis succeeded, and memory and life began to fail. 
 The awful anxiety of suspense had overcome the semi-ex- 
 hausted life-powers, and thus it was with him as it ever is 
 with men in the crisis of their being. 
 
 "The ocean of to-morrow 
 Breaks upon life's rocky shore 
 With its turmoil, with its sorrow, 
 Evermore, ah, evermore ! 
 Flowing, ebbing, ebbing, flowing, 
 Its emotions change and glide ; 
 Fears of unknown trouble throwing 
 Solemn shadows o'er the tide." 
 
 In the indescribable agony of this uncertainty, which had 
 unnerved his frame and almost overwhelmed his mind, he 
 lay nursing hope even in the embraces of despair. And yet 
 the ominous words, too late, would keep sounding in his 
 ears, and booming through all the avenues of thought. 
 
The Hour and Power of Death. 209 
 
 Life began silently and stealthily to ebb away. The torpor 
 of death was closing the gateways to the palace of the soul. 
 When suddenly sounds are heard, the rapid tramp of a 
 horse's hoofs brings a strange sensation to that half-shut ear. 
 It stops — it is — it is the messenger from Nuremberg ! He 
 dismounts, hastens in; the eye of Copernicus sparkles with 
 renewed life, his cheek flushes, and the pulses of his heart 
 revive. He raises himself slowly, grasps the precious 
 volume, touches " the great legacy he was to bequeath to 
 mankind," turns his ardent gaze on its still damp pages, 
 and smiles. The hour is come. The book falls from his 
 hands ; " the common safeguard against oppression '' is here; 
 a faint voice rises on the quietude of the sick-room — "Lord, 
 now let thy servant depart in peace." These words said, 
 Copernicus rested from his labours in the kindly care of 
 Death. That was the 23d of May 1543. Evening had 
 passed away and taken her stars with her, morning had 
 brought the rising sun and the glory of a new day; but 
 before the shadows again fell, Copernicus had gone to yield 
 up his account to the Sovereign of that creation whose 
 mysteries, while acknowledging their inscrutability, he had 
 attempted in part to know, to interpret, and to describe. 
 
 The years passed on. The long ripening process of a 
 great thought required to be gone through. Copernicus 
 departed, but his thought remained. Wafted hither and 
 thither, like the seeds of a plant, it sought a congenial soil 
 to genninate in. That was found, and modern astronomy 
 arose, flourished, and still flourishes. 
 
 So lived, so died, he who gave the first real impulse to 
 that thought which, through Moestlin and Giordano Bruno, 
 the after-ages inherited. "Tycho Brahe attempted to restore 
 the absurdities of the Ptolemaic system," but the rebellion 
 
2IO Copernicus. 
 
 of experimental science is only to be quelled by proofs ex- 
 celling in cogency those given by it ; the attempt failed, and 
 the Copernican system of the universe was effectually incor- 
 porated with the thoughts of men after it had produced such 
 results as the names of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton recall. 
 Let us reverence him as one of the heroes of old, whose life- 
 battle was spent in honour ; but while we do so, let us not 
 forget that 
 
 "Earth hath her heroes still, who strive 
 In silence for the right ; 
 Unheralded to battle come 
 Truth, Patience, Firmness, Might." 
 
Lord Clive — The Conquest of 
 India. 
 
 A.D. 1725— 1774. 
 
'* Strange are the destinies of men and states I 
 
 And oft within the little round of life, 
 
 Where effort and effect, so stem in strife, 
 Wage battle 'neath the banner of the fates. 
 The strong will works a noble purpose out, 
 
 By giving scope to energies sublime, 
 
 By putting age-old evils to the rout. 
 Making mankind its debtor for all time. 
 Clive's influence, Indian history recast. 
 
 And moulds even yet the future of the East ; 
 
 And must, or Britain's empire shall have ceased 
 To wield sure lordship o'er its regions vast. 
 
 Arcot and Plassey did not all decide, 
 
 But Clive began the glory gain'd by Clyde." 
 
 — Jul. Sleeman. 
 
 ** A heaven-bora general, who, without experience, surpassed all the 
 soldiers of his time." — Lord Chatham. 
 
 " Every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole 
 career, must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, 
 has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great, either in arms or in 
 counciL"— Macaulay's Lord Clive, 
 
LORD CLIVK— THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 
 INDIA. 
 
 HE Right Hon. William Pitt, (afterwards Lord 
 Chatham,) then one of His Majesty George II.'s 
 principal secretaries of state, received a commu- 
 nication dated "Calcutta, 7th January 1759," in which "the 
 present possessions and future prospects" of the East India 
 Company were passed under review; the means necessary 
 " to enable the Company to take the sovereignty [of India] 
 upon themselves," or, if it be thought " worthy the Govern- 
 ment's taking it into hand," it is proven " that there will be 
 little difficulty in obtaining the absolute possession of these 
 rich kingdoms." The writfer of this letter, which anticipated 
 the issues of history by a century, was Robert (afterwards 
 I^rd) Clive, — a man whose career was so useful and 
 glorious as to tempt the pen of " the Philosopher of Fer- 
 ney f to draw forth from Lord Macaulay one of the most 
 striking and eloquent papers which have ever enriched 
 the pages of the Edinhcrgh Eeview; and to establish a 
 name which merits appreciative mention in the historic 
 annals both of Europe and India, as the inaugurator of 
 that policy which Britain has recently (1858) consummated 
 
214 Lord C live, 
 
 by the annexation of India as an integral part of the 
 dominions of her sovereign. 
 
 There is no chance in human life ; all its issues are the 
 results of an intexturing and combination of personal quali- 
 fication and providential causation. The great "shaping 
 Spirit" is supreme over the plan, pattern, and product of 
 existence. To show in one concrete instance how truly 
 and how grandly — using only the commonplace of life, and 
 the seemingly accidental occurrences therein — Providence 
 penetrates the soul with suggestion, such impulses as animate 
 thought, such influences as stir to action, such aims as task 
 the soul's best energies, will, we fancy, neither be useless 
 nor unprofitable ; and we have selected for this purpose the 
 biography of one who achieved eminence in the midst of 
 the most unpropitious circumstances, by the spontaneous 
 and persistent energy with which he pursued the main 
 object of his life ; even while he was, indisputably, working 
 out one of those grand changes in history which all-prescient 
 Providence had fixed — that the age-hoar and amazing 
 civilisation of Hindostan might be supplanted by a benigner, 
 because a Christian, form of social life. This new central 
 light by which we propose to examine the early phenomena 
 of European conquest in the East will, we hope, exhibit 
 events in such a form as, while not detracting from their 
 picturesqueness, may increase their interest and intelligi- 
 bility. Therein will lie our justification for bringing again, 
 and now, under review a Ufe and an epoch on which the 
 best energies of genius have already been exerted. 
 
 Robert Clive was born in the manor-house of Styche, 
 in the parish of Moreton Say, near Drayton-in-Hales, in the 
 hundred of North Bradford, Shropshire, 29th September 
 1725. His father, Richard Clive, a practising attorney, 
 
The Ha7^vest of Wild Oats. 2 1 5 
 
 married Miss Rebecca Gaskill, by whom he had a family of 
 thirteen children, of whom Robert was the eldest. Before 
 he had completed his third year, Robert CUve was sent to 
 reside with his uncle-in-law, Mr Bayley, of Hope Hall, 
 Manchester, where he was brought up in youth, and was 
 more remarkable for wayward intractability of temper, 
 ingenuity in mischief, and audacity in the execution of 
 boyish freaks and pranks, than for application to study. 
 A dashing perversity and fearlessness, as well as imperi- 
 ousness of manner, secured to him the ringleadership of 
 plot and play in school and at home. He was " put to 
 school" at Lostock, in Cheshire ; at Drayton-in-Hales ; at 
 the Merchant Taylors' in London ; and in them all acquired 
 so wild a reputation that he was at last consigned to the 
 private tuition of a Mr Sterling. It had been intended that 
 he should follow his father's profession; but the daring 
 unmanageabihty of his disposition induced his friends to 
 regard themselves as lucky in getting rid of an annoyance 
 by the attainment for him, in 1743, of a writership in the 
 service of the Hon. East India Company. He set off 
 immediately, scarcely eighteen, scantily furnished with 
 money, and had a long and dangerous voyage. The ship was 
 unseaworthy, and required to put in for repairs, — first at 
 Brazil, where it lay nine months, and again at the Cape of 
 Good Hope. It was the autumn of 1744 before he reached 
 Madras, and then, — he had been obliged to borrow money 
 from the captain at a high rate of interest ; and the only 
 friend to whom he had letters of introduction had started 
 for Europe months ago. Shy, proud, lonely — perhaps 
 repentant — he held aloof from patronage and hospitahty, 
 and began his duty with moody irritability. He felt himself 
 misplaced, grumbled at destiny, and moped himself into a 
 
2i6 Lord C live, 
 
 chronic melancholia^ whose morbid gloom almost eclipsed 
 and always clouded his reason. Life, so pent up and dull, 
 became unendurable ; and one day, in an excess of miser}'', 
 he attempted suicide. Twice the pistol, laid against his 
 forehead, was snapped, yet missed fire. He threw it down 
 dissatisfied. A fellow-clerk shortly after entered. "Fire 
 that pistol out of the window ! " said Clive. He obeyed. 
 The pistol went off, and Clive, starting up, exclaimed, "Fat 
 has something in reserve for me to do then !" and walked 
 out. The perturbed state of his mind made him insubor- 
 dinate, reckless, and a gambler — anything to brace his 
 nerves and keep his mind alert. Personal disputes and 
 public quarrels were the result. Once the Governor of 
 Madras commanded him to apologise to his secretary for 
 some insolent language he had used. Clive sullenly did so. 
 The kindly functionary asked him to dinner. "No," 
 replied Clive ; " I have not been commanded to dine with 
 you." Again, he had lost considerably at cards, by two 
 officers, whom he afterwards detected in the act of cheating, 
 and whom, consequently, he refused to pay. One asked 
 satisfaction : Clive complied. They met. Each was fur- 
 nished with a loaded pistol, which, after having retired a 
 given number of paces, each was to fire when he chose. 
 Clive fired first, and missed. His opponent walked up to 
 him, put the cold muzzle to dive's head, and demanded an 
 instant retractation. "Shoot!" said Clive; "I said you 
 swindled — I maintain so still." The officer ejaculated, 
 " Madman !" withdrew his pistol, and the matter was at an 
 end. These are neither instances of bravery nor hardihood : 
 they are merely signs of the reckless carelessness of his 
 life, to which despair had reduced him. But the life-task of 
 Clive lay before him, and that very excitement and worthy 
 
Light in Darkness. 2 1 7 
 
 labour for which he pined and yearned were nearly ready to 
 employ his hand. Panting impatiently under the unprofit- 
 able restraints of a merchant-clerk's duties, and chafing and 
 chiding at Fortune and Fate, he did not see the glimmer 
 and the sheen foreshowing his futurity of fame, — 
 
 "As the sun, 
 Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image 
 On the atmosphere." 
 
 A few preliminary explanations will be required now, 
 before we can adequately comprehend this epoch of crisis 
 for Clive, India, and Britain. 
 
 The Portuguese, shortly after 1497, began to hold com- 
 mercial intercourse by sea with India ; but about a century 
 thereafter, the Dutch and the English extended their ambi- 
 tion to the Orient. On Dec. 31, 1600, 220 merchants and 
 gentlemen of London became incorporated by charter into 
 a Company possessed of the exclusive right of trading in 
 the East Indies. On the renewal of this charter in 161 6, 
 the number of shareholders was increased to 950. In 1634, 
 a new Company, in which Charles I. had an interest, was 
 formed ; but this soon merged into its elder rival, and they 
 became incorporate and one in 1650. In 1661, Charles II. 
 granted a new charter, in which the Company was em- 
 powered "to make peace or war with or against princes 
 and people, not being Christians;" and, in 1668, Bombay 
 — which had been given by Portugal as a portion of Cathe- 
 rine's dowry — was ceded to the Company on payment of an 
 annual rent of ;j^io in gold. In 1682, a new rival company 
 was projected, but failed ; and a new charter was acquired 
 by the old association in 1693. The Company did not, 
 however, attain an organised form till 171 1 ; and in 1744, 
 the House of Commons confirmed the privileges of the 
 
2 1 8 Lord Clive. 
 
 Company, and granted an extension of their monopoly till 
 1780. 
 
 About 16 1 2, the Company's agents procured leave from 
 the native authorities to establish warehouses at Surat, 
 Ahmedabad, and Cambay; and gradually their factories 
 spread over the chief islands of the Oriental Archipelago. 
 In 1640, Fort St George, at Madras, was founded; and in 
 1645, ^ factory, by permission of Mogul Shah Jehan, was 
 erected near the present site of Calcutta. In these several 
 places, as well as in Bombay, the Company carried on a 
 trade in exporting from India, cahcoes, diamonds, drugs, 
 saltpetre, silk, tea, pepper, porcelain, &c., and importing in 
 exchange, bullion, hardwares, lead, quicksilver, woollens, &c. 
 In 17 15, power was granted to them to purchase thirty-seven 
 townships in Bengal, where Calcutta was already assuming the 
 importance of a settlement. There were, in 1744, the three 
 presidencies — Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta — with their de- 
 pendent territories, lying along the mere outskirts of Hindos- 
 tan, in the possession of the Enghsh East India Company. 
 
 The aboriginal Hindoo population of the country lying 
 south of the mountains of Himalaya, and peaking forward 
 into the Indian Ocean, were invaded by Mahmoud of 
 Shizni, early in the eleventh century ; and towards the 
 close of the twelfth, an Affghan dynasty was seated on the 
 throne of Delhi. A century later a revolution occurred, 
 and a new and longer-lived Mohammedan dynasty acquired 
 dominion ; but the entire subjugation and subjection of the 
 Hindoos to a Mohammedan monarch was not accomplished 
 till Baber, a descendant of the " mighty Tamburlaine," 
 
 "Thirsting for sovereignty and love of arms," 
 
 founded a wide and stable empire in 1525. The petty 
 
Ettrope arid India. 219 
 
 Hindoo princes were replaced by tributary kings or 
 nabobs, and, by daring yet judicious government, the whole 
 of northern India was brought and kept under the sway of 
 the Mogul emperors. On the death of Akbar, in 1605, 
 Jehonghir succeeded. The empire was then apportioned 
 among fifteen subahdars or viceroys, by whose favour — with 
 the consent of their imperial master — the English company 
 obtained the earher trading settlements on the north-west 
 coast already mentioned. With his great-grandson, Aurung- 
 zebe, the dominion of the Moguls attained its highest 
 growth and its widest stretch. But the glory of his power 
 excited envy, and the Persians attacked his empire, while 
 an associated confederacy of native Hindoo tribes, whose 
 territories lay along his borders, waged a war of raids against 
 him. On his death the subahdars revolted and asserted 
 their independence. Feroksere, Aurungzebe's great-grand- 
 son, granted leave to purchase those townships near Calcutta 
 of which we have already spoken, probably in the hope of 
 attaching the English to his cause in an invasion of his 
 territories threatened by the Persians under Nadir Shah. 
 While revolt, insurrection, and war distracted and disturbed 
 the Indian peninsula, the ambition of Europeans was 
 inflamed, and there arose a determination to claim a share 
 in the booty to be gained in the struggle. 
 
 We must again retrace the lines of time, and strive to 
 delineate the respective positions of those European nations 
 whose interests and enterprise led them to take part in the 
 ongoings of the Hindostanee troubles, and to embroil them- 
 selves with each other in the endeavour to snatch as much 
 as they could from the disunited inhabitants of the East. 
 
 Under the financier Colbert, in the reign bf Louis XIV., 
 an East India Company was estabfished by the French. 
 
2 20 Lord Clive. 
 
 Though indefatigably pursued for upwards of fifty years, the 
 objects of their desire seemed doomed to utter failure ; for, 
 in 1744, they possessed only one important settlement — 
 Pondicherry, on the Coromandel coast, a fortified town near 
 the mouth of the Gingee, and about a hundred miles south- 
 west of Madras. Their other settlements were Carical, 
 south of Pondicherry ; Mahe, a small seaport on the 
 Malabar coast ; and Chandernagore, a town sixteen miles 
 further up the Hoogly than Calcutta, granted to the French, 
 with an adjoining temtory of 2330 acres, by Aumngzebe, in 
 1676. Not only was the French company closely modelled 
 after the English one, but it followed and kept as near to 
 the tracks of English commerce as was possible. But 
 France has always had a predilection for military organisa- 
 tion, and she had not neglected here to plant her standards, 
 and to place her forts with due regard to warlike contin- 
 gencies. In the Indian Ocean, too, the islands of Mauritius 
 and Bourbon, east of Madagascar, were French dependencies 
 under military government. The continental possessions of 
 France in the East were under the governorship of Joseph 
 Francis Dupleix — a man of ability, energy, and ambition, 
 well trained and practised in the management of business ; 
 while the insular temtories were ruled over by an officer 
 whose experience in colonial affairs was extensive, and whose 
 personal prowess and abilities were regarded as of a very 
 high order — Labourdonnais. Such men, both by inchna- 
 tion and interest, could not fail to be watchful of the course 
 of events, and wishful of an opportunity to make quick-, 
 heeled advances on behalf of France — they stood on tiptoe 
 with expectancy. 
 
 The Dutch, besides holding large possessions in the Spice 
 Islands generally, had fixed upon Batavia, a town in the 
 
Political Complications. 221 
 
 north-west of the island of Java, as their capital in the 
 Eastern Archipelago ; had succeeded in expelling the Por- 
 tuguese from Ceylon, and in bringing the maritime districts 
 of it into subjection ; they possessed, besides, a strongly 
 garrisoned and flourishing establishment at Chinsura, on the 
 right bank of the Hoogly, about four miles from Chander- 
 nagore, and twenty from Calcutta. 
 
 At this particular time we have in India a weak central 
 government, revolted subahdars, invading enemies, insurgent 
 subjects, or raiding neighbours ; and upon their coasts, and 
 in their vicinity, anxious competitors for profit, fame, and 
 national renown, held in check by the accident (then rare) 
 of peace ; but ready " to let slip the dogs of war " on any- 
 plausible pretext; for by success therein all their wishes 
 were to be gained, and, perhaps, even more than all. 
 
 In 1740, Charles VI. of Germany — in whom the male 
 line of the House of Hapsburg terminated — expired, and 
 almost immediately thereafter the war of the Austrian suc- 
 cession broke out. It had its origin in the will of the 
 German emperor — called the Pragmatic Sanction — signed 
 in 1724, by which the order of the succession and accession 
 of the royal family of Austria was regulated. By this docu- 
 ment — ^which had obtained the adhesion or concurrence of 
 all the chief royal families of Europe, except the Bourbons — 
 it was arranged that Maria Theresa, only daughter of Charles 
 VI., and her children, should succeed him. On his demise, 
 it was determined by France, Prussia, Spain, Saxony, 
 Bavaria, and Sardinia, to dismember and partition the 
 Austrian dominions. Stirred by a noble spirit of resistancy, 
 the young empress staked her fortunes on the hazard of war 
 — the burden of which, however, fell latterly upon England 
 on the one part, and France on the other. The formal 
 
222 Lord Clive, 
 
 declaration of war between these nations was issued in 
 1744. 
 
 As soon as the news of the commencement of hostilities 
 arrived, Labourdonnais decided on seizing at once the ad- 
 vantages placed in his grasp by this opportune conjuncture. 
 The Indian Ocean was quickly astir with his fleet, and on 
 14th September 1746, the British residents at Madras saw a 
 French fleet at anchor on the surf-beaten coast. In five 
 days the French flag waved in Fort St George, and articles 
 of capitulation were in process of signature. The English 
 were placed on parole, and a moderate ransom was agreed 
 to for the restoration of the city, if paid within a given 
 period. Dupleix, however, had other aims on hand, and 
 feeling offended that the glory of first stepping into the 
 troubled waters of Indian poHcy had been taken from him, 
 fomented the spleen of the English, and annoyed his rival 
 by thwarting his schemes in their nicest point — his honour. 
 Asserting that he alone was authorised to represent France 
 on Continental India, he sent an officer and troops to 
 assume the permanent management of Madras, to take the 
 English as prisoners of war, to plunder the town, and to 
 cany the governor and chief inhabitants of the place to 
 Pondicherry. The parole contract being thus broken, many 
 Englishmen escaped from Madras to Fort St David. Clive 
 escaped disguised as a Mussulman. Danger whetted his 
 temper, and stirred his blood. 
 
 Dupleix, (19th December 1746,) anxious to gain the full 
 advantage of the consternation which the English felt at this 
 sad and sudden turn of events, concentrated a force before 
 Fort St David. Resistance having been determined on, 
 Robert Clive volunteered his services ; and, in daring sortie, 
 with deadly impetuosity and irrepulsible bravery, hazarded 
 
War and Diplomacy. 223 
 
 his untutored intrepidity against the trained bands of the 
 enemy. His valour and discretion were so conspicuous, 
 that he was rewarded by an ensigncy in the Company's 
 army — a position which, though bringing him under the in- 
 fluences of " Captain Sword," did not release him from the 
 drudgery entailed on him by his previous enlistment under 
 " Captain Pen." The siege was hastily raised by Dupleix 
 on the appearance of Admiral Griffin's fleet, and Clive's 
 musket was unwillingly re-exchanged for the goose-quill. 
 
 An expedition against the Mauritius having failed. Admiral 
 Boscawen, its leader, disembarked his troops before Pondi- 
 cherry, with the design of revenging the siege of Fort St 
 David. This thirty-one days' unsuccessful enterprise restored 
 Clive to the restless ecstasy of war, where he displayed the 
 energy and coolness of his nature in acts of gallantry and at 
 moments of danger so strikingly as to rouse the jealousy of 
 some of the "regular" officers; and he found it necessary to 
 rebut the sneers made on him as an " interloper," by chal- 
 lenging one of the officers to personal conflict in a duel. 
 The latter refused, and was expelled from the service. Peace 
 was, however, concluded in Europe in 1748, and matters in 
 India were relegated to the status in quo ante belhmi. 
 
 This, however, could not be. Hostilities had arisen, and 
 no treaty could settle the young hot blood of Clive, who had 
 tasted " the insatiate joy" of a vocation, or calm the insur- 
 gent ambition which swelled in the heart of Dupleix. The 
 pathway to power was open and inviting ; and shrewd men 
 saw that no restraint could be vigorous enough to check the 
 desire for " sovereign sway and masterdom " which had been 
 excited. The genius of Dupleix soon carried the fierce 
 spirit of warfare into diplomacy, and a new contest of chi- 
 canery and circumvention began. The rivalry was inap- 
 
2 24 Lord C live. 
 
 peasable, and peace impossible. Supremacy must be had 
 by one or other at all hazards. 
 
 Dupleix schemed, plotted, counterplotted, and planned ; 
 power in his grasp, and an army at his command. CHve 
 spent doleful days among sheaves of invoices and piles of 
 ledgers in Writers' Buildings, Madras, and his hand grew 
 nervous as his soul revolted against the calm and unexciting 
 life he lead, which he unluckily strove to render more en- 
 durable by gaming. 
 
 Ul Mulk, subahdar of the Deccan, or south country of 
 Hindostan, died in 1748, leaving six sons and a grandson to • 
 contest for the occupancy of the vacant throne. Dupleix at 
 once determined to rush into the thick of the hostilities, and 
 to work out of those troubles which distracted Hyderabad a 
 signal success for his native country, and glory as well as 
 profit to himself. Ul Mulk had proclaimed his grandson 
 heir, and appointed Anwar-u-deen, nabob of Arcot in the 
 Camatic, the territory on which both Madras and Pondi- 
 cherry were situated, guardian of the child. Anwar-u-deen 
 connived at the murder of the child ; and Nazir Jung, eldest 
 son of Ul Mulk, was proclaimed subahdar of the Deccan. 
 Merzapha Jung, his nephew, at the head of a large party of 
 Hindoos and Mussulmans, disputed his accession. Dupleix 
 not only encouraged Merzapha, but also paid a ransom of 
 ;£'7 0,000 to the Mahrattas for the liberation of Chunda 
 Sahib, formerly prime minister (dewan) of the Deccan, of 
 whose children he was the guardian, that he might set him 
 up as a rival to Anwar-u-deen, who, as well as Nazir Jung, 
 •were favoured by the Enghsh, and — inclined to return the 
 compliment. The tools, or puppets, of Dupleix took the 
 field, well helped by their master, and marched into the 
 Carnatic. Anwur-u-deen met them. He was slain ; the 
 
Diamond cut Diamond. 225 
 
 enemy seized his eldest son ; and his youngest, with some 
 difficulty, escaped to Trichinopoly. Nazir Jung entered the 
 field aided by Major Lawrence j they caused the subahdar 
 and nabob to retreat to Pondicherry. Dupleix sent them 
 out, reinforced, to fight. A mutiny in the French corps led 
 to the dissolution of the army. Merzapha surrendered to 
 his uncle, and was imprisoned ; and Nazir Jung, ungrate- 
 fully refusing to implement his promises to Major Lawrence, 
 was left to himself Dupleix bribed some of his chiefs, and 
 Nazir Jung was murdered. Merzapha was released and 
 seated on the throne, while Dupleix, as a reward for his 
 timely help and crafty suggestiveness, was proclaimed 
 Dewan of the Deccan j a present of ;£"2oo,ooo, besides 
 silks, gems, &c., of more than equal value, was given him, 
 and immense treasure was supplied by him to the French 
 exchequer from the hoards of the conquered subahdar and 
 nabob. The greatness of Merzapha was short-lived. The 
 Patan chiefs, by whom the obstacle to his elevation was re- 
 moved, revolted because he would not comply with some of 
 their exorbitant demands, and he was slain. M. Bussy, the 
 French representative at his court, immediately released 
 Salabut Jung, one of Ul Mulk's sons, and declared him 
 subahdar ; and the gigantic schemes of Dupleix seemed 
 about to go on unhindered to success. The infatuation of 
 gratified vanity, however, defeated his purposes ; for one 
 morning the residents in Fort St David and Madras saw the 
 white flag of France unexpectedly waving round their 
 boundaries, as if challenging them to overpass the barriers 
 to their advancement France had erected. No heart with 
 British blood in it could brook an insult such as that. War 
 was accordingly determined on, and Captain Ginger, an 
 over-cautious and hesitant commander, was sent to raise the 
 
 p 
 
226 Lord Clive. 
 
 siege of Trichinopoly, where Mohammed Ali, Anwar u-deen's 
 son, was sorely bestead. 
 
 Lieutenant Clive accompanied this force as commissary, 
 and when it was defeated at Valconda, he set out alone to 
 Fort St David for more men and ampler stores. These he 
 succeeded in obtaining, and although attacked by a horde 
 of Polygars, against whom he maintained a running fight, 
 led the men and brought the stores triumphantly to Tri- 
 chinopoly. His bravery and energy were rewarded with a 
 captaincy. He encountered and overcame a French force 
 while conducting another detachment of auxiliaries to the 
 besieged city. During his brief sojourns at Trichinopoly, 
 and from information acquired in his repeated journeys, 
 Clive learned sufficient to convince him, that unless more 
 energetic measures were instantly taken, Chunda Sahib 
 would be the nominal victor, and the Frenchman, Dupleix, 
 the real one. Such an event would have led to the complete 
 sweeping away of the British from the Indian coasts, and 
 the entire subjugation of Hindostan to France — then fast 
 ripening into Encyclopaedism and maturing for the Revolu- 
 tion. How much of all that men hold dear and prize, hung 
 upon this single "gage of battle !" England's material wealth 
 and moral grandeur — India's ultimate civilisation and reli- 
 gious advancement — might we not even say, the future 
 "balance of power in Europe," depended on the wit of soul, 
 the virtuous bravery, and intelligent skill of those who held 
 the springs of causation at their sword-points. Clive's dash- 
 ing intrepidity had taught him the grand secret of success— 
 
 " Dull not device by coldness or delay." 
 
 No sooner, then, had he formed a scheme likely to touch 
 efifectively this very turning-point of fortune, than he hastened 
 
Impossibilities Possible, 227 
 
 to its execution. The daring cunning of this new plan at 
 once startled and pleased — but "impossibilities" hemmed 
 and circumvented its accompHshment. Clive urged, with 
 all the passionate earnestness of a man who sees his way 
 and feels his nerves tingle for the moment of action, first 
 the practicability of the scheme, then the desperate ebb to 
 which the fortunes of the Company were reduced; and more 
 from a conviction that "when things are at the worst 
 they're sure to mend — or end," Mr Saunders, the Company's 
 agent at Madras, consented to stake, upon Clive's assurance 
 of success, the whole future of the Company in India. 
 Clive's plan was this — Create a diversion from Trichinopoly 
 by an attack on Arcot, the wealthy capital of Chunda Sahib, 
 a place containing 100,000 inhabitants, garrisoned with 
 about 15,000 of the best trained troops, well provided with 
 guns and ammunition, and thus relieve Mohammed Ali 
 from the threatening power of France, and by causing a 
 dispersion of the troops of Chunda Sahib and his allies, 
 increase the opportunities of active hostilities and the 
 chances of war. With 200 Europeans and 300 trained 
 Sepoys — after leaving Madras and St David's almost de- 
 fenceless — Clive took his leave of the former garrison on 
 the 26th of August 1751 ; by the 29th he had reached Con 
 jeveram, forty miles inland. Here a thunder-storm, such 
 as might have awed the very stoutest soul, broke upon his 
 march ; but he was dauntless, and continued his progress. 
 Spies from this inland capital saw and reported the strange 
 disregard, even to the rage of nature, which these islanders 
 exhibited, and the commandant of the garrison, struck by 
 the event, evacuated the place, and gave the assailants free 
 ingress. So far Clive's anticipations were justified, though 
 the struggle was delayed, not over. He proclaimed im- 
 
2 28 Lord C live, 
 
 munity to life and property unless used against him, and 
 by restraining his men from pillage or injury, won the regard 
 of the inhabitants, who, on promise of payment, helped him 
 to repair the walls and to prepare for the siege which he 
 expected. Twice he threw himself from the fortress upon 
 the encamping enemy, though with Httle success. In a third 
 sortie he totally routed them, and sent out his company to 
 prevent the enemy from intercepting some guns he had 
 commissioned from Madras — retaining only eighty armed 
 men in Arcot. The enemy hastened to re-collect, and 
 rushed upon the citadel. He held them at bay till his own 
 forces, with the guns, entered the gate. Now, Chunda 
 Sahib, at all hazards, to save his capital, detached largely 
 from the siege-force of Trichinopoly, and hurried with 
 intense anxiety to Arcot. Ten thousand men invested it; 
 while CUve's diminished force scarcely manned the ramparts. 
 For fifty days the siege was pressed; heavy guns made 
 breaches in the walls ; constant musketry swept the fortifi- 
 cations; supphes were held back, and yet Clive's indefati- 
 gable zeal sustained his men and kept up the throb of 
 courage in their hearts. The Sepoys, when scarcity had 
 overtaken them, petitioned him to give rations of solid rice 
 to the Europeans, and to serve them with the boilings 
 of the day's allowance only. Bribes were tried, threats were 
 uttered by the rajah; but Clive despised them both. No 
 negotiations but those of weapons could be entered into 
 then. An attempt to relieve CHve, from Madras, failed. 
 Ginger and Mohammed Ali passively accepted the siege, 
 and made no attempt to benefit by the withdrawal of troops 
 secured by the audacious risks of Captain Clive. At length 
 Clive's boldness brought him his reward. Morari Row, a 
 Mahratta chief, admiring the man who, in India, first proved 
 
Victory at Ar cot. 229 
 
 that the British could fight, came to his help with 6000 men. 
 Chunda Sahib had resolved on an assault. On a holy day 
 — 14th November 175 1, kept with exceeding fervour, in- 
 creased by plenteous allowances of bang — the attack was 
 begun at dawn. Clive was ready. Bang-made bravery and 
 superstitious ardour failed. The enemy, though nearly ten 
 to one, was repulsed at every point. The master-mind was 
 lord of the situation. Quailless strength of soul, a rare 
 capacity for eliciting and holding at his will the sympathies 
 of his coadjutors, supphed Clive with the whole magic of 
 war, and though he had never studied its arts or been trained 
 in its schools, the best authorities commend his tactics and 
 write his canons in their books. A futile fire was kept up 
 till night, by the command of Chunda Sahib, to conceal his 
 retreat. On the morrow the enemy had fled. Clive was 
 triumphant. Guns, treasures, military stores, became his, 
 and he acquired the honourable title of Sabat Jung — the 
 Daring in War — from the admiring natives, who looked upon 
 his success as having in it a dash of the miraculous. In 
 this crisis of England's fate, one man only — " The hero of 
 Arcot" — seems to have foreseen and foreknown the intense 
 issue of the strife, and to have shown himself fit for the 
 emergency from which the rise of British power in India 
 dates and endures. 
 
 Success favours the persistent ; and Clive possessed that 
 unsleeping energy which constitutes the chief characteristic 
 of each master mind. 
 
 ** Sloth, the nurse of vices, 
 And rust of action, was a stranger to him." 
 
 Arcot was but the beginning of a succession of triumphs. 
 Reinforced by a few soldiers from Madras, and aided by the 
 troops of Morari Row, Clive took the fort of Timery, fell 
 
230 Lord Clive. 
 
 upon a corps, headed by the French, despatched from Tri- 
 chinopoly to the assistance of Chunda Sahib — with whom 
 they had effected a junction — and defeated it, gaining the 
 treasure chest of the rajah. Arnee surrendered unresist- 
 ingly ; and Conjeveram, after a brief struggle, was effectually 
 reduced. The flush of glory in Clive's heart made him 
 irresistible, and each additional victory acted as a spur to 
 his zeal. His vigorous restlessness changed waverers into 
 aUies, and his indomitable spirit wrested submission from 
 each adversary. Covered with the renown of unexampled 
 conquests, he proceeded to Fort St David to report progress 
 and plan a future. 
 
 It was only, however, where the man of clear aim and 
 decisive poHcy directed action and compelled obedience, 
 that matters progressed favourably. Ginger and Mohammed 
 Ali still remained cooped up in Trichinopoly, effortless, and 
 Chunda Sahib had collected a new army, which Dupleix 
 had reinforced with 500 formidable French infantry, under 
 European leaders. After laying waste the districts whose 
 inhabitants were favourable to Mohammed Ali, the rajah 
 attacked Poonamalee, and succeeded in destroying it and 
 the Enghsh residences in its neighbourhood. Clive was 
 asked to meet him, did so, and, after a keen contest at 
 Coverspak, totally routed the enemy. Elated with their 
 hard-won victory, Clive's army on their homeward march 
 came within sight of a city, recently erected by Dupleix in 
 commemoration of his success in founding a French empire 
 in India, and named by him the "City of Victory." A lofty 
 column, on whose four sides it was intended to inscribe, in 
 different languages, an epigraph regarding the glories and 
 labours of the French statesman, was just reaching comple- 
 tion. Clive immediately resolved upon the demolition ot 
 
Disappointment and Change. 231 
 
 the boastful lie. This was done, as an indication to India 
 of the unchallengeable hardihood of the British, of the 
 futihty of the French policy, and of the real weakness of 
 the self-styled leading power. To Dupleix it was undoubt- 
 edly throwing down a gage of battle, which it would be 
 hazardous to accept and dangerous to refuse. It certainly 
 committed Clive to ultimate hostilities, and made him 
 sufficiently marked as the antagonist of the Dupleix policy. 
 He returned to Fort St David unopposed and untouched, 
 his intended work more than accompUshed, and his men 
 enthusiastic for new adventures. 
 
 Chve was next nominated to command an attack upon 
 the lines of the enemy entrenched round Trichinopoly ; 
 but while he was organising his force, and just on the point 
 of marching. Major Lawrence, his superior — a brave, care- 
 fully-bred, practical soldier — arrived from England, and 
 assumed the leadership of the expedition. Chve unhesitat- 
 ingly relinquished the nomination, and accepted a subor- 
 dinate position, where he ought to have been first. Duty 
 does not so much love place as labour, and CUve was 
 possessed of the fine miUtary instinct of subordinacy in the 
 ranks, and indomitability in action. No slight labour lay 
 before the Engfish forces. Trichinopoly stands at the head 
 of the delta of the Cauvery river, 190 miles south-west of 
 Madras. Its fort is placed on an isolated rock, which rises 
 600 feet above the alluvial expanse that lies around. 
 Chunda Sahib and M. Law, commander of the French 
 contingent, completely blockaded the fort and town, and 
 the British required to besiege the besiegers. Law had 
 established his head-quarters on Seringham, an island 
 formed by two branches of the Coleroon ; it is holy ground 
 in a Hindoo's eye, and contains one of the most f^med 
 
232 Lord Clive. 
 
 pagodas of Southern India. Clive suggested that he, with 
 half the British force, should occupy the village of Samia- 
 veran, right in the line of communication between Trichi- 
 nopoly and Pondicherr)', where Dupleix sat designing those 
 webs of policy which his agents were not astute enough to 
 work, and he was not brave enough to manage in person. 
 Lawrence assented. Clive made a rapid dash upon the 
 rajah's forces, broke their lines, and enabled Lawrence to 
 effect an entrance into the beleaguered fort. He afterwards 
 completely effected his design, but that mainly through a 
 somewhat melodramatic series of war incidents, in which 
 Clive was the leader. Samiaveran was the master position 
 of the siege ; Dupleix perceived this, and sent a reHeving 
 corps under M. d'Auteuil ; Chve resolved to intercept it ; 
 d'Auteuil retreated to Uttalore, and Clive, immediately 
 countermarching, regained his quarters. Law heard of 
 Clive's departure, and determined upon attacking the en- 
 feebled encampment during its commander's absence ; aided 
 by forty English deserters, under an Irish officer, he 
 proceeded to effect his purpose. Unaware of Clive's return, 
 Law led about 800 men towards the camp. The English 
 sentinels challenged the advancing force, the deserters 
 responded ; they passed in ; but their impatient haste de- 
 feated the success of the manoeuvre. They fired at once. 
 One of their musket balls shattered the chest which Clive — 
 snatching a moment's rest after his long march — used as a 
 pillow. He was instantly awake. Rushing amongst his 
 men, he found them under arms, but entirely in ignorance 
 of what had occurred. CHve, in a passion, flew upon the 
 French Sepoys, thinking they were his own, and scolded 
 them in the confusion for their folly, until one of them con- 
 vinced him of his mistake by wounding him on the thigh. 
 
The Melodrama of Reality. 233 
 
 Unappalled by this unexpected apparition of an armed 
 enemy in the very heart of his own stronghold, he called 
 for an instant surrender from the foe ; a number yielded, 
 and he gave them in charge of a band of Sepoys of their 
 own party. Suddenly the mist cleared away from his view ; 
 he divined the trick, and counter-plotted so sagaciously as 
 to hold active hostilities in check till daylight broke, when 
 he gave deadly fight to the enemy. Faint with the loss of 
 blood, leaning upon the shoulders of two of his men, he 
 ordered the action. One of the deserters, fearful of the 
 evil upshot of the exploit, fired at Clive, but missing his 
 mark, killed one of Clive's supporters. Thrice had Death, 
 in one engagement, thus aimed at the life of the leading 
 thoughtsman and strategist among the British, but, unnerved 
 by the hardihood of the hero, failed in his purpose. 
 
 This failure rendered affairs desperate. Chunda Sahib 
 left his followers to shift for themselves, and, instead of 
 honest capitulation, chose to negotiate for escape with the 
 leader of Clive's Tanjore contingent. He proved false, 
 and put the rajah to death. Law persistently braved and 
 endured, waiting for help which could not come, for Clive 
 intercepted every auxiliary band. At length he was com- 
 pelled to submit. Dupleix's schemes, however craftily 
 conceived, were foiled on every side. He bribed, intrigued, 
 flattered, promised, and threatened ; but Lawrence van- 
 quished his nephew under the walls of Gingee, and Clive 
 was summoned to Madras to undertake a new enterprise. 
 
 Covelong, twenty miles south of Madras, and Chingleput, 
 about fifteen miles south-west of that, were then in the hands 
 of the French, and interfered with the interests of Madras. It 
 was advisable they should be reduced, and this was the mis- 
 sion to which Clive was called. The only available forces for 
 
234 Lord Clive. 
 
 this expedition were 500 freshly-levied Sepoys, and 200 
 Europeans, crimped from the dens of London, or exiled 
 from its gaols, and pitched, like shot rubbish, on the quays 
 of Madras. A regular Falstaff 's regiment it was ! How- 
 ever, CUve, born to manage men, soon disciplined them 
 into daring, by the most successful and contagious of all 
 agencies — example. He led his motley brigade of vaga- 
 bonds against Covelong, and it was captured. While their 
 exultation was at its full, he marched them on to Chingleput 
 A detachment had just left it to help the Covelongians. 
 They were too late. Clive heard of their advance, placed 
 his men in ambush, and at a wave of his hand they 
 delivered such a volley as resulted in the immediate flight 
 of the auxiliaries. Ill news travels fast ; but Clive was at 
 Chingleput almost as early as the report of the disaster. 
 Without delay he commanded an escalade, and the assault 
 was just on the point of commencing, when the French 
 commander begged a truce, and afterwards stipulated for a 
 surrender, accompanied by the honours of war. Clive was 
 glad to purchase real success at the price of gratifying this 
 little piece of mere vanity ; and while the French comman- 
 dant issued with flying colours and beating drums, Clive 
 entered with the calm collectedness of a genuine hero. But 
 the effects of wounds, and of this three years' strain on the 
 mind, unnerved and enfeebled him, and the hour of reaction 
 came. He returned to Madras, a fitting subject for a sick 
 nurse. This he found in the young, handsome, and amiable 
 sister of his old friend, Mr Maskelyne, in whose company 
 he had escaped from Madras eight years before. " Pity is 
 akin to love," and Miss Margaret Maskelyne's affections 
 were gained in the sick-room of him who had won honours 
 in the camp and on the tented field. On 15th March 1753 
 
Marriage^ Home^ aiid Parliament. 235 
 
 Clive, by marriage, united his destiny with hers, and shortly 
 thereafter, on leave of absence, he and his bride embarked 
 for England, where, on 7th March 1754, Edward Clive, 
 their son, was born. 
 
 Clive's reception in his native country was enthusiastic 
 and flattering. He was everywhere feted and caressed. 
 The Court of Directors of the East India Company, at a 
 magnificent public banquet, presented him with a diamond- 
 hiked sword, value ;£"5oo, — a gift which he, much to his 
 credit, only accepted on condition that a similar honour 
 should be conferred on his superior, Lawrence. He had 
 acquired a considerable amount of wealth in his brief but 
 brisk military career, and dutifully expended a portion of it 
 in relieving the paternal estates of heavy mortgage burdens, 
 and assisting in the establishment of his brothers and 
 sisters. He rattled his equipages grandly among the nobiHty, 
 and mingled in the political intrigues of the time. Flattered 
 and befooled into a parliamentary contest, he was, after the 
 usual complimentary (1) acknowledgments to the " free and 
 independent electors," chosen, 1754, member for St Michael's, 
 Cornwall. He was ousted on petition, by a merely party 
 dodge, and after all his waste of wealth, was left apparently 
 careerless. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the French and English India Com- 
 panies had met to arrange their difficulties, and had agreed 
 to relinquish their warlike antagonism. Clive was at home; 
 Dupleix was recalled, and thanklessly treated by those 
 for whose interest he had toiled ; halcyon days of peace 
 in India beamed from the treaty papers of the directors. 
 The English were superior in the Camatic, the French 
 held chief sway in the Deccan, and all seemed equable and 
 fair; but European politics became comphcated, and pre- 
 
236 Lord Clive. 
 
 moDitory mutterings of a continental war were heard in the 
 salons. Chve had pretty well indoctrinated the Company 
 with his opinion, that there could be no real peace in India 
 for the English while any other European power was in- 
 fluential there ; and he was known, on the trustworthy tes- 
 timony of Major Lawrence, to be "a man of an undaunted 
 resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind 
 which never left him — born a soldier." With the intention 
 of being ready, should war really become imminent, the 
 Directors of the India Company invited Clive to reaccept 
 office under them, with a royal commission, as colonel. He 
 instantly agreed, and left England for Bombay — the general 
 rendezvous for the British navy on Indian service — with 
 three companies of Royal Artillery, and 300 infantry, in 
 February 1755. Colonel Scott, his senior officer, expired 
 before Clive reached Bombay, and he thus became chief of 
 the British forces in India. He would have invaded the 
 Deccan at once, but a recently-concluded treaty or con- 
 vention stood in the way, and he was reluctantly compelled 
 to delay the execution of his purpose. 
 
 The restless ardour of his disposition soon pointed out 
 other occupation. Angria, a Mahratta pirate, the scourge 
 of the coast of Malabar, held the rocky fortress of Gheriah, 
 and from an excellent, land-locked harbour, his barques 
 issued to plunder the neighbouring coast towns, or to seize 
 the vessels of traders. Clive proposed to Admiral Watson 
 the reduction of this stronghold; and the proportions of the 
 expected booty having been agreed on, they set to work, 
 and in two days succeeded in razing the pirate's dens to the 
 ground, and defeating the outlaws. Clive thereafter sailed 
 for Fort St David, where he arrived, by a singular coinci- 
 
The Black Hole of Calcutta. 237 
 
 dence, on the very day of the capture of Calcutta, the 
 memorable 20th June 1756. 
 
 The circumstances of this catastrophe may be briefly told. 
 Aliverdy Khan, Subadar of Bengal, died April 1756, and 
 his grand-nephew, who adopted the name of Surajah Dow- 
 lah, " Sun of Empire," — a dissolute, ignorant, tyrannical, 
 and selfish prince — succeeded him. He hated the British, 
 and coveted their wealth ; and he resolved at once on their 
 extirpation from his territories. With an army of 30,000 
 cavalry, 40,000 infantry, and 400 elephants, he marched 
 against Calcutta, whose inhabitants were just strengthening 
 their forts against invasion by the French, and invested it 
 on 1 8th June. The hearts of the Europeans failed them 
 for fear, because as yet unprepared for resistance to such a 
 force. They thought it the best policy to get on shipboard 
 and escape. A few were left behind, and these determined 
 to hold out, in the hope of gaining terms. The place was 
 stormed; they were all taken, and to the number of 146, 
 thrust into a twenty feet square dungeon, which, before 
 morning, had become a putrid charnel-house, from which 
 only twenty-three issued alive. The rest had perished by 
 the intolerable pangs of suffocation and thirst. As an ex- 
 ample of the atrocious criminality of ignorance and self- 
 indulgent apathy, the Black Hole of Calcutta has become 
 proverbial. Intense hate for the man who, having com- 
 mitted a wrong like that, boasted of having thereby exter- 
 minated the British, and evinced no sign of horror at the 
 hideous deed, deepened into a slakeless thirst for vengeance. 
 When, therefore, on the i6th of August, the news reached 
 Madras, the governors of the presidency felt fell as tigers, 
 and resolved upon the instantaneous chastisement of the 
 
238 Lord Clive. 
 
 offending Surajah. The whole available strength of the 
 Company was immediately and unhesitatingly placed under 
 the command of Clive, with power to adopt the most sum- 
 mary and signal proceedings. By the nth of October, 900 
 European infantry and 1500 Sepoys were embarked, and 
 set sail in five men-of-war and five transports. Admiral 
 Watson led the navy. They reached Fulta on 2 2d De- 
 cember, and immediately disembarked. Chve at once 
 marched through the jungle upon Budge-Budge. It capitu- 
 lated, and he went on to Fort William. Watson had got 
 ready to batter it from the seaboard as soon as Clive had 
 surrounded it on land. Operations were at once begun : by 
 the 2d of January 1757, it had succumbed; and on the 
 nth the Hoogly was plundered and burnt. So far hardi- 
 hood bore him on; and then, when such rash heroism 
 seemed to be unfitting, he plied the arts of negotiation with 
 almost equal skill. He met ruse with ruse, and knavery 
 with cunning. A trained diplomatist could not have been 
 more adroit in the art of circumventing an enemy smilingly. 
 Clive offered to treat for terms ; the Surajah hesitated, but 
 marched on. Clive did not oppose him, even where the 
 strategies of war promised success, though he kept to the 
 open field, and still insisted on negotiation. He was, in 
 reality, but working him into irrecoverable toils. The 
 Surajah got his army between Clive and Calcutta, and had 
 the latter so besieged as to have some of his men in its 
 outer streets, and was already anticipating an easy conquest. 
 Clive was born a match for seemingly adverse fates. He 
 sent, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Nabob's 
 troops ; intimating at the same time that, unless this was 
 done, all proposals for negotiation must cease, and ulterior 
 measures be taken. The Surajah thought this the sublime 
 
Politics and Policy. 239 
 
 of impudence, and replied with passionate scorn. Before 
 daybreak next day, Clive, having formed a single column of 
 2200 men, cut a bloody avenue through the hosts of the 
 besiegers, and with steady continuity kept on until he had 
 re-established communications with the garrison. The 
 Nabob retreated in dismay, and offered terms. These 
 Clive accepted, though apparently opposed to " the interest 
 and reputation of a soldier," for the following good and 
 sufficient reasons. 
 
 News had arrived of the outbreak of " the seven years' 
 war;" M. Bussy was up in the Northern Circars, and 
 anxious to gain an offensive and defensive alliance with the 
 Surajah ; Count Lally, whose hatred of Britain had all the 
 intensity of a passion, was preparing a military force for ser- 
 vice in the Carnatic ; and a French fleet was expected in 
 the Bay of Bengal. The government at Madras, who had 
 stripped themselves of all defence in their anxiety for the 
 infliction of a penal war on the Surajah, were becoming 
 fearful for their own safety in the emergencies that threat- 
 ened ; and pressed for Clive's return. These affairs were 
 likely to strike at the root of the policy he had inaugurated, 
 and in the achievement of which he had done so much. To 
 precipitate a treaty before Bussy could unfold the complica- 
 tions of European pohtics, and gain over the Surajah to his 
 schemes \ to aim a sure blow at the French, early enough to 
 destroy the prestige of their arms ; and to be able then to 
 flash off into the Circars, against M. Bussy, before reinforce- 
 ments could reach him, and the reanimation of news from 
 Europe increased the confidence of his troops — seemed to 
 be matters of graver importance, in Clive's eyes, than the 
 grumbling of subordinates, the taunts of governors, or the 
 reproaches of his naval coadjutors. He therefore concluded 
 
240 Lord Clive, 
 
 a treaty of peace, whose conditions he saw his way through ; 
 for he had matured his diplomacy far-sightedly enough. 
 The fortunes of the British power in India were set "upon 
 the hazard of a die ; " he bravely risked, and luckily won, 
 and claimed that as his justification. 
 
 Clive drove on his preparations for attacking Chandema- 
 gore, the head-quarters of the French in Bengal. The 
 Surajah was actively negotiating with M. Renault, its gover- 
 nor, for a treaty of alliance. Clive suspected as much, and 
 therefore claimed by treaty the aid of his surajahship 
 against the French, now at war with the British. The 
 Surajah replied by asking Clive's help against the Afghauns, 
 who were threatening him with invasion. Clive unex- 
 pectedly agreed, and on the principle of "diamond cut 
 diamond," announced his intention to march for Moor- 
 shedabad, to the Surajah's help, so soon as he could manage 
 to storm Chandernagore on his way, that no enem/s camp 
 might be left between his army and Calcutta. On the 23d 
 of March Chandernagore capitulated. The Surajah, con- 
 scious of his own duplicity, and not so much trusting as 
 fearing his ally, bribed off the Afghauns, and strictly forbade 
 Clive's advance on pain of being held as an enemy. This 
 put the matter at once on the footing Clive desired ; he 
 determined to have done with him ; and the consummate 
 scoundrelism of Indian diplomacy now received a singular 
 accession to its annals. 
 
 Surajah Dowlah had somewhat heavily taxed his rich 
 Hindoo subjects ; and sensitive on this point, they had re- 
 solved to try a new master. Meer Jaffier, the Surajah's 
 commander-in-chief, and a marriage relation of the late 
 subahdar, Aliverdy Khan, was the substitute finally fixed on. 
 The arch-plotter was one Omichund, a Hindoo merchant, 
 
Treason a7td Forgery, 241 
 
 who had left Calcutta and gone to Moorshedabad, where he 
 had ingratiated himself with the Surajah by unscrupulous 
 hypocrisy. It was proposed to Clive by a Mr Watts — a 
 semi-spy, semi-prisoner at the Surajah's court — that he should 
 become a party to the plot, declare war against the Surajah, 
 and march at once against Moorshedabad. On the Surajah's 
 taking the field, Meer Jaffier was to pass over, with all his 
 forces, to the British lines, and thus secure an easy and de- 
 cisive victory. Clive agreed, and prevailed on the demur- 
 ring Committee of Council at Calcutta to risk the scheme. 
 They saw the advantage of having a Subahdar whose acces- 
 sion entirely depended on them, but they thought the plot 
 unlikely to succeed. However, full of reliance on Clive's 
 irresistable skill, they at last assented, and affairs were 
 ready for immediate initiation, when an unexpected 
 difficulty presented itself. Omichund had, at the last 
 moment, announced that unless by a sealed treaty, he were 
 assured of ;£'3oo,ooo, he would disclose the plot and its co- 
 partners to Surajah Dowlah. The British had committed 
 themselves ; now they were overreached ; and here seemed 
 to be an insuperable obstacle projected on their path. Clive 
 appears to have thought, that in diplomacy as in war, each 
 stratagem was fair that proved successful ; and it appeared 
 specially fitting that, by a, retaUation of treachery, this 
 traitorous trickster should be himself outtricked. He set 
 himself to " counterplot the scoundrel," and was re^dy with 
 a plan upon the moment. He, with daring duplicity, pro- 
 posed that two treaties should be got up ; one, on white 
 paper, for Meer Jaffier, to be held to literally ; another, on 
 red paper for Omichund, including the stipulated assurance, 
 but not to be acted on in that respect at all. The council 
 hesitated, and then yielded assent, and signed both treaties, 
 
 Q 
 
242 Lord Clive. 
 
 except Admiral Watson, who resolutely refused to sign any 
 but otie. The fascination of revenge upon " the villain in 
 grain " was too alluring for Clive, and \vq forged \\\q admiral's 
 name to the other. This seems to us to have been both a 
 blunder and a crime ; for it was still further destroying the 
 confidence of the copartnery, and it would, as we think, 
 have been better at once to rush into the thick of war, when 
 everything urged to, and depended on, instantaneous action, 
 and each would have been more anxious than another to 
 risk the event of war than wait for a discovery. 
 
 The treaties were forwarded, and all seemed right again. 
 Clive wrote to the Surajah, twitting him with a breach of 
 treaty, by intriguing with the French, and offering to refer 
 his cause to the arbitration of three persons named, who 
 were, of course, Clive's fellow-conspirators. He intimated, 
 at the same time, that if they decided in his favour — which 
 they were sure to do — he should demand reparation for his 
 wounded honour, and a solatium for the unnecessary labours 
 to which the navy and army were put by these unfriendly 
 proceedings \ and as the rains were near, he would come 
 himself for an immediate answer. The masked batteries 
 were thus suddenly opened upon Surajah Dowlah before he 
 had his own quite ready ; for the French had as yet only 
 coquetted with his offers. There was no alternative. The 
 sword alone could be the arbiter. 
 
 Procrastination was not Clive's fault ; and now impatience 
 seemed to him a virtue. In opposition to the very elements, 
 which, at the monsoon season, by rain and hurricane, render 
 active operations to Europeans all but an impossibility, he 
 set out — though fever, in a malignant form, was almost 
 hourly diminishing his forces — on the 12th of June. On 
 the 19th, while they were encamped round the castle of 
 
The Field of Plassey. 243 
 
 Cutwa, the weather broke upon them with unexpected and 
 almost unexampled violence. Here, for the first time, he 
 faltered ; the great crisis of his scheme had come, and the 
 big consequences with the small means to work it out, struck 
 him with a strong sense of their contrast. Failure in this 
 was ruin to the British power, his own reputation, and the 
 soldiery who adored him. He called, for the first and only- 
 time in his life, a council of war, on the 21st; and it, by a 
 majority of one, advised delay. This was regarded as de- 
 finitive. But hesitancy was, in this case, defeat, and after- 
 reflection convinced Clive of the perils of such a policy; 
 for, in an hour -thereafter, with audacious self-confidence, he 
 had nerved himself to risk the contest. 
 
 There seems a gleam of dare-devil nonchalance in this 
 resolve to meet the gathering storm ; for Surajah Dowlah 
 had poured forth from Moorshedabad the very " pick and 
 span" of his whole force — 40,000 infantry, well (though 
 variously) accoutred; 15,000 cavalry, Rajpoots and Patans, 
 soldiers from their infancy, well-equipped and horsed ; and 
 fifty pieces of cannon, with a train of elephants. Clive had 
 under him only 1000 Europeans, to whom danger was de- 
 light, and toil but a heightening of the joy of victory; and 
 2000 Sepoys, who had undergone the discriminating train- 
 ing of his singular soldierly skill. At daybreak of the 23d 
 of June, on a plain near the village of Plassey, about 100 
 miles north of Calcutta, these forces met. It was a perilous 
 moment; Fate seemed to have enmeshed the soldiery of 
 Clive completely. Drums, clarions, cymbals, and other 
 noisy instruments awoke the morning in the Indian camp. 
 The British, entrenched behind a rude mud fence around a 
 grove, stood 
 
 " Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm." 
 
244 Lord Clive. 
 
 The Nabob's cannon boomed a salute of death amongst 
 them, but they told it back with greater caution, certainty 
 of aim, and efficacy of execution. Fire and counter-fire con- 
 tinued for awhile, but no decisive movement was made; 
 each felt that his fate stood on a precipice's edge, down 
 which the slightest rashness might precipitate it. Clive was 
 wary, the Surajah timid, and neither made advances to the 
 dazzling coil and recoil of close warfare. Fatigued by toil, 
 and overpowered with care, Clive sank to sleep during the 
 few moments of calm thus afforded him. Fear of treason 
 in his camp, and inability to manoeuvre the magnificent 
 show-2iXmy he had assembled, seemingly paralysed the Sura- 
 jah's mind. About noon Chve was awakened, and informed 
 that the enemy were retreating. The day had overcast ; 
 the enemy had neglected to " keep their powder dry j " and 
 their artillery had become useless. CHve gave the signal 
 for a rush. The panic was in the foes' hearts already, and 
 they fled in strangely-mingled confusion — all, save a few 
 French soldiers, who, with dauntless daring, held their post 
 in a redoubt until dislodged by Clive's superior force. En- 
 couraged by this stout resistance, some of the Nabob's 
 troops rallied and returned ; but the British turned the guns 
 they had taken against the re-assembling multitude, and they 
 fled again more precipitately than before. 
 
 Treachery had, no doubt, much to do with this hasty and 
 unseemly retreat, begun by mid-day, before the armies had 
 once been brought within the sword's-arm circle of each 
 other ; but it had as truly an embarrassing effect upon the 
 English ; for, — with the political Jesuitry of a conspiring 
 Hindoo, holding aloof to take advantage of the turn events 
 might take, — it was not until victory had fairly declared in 
 favour of Clive, that his sly ally, Meer Jaffier, fulfilled his 
 
The Masquerade of Fear. 245 
 
 part of the treaty, and came over to secure what he had not 
 ventured to win. Treason is a dubious game to play at, 
 and that he felt full well, when Clive drew up a guard of the 
 gallant 39th — the heroes of Plassey — to greet him on his 
 coming ; for he started, and stammered out some sort of 
 •explanation of his apparent inattention to his agreement. 
 Though the maxim, " qui s'excuse^ s'accuse^' is generally 
 true, Clive at once, in accordance with the policy of expe- 
 diency in this case adopted, hailed him as Nabob of Bengal, 
 Behar, and Orissa, and led him in honour to his tent. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Surajah had fled to his former capital, and 
 there, in hesitation and fear, passed from thought to thought, 
 from plan to plan. To no brave course could he commit him- 
 self. He dropped from the palace window in a mechanic's 
 dress, taking with him a casket of jewels, and escaped. He 
 was ultimately betrayed, taken, and, with Meer Jaffiefs con- 
 nivance, strangled. 
 
 Meer Jaffier was installed in great splendour, amid most 
 pompous forms, by Clive; and the chief articles of the 
 treaty were then begun to be effected. At the meeting 
 which took place regarding these, the outmatched Omichund 
 was told how his own treachery had been surpassed, and 
 under the influence of the disappointment to his avarice, 
 reeled like a drunkard, and became a mere idiotic driveller 
 about wealth and gems. Clive felt a momentary pang, but 
 drugged his conscience at the time with the opiate gladness 
 of success. A perfect shower of wealth fell upon the Com- 
 pany and its servants by this transaction : ;^8oo,ooo were 
 sent in a hundred boats from Moorshedabad to Calcutta. 
 Clive had the fisc of Bengal opened, that' he might take 
 therefrom to his liking. The army and navy both shared 
 handsomely in the gains, and even Admiral Watson came to 
 
246 Lord Clive. 
 
 believe that Clive, despite his disrespectful forgery, was " the 
 finest fellow in existence." 
 
 It is impossible to manufacture kings ; and Clive, though 
 he had successfully become the Warwick of India, could 
 not confer upon his protege the potency and wisdom re- 
 quisite to sustain a throne and maintain a kingdom. Meer 
 Jaffier had neither the virtue nor talent which a sovereign 
 ought to have ; he was little skilled in the rare art of wield- 
 ing authority, and greatly deficient in that foresight, circum- 
 spection, and intrepidity which is needed to consolidate a 
 dynasty, and it was not long before Clive was compelled to 
 execute all the essential duties of royalty. Excessive taxa- 
 tion is a daring venture for a new government, if it is a 
 growth from revolution, for the lesson of insurgency is soon 
 and easily learned. The enormous pecuniary liabilities, for 
 which Meer Jafiier had pledged his royal faith, rendered a 
 summary operation on the purses of the wealthy Hindoos 
 an inevitable necessity. The circumstances of Meer Jaffier 
 soon became eminently critical ; the elements of danger and 
 discord were active ; the genius of intrigue was busy ; con- 
 spiracies became rife ; and he was less experienced in the 
 management of men than in the manoeuvres of policy. 
 Wheedling failed, force prevailed, the perilous moment 
 came, and a rebellion arose ; but Clive suppressed it. An- 
 other timely intervention on his client's behalf, Clive made, 
 when Shah Alum, the exiled heir to the sovereignty of 
 Delhi, attempted, with the help of the Viceroy of Oude, to 
 oust Jaffier, and take his throne. He was besieging Patna 
 when the hero of Plassey appeared, and at his coming the 
 army fled. Such a proceeding gained Clive the favour of 
 the imperial majesty of Delhi, who was pleased to nominate 
 Clive to the dignity of an Omrah, and to invite him as " the 
 
The Chain of Events. 247 
 
 high and mighty potentate, Colonel Sabat Jung," to his 
 court. The honour he accepted ; the invitation he declined. 
 He was rewarded for these services to Jaffier by the gift of 
 the quit-rent of the Company's Zemindary — equivalent to 
 ;£3 0,000 per annum. 
 
 While the consolidation of the Company's power in 
 Bengal, the maintenance of Meer Jaffier on his throne, and 
 the organisation of an efficiently drilled and thoroughly dis- 
 ciplined native force, were occupying the constant activities 
 of Clive, Bussy captured the EngHsh factory of Vizigapatam, 
 and swept the Circars like an uninterrupted pestilence. 
 Count Lally, who had in the meantime arrived with the 
 French forces, very foolishly suspended him, and substituted 
 the Marquis of Conflans in his office, while he himself boldly 
 and busily re-opened war in the Carnatic. He took Fort 
 St David, Tangore, Arcot, with more than dramatic rapidity, 
 and sat down before Madras. The small garrison there, 
 however, were soldiers, and stood their ground till help 
 came, and Lally abruptly raised the siege. Colonel Forde, 
 detached by Clive, rounded into the Circars, regained all 
 losses there, and stormed Masulipatam, where the French 
 were entrenched, so eagerly, as to cause 3000 to yield to 
 less than 900. Clive was in raptures. 
 
 Dangers thickened and crowded tumultuously upon each 
 other. Clive's policy was destined to yet another struggle. 
 Part of his available forces were in Masulipatam, part in 
 Patna, and part on the Coromandel coast; Forde was 
 ailing ; and Colonel Eyre Coote was reinstating matters on 
 the borders of Bengal. The Dutch at Chinsura, farther up 
 the Ganges than Fort William or Chandernagore, saw them- 
 selves not only outmatched but isolated, and began to 
 bethink themselves that they had been too unambitious. 
 
248 Lord Clive. 
 
 They drew recruits together ; and as rumours reached them 
 of impending war between Holland and England, they 
 courted Meer Jaffier, and brought round a squadron into 
 the Ganges. Clive held to his policy of British supremacy; 
 plied the Nabob incessantly with petitions, which gradually 
 became commands, to prohibit the Dutch ships from passing 
 Fulta, a village below Calcutta. He succeeded : the Dutch 
 remonstrated. Clive lined the river with guard-boats, and 
 garrisoned all the little forts on its banks. The Dutch were 
 obstinate; and Clive ordered Colonel Forde, with 1200 
 men, to intercept communications between the squadron 
 and Chinsura. After a skirmish near Chandemagore, in 
 which he drove back a force into Chinsura, he found that 
 the men-of-war's men had landed, and were marching upon 
 him. Forde had no orders of council to fight ; and wrote 
 to Clive that this alone prevented him from attacking them. 
 Clive, who was playing an after-dinner rubber at whist, 
 merely took out his pencil and wrote on the missive sent, 
 " Dear Forde, fight them just now, and I'll send the order 
 to-morrow." Forde fought at Bridona, while Clive managed 
 a naval encounter on the Ganges, and the Dutch were 
 thoroughly vanquished. Clive, however, throwing vindic- 
 tiveness aside, saved Chinsura from pillage by the Nabob. 
 The Dutch apologised ; offered to pay the expenses of the 
 war ; and the hazard he had thus again dared declared in 
 his favour. Conflans was defeated; Bussy was made a 
 prisoner ; Tally's last hope was destroyed at the battle of 
 Wadewash ; Pondicherry was razed to the ground ; and 
 Surat was acquired from the Emperor of Delhi. Thus the 
 French power was completely and irrecoverably broken. 
 Count Tally was subsequently recalled, arrested, and tried 
 as a traitor, who had sold Pondicherry, and dragged in un- 
 
The State of Hindostan. 249 
 
 just ignominy, gagged, to the scaffold. The Dutch were per- 
 fectly humbled. Bengal was almost a new creation among the 
 powers of Hindostan ; Madras became the master-city of 
 the Coromandel coast ; and Bombay was fast working up to 
 the plenitude of power in the western border. Everything 
 was in right trim \ the army trained ; officers educated in 
 the policy of conquest ; the navy on friendly terms with the 
 army ; all the traditions of warfare changed into the history 
 of British triumphs ; subject nabobs ready to bow while 
 they boasted \ and everywhere the alliance of Britain an 
 object of desire. In India all was right : at home, however, 
 the views of Eastern politics were anything but sound, and 
 Clive, determined to exchange the soldier's glaive for the 
 statesman's glory, left India, 5th February 1760, to teach 
 his poHcy to the Merchants' Company in Leadenhall Street, 
 and to show them how, by the introduction of a superior 
 civilisation, to endow themselves with wealth, widen the 
 circle of their country's empire, promote the happiness of 
 the miUions of India, and, by a wise valour, to unite the 
 scattered and discordant tribes of the East under a rule at 
 once benign, paternal, soUd, trustworthy, and energetic. 
 He had given, in his own person, an example of devotion 
 to a distinct pohcy; of inexhaustible resource and self- 
 reliance'; of chivalrous enterprise, undaunted spirit, and 
 then almost unparalleled daring, gallantry, and intrepidity. 
 He had now to impress upon the masters of the fate and 
 future of Hindostan the need for using a prudent sagacity 
 in retaining their position and maintaining their rights. 
 
LORD CLIVE— THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA. 
 
 HE methods of observation and reasoning in poli- 
 tics" had not specially engaged the attention of 
 Clive ; but he seems to have inherited from 
 nature that invaluable faculty which instinctively harmonises 
 experience by theoretic thought, and suggests the means of 
 overcoming those stupendous difficulties which inevitably 
 arise when, the operations of warfare being ended, the need 
 of providing for the permanent and progressive welfare of 
 a people requires consideration and effectual elaboration. 
 During the period of pupilage consequent on, and subse- 
 quent to, conquest, 
 
 *' Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war ;" 
 
 and these Clive did not forget. Well-fought fields and 
 conquered provinces do not complete the list of the 
 achievements of the Salopian ruler of Hindostan. Amidst 
 the difficulties and dangers of a nascent empire, he initiated 
 a policy, as well as inaugurated a rule ; and, fixing his acute 
 mind on the laws of causation, which form or transform 
 history, he deduced a suitable system of government, 
 capable of being beneficially operative in the early exigen- 
 
hidia's Conqueror aji Irish Peer. 251 
 
 cies of affairs, and throughout the after progress of the 
 empire which his right hand had founded, and his energy- 
 had, for a time, sustained. Legislative measures could not, 
 however, like a scheme of battle, be self-originated. To be 
 permanent and effective, they must have all the guarantees 
 of formal enactment. When the sword was sheathed, 
 therefore, it behoved Clive to supplant the provisional man- 
 dates of a conqueror by the maturely considered regulations 
 of a legislator. So soon, therefore, as in the autumn of 
 1760 he landed in England, he endeavoured to effect this 
 object by re-entering the House of Commons, and acquiring 
 a large interest in the directorate of the East India Com- 
 pany. A death-threatening illness interrupted, for a time, 
 the pursuit of tliis thought-absorbing scheme. After a while, 
 however, he rallied, and set to work again. The king, 
 George TIL, had pointed him out as a proper teacher for 
 any one who desired to learn "the art of war." Lord 
 Chatham had spoken of him as a heaven-bom general, and 
 compared him to Frederick the Great. The Board of 
 Directors bestowed upon him a sort of jealous adulation ; 
 and at last — though he regarded the honour wholly inade- 
 quate as a recognition of his services — he Was raised, 15th 
 March 1762, to the Irish peerage, with the title of Lord 
 Clive, Baron of Plassey, and led to expect — though it is to 
 be feared as the reward of political subserviency — at a 
 future period the red ribbon of the British peerage. 
 
 When the issue between Bute and Newcastle arose, Clive 
 was almost, in so many words, asked to fix a price upon his 
 services in the administration ; but he says of himself, "I 
 still continue to be one of those unfashionable kind of 
 people who think very highly of independency, and to bless 
 my stars indulgent fortune has enabled me to act according 
 
252 Lord Clive. 
 
 to my conscience." He " thought it dishonourable to take 
 advantage of the times," and so was treated with indiffe- 
 rence. But the thought of British supremacy in India still 
 nestled in his heart ; and though looked coldly on by the 
 Government, he did not hesitate, in an emergency, to advise 
 the ministry, unasked, regarding the chief points to be 
 achieved in a treaty pending between France and England, 
 in reference to India. His advice was taken, and France 
 agreed to keep no troops in Bengal, or the Northern Circars. 
 This much accomplished, Clive turned his attention to the 
 management of the East India Company; but there the 
 energy of envy had forestalled him. Mr Lawrence Sullivan, 
 who had previously acted in a friendly manner with Clive, 
 had taken umbrage at the letter — previously referred to — 
 in which, addressing Mr Pitt, Clive had proposed the 
 assumption of the Indian Empire by the British Govern- 
 ment ; and Lord Clive had offended Lord Bute by voting 
 against the peace of 1763. Bute wanted a tool to work his 
 revenge with, and Sullivan was just in that frame of mind 
 to take any means of thwarting Clive. Difference increased 
 to animosity, and animosity led to a rupture, and the 
 quondam friends became thereafter such enemies as only 
 former friends can be. The Court of Directors became the 
 arena of their strife ; and it was waged with no want of 
 intensity. The ministry favoured Sullivan, and Clive exerted 
 every available stratagem to oppose him. " He that is a 
 gamester, and plays often, must sometimes be a loser ;" and 
 so it happened nov/. The test-hour came when Sullivan 
 was proposed as chairman of the Directory. The ballot- 
 box brought defeat to Clive, and the opportunity of a large, 
 sweet morsel of revenge to Sullivan. The Court, at his 
 instigation, confiscated the revenue derivable from Meer 
 
New Lamps for Old Ones. 253 
 
 Jaffier's present — the jaghire of the territory south of Cal- 
 cutta. CHve filed a bill in Chancery against it. The case 
 was eminently unfair ; for Clive's right rested on precisely 
 the same ground as the Company's treaty, granting the 
 original Zemindary — Meer Jaffier's gift. It is not enough 
 to gain a victory, if we do not also make a right use of it. 
 This was a knowledge Sullivan had not ; while Clive could 
 compel defeat itself to be the instrument of his success. 
 The dominant faction rioted in their hour of triumph, but 
 it was short. Like a snow-ball held in the hand, the more 
 firmly it was grasped the sooner it melted. 
 
 The ascendant genius of Clive had scarcely been with- 
 drawn from interference with the affairs of Bengal, than the 
 mediocre minds in that presidency began to mismanage their 
 trust, and abuse their power. Revolts were rife ; peculation 
 notorious; disorganisation extreme; and, worst and fatalest 
 of all, dividends became impossibilities. Alarm prevailed : 
 ruin was imminent ; safety — where was it to be found % The 
 shopkeeping instincts of the Company immediately sug- 
 gested CHve. In full court the proprietors besought the 
 hero of Plassey to revisit the scenes of his former victories, 
 to save his conquests and their capital. They offered him 
 an official recognition of his right to the jaghire; to permit 
 him to name his own committee of council, and the mihtary 
 officers who were to execute his commands; and to appoint 
 him to the new and unexampled office of Governor-General 
 and Commander-in-Chief of the whole of the Company's 
 possessions in the East. So thoroughly do cowardice and 
 fear make men traitors to themselves, that there seemed 
 almost no concession too great for them to make, if asked. 
 Clive modestly sought the undisturbed enjoyment of his 
 jaghire for ten years — to be afterwards disposed of by an 
 
254 Lord Clive, 
 
 arrangement between him and the Company : but he insisted 
 on the deposition of SuUivan from the chairmanship, and 
 refused, in opposition to every entreaty, to leave England 
 on the commission entrusted to him, until the proprietors 
 had completed their elections to the directorate, in which 
 Clive's friend, Mr Rous, was chosen chairman, vice Mr Sul- 
 livan; and Mr Bolton, a member of Clive's party, was 
 appointed to the deputy-chairmanship. Next year the 
 SuUivanites, though supported by the Duke of Northumber- 
 land and Lord Bute, were completely overcome ; but not 
 until they had hived in their breasts a strong and fervid 
 rancour against Clive. 
 
 On 4th June 1764, Clive, accompanied by Messrs Sumner 
 and Sykes, set out, and it was April 1765 before the vessel 
 in which he sailed entered the Hoogly. On the 3d of May 
 he reached Calcutta, and that same afternoon he began his 
 official duties. Strangely, indeed, had affairs been mis- 
 managed, or unmanaged, since five years ago he left the 
 empire of Britain in India not a possibihty only, but a fact. 
 That Clive had maturely reflected on the changes rendered 
 necessary by the altered aspect of affairs in India, is proven 
 by a lengthy, dispassionate, and statesmanlike letter which 
 he addressed to the Court of Directors, 27th April 1764, 
 while busied with preparations for his departure on the 
 service to which he had been so unanimously elected. In 
 this letter he fully develops the views he entertained, and 
 expresses a determination, if properly supported by the 
 home officials, to settle the Company's affairs in a moderate, 
 safe, judicious, and permanent manner. He points out the 
 want of temptation, on his part, to accept the trust ; pro- 
 mises to give up the Governor's usual portion of commercial 
 advantages j proposes to accept a lower military commission 
 
Private Trade Trickery. 255 
 
 than his old coadjutor, Lawrence — on whom he had gene- 
 rously settled ;£"5oo a year — and then claims that such help 
 as he requires may be freely and promptly given ; and that 
 such powers may be entrusted to him as may enable him to 
 show " that the Company possessed the power and the will 
 to protect" its native allies, "not only against foreign ene- 
 mies, but each against the unjust aggressions of the other.'' 
 We may be certain that on the outward voyage the great 
 responsibilities resting on him would occupy much serious 
 thought, and that he stepped ashore at Calcutta 
 
 "Strong in will, 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield ; " 
 
 ready to brave reproach, to inflict salutary castigation, to 
 prefer public business to private interest, to bear up against 
 that sullen discontent which is worse than open hostiUty, 
 and to contend even with the despair of those whom he 
 should require to foil, rebuke, restrain, dismiss, or punish. 
 Impatient ardour at once impelled him to action, and in 
 two days after his arrival he was prepared to initiate the 
 proceedings which were to make his administration famous, 
 with such sincere honesty of heart, as to be able to say, " I 
 do declare, by that Great Being who is the searcher of all 
 hearts, and to whom we must be accountable, if there must 
 be a hereafter, that I am come out with a mind superior to 
 all corruption; and that I am determined to destroy these 
 great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt." 
 
 The Council was soon a scene of contention. Clive was 
 imperious and intolerant of subterfuge or evasion, and at 
 once proceeded to the investigation of the evils which had 
 brought the affairs of the Company to a pass so disastrous. 
 These arose primarily from what was called the " private 
 trade," which originated thus — the East India Company 
 
256 Lord Clive, 
 
 paid no transit dues on their goods, which were protected 
 by a permit, or by their flag. The chief revenues of the 
 native princes were obtained from transit dues, and goods 
 were consequently excised and examined at the several 
 frontier lines of the Customs. The Company's servants 
 had been in the habit of smuggling home and duty-paying 
 goods from province to province, under the protection of 
 these permits, and so realising speedy and enormous fortunes 
 by defrauding the native princes of their dues, and being 
 able to undersell the honest customs-paying trader j they 
 had even gone the length of selling these permits to 
 native traders, and thus succeeded in dishonestly trans- 
 forming the revenues of the native princes into perquisites 
 for themselves. Under these circumstances, the revenue 
 of Meer Jaffier became so much decreased that he was 
 unable to pay the large sums for which, on his accession, he 
 had become bound to the Company. The Governor (Mr 
 Vansittart) and his Council immediately conceived that 
 they might play Clive's game with the Moorshedabad poten- 
 tate, and entered into negotiations with Cossim Ali, his 
 son-in-law, by which they agreed to depose Meer Jaffier, 
 and instal him, if he would undertake to "convey" 
 ;^2 00,000 to the Council, and to pension his father-in-law 
 with such a sum as would enable him to live as a respectable 
 private citizen. He agreed. Clive's protege was dethroned, 
 and Cossim Ali enthroned. But as the "private trade" 
 frauds continued and extended, Cossim Ali was unable to 
 secure a revenue sufficient to enable him to discharge his 
 liabilities, and was forced into collision with the parties to 
 whom he owed his elevation. He remonstrated, the Council 
 was inattentive, and the servants of the Company evaded 
 or disobeyed the law. Discontent produced hostiHty, and 
 
The Hour and the Man. 257 
 
 at length Cossim Ali authorised the use of violence for the 
 protection of his rights and revenues. This was objected 
 to, and Cossim Ali, determining not to be outbraved, 
 resolved on abolishing the injustice by abolishing all transit 
 dues, and changing his mode of taxation. The Council 
 objected to this politic measure, demanded its annulment, 
 and backed their demand by an embassage and a number 
 of soldiers. On Cossim Ah's refusal, the Enghsh attacked 
 and took the citadel of Patna \ but the Nabob immediately 
 stormed the place, took the whole captive, and massacred 
 them ; then fleeing his capital, he retired within the terri- 
 tories of the Viceroy of Oude. Meer Jaffier was hereupon, 
 at a stipulated price, reinstated in his ancient dignity, and 
 reigned uneasily, for a while inspired by the rumour that 
 Clive was likely to return. This hope was never realised 
 for him; on February 1765, he died, leaving his English 
 benefactor a legacy of ;£"7 0,000. Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah, 
 Meer Jafiiefs son, was next inducted on the same terms as 
 Cossim Ali, — although a prohibition of any such measures 
 had reached the Council from the Directors, — and thus the 
 Company's servants enriched themselves, while Leadenhall 
 Street was distracted by lack of dividends. 
 
 In this plight Clive found affairs on his arrival. The 
 Council pleaded his own conduct as their precedent. Clive 
 replied that his act was not self-planned and selfishly 
 initiated, like theirs, but auxiliary to a scheme originating 
 among the Bengalese themselves, and, besides, that it was 
 experimental, and done at a time when there was "no law" 
 against it, and, consequently, "no transgression" in it. 
 They, unjustified by any policy except that of an " itching 
 palm," had, in fact, manufactured a revolt for their own 
 profit, effected it with the Company's forces, and at its charge. 
 
258 Lord Clive. 
 
 to increase their own hoards, heedless ahke of the weal of the 
 Hindustan ee, or the wealth of their employers. The hot, 
 imperious, and impetuous manner in which Clive scolded 
 the offenders, they Uttle relished \ and when they ventured, 
 by insubordination, remonstrance, opposition, and counter- 
 accusation, to justify, palliate, or defend their criminaHty, 
 he at once suspended the recusants, and shipped them off 
 to England, where they invested their means in the stock of 
 the Company, that they might purchase revenge. By repre- 
 hension, positive enactment, and summary dismissal, he 
 arrested bribery, and thereafter set himself to undo the evils 
 resulting from the private trade fraud. This he accom- 
 plished by placing the right of granting permits in the hands 
 of responsible officials. To compensate, in some measure, 
 for the loss thus occasioned. Lord Clive projected and 
 instituted a salt-tax, the proceeds of which were to be 
 divided proportionately among the Company's servants ; 
 but this was afterwards objected to (though ultimately 
 allowed) by the Directors. 
 
 His next "administrative reform" was to lessen the num- 
 ber of the members of the Council, and to require them to 
 be resident in Calcutta. 
 
 The far-reaching policy which had unfolded itself to him 
 before the battle of Plassey was now ripe for another 
 development. Britain was lord of the trade and revenues 
 of India, as well as its military bulwark. The Nabob's 
 government was only a pageant, and it would be well, he 
 thought, that it should be now distinctly arranged that all 
 real power should be ceded to the Company. He resolved 
 to pension Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah into impotence ; to acquire 
 the (dewanee) premiership of Bengal, and thus to gain sub- 
 stantive and acknowledged power for Britain in India. 
 
British Dominion in the East, 259 
 
 Aware, however, that the instant and open assumption of 
 regal functions and a royal name in Bengal would have 
 embroiled his country with various European nations, and 
 with the surrounding Hindustanese, he employed high 
 diplomatic tact in effecting his purpose, without outward 
 offence to any of the usages of nations. In due form he 
 secured from Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah a grant of the Dewanee ; 
 concluded with Surajah-Dowlah, the vizier of Delhi, a treaty 
 of peace ; and arranged with Shah Alum, the Emperor, for 
 the permanent (nizamut) princedom in Bengal, Bahar, and 
 Orissa, by Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah, and for the collection and 
 management of the revenues, &c., by the British, as his 
 agents. This great, good work, which officially inaugurated 
 an essential epoch in human progress, and made Britain 
 (potential) empress of the "Land of Desire," — this first 
 legally ratified step in that grand march of conquest which 
 has gone from the seas that bathe Cape Comorin to the 
 shadows that fall from the Himalayas, and from the hither 
 banks of the Indus to the farther borders of the Ganges, 
 was taken with less pomp than the bridal of a merchant's 
 daughter, or the opening of a slip of railway. He who had 
 begun the conquest by the sword now closed it by the pen. 
 On an ordinary table, in a bell-tent, set in an open field, 
 the instrument which formed the earliest legal token of 
 British dominion in the East was signed and ratified ; and 
 well might he say of the vessel which bore the parchments 
 of the treaty, " It will bring the Company the most impor- 
 tant news they ever received.'' 
 
 But he had a more difficult task yet to accomplish before 
 he could quit the post his anxious fellow-proprietors had 
 conferred on him. To prevent the civil servants from 
 taking bribes, with the honeyed name of presents, was a 
 
26o Lord Clive. 
 
 work that needed decision, firmness, and persistency ; but 
 to attempt the diminishing of the emoluments of the mili- 
 tary force, by whose aid the government was carried on, 
 was one demanding hardihood, daring, and invincible reso- 
 luteness. In this, too, he succeeded. Double ("batta") 
 allowance, which had been given by Meer Jaffier, at Clive's 
 suggestion, to induce men to enter the field, the soldiery 
 had still continued to claim and receive ; but as the 
 expenses of warfare were now to fall upon the Company's 
 exchequer, Clive resolved to discontinue it. It had been 
 given as an expedient, not promised as a regular honorarium. 
 He accordingly issued a proclamation, announcing that on 
 and after ist January 1766, the right to double batta would 
 cease. Intrigues immediately began. Remonstrances were 
 showered in, and Clive was severely censured in private for 
 his daring intermeddling. He repHed mildly, but authorita- 
 tively. The military officials, however, trained to think the 
 sword resistless and supreme, believed themselves too im- 
 portant and essential a constituent of the government to 
 be dealt with in this high-handed way. They had been 
 accustomed to inspire awe : were they now to be overawed % 
 A conspiracy was planned, to send in their resignations 
 unless their demands were complied with. To have sub- 
 mitted would have been to have given up civil government, 
 and to have created a military tyranny. At this very time 
 an irruption of a horde of Mahrattas was threatening Corah. 
 Nothing daunted or disconcerted by the untoward aspect 
 of affairs, Clive determined on bringing from Madras and 
 Bombay as many officers as could be spared, and on 
 making no terms with the mutineers, but rather on breaking, 
 at whatever cost, the refractory spirit of the malcontents. 
 " Secure is he who on himself relies." After immense effort, 
 
Reforms Effected s 261 
 
 he succeeded in withdrawing the timid and misguided from 
 the set, arresting the ringleaders, and after their trial and 
 dismissal from the army, subduing the incipient revolution, 
 which would have opened up the whole field of Indian 
 warfare and diplomacy to France and Holland, besides 
 impairing the whole efforts of his life's politics. The per- 
 sons so detached from the service, of course, enrolled 
 themselves at home among Clive's enemies. 
 
 The time occupied in the working out of those various 
 reforms was little more than twenty months. In this period 
 he had concluded advantageous treaties of peace with all 
 the near native powers, had suppressed the private trade 
 fraud, the corrupting bribery system, and the revolt in the 
 army, and had re-arranged almost the whole polity of the 
 Company's service, — scattering, meanwhile, seeds of sound 
 thought in numerous letters to various officials regarding the 
 future of India. Besides this, his example had been one 
 of the utmost disinterestedness. He cheerfully left home, 
 friends, and country, to grapple with hideous wrongs, and 
 yet made and kept a determination to abjure every personal 
 advantage if he could but accomplish the reformation he 
 intended ; so that he was able to write, — " With regard to 
 myself, I have not benefited or added to my fortune one 
 farthing; nor shall I, though I might by this time have 
 received ;£5oo,ooo sterling." So far did he carry his 
 scrupulousness on this point, that he bestowed the legacy 
 Meer Jaffier had left him on the Poplar Hospital, then 
 a refuge for decayed seamen belonging to the Company's 
 service, but which, on receipt of Clive's donation, en- 
 larged its constitution, so as to include the soldiery as 
 well, and became the united Greenwich and Chelsea of the 
 Indian service. 
 
262 Lord Clive. 
 
 The active exertions of these few months completely 
 prostrated Clive. He had been " tasking his heart, forgetful 
 of his Hfe and present good," so that by the close of October 
 1766, his system was all but shattered; and for some time 
 it seemed as if no to-morrow would dawn again for him. 
 
 Letters from Leadenhall Street reached Clive in Decem- 
 ber 1766, cancelling his salt-duty plan, disagreeing with him 
 in the form of compensation to be made to the Company's 
 servants, postponing the settlement of that point, yet 
 imperatively commanding the discontinuance of the salt 
 trade. Although Clive was complimented by the Directors 
 for the integrity, good sense, and peremptory rapidity of 
 his proceedings, he could not consent to undo the work 
 which he had so painfully and laboriously arranged ; and, 
 before his departure, he perpetuated the salt trade grant 
 till the ist September 1767, by which time he hoped to be 
 able to convince the Directory of the Tightness and righte- 
 ousness of his plan. These letters besought his lordship to 
 retain office for another year; but from the state of his 
 health he resigned the government into the hands of Mr 
 Verelst, and on i8th January 1767, attended a meeting of 
 the Select Committee for the last time. He was weak, and 
 therefore handed his valedictory address to the secretary to 
 be read. It was a statesmanly paper, full of pithy and 
 weighty maxims, the harvestings of a mind constantly active, 
 continually observant, and having the rare intellectual 
 instinct of prudent forethoughtfulness. He expressed in it 
 his regret at leaving, constrained as he was only by the 
 duty of preserving and prolonging life for other uses — 
 exercised the power given him of naming officials to fill 
 vacancies, and laid down general directions for the future 
 management of affairs. Cautions against greedy haste in 
 
Valedictory Address. 263 
 
 increasing the revenue, or in striving to steal a march on 
 fortune by dishonest inattention to the Company's interest, 
 were accompanied with promises to exert every energy to 
 effect some satisfactory arrangement regarding the salt 
 trade ; and his warnings against insubordinate contumacy 
 were exceedingly wise. Towards the conclusion of his 
 address he said, " I leave the country in peace. I leave 
 the civil and military departments under discipline and 
 subordination. It is incumbent on you to keep them so. 
 . . . . If you do not make a proper use of that power 
 with which you are invested, I shall hold myself acquitted 
 as I do now protest against the consequences." The medi- 
 ocre minds to whom these solemn words were spoken soon 
 forgot their influence, if they had ever conceived their 
 importance ; and the useful reforms, initiated by Clive, were 
 soon replaced by disorganisation. 
 
 At the close of January 1767, Clive embarked on board 
 the Britannia, and having set sail from the Ganges, reached 
 Portsmouth 14th July, and arrived in London next day. 
 George III. and Queen Charlotte received him at their 
 levees, and the Court of Directors welcomed him with a 
 profusion of thanks. And well, indeed, they might ; for to 
 him, under Providence, the success of the Company was 
 owing, and the glory of the British name had received 
 through him such accessions in India as to be at once a 
 talisman and a terror. In the pregnant summarisation of 
 Lord Macaulay, — " From his first visit to India dates the 
 
 renown of the English arms in the East From 
 
 Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendancy 
 
 of the English in that country From Clive's 
 
 third visit to India dates the purity of the administration 
 of our empire." But 
 
264 Lord Clive. 
 
 "The very noblest heart on earth hath oft 
 No better lot than to deserve^^ 
 
 and strange ubiquitous enmity clamoured and clangoured 
 round the laurel-foliaged paths of CHve's past life. Ve- 
 nality, made rancorous by his brave baying of the hate of 
 the ill-doing; Envy, turning the keen eye of ungratified 
 desire on his success ; Oppression, foiled and fooled in 
 its endeavours j Rapacity, convicted and punished by him 
 in the unshrinking honesty of his determination; and 
 Selfishness, arrested with its grasp unlawfully upon the chief 
 prizes of Fortune, yoked their votaries together to overthrow 
 the vigorous soul who, when men's footsteps were timid in 
 the dark uncertainty of Indian affairs, planted a firm foot 
 on the land, and, with a prescient eye-gauge, marked the 
 time and means for rearing up an empire on the territory 
 which then held but a few trading settlements, — who had 
 transpierced the gloom of events, and illumined the future 
 by the suggestion, initiation, establishment, and mainten- 
 ance of a polity to which the after-time — even our own 
 days — gave their sanction, and who had redeemed from 
 blundering, dishonest mediocrity the honour of England 
 and of Englishmen. 
 
 The weapons and wounds of intrigue are often more 
 deadly than those of war ; and they are much less easily 
 opposed or cured. A tricky, strategic strife was opened 
 against Clive in the Directorate. A vote of indemnity to 
 the offenders he had dismissed was passed, and, though the 
 grant of his jaghire was continued for ten years, it was 
 carried by the narrow majority of twenty-nine. He was 
 piqued at the slighting welcome given him ; he assumed a 
 defiant and haughty tone, and in every possible manner, 
 except becoming a candidate for membership in the Direc- 
 
Thankless Ingratitude. 265 
 
 torate, strove to hold the East India Company to the 
 furtherance of the views which he had matured in the courts, 
 camps, writing offices, and council chambers of Hindostan. 
 He felt and said that the Directors had " neither abilities 
 nor resolution to manage such important concerns as are 
 now under their care ;" and in consequence he treated them 
 cavalierly, and they used him coldly. 
 
 Clive was ordered by medical men to abstain from busi- 
 ness, and to try the arduous toil of idleness — for to such a 
 man so it appeared — as the only agency for regaining health. 
 He was unable to exist in the quietness and quiescence 
 they enjoined ; and though, as an experiment, he set out on 
 a continental tour, he speedily returned, and rushed into 
 the warfare of politics with all the irresistible energy of his 
 disposition. Listless do-nothingism seemed to him a living 
 death ; and he took his seat in Parliament as the leader of 
 a few persons who, owing their places to him, were pledged 
 to his opinions on Indian affairs. The king asked his 
 views, and promised to forward them ; Grenville advocated 
 his Eastern polity ; and it was determined to bring in a bill 
 for the better regulation of the Company's affairs, and to 
 arrange the part which the Crown should take in the main- 
 tenance of British influence in the East. Great consterna- 
 tion seized the Directorate, and unseemly vituperation was 
 plenteously bespattered upon each other during the contest 
 by the disciples of the rival schools of Indian politicians. 
 This only served to make both ridiculous and hateful to the 
 public. Clive, as the most conspicuous of the Nabobry, 
 received more than a full share of obloquy and envy, and 
 every effort was made by his enemies to increase this " evil 
 report ;" for the more they heightened popular indignation, 
 the more they lowered his eminence and lessened his 
 
266 Lord Clive. 
 
 influence. Clive desired to see the territorial sovereignty 
 of India transferred to the British Crown, and wished the 
 trading interest of the Company to be secured and respected ; 
 but his enemies in Parliament and in the Directorate 
 managed to frustrate this design, and a policy of procrastina- 
 tion was adopted, leaving it for our own day to accomplish 
 Clive's prescient scheme. On the appointment of Warren 
 Hastings, who had had a seat with Clive in the Council, 
 and generally coincided in his views, Clive forwarded a note 
 of his policy, and a feeling and sensible letter of advice 
 regarding the position the Company should assume and 
 retain ; but he was scarcely prepared for being treated as 
 an enemy by that Company for whom he had sacrificed so 
 much, as well as for and by whom he had acquired so 
 much. Yet, on 7th January 1772, four and a half years 
 after his return to England, the Company duly informed 
 him, by a formal official note from the secretary, that he 
 should be called to account for his conduct in India. On 
 leave being granted to bring in an Indian bill, Sullivan 
 covertly denounced Clive ; but he replied boldly, with a 
 characteristically grandiloquent account of his " manner of 
 life from his youth up" in the Company's service. It was a 
 vindication, not a defence. A select committee was ap- 
 pointed to inquire into British affairs in India; and, its 
 reports being published, India and Clive became the twin 
 topics of debate. The public, knowing only one side 
 imperfectly, held him in disrepute ; but he was installed 
 Knight of the Bath, on 15th June 1772, and in the same 
 year was made Lord-Lieutenant of his native county, Shrop- 
 shire, and of Montgomery. He also laid his plan of Indian 
 polity before the Cabinet. Lord North, by the advice of 
 Chancellor Thurlow, contemplated the confiscation of the 
 
Defence in Parliament, 267 
 
 whole estates of the several members, agents, and servants 
 of the Company, past and present, as the only security for 
 the discharge of the immense obligations of the Company ; 
 but Government had approved its transactions, and could 
 not rightly act in such an inconsistent way. At the end of 
 a long contest, out of which Clive, after defending himself 
 with intelligence, force, and pertinacity, came with flying 
 colours, a vote of censure was proposed in Parliament ; but 
 when it was put, every criminating expression was expunged, 
 and it was declared that though Clive had enriched himself, 
 he "did at the same time render great and meritorious 
 services to his country." Having conquered in this matter, 
 Clive took no part in the subsequent proceedings, which 
 resulted in the granting of a new charter to the Company ; 
 and though he continued to sit in Parliament, he refrained 
 from interfering with its business. Government asked him, 
 it is said, to conduct the American war; and Voltaire 
 requested permission to use his lordship's papers to help 
 him in the compilation of a history of the conquest of 
 Bengal ; but the mainspring of his character — self-esteem — 
 was broken, and life was hopeless. When, therefore, pain 
 seized upon him with relentless gripe ; and the gnawing 
 intensity of reflection upon a life misunderstood, a career 
 maligned, and the plan, purpose, and foremost thought of 
 his being, indefinitely postponed, if not set aside, increased 
 it, his mind wavered and lost balance ; for the pivot of 
 right action — reason — had failed, and the sad distemper of 
 the nerves — occasioned by the over-frequent use of opium, 
 as a palliative of pain of mind and body — made him feel 
 " a-weary, a-weary of the world." An aimless, exertionless, 
 unhonoured, if not dishonoured, existence he could not 
 brook; and on the 22d of November 1774, he used a 
 
268 Lord Clive. 
 
 penknife for his own destruction, and by the hand thai 
 wielded " the rod of empire," he lay self-vanquished anc 
 cold in unexpected death. 
 
 The mighty heart, whose pulses had beat to so much o: 
 the glorious music of life, is pulseless and still ; the soul, tc 
 whose view the grand panorama of India's future had beer 
 so vividly unfolded, is gone ; the affections, which twined 
 themselves so seriously and tensely round the races of Hin 
 dostan, are calm and cold ; and the politic brain, whose 
 prescient schemes did so much for the greatening and 
 widening of the dominion of Britain in the East, has ceased 
 to concoct subtle and complicated plans of Oriental law 
 and government. But the lessons of his life remain, and 
 the impulses which it impressed on circumstances go sweep- 
 ing down the tides of time, and touch into shape the outlines 
 of the future. Let us venture to sum up a few of these. 
 
 We note, first. His constant faith in the vitaUty of effort. 
 Second, The thoughtful considerateness with which he 
 formed his plans, and the daring undauntedness with which 
 he executed them. Third, The persistent unity of effort he 
 secured by holding to one great, well-matured idea — British 
 dominion in India. Fourth, The loveable heroism of his 
 nature, and the (with that one exception, when he stooped to 
 win success by trickery) stern honesty of his character. Fifth, 
 His enthusiastic and friendly acknowledgment and encour- 
 agement of others, — his ready helpfulness to any one who 
 required aid. Sixth, The width of scope with which his eye 
 glanced at events, to trace their farthest visible bearings on 
 the future. Seventh, His decision of character and resolute 
 unyieldingness, when his convictions were once formed. 
 Eighth, The constancy with which he kept in view the need 
 for inducing a higher, ?>., a moral civilisation upon India, 
 
Influences of his Life. 269 
 
 and the consistency of his patriotism in aiming at the great- 
 ness and glory of his fatherland. Ninth, The healthy tone of 
 his patriotism — its nationality and impersonality. How 
 unlike that of the young Corsican, who, at the time of Clive's 
 death, may have been playing the usual pranks of boyhood 
 in the Rue Charles, in Ajaccio, unweeting of the destiny that 
 waited him! How like that of his own great — though 
 specially trained — successor, who dreamed little of Assaye 
 or Waterloo as he paced with his governess the gardens of 
 Dangan Castle in Meath, when the news-sheets of the day 
 brought tidings of Clive's suicide ! There is one characteristic 
 we wish he had possessed, but which we dare not predicate 
 of him, — the noble Christian life that he exemplified. Alas ! 
 he lived in an age when men scoffed at the Saviour's name, 
 and, while they idolised the hero of a day, left the Hope 
 and Succour of the world without a temple in their hearts. 
 That he felt with genuine ardour the faith which puts heart 
 into a man's life, and moves and sustains when all ordinary 
 motives and ordinary supports fail, it were hard to deny ; but 
 we have little proof that he walked by " The True Light." 
 He was one of those who in his own age sowed the seed of 
 the world's hereafter, and he has linked himself to history as 
 one of those great souls who have initiated an epoch, and 
 who, in those moments that try men, hold unflinchingly 
 by the banners of Progress and Beneficence. 
 
James Watt — The Utilisation of 
 Steam. 
 
 A.D. I 736- 1819. 
 
^* The fables of Old Giants realised, 
 
 Behold, in this unsleeping sinewy slave ! 
 
 He toils in Earth's deep mines, o'er Ocean's wave, 
 Unswerving and unfaltei-ing, unsurprised. 
 
 Whether through barren heath and mountain gorge 
 He 's bidden haste ; or sent to weave and spin 
 Amid the populous City's swarming din ; 
 
 Or call'd to wield his hammer at the forge, 
 His throbbing heart with all obedience hies 
 
 To do its part in Life's industrial plan ; 
 Fatigueless at his task he swinks, nor sighs 
 
 To work the will of his weak master, Man. 
 To thee, be thanks, O Watt ! with genius fraught. 
 By whom this Cyclops has been tamed and taught." 
 
 y. A. E. Mullens. 
 
 " After years of intellectual toil and mental anxiety, James Watt 
 brought the steam-engine to such perfection as to make it the most pre- 
 cious gift that man ever bequeathed to his race." — Sir D. Brewster. 
 
 •* Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying 
 our'national resources to a degree, perhaps, even beyond his own stu- 
 pendous powers of calculation and combination, bringing the treasures 
 of the abyss to the summit of the earth ; giving the feeble arm of man 
 the momentum of an Afrite ; commanding manufactures to arise, as the 
 rod of the prophet produced waters in the desert ; affording the means 
 of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man, and of 
 sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of 
 Xerxes."— i'zV Walter Scott. 
 
THE UTILISATION OF STEAM. 
 
 TEAM was, for long ages, one of the waste products 
 of nature. It is scarcely a century since the 
 means of utilising it were discovered and invented ; 
 and it was yoked in servitude to that mighty and manifold 
 series of mechanical agencies which augments the energies, 
 increases the comforts, and promotes the improvement of 
 the human race. The numerous applications of steam to 
 the useful purposes of life ; the various modes in which it 
 can exert a ministry of beneficence ; and the many differing 
 methods in which it enlarges the sphere of human influence, 
 and fits itself in, so directly, to the several purposes of an 
 advanced civilisation, could scarcely have been dreamed of 
 by those who watched the rising vapours of the mom on the 
 banks of the green old Nile, on Corinth's shores, or beside 
 the empire-margined Tiber ; and, indeed, that it ever could 
 become the subservient serf of man, and execute not only 
 his bidding, but his work, does not, on an i priori view of the 
 case, seem very probable even to ourselves. Yet the sub- 
 stance of that same retinue of clouds which girds the sun 
 " With pomp, with glory, and magnificence," 
 
 or forms that "pestilent congregation of vapours" which 
 casts its gloom over city and town, as well as hamlet, is, in 
 
 s 
 
2 74 James Watt. 
 
 great part, a similar aeriform mass to that whose force 
 bridges the ocean-spaces between continents; speeds the 
 engine with current swiftness over the iron-Hnes which 
 link factory-centre to metropolitan populousness, and 
 swinks with almost exhaustless efficacy, as the generator of 
 motions, forces, and means by which the capacity of man 
 has been multipHed to an indefinable extent. 
 
 The progress of that marvellous thought by which the 
 industrial power of humanity is so wondrously augmented; 
 from the earliest observation of some reflective man upon 
 the elasticity of vapour, to the moment in which steam was 
 utilised by the genius of Watt, would, if rightly told, form 
 the strangest of " the fairy tales of science," and would be a 
 historic truth far surpassing the sublimest reach of fiction. 
 
 Man's progress in the utilisation of steam seems to have 
 been very slow. Hero of Alexandria (cir. 120 B.C.,) in a 
 work " On Pneumatics," describes two machines of his own 
 invention, in which a rotary motion was conveyed in the 
 one case by the emission of heated air, and in the other 
 by the immission and emission of steam. The latter is the 
 first known attempt to effect the production of motion by 
 the employment of elastic vapour. It was, however, used 
 only as a toy, and does not seem to have been applied to 
 any utilitarian purpose. This plaything is the original of 
 that distinguished ''species" of mechanism now known as 
 the steam-engine. It was for ages a curiosity of mechanics. 
 Nor till the stir and ferment of the Reformation does it ap- 
 pear to have entered into the human mind that the spirals 
 of vapour rising from heated water could become weariless 
 labourers for humanity ; and then it was more an outburst 
 of rhetoric than a scientific appraisement of facts. A 
 volume of sermons by Mathesius, published at Sarepta in 
 
Steam and its History, 275 
 
 1563, contains a suggestion of such a possibility. About 
 thirty years thereafter, the Alexandrian toy was taken as a 
 model for a mechanical turnspit. Baptista Porta in Italy, 
 and David Rivault in France, occupied themselves as stu- 
 dents of the powers, quaHties, uses, &c., of steam. Indeed, 
 the need of some new industrial energy appears in the early 
 part of the seventeenth century to have been simultaneously 
 suggested to several minds. Hence originated the many 
 experiments on heat, air, gases, motion, &c., which are re- 
 called to us by the mere mention of the names of Galileo, 
 Descartes, Torricelli, WaUis, Roemer, and Leibnitz; Ste- 
 vinus, Newton, Castelli, and Guericke ; De Caus, the 
 Marquis of Worcester, Huygens, and Boyle. 
 
 A century of tentative approaches — many successive and 
 some parallel — were made to the solution of the question^ 
 each supplying some preliminary to its successful accom- 
 phshment, none effecting the required result. The know- 
 ledge of the quaUties and properties of the materials was 
 requisite before contrivance could efficiently act and super- 
 add to nature such appliances as would fit in with her 
 divinely-ordained activities, and cause the ordinary action 
 of the elements involved to achieve a human purpose in 
 harmony with the ever-abiding designs of the One. For 
 this is the great law of discovery — to bring human concep- 
 tions into harmony with the Divine plan ; and whensoever 
 that is accomplished, the means of touching to their required 
 uses the ordinary elements of nature become self-evident. 
 The science of dynamics might also be said to have had its 
 origin in the desire to know the laws of force. The Ber- 
 nouillis, Varignon, Herman, Euler, Segner, and Boscovich, 
 are the chief names to which the scientific correlation of sta- 
 tics and dynamics may be traced. And though the names 
 
276 James Watt. 
 
 of Newton, D'Alembert, Venturi, Deluc, &c., may not be 
 omitted from a catalogue of the assistants in the discovery of 
 the true theory of the steam-engine, this distinction belongs, 
 perhaps, more justly to the originators of a true theory of 
 heat. Without neglecting to notice th,e efforts of the Floren- 
 tine academicians, we may mention the thermometers of 
 Fahrenheit and Reaumur as tending much to the consolida- 
 tion of this science. But perhaps the greatest achievements 
 in the investigation of the theory of heat were made by Drs 
 Cullen and Black, professors in. the Glasgow University, the 
 latter of whom was a patron of the obscure though ingenious 
 mechanician by whom steam was first utilised. Dr Black 
 expounded the theory of latent heat ; Scheele introduced 
 the idea of the radiation of caloric : and all these various 
 eftbrts combined, led to the successful and systematic appli- 
 cation of the laws of heat to the furtherance of the mecha- 
 nical arts, and ultimately to the actual construction of the 
 most marvellous and multiform mechanism of modern days 
 — the steam-engine. 
 
 Sir Samuel Moorland, master of mechanics to the King 
 of England, made some experiments upon the elasticity of 
 steam before 1682, and projected a scheme for raising water 
 by the force it afforded. Dr Denys Papin, a native of Blois, 
 who had assisted Boyle in many of his experiments, and who 
 thus had his attention directed to the grand mechanical 
 problem of that time, published in the Ada Ertidiiorum 
 of Leipsic, in 1685, several communications, which show 
 that he had attained a clear idea of the nature of the 
 material facts upon which the construction of a steam-engine 
 depended, and shortly afterwards made some steps towards 
 the construction of such a mechanism. Steam was now well 
 known to be capable of acting as a motive power; the 
 
Early Steam Meclia7iism. 277 
 
 proper applicability of its force to useful purposes was the 
 great difficulty. To Papin we owe the invention of the 
 digester and the safety-valve. Captain T. Savery, about 
 i6g8, invented an engine, in which steam was employed to 
 give a force for the draining of mines or fens, for the pro- 
 pulsion of water through mansions and palaces, and for 
 pumping it from shipsl Amontons, in 1699, proposed a 
 fire-wheel; but this, though ingenious in conception, was 
 liable to many derangements, and was found impracti- 
 cable. 
 
 Dr Andr^ Dalesme, in 1705, exhibited at Paris an engine 
 for raising water by the force of steam ; and Leibnitz, after 
 examining Savery's mechanisms in England, sent a sketch 
 of one of them to Papin, who renevsfed his attempts to make 
 an effective working engine. Upon the basis of Savery's 
 machine, Thomas Newcomen and John Cawley — the former 
 a blacksmith, and the latter a glazier in Dartmouth — con- 
 structed an engine upon Papin's principle of a piston and a 
 condensing process, using, however, Savery's mode of creat- 
 ing a vacuum by cold affusion, for which they were led by 
 an accident to substitute the method of throwing a jet or 
 stream of cold water into the cylinder. Further improve- 
 ments were made upon this engine by Desaguliers, Henry 
 Beighton, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Smeaton, and others, 
 but none of these engines employed the direct force of steam 
 as their motive power, and none of the improvers made any 
 alteration in or advance upon the principles of steam mechan- 
 ism. These engines, therefore, have been designated, for dis- 
 tinction's sake, atmospheric steam-engines. All the elements 
 of a successful adaptation of steam to industrial purposes 
 might now be said to have been gathered together, but, like 
 the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision, they required a Divine 
 
2^]^ y antes Watt. 
 
 breath to give them the life of usefulness. At length came 
 the hour, and with the hour 
 
 " The master hand 
 That seized the fire-flame, like Prometheus old, 
 And, out the black shaft, through the grass)' land, 
 Dragg'd up the iron from earth's rocky hold, 
 And gave command to both. Ye shall not rest 
 Till striving man is from work's bondage free. 
 Go, steam ! and do man's hest ; from east to west. 
 Ye wheels of iron, at his bidding flee ! " 
 
 The following resume of the chief steps through which the 
 invention had by this time passed will be found not only 
 intelligible and interesting, but authoritative : — " S. de Caus 
 made steam act to raise water ; Worcester performed this 
 operation in a more regular and mechanical manner ; Papin 
 used the condensation of steam, and, through that, the 
 atmospheric pressure, as well as the direct expansive force, 
 and he worked the engine by a piston ; Savery condensed 
 by refrigeration, instead of the mere absence of fire, but 
 did not use the atmosphere ; Newcomen used the jet for 
 condensing, and the atmosphere for pressure, but did not 
 use the direct force of steam ; Desaguliers introduced the 
 safety-valve ; Beighton and Smeaton improved the mechan- 
 ism ; Dalesme needs not to be mentioned, as we are not 
 informed what plan he executed, but he certainly made no 
 step himself. If the direct force of steam, as well as atmo- 
 spheric pressure, had been both employed, with the jet of 
 cold water, the safety-valve, and the contrivance for regu- 
 lating the supply valves, a far better engine than any ever 
 known before the time of Watt would have been produced, 
 and yet nothing whatever would have been added to the 
 former inventions, they would only have been combined 
 together. The result of the whole is, that one of the greatest 
 
The Genealogy of the Steam-engine. 279 
 
 theoretical steps was made by Papin, who was, during a long 
 period, little commemorated ; and that Savery and New- 
 comen, who have been by many called the inventors, were 
 the first, of all the ingenious and usefiil persons whose suc- 
 cessive improvements we have now recorded, to apply the 
 steam-engine to practical purposes. France has thus pro- 
 duced the man who, next to Watt, may be regarded as the 
 author of the steam-engine; of all Watt's predecessors, 
 Papin stands incontestibly at the head; but it is almost 
 certain that he never actually constructed an engine. 
 Though the engine of Savery was of considerable use in 
 pumping to a small height, and indeed has not entirely 
 gone out of use in our own times ; and though Newcomen's 
 was still more extensively useful, from being applicable to 
 mines, not only had no means ever been found of using the 
 steam power for any other purpose than drav/ing up water, 
 but even in that operation it was exceedingly imperfect and 
 very expensive, insomuch that a water-power was often pre- 
 ferred to it, and even a horse-power in many cases afforded 
 equal advantages. The great consumption of fuel which it 
 required was its cardinal defect ; the other imperfection 
 was its loss of all direct benefit from the expansive force of 
 the steam itself That element was only used in creating a 
 vacuum, and an air-pump might have done as much, had it 
 been worked by water or by horses. It was, in the strictest 
 sense of the word, an air and not a steam-engine."* When 
 the progress of invention had proceeded thus far, "the 
 genius of Watt, guided by sound judgment, and urged by 
 unremitting application, effected in less than forty years a 
 complete change in the power of mechanism." 
 
 * Lord Brougham's Works, vol. i., Lives of the Philosophers of the 
 Time of George III., article, ««Watt," p. 30. 
 
2 So James Watt. 
 
 In a small, comfortable cottage at the east end of the 
 south side of Dalrymple Street, in the old burgh town and 
 seaport of Greenock — of the Council of which he was 
 treasurer — dwelt Mr James Watt, shipwright, builder, and 
 general merchant, a clever pursuer of many handicraft arts, 
 and a successful conductor of such commercial speculations 
 as the state of trade at that time afforded opportunity for. 
 His wife was Agnes Muirhead, a handsome, well-informed, 
 and good-tempered woman, in whose veins ran the " bluid " 
 of the " lairds of Lachop." To this honest pair there were 
 born five children, of whom three, two sons and a daughter, 
 died in infancy, and the latest born, John, was lost at sea 
 in the twenty-fourth year of his age — only seven years after 
 the death of his mother, in 1755. Their fourth child was 
 the James Watt to whom 
 
 *' Nature disclosed the artful plan 
 To mould the mist into Leviathan." 
 
 He was born 19th January 1736. He was sickly in child- 
 hood, and was an object of much anxiety, for the parents, 
 tried by former losses, almost despaired of training him 
 through the perils of boyhood, or of his ever attaining to 
 man's estate. The deHcate boy, though kept long from 
 school, was of an observative and thoughtful turn of mind, 
 and found in the shop and workshops of his father, as well 
 as in the splendid scenery of land-locked sea and towering 
 mountain jiear him, multitudes of " object lessons," which 
 excited his intelligence, quickened his aptitudes, and, by 
 gratifying his curiosity, increased his thirst for information. 
 He made teachers of all he saw, and often made himself 
 master of their secrets. His mother taught him to read, his 
 father imparted to him the rudiments of writing and arith- 
 
Boyhood and School-time. 28 1 
 
 metic. He was carefully drilled in his lessons, though not 
 harassed with them, and though far outstripped in school- 
 learning by many of the burly youngsters who jibed the 
 feeble home-pet, he had an education of the feelings and 
 senses seldom acquired in those old days of stem catecheti- 
 cal discipline and classical drudgery. Marvellous stories 
 are often told of " the boyhood of great men," as if, in their 
 early years, their future eminence had been foreshadowed. 
 In the biography of James Watt these are not wanting ; nor 
 do we think that they are, in this case, apocryphal. It would 
 be impossible for us, however, in a mere sketch, such as this 
 must be, to criticise minutely the tales of his self-suggested 
 discovery of geometrical truths, of his early acquaintance 
 with algebraic formulae, of his precocious powers of calcula- 
 tion, and of inventing and constructing philosophical toys. 
 It must suffice us to say that such stories seem to be 
 authentically narrated, and appear to be credible, for the 
 boyhood of Watt was different in its conditions from that 
 of the majority of children in his day. 
 
 After the anxious expenditure of a mother's care, and the 
 faithful patience of a father's affection, the boy's health 
 seenjed to warrant his attendance at a public school, there 
 to be braced by competition, and fired by contact with his 
 age-fellows. In the commercial school of Mr M'Adam he 
 increased his knowledge of penmanship and accounts; 
 under the learned and excellent Robert Arrol, Master of the 
 Burgh Grammar School of Greenock, he acquired a fair 
 acquaintance with Latin, and a " little Greek ; " while with 
 a relative of his own, John Marr, he studied mathematics 
 with zeal and purpose, with a loving diligence which won 
 ]iis master's and his parents' admiration. Though not a 
 frequent companion in the giddy joys of schoolboy life^ he 
 
282 James Watt, 
 
 was a great favourite with his comrades, on account of his 
 mechanical ingenuity, and his rare power of story-teUing, — 
 a power which he exercised with an imaginative fertiUty and 
 a fascination of style more delightful to his hearers than the 
 daily-drilled narrative of the ^neid, the Homeric " Tale of 
 Troy divine," the verses of 
 
 *' Him who left half-told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold," 
 
 or the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of the "Faery 
 Queen e." Scotland has always been famed for legend and 
 tradition ; and in Watt's youth, when the Jacobite rebellion 
 was an actuality, — when " bonnie Prince Charlie " really 
 fought at Falkirk, feasted in Holyrood, failed at Culloden, 
 and fled thence a fugitive to France, — there can be little 
 doubt that mother-told tales of the stern and sturdy wars 
 of the olden times were frequent at a fireside graced by a 
 female descendant of the ballad-famed Muirheads ; or that 
 Watt, having been thrilled himself by the magic of story, had 
 learned to use its witcheries on others. 
 
 The home-training, to which Watt was subjected, was 
 judicious though indulgent. Manliness and morality were 
 carefully inculcated, and strictly, but with enlightened affec- 
 tion, enforced. The boy grew up sincere, truthful, honest, 
 persevering, intelligent, and thoughtful. His uncle, John 
 Muirhead, often united with the elder Watt in commercial 
 transactions ; the greatest cordiaHty prevailed between the 
 brothers-in-law ; and James Watt had the privilege of fre- 
 quent intercourse with his uncle's family, both in Glasgow 
 and at Killearn, on the banks of Loch Lomond. In 
 Glasgow, too, he had another influential relative, viz., 
 George Muirhead, Professor of Humanity in the University 
 there, and one of the editors of the magnificent Foulis' 
 
The Value of a Thought. 283 
 
 "Homer" (1756-8.) In his fourteenth year, a copy of 
 Gravesande's "Elements of Physics" came into Watt's 
 hands, and fired his mind with its destined ambition. He 
 became an experimenter in chemistry, mechanics, electricity, 
 &c., and so cultured in himself the capacities of researchful 
 observation. This phenomenon-watching inquisitiveness 
 did not meet his aunt, Mrs Muirhead's, notions of utilita- 
 rianism, and she scolded him after this fashion : — " James 
 Watt, I never saw such an idle boy. Take a book, and 
 employ yourself usefully. For the last hour you have not 
 spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle and 
 put it on again ; holding now a cup and now a silver spoon 
 over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, and 
 catching and connecting the drops of hot water that it falls 
 into. Are you not ashamed of spending your time in this 
 way]" Ah, good old dame! the boy has been indulging 
 in a glorious dream. The boy-thought is a new heaven-seed 
 implanted in humanity, to release vital force from every-day 
 taskwork, and to produce a substitute for much of the most 
 exhausting bodily labour in the manufactory and the mine, 
 on the roadway, and across the sea ; to supply unskilled 
 labour by art, that so skilled labour may henceforth be the 
 lot of thinking man. The boy's idle hour has potencies of 
 usefulness in it incomputable by the meagre arithmetic of 
 every-day existence ; for there is in it — as there is at the 
 same time in the mind of a Glasgow professor of morals — 
 a revision of all old notions on " The Wealth of Nations." 
 
 The facilities afforded by his father's business for acquiring 
 a knowledge of the construction and uses of telescopes, 
 quadrants, and other instruments of a similar sort, quickened 
 in Watt's mind the love of geometrical, astronomical, and 
 optical studies, and at last inchned him to choose, as his 
 
284 James Watt, 
 
 own pursuit in life, the manufacture of philosophical instru- 
 ments. The need for a decision on that subject was not 
 forced upon him early. He was in the seventeenth year of 
 his age when some business reverses of his father's made it 
 advisable to provide himself with some means of gaining a 
 subsistence. He was apprenticed to a mathematical instru- 
 ment maker in Glasgow ; but his own ill health, the death 
 of his mother, and his desire to get a proper training in his 
 business, unitedly led him to break his indenture, and to set 
 out for London, whither he went, under the care of his 
 former teacher and cousin-german, John Marr. After a few 
 difficulties, and a little hopelessness, James Watt, on agreeing 
 to pay a premium of ;£'2i, and give his labour during the 
 period of servitude, became the pupil, but not the apprentice, 
 of John Morgan, mathematical instrument maker, in Finch 
 Lane, Comhill, for one year. His father's poverty made 
 him determine on eating only the bread of industry. He 
 worked early and late, with constancy and goodwill, and 
 strove to make himself as little as possible burdensome at 
 home. He jobbed at overhours, and improved both his 
 finances and his skill by the efforts he made, though he 
 injured his health, and gave additional poignancy to the 
 headaches to which he had been subject from boyhood, 
 besides adding to them rheumatic and nervous pains. In 
 the autumn of 1756 he returned to his native land; and 
 having supplied himself with a kit of superior tools, and a 
 copy of Nicholas Biron's treatise on "The Construction 
 and Use of Mathematical Instruments," — translated by a 
 self-taught Scottish mathematician, Edward Stone, — sought 
 an outlet for his energies. Fortune, in this, favoured him. 
 A merchant of Jamaica, Alexander Macfarlane, having died 
 in 1755, bequeathed his collection of mathematical instru- 
 
Obstacles Overcome. 285 
 
 raents to the Glasgow University ; and on the suggestion of 
 Dr Moor, Professor of Greek, and Dr Dick, Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy, Watt was requested to unpack, arrange, 
 clean, and repair them. 
 
 He thereafter attempted to establish himself in business 
 in the city of Glasgow, but was opposed in this scheme by 
 the members of the incorporated trades, who, because he 
 was neither a burgess, a regularly-trained tradesman, nor 
 married to the daughter of any one possessed of the freedom 
 of the city, forbade his opening a workshop or warehouse 
 within the burgh bounds. The University came to his 
 help, and gave him the use of a small room within the col- 
 lege precincts, next the apartments occupied by tlie Messrs 
 Foulis, printers to the University. Watt was appointed 
 mathematical instrument maker to the University; and 
 here, by a variety of miscellaneous exertions of acquired 
 neat-handedness and inborn intelligence, he managed to 
 make a moderate income. Fiddle-making, ornamental 
 nick-nackeries, organ-building — though he was entirely des- 
 titute of "musical ear" — employed the spare time of the 
 modest and studious young man, who made and repaired 
 the mechanical contrivances by which grave professors 
 exemplified to sage students the modes of operation in 
 which nature delighted. The city was full of James Watt's 
 reputation as a handicraft workman, and an intelligent 
 artisan. The professors of the University — all men of note 
 in their departments — encouraged the young mechanician, 
 and the students loved and respected him. Small, steady 
 gains gave him the hope of a living ; and by entering into 
 partnership with John Craig, who advanced a small capital 
 in lieu of skill, he increased his chance of making " ends 
 meet." This commercial companionship lasted from 1759 
 
286 James Watt. 
 
 till 1765, in which year John Craig died. In 1763 James 
 Watt considered himself capable of starting housekeeping 
 on his own account, and succeeded, in July of that year, in 
 persuading his cousin. Miss Miller, whose father was the 
 chief magistrate of Calton, an eastern suburb of Glasgow, 
 to share his small home and his large hopes. This event 
 probably gave emphasis to his desire of doing something 
 more likely to win bread, enjoyment, and fame, than the 
 trade of the artisan afforded opportunity for. 
 
 He had the art of waiting without idling, and his interest- 
 ing activity of thought made him an acquisition to college 
 society. Adam Smith, the political economist; Simson, 
 the geometer ; Black, the discoverer of latent heat ; Moor, 
 the Grecian ; Muirhead, the humanist and orientalist ; John 
 Millar, the historian and jurist ; Clow, the logician [?] ; 
 Principal Leechman ; Anderson, the physicist ; Robert and 
 Andrew Foulis, the printers, &c., then formed the chief mem- 
 bers of the literary society of the city, and they found in 
 Watt a man of congenial intellectuality and taste. These 
 men gave his mind employment and aim ; they encouraged 
 his inventive genius, and spurred on his ambition. The old 
 dreams of greatness which as a lad had glorified his life, 
 though gaining him the chastisement of his aunt's disappro- 
 bation, began to play about his brain, and his little shop — 
 now in the Saltmarket — was the scene of many experiments 
 for increasing the home-income. 
 
 Just as his mind was all alert for some new stroke of 
 money-making ingenuity, the chance came. During the 
 session of 1763-4, John Anderson, who had between 
 1756-60 occupied the chair of Oriental Languages, then 
 vacated by Watt's relative, George Muirhead, but who was 
 now Professor of Natural Philosophy, required to illustrate 
 
The Beginning of Success, 287 
 
 his prelections on elastic vapours by experiments with a 
 model of Newcomen's engine. The instrument belonging 
 to the University broke down, and it was sent to Watt for 
 repair. His mind had been reverting of late pretty fre- 
 quently to the subject of steam. He had held several 
 conversations about it with John Robison, then a student, 
 afterwards Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
 Glasgow, and, at a later period, occupant of the chair of 
 Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh. This opportune and 
 suggestive reminder, aided as it was by the recent study of 
 Dr JohnT. DesaguHer's " Experimental Philosophy," (1734,) 
 the translation of Gravesande, already mentioned, and B. F. 
 de Belidor's "Science of Engineering," (1729,) and "Hy- 
 draulic Architecture,"' (173 9- 1 7 53,) was through pressure of 
 business almost becoming effectless. He began to repair it 
 "as a mere mechanician," he says, when he noticed that, 
 though apparently all right, " its boiler could not supply it 
 with steam" enough to keep it working more than a few 
 strokes at a time. This anomaly between means and pur- 
 pose, however, astonished his persistent curiosity, and he 
 who had studied the science of harmonics that he might 
 construct an organ, and in his impatience to be a thorough 
 master of mechanics learned the then rarely acquired 
 languages of Germany and Italy, was not likely to spare 
 pains or labour to discover the reason of this faultiness in 
 the simplest and most powerful engine that had hitherto 
 been constructed. The determination to find a reply to 
 this imperatively recurring — why ? — formed at once the crisis 
 of Watt's life, and the first step towards the emancipation 
 of human industry. '• Everything," says Professor Robison, 
 "became to him a subject of new and serious study — every- 
 thing became science in his hands." In a mind so prone 
 
288 James Watt. 
 
 to reasoning, and so sedulously ambitious of success, it is 
 not to be wondered at that " this little job of the model 
 came opportunely in his way, and immediately took up his 
 whole attention." It would be useless and unprofitable to 
 enumerate the many beautiful though abortive specimens of 
 ingenuity which, with a rare facility and fertility of resource, 
 he produced during the period of experiment which preceded 
 the realisation of his ideal. He tested the theory of heat, 
 investigated anew the properties of steam and other elastic 
 vapours ; he employed himself in chemical researches, in 
 inquiries regarding atmospheric air and its powers, and in 
 the careful manipulation of glass, metals, &c., so far as they 
 seemed likely to contribute to the end he had in view. 
 Then he read voraciously, avariciously, and gloated over 
 each newly-gained fact like an alchemist over his crucible. 
 Nor was this insatiabTe persistency, energy, and thought 
 useless or unrewarded. This competent knowledge supplied 
 him with the power to overcome Nature ; for " Nature," as 
 he used to say, " has a weak side, if we can only find it out." 
 His hour of triumph came, and to 
 
 *' His sagacious mind, 
 With faculty inventive rarely fraught," 
 
 she communicated the inspiration which enabled him to 
 knit together the engine's bones of steel and sinews of brass, 
 to set in its heart a burning furnace, and to give it the hot 
 breath of a new Ufe, while he reserved to man the power of 
 being the guiding soul of all its motions. "One Sunday 
 afternoon," he says, " I had gone out to take a walk in the 
 Green of Glasgow ; and when about half-way between Am's 
 well and the herd's house, my thoughts having been naturally 
 turned to the experiments I h,ad been engaged in for saving 
 
A Priceless Thought. 289 
 
 heat in the cylinder, at that part of the road the idea 
 occurred to me, that, as steam was an elastic vapour, it 
 would expand, and rush into a previously exhausted space ; 
 and that, if I were to produce a vacuum in a separate 
 vessel, and open a communication between the steam in 
 the cylinder and the exhausted vessel, such would be the 
 consequence." This idea was alone wanting to the entire 
 success of what Dr Neil Amott calls " the king of ma- 
 chines." The date of this flash of thought is stated to have 
 been *'the summer of 1765." 
 
 A century, therefore, has only elapsed since the concep- 
 tion of that mighty engine which has revolutionised human 
 industry, and has compacted into " the days of the years" 
 of each man's life the results and changes of steam's 
 exhaustless energies, the advantages of the labours of those 
 Anakim and Cyclops who have been made our fags and 
 drudges, slaves and bondsmen. These huge leviathans of 
 industry, which plod and toil, and tug and strain their great 
 tireless limbs in our service, in all the multiform processes 
 of labour, are the lineal progeny of that thought-bom 
 mechanism which "in the twinkling of an eye" converted 
 the almost useless inventions, studies, and discoveries of 
 many lives into available agencies for economical and expe- 
 ditious manufacture, travelling, printing, &c., and added in 
 a moment incalculable wealth to the world at large. Truly, 
 
 ** The value of a thought cannot be told ! " 
 
 And there probably has never been one instant, in the long 
 reach of past ages, when so much latent life was quickened 
 into utility and wealth as that in which this single thought 
 imparted the soul of motion to the mechanism of which 
 James Watt was the inventor, and gave the gigantic skeleton 
 
 T 
 
290 James Watt. 
 
 that elastic life which thrills its pulseless but all-pliant limbs. 
 Oh, the high-bounding feel of intellectual energy, the glow, 
 the quiver and enchantment which the great spirit and busy- 
 heart of the " philosophical instrument maker to the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow" must have experienced, when that idea 
 rushed from its lurking corner in the mind, and lit up the 
 inanimate masses of the mine with life, and harnessed the 
 matter of the clouds to an everlasting servitude ! 
 
 The single central thought being now gained, it became 
 the aim and purpose of Watt's life to work into a practical 
 form the intellectual Frankenstein he had created, and to 
 subdue to his ideal the almost incorrigible and very refrac- 
 tory elements to be employed in the construction of the 
 engine, in order that it might become apphcable to the uses 
 of daily life, and available in the ordinary operations and 
 processes of the industries of the masses. He did not all 
 at once succeed in wedding and welding the agencies of 
 mechanism, and in amalgamating the ideal and the real. It 
 was a long labour to inspirit the iron thews and the vapor- 
 ous wanderers through immensity with his purpose, and 
 incline them to work together in friendly simultaneity, that 
 they might transform, raise, and ennoble the whole material 
 existence of humanity, by accepting the drudgery of industry 
 as their portion in the great manifoldness of exertion neces- 
 sary to supply all human wants. Not all at once, or wholly 
 by him, were the whims of the winds and the passionate 
 rebelliousness of the sea, the freedom of the vapours, and 
 the inert self-will of iron, overcome ; nor, though due to his 
 early thought, was the whole sum of change which civilisa- 
 tion in one century has undergone, the work of his intellect. 
 But he accomplished the subjugation of that one physical 
 power from which commerce and industry draw their noblest 
 
Difficulties Overcome. 291 
 
 forces ; and to his persistent determination to succeed, 
 science owes many of its marvels, art many of its grandest 
 achievements, trade a multitude of improved processes, and 
 commerce the means of nearly annihilating distance, and of 
 almost overcoming time. 
 
 Around the simplest steam-engine there ever circles a 
 whole multitude of powers, self-willed and dangerous, but 
 which have all been overcome and harmonised by the con- 
 structive ingenuity of the maker. The laws of atmospheric 
 pressure, of friction, of motion, of metallic production and 
 power, of velocities and forces, of expansion and condensa- 
 tion, of economisation of fuel, space, labour, and superin- 
 tendence, of adaptative construction, of means, ends, causes, 
 and effects, require to be provided for or against, and the 
 mechanism brought into harmony with them all, as well as 
 with the specific industrial purposes which led to its being 
 conceived and made. 
 
 The necessary inadequacy of any exposition of the nature 
 and uses of Watt's engine, which can be given by any one 
 except an adept who has long occupied himself in the study 
 of the operations of that multiform mechanism, might restrain 
 us from any attempt at a formal description of it. When, 
 however, we remember that the distinct achievement of Watt 
 was to bring the elastic force of the vapour of heated water 
 directly and immediately into exercise as a source of power, 
 we perceive that our present business is not to describe that 
 exceedingly complex mystery of mechanism which now starts 
 into thought at the mention of the steam-engine. That 
 hard-working, sweatless monster, whose vibrating beams 
 play at the pit-head, whose cranks turn the wheels of ships 
 or locomotives, or set in motion the complicated mechanical 
 contrivances of manufactories, or whose resounding pistons 
 
292 James Watt. 
 
 clank in the great foundries of our day — wherein human wit 
 has so armed the iron with wise power, that it seizes upon 
 great masses of its smelted ore, squeezes it into plates, cuts 
 it into ribands, or moulds it into almost any predetermined 
 shape — that giant of the forge, the factory, the mine, the 
 rail, and the ocean, that weariless coadjutor of humanity, is 
 a highly-trained and cultured Caliban, compared with the 
 engine to which Watt's ^ early thought gave life. It had 
 little of that recondite multiplicity of parts, processes, re- 
 quirements, and capacities, which the steam-engine of our 
 time displays. Reduced to the one distinguishing idea, it 
 seems to us that it may be intelligibly represented in our 
 minds as a strongly-compacted cyhnder, in which a closely- 
 fitted piston works by the alternate admission of steam above 
 and below it, the said steam being supplied in any con- 
 venient way from a suitable boiler, and the said piston being 
 attached in any convenient way to the machinery which it is 
 desirable should be set in motion. The contrivances requi- 
 site to subdue and direct the vaporous energy, and the 
 means by which it is adapted to impart its aid to man, are 
 things apart from the ideal plan for bringing the force of 
 steam to act as a direct source of power, and as a manage- 
 able appliance wheresoever that power was required in any 
 of the departments of industrial life, or in any of the arts or 
 processes of civilisation. In order, however, to give due 
 prominence to the mechanical side of the subject, we sub- 
 join an authoritative abstract of the changes, and the modes 
 of effecting them, which James Watt made in the passage 
 from an attnospheric to that of a steam engine : — 
 
 "The first and most important improvement of Watt's on the engine 
 consisted in effecting the condensation in a separate vessel, termed the 
 condenser, which communicated with the cyUnder. This condenser 
 
The Skam-engiiie Explained. 293 
 
 being filled with steam from the boiler at the same time with the 
 cylinder, the jet of cold water, admitted into the former only, effected 
 the condensation of the whole volume of steam, both of that in the 
 cylinder as well as that in the condenser, in conformity with the well- 
 known principle in physics, that an action originated in any part of a 
 homogeneous fluid is almost instantaneously communicated throughout 
 the mass. 
 
 "To effect still farther the object of this separate condensation, Watt 
 placed his condenser in a cistern, the temperature of which was kept 
 constant by a fresh supply of cold water, brought from a well by a 
 pump ; for otherwise the heat given out by the condensing steam would, 
 by heating the vessel and the water surrounding it, have prevented the 
 rapid or almost instantaneous condensation necessary to the efficient 
 action of the engine. 
 
 " To comprehend the necessity for a rapid condensation, it must be 
 remembered that the effective power of the engine depends on the 
 pressure on the piston, minus any resistance it encounters, and on 
 the space through which it moves. If the steam could be instantly 
 converted into water, and so, entirely removed, a perfect vacuum would 
 be formed beneath the piston, in which case, there being no resistance 
 from this source to overcome, a maximum of power would be obtained ; 
 but if the condensation be slow, or only partial, since the piston will 
 begin to move the instant there is any inequality in the pressure exerted 
 on its opposite surfaces, its motion will be retarded, or the power 
 diminished, by the resistance to compression offered by the uncondensed 
 steam ; and although that resistance would tend to diminish as the con- 
 densation proceeded, yet the space occupied by the steam diminishing 
 in consequence of the descent of the piston in nearly the same propor- 
 tion, the resistance would be nearly constant through the whole of that 
 descent. 
 
 * ' On the other hand, to maintain the temperature of the cylinder as 
 high as possible. Watt at first cased it in wood to retard the radiation, 
 and subsequently surrounded it by a second iron cylinder, admitting 
 steam from the boiler between the two. This casing, or 'jacket,' as it 
 is termed, is not used in most modern engines made since Watt's time, 
 and the effects of radiation from the surface of the cylinder are now 
 chiefly guarded against, as much as possible, by keeping that surface 
 bright and smooth. 
 
 "The second of Watt's improvements on Newcomen's engine con- 
 sisted in closing in the cyUnder at top, the piston-rod beuig made to 
 
294 yames Watt. 
 
 pass through a cylindrical neck in the top, termed a stuffing-box, from 
 the passage being rendered steam-tight by a stuffing of tow saturated 
 with grease, which, by its lubrication, diminished the additional friction 
 resulting from this arrangement. The object of this alteration was to 
 admit of the elastic force of the steam being employed to impel the 
 piston downwards, instead of atmospheric pressure ; for this purpose, 
 the steam was admitted from the boiler above the piston at the same 
 moment that the condensation took place in the condenser, the steam- 
 passage being made double for the purpose, so that the communication 
 with the condenser could be cut off when that with the cylinder was 
 opened, alternately. When the piston-rod descended to the bottom of 
 the cylinder, the counterpoise at the pump-rod raised it again, as in 
 Newcomen's engine ; but to allow of this upward motion, it was neces- 
 sary to remove the steam that was above the piston, and this was done 
 by allowing it to pass under the piston, and into the condenser, through 
 a passage opened at the proper instant for this purpose. Such is the 
 general principle of Mr Watt's single-acting engine, which hence became 
 a steam-engine, and was no longer an atmospheric one. 
 
 *'By a further improvement, the counterpoise at the pump-rod was 
 done away with, which obviously had been so much added to the un- 
 productive work of the engine, since this weight had to be raised in 
 addition to that of the water. The upward stroke of the piston was 
 now produced by admitting the steam below it, to act by its elasticity, 
 as it had previously done above, when causing the piston to descend. 
 Thus the engine became double-acting, and assumed that essential 
 general principle which it has ever since maintained, although all the 
 details of its construction have been improved upon by successive 
 engineers." * 
 
 Such is the briefest and most intelligible trustworthy ab- 
 stract of Watt's early labours we have been able to find. It 
 points to a very different state of matters from that which 
 now exists, and which has been described by a competent 
 authority in these terms, viz. : — " In the present perfect state 
 of the engine, it appears almost a thing of intelligence. It 
 regulates, with perfect accuracy and uniformity, the number 
 
 * T. Bradley, article *' Steam- Engine," in Penny Cyclopcedia^ vol. 
 xxii., p. 475. 
 
Self -trust and Self-control. 295 
 
 of its strokes in a given time, counting or recording tliem, 
 moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock 
 records the beats of its pendulum ; it regulates the quantity 
 of steam admitted to work, the briskness of the fire, the 
 supply of water to the boiler, the supply of coals to the fire ; 
 it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to 
 time and manner; it oils its joints; it takes out any air 
 which may accidentally enter into parts which should be 
 vacuous ; and when anything goes wrong which it cannot of 
 itself rectify, it warns its attendants by ringing a bell ; yet, 
 with all these talents and qualities, and even when exerting 
 the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand 
 of a child; its aliment is coal, wood, charcoal, or other 
 combustibles ; it consumes none while idle ; it never tires, 
 and wants no sleep ; it is not subject to malady when ori- 
 ginally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out 
 with age ; it is equally active in all climates, and will do 
 work of any kind." * 
 
 Though "Truth had wedded Power" in Watt's thoughtful 
 scheme, and incalculable capabilities of enrichment and 
 enfranchisement from merely, or chiefly, bodily toil lay in 
 his felicitous contrivance, yet great difficulties stood in the 
 way of the practical application of its latent potencies to 
 the economic and industrial arts. Watt was poor, but 
 cautious. He would not willingly trust himself to the 
 money-lenders. There was a sturdy honesty in him, too, 
 which withheld him from exceeding his own means, and 
 a self-control which tempered the glow of the inventor's 
 enthusiasm to a moderate but patient hopefulness. The 
 care-born instrument, instinct with mind, was laid aside in a 
 
 * Dr Neil Arnott's "Elements of Physics, &c.," 4th edition, vol. i., 
 P-384. 
 
296 y antes Watt. 
 
 delft-ware manufactory at the Broomielaw — the name then 
 given to the city portion of the north bank of the Clyde — 
 while he, feeling the inroad his devotion to its construction 
 had made on his business-income, employed himself in 
 sundry ways, congenial enough to his own mind, though not 
 strictly cognate to his profession, accepting, indeed, any 
 occupation likely to afford him a settled way of providing 
 for the necessities of home. Still his thoughts could not 
 be entirely withdrawn from the unexampled motive-power 
 which lay rusting unused, while he was labouring merely to 
 be able to pay all his debts. Dr Black had introduced him 
 to Dr Roebuck, (born in Sheffield, 17 18,) then proprietor of 
 Carron Iron-works, two miles north-west of Falkirk, and resi- 
 dent at Kinneil House, on the banks of the Frith of Forth, 
 near Borrowstounness, about five miles distant from the works. 
 Roebuck, in planning the Carron Works, had employed 
 John Smeaton, (born at Austhorpe, near Leeds, 1724,) who 
 had, like Watt, been in early life a philosophical instrument 
 maker. One of the great schemes of Roebuck was to use 
 pit instead of char coal in the manufacture of iron, for 
 which purpose he had leased the Duke of Hamilton's coal 
 mines, in the vicinity of Borrowstounness. The depth of 
 the coal seams, however, had made him almost hopeless of 
 success, when he was introduced to the only man who 
 could, at that time, " sell power." He made overtures of 
 assistance to Watt, and thereafter became interested in the 
 progress of the invention. During 1765-6 an unreserved 
 intercourse on the subject was maintained between the two, 
 personally and by letter. Watt experimented at Kinneil 
 House, and Roebuck made the materials for models and 
 machines at Carron. But, in 1766, symptoms of an on- 
 coming "paralysis of poverty" began to manifest themselves 
 
The Edge of Stcccess. 297 
 
 in the affairs of the Carron projector, and fortune deserted 
 Roebuck, and, therefore, Watt. Amid care, and the torture 
 of a consciousness that there was within their grasp a real 
 means of enrichment, more potent than the fabled charm 
 of the alchemist, and of realising a wealth beyond the 
 dreams of misers, they struggled on, downcast in spirit, 
 against a sea of troubles. 
 
 The success of Smeaton as a " civil engineer," — a title 
 which he was the first to adopt as a professional designation, 
 —encouraged Watt to follow his example, and relinquish the 
 making of mathematical instruments, &c., for their use. In 
 1767 he surveyed a route for a canal to unite the Friths of 
 Forth and Clyde, to pass through the Leven, Loch Lomond, 
 Endrick, &c., into the Forth, above Stirling. Smeaton's 
 plan of joining the seas of the east and west of Scotland 
 by Denny and Carron was preferred, and was in great part 
 executed under his direction. In Watt's journey to London, 
 to be examined before Parliament on the rival schemes, he 
 made the acquaintance of Dr Erasmus Darwin, the inge- 
 nious, fanciful, and philosophical poet, then resident at 
 Lichfield, and full of interest regarding the inventions with 
 which Earnshaw, Wyatt, Kay, Hargreaves, Paul Arkwright, 
 &c., were at that time busy, to subdue "the nymph Gos- 
 sypia'^ To him Watt disclosed the secret of his engine. 
 On this journey, too, probably at Dr Darwin's suggestion, 
 he first saw that marvel of human ingenuity, the manufac- 
 tory at Soho; through which he was shown by Dr Wm. 
 Small, with whom he had had some conversation regarding 
 his machine. Through this interview, the non-success of 
 his canal scheme became the means of making the king- 
 thought of the age available for his own advantage and the 
 benefit of others. 
 
298 James Watt. 
 
 By May 1768, Roebuck and Watt had arranged to take 
 out a patent ; and the latter went to London in August, to 
 make the necessary arrangements. Mr Boulton invited him 
 to Soho. Here he stayed a fortnight. Dr Darwin, Dr 
 Small, Mr Keir, translator of the " Chemistry" of the Scoto- 
 French philosopher, J. P. Macquer, and others who had 
 been asked, met him there. The chief topic of conversation 
 was the new fire-engine, in which, after full explanations, 
 Mr Boulton expressed a desire to be " concerned." Watt's 
 engagements with Roebuck prevented him from closing with 
 this offer ; but on his return to Scotland, he wrote a state- 
 ment to Mr Boulton, explaining his position thus : " By 
 several unsuccessful projects and expensive experiments, I 
 had involved myself in a considerable debt before I had 
 brought the theory of the fire-engine to its present state. 
 About three years ago, a gentleman [Mr John Craig] who 
 was concerned with me, died. As I had, at that time, con- 
 ceived a very clear idea of my present improvements, and 
 had even made some trial of them, though not so satisfactory 
 as has been done since, Dr Roebuck agreed to take my debts 
 upon him, and to lay out whatever more money was neces- 
 sary, either for experiments or securing the invention ; for 
 which cause I made over to him two-thirds of the property 
 of the invention. The debts and expenses are now about 
 ;£i2oo. ... It gave me great joy when you seemed to 
 think so favourably of our scheme as to wish to engage in 
 it. I therefore made it my business, as soon as I got home, 
 to wait on the Doctor, and propose you as one I wished he 
 would make an offer to, which he agreed to with a great deal 
 of pleasure." Mr Boulton declined becoming a partner in 
 the affair on the terms proposed by Dr Roebuck, and 
 ** held off." Hemmed in by want, and pressed with care, 
 
The Witlessness of Selfishness. 299 
 
 Watt still persisted in his design, and at length, on January 
 5th, 1769, a patent was granted for "^ 71610 method of 
 lessening the consumptio?i of steam a7id fuel i?t fire-engines'' 
 
 Dr Roebuck could advance no money, and Watt was 
 indebted to the voluntary offer of Dr Black for the means 
 of paying the incidental expenses of gaining this patent. 
 Mr Boulton and Dr Small assisted him in drawing out a 
 draft of the specification for his patent — the former, in 
 explanation of his hesitancy as to partnership, saying, in a 
 letter to Watt, "I was excited by two objects to offer you 
 my assistance, which were, love of you, and love of a 
 money-getting, ingenious project ;" and entering into de- 
 tailed reasons for resiling. Dr Roebuck shortly afterwards 
 made a more agreeable offer ; but, while negotiations were 
 yet pending through Watt, he became insolvent, and the 
 creditors of the Carron Iron-works, &a, having declared 
 that they did not "value the engine at a farthing," a 
 transfer from Carron to Soho became easier. 
 
 In the meantime, bread required to be earned, and Watt 
 made a survey of the canal from the Monkland collieries to 
 the city of Glasgow, nearly twelve miles, for which he after- 
 wards became the engineer, at a salary of ;^ 200 per annum. 
 In 1770 he was engaged by the trustees for the estates 
 forfeited by attainder in the rebeUions of 17 15 and 1745, 
 to survey a canal between Coupar- Angus and Perth. He 
 planned, in the same year, a bridge over the Clyde at 
 Hamilton, and, at the desire of the magistrates of Glasgow, 
 surveyed and reported on the state of that grand river. 
 Other engagements of a similar nature filled up the doubt- 
 distracted years 1770-73, of which the following may be 
 mentioned : — A report on the best means of improving the 
 harbour of Ayr; courses for canals through Crinan and 
 
300 James Watt. 
 
 Tarbet, from Hurlet to Paisley, and from Inverness to the 
 western sea (now known as the Caledonian Canal;) the 
 clearing and rendering navigable the channels of the Leven, 
 Forth, Gadie, Devon, &c. ; the supplying of Greenock with 
 water; and the construction of docks and harbours at 
 Port Glasgow. 
 
 While absent on his survey of the Caledonian Canal route, 
 he received notice of his wife's illness, and on hurrying 
 home, found that she was dead. A son and a daughter 
 survived her. The sadness of death made the miseries of 
 life more perplexing, and the griefs and harassments of the 
 i^w^ preceding years, heightened by this latest stroke of 
 fortune's spite, made him heart-sick and unmanned; for 
 "Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier days." 
 He longed to leave the land of his disappointments and 
 wretchedness — "to try England, or to endeavour to get 
 some lucrative place abroad.^' 
 
 It was just at this time that the insolvency of Roebuck 
 enabled Watt to enter into terms with Mr Boulton, and so 
 to inspire his long-cherished ideal with a life and movement 
 which made it practically useful, while it enabled him to ex- 
 ercise his own kill-care receipt — " Come, my dear sir, and 
 immerse yourself in this sea of business as soon as possible, 
 and do not add to the grief of your friends by giving way to 
 the tide of sorrow." How great a relief this was to his 
 
 *' Prone brow, 
 Oppressive with its mind," 
 
 may partly be guessed from his plaintive expression of vexa- 
 tion in March 1770, "It is a damned thing for a man to 
 have his all hanging by a single string. If I had the where- 
 withal to pay the loss, I don't think I should so much fear 
 
Patents and Patent-laws. 301 
 
 a failure ; but I cannot bear the thought of other people 
 being losers by my schemes, and I have the happy disposi- 
 tion of always painting the worst." The great sorrow of his 
 life was tempered to him, as we have seen, by the open- 
 ing up of new hopes, opportunities, business, &c., while a 
 " daylight " of success beamed on his prospects. Boulton 
 arranged with Roebuck for the transference of his share in 
 the undertaking ; the latter and Watt signed a mutual dis- 
 charge ; while the former and he entered into a fresh co- 
 partnery. 
 
 In 1774, Watt removed to Soho j in 1775, application 
 was made for an Act of Parliament extending the previous 
 patent, and this application, notwithstanding the opposition 
 of the famous Edmund Burke, was granted in May of the 
 same year, thus " vesting the property of the new engines 
 in him and his assigns throughout Great Britain and the 
 Plantations for twenty-five years to come." Of course, it 
 was only gained after a strenuous opposition from the 
 miners and engineers whom it would restrain from the use 
 of the machine, unless purchased from the firm of Boulton 
 and Watt. 
 
 At the Soho manufactory machinery was constructed, and 
 workmen were trained to make the various portions of the 
 engine, and great precision, accuracy, and fitness of part to 
 part was rapidly attained. The use of the engine extended, 
 and its adaptations were multipUed. This extensive demand 
 induced piracy, and to defend themselves against that, the 
 firm entered the law-courts with great determination, and 
 were uniformly successful; yet so numerous were the 
 evasions practised, that Watt once wrote, " I have been so 
 beset with plagiaries, that if I had not a very distinct recol- 
 lection of my doing it, their impudent assertions would lead 
 
302 James Watt. 
 
 me to doubt whether I was the author of any improvement 
 on the steam-engine." The fame of the contrivance spread, 
 and it was looked upon as a boon in various parts of the 
 country. Indeed, negotiations were early opened to accom- 
 plish, by its aid, what Paris yet very much requires — an 
 adequate supply of water. Its earliest applications, how- 
 ever, were made in the mining districts, where it speedily 
 supplanted Newcomen's engine, and gave a new impulse to 
 the mining interests, which were all but stagnant and 
 stationary. 
 
 This cheapened power of which the world had so much 
 need, revived old mines, caused new ones to be opened, and 
 enabled those then working to yield a profit handsome 
 enough to promote enterprise. This was especially the case 
 in Cornwall and other places where fuel was scarce ; and as 
 the price charged by the patentees was only " a third part 
 of the value of the coal saved by the new engine," its use 
 extended as its cheapness became manifest. Yet so great 
 were the difficulties of bringing the steam-engine into 
 general and active use, that the firm of Boulton and Watt 
 had expended ^£"47,000 before they began to gain any re- 
 turn for their outlay, skill, labour, and enterprise. Such are 
 the risks the benefactors of their country require to run be- 
 fore the spirit of custom yields to the genius of civilisation, 
 and before the resistance of ignorance and selfishness is 
 overcome. Moral, like physical power, requires not only 
 to be generated but applied, and to be so applied as to 
 assume the form of force. It was chiefly the fortunate con- 
 junction of the appreciative minds of Roebuck, in the first 
 instance, and of Small and Boulton in the second, that the 
 mighty inventive genius of Watt was freed from the presence 
 of those external cares and daily-life difficulties which would 
 
Steam Applied to Manufactures. 303 
 
 otherwise have consumed his days in the mere provision of 
 home-income, and would have deprived the world of the 
 readiest, cheapest, and most obedient of servants in every 
 walk of industry. 
 
 Other manufactures had reached a point of development 
 when the application of a new species of power had become 
 desirable. The draining-engine in mines relieved the me- 
 tallic arts of their great repressive influence — expense ; but 
 the fictile and textile industries had need, too, of some 
 economic power. Speed was the great need, for on speed 
 of production depended the profitable employment of 
 capital, and the capacity to pay labour. Dearness was 
 dearth. Only by small profits on many articles rapidly 
 made, and suitable for general use, could the due relations 
 of income and purchase, outlay and gain, be maintained. 
 All arts had been employed to heighten the rate of produc- 
 tion, cheapen its cost, and quicken into dexterity, by the 
 division of labour, the working staff of our factories. The 
 touch of a new agent was urgently required — and this chiefly 
 in the cotton districts. There — 
 
 *' First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull 
 From leathery pods the vegetable wool ; 
 With wiry teeth revolving cards release 
 The tangled knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece. 
 Next comes the iron-hand, with fingers fine, 
 Combs the wide card, and forms the eternal line. 
 Slow, with soft lips, the whirling can acquires 
 The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires. 
 "With quickened pace successive rollers move, 
 And these retain, and these extend the rove. 
 Then fly the spokes, the rapid axles glow. 
 While slowly circumvolvp.5 the labouring wheel below. " 
 
 To this slowly circumvolving wheel Watt could impart 
 power and speed, but it required more than these two — 
 
304 James Watt, 
 
 regularity of action. He had created power, but he had not 
 regulated the pulses of that vigorous vitality which he had 
 injected into the inanimate metals of which his engines were 
 formed ; and he stooped again over the rude thewed Samson, 
 and at length tamed and trained him into trustworthiness. 
 The principles on which the engine acted, and the skill with 
 which it was now endowed, made it easily adaptable to the 
 machinery of the industrial arts ; and in the very act of 
 fitting them together, fresh aptitudes and new powers were 
 manifested in each, and an^ interchanging series of progres- 
 sive improvements was begun, not yet exhausted, if exhaus- 
 tible. 
 
 Many attempts were made to pirate his inventions, or to 
 evade the protective Act which Parliament had granted him; 
 and though he shrank from paper wars, controversies, and 
 law-suits. Watt had occasion often to claim the strong hand 
 of justice to maintain and defend his right. While he readily 
 and honourably acknowledged the efforts of co-labourers in 
 similar pursuits, he resolutely opposed the dishonest appro- 
 priators of the schemes of his ingenious, contriving mind, 
 patiently refuted their claims, or perseveringly exposed the 
 knavery by which they sought to profit by a disingenuous 
 employment of his projects and inventions. 
 
 In 1775, Mr Watt, after two years of a widower's life, felt 
 it necessary to lighten his family cares by a second marriage, 
 and then wedded Anne Macgregor, the daughter of a 
 wealthy and influential merchant and manufacturer in 
 Glasgow. In that year, too, the Imperial Government of 
 Russia offered him employment at a salary of ;£iooo per 
 annum. This, however, he declined. In 1778, the King 
 of France granted an exclusive privilege to the Soho manu- 
 facturers, to make and sell engines for that country. Though 
 
The Growth of Thought, 305 
 
 resident in Birmingham, Watt required to superintend the 
 introduction of his machinery throughout the country, and 
 hence was brought into contact with many of those whose 
 wants in machinery were urgent, and this doubtlessly set his 
 mind more eagerly on modifying his engine to meet the 
 extended requirements of the country. The mere mention 
 of the patents he secured and worked out, with a note of 
 their aim, will abundantly show the activity and inventive 
 capacity of his intellect : — in 1 781, for a regulator, and the sun 
 and planet wheel; in 1782, for an expansive engine, six 
 contrivances for regulating motion, a double stroke engine, 
 parallel motion, double cyhnders, semi-rotative engine, and 
 steam wheel; in 1784, for a rotative engine, parallel 
 motions, working hammers, improved gearing and working 
 the valves, portable engines, and steam carriages; in 1785, 
 for constructing furnaces and consuming smoke. Besides 
 these, he supplied a steam and condensation gauge, an 
 indicator, and a governor. 
 
 It would be vain for us to attempt to explain the uses 
 and adaptations, the savings, applications, and arrangements 
 of which the steam-engine thus became capable. By twenty 
 years' studious thought and persevering labour Watt had 
 succeeded in creating a new source of power, and had con- 
 trived many invaluable means of distributing it usefully, 
 wheresoever and howsoever the industrial arts demanded ; 
 and the clumsy, intractable, snorting, asthmatic, weak, 
 atmospheric engine, of which he saw the model in 1763, 
 had been, by the steady development of that idea which 
 flashed upon his mind in 1765, transformed into a docile, 
 compact, serviceable machine — resistless as a whirlwind, 
 yet obedient as a planet to its laws — capable of adding its 
 
 u 
 
3o6 jfames Watt. 
 
 intense energy to every branch of manufacturing activity — 
 a veritable stea77i-e7igi7ie. 
 
 In 1786 Boulton and Watt were invited by the French 
 Government to Paris, and there met the chief savans of 
 that empire, Lavoisier, La Place, Monge, Fourcroy, Ber- 
 thollet, the last of whom revealed to Watt, who was a 
 well-informed man and a fair chemist, the bleaching proper- 
 ties of chlorine ; and he, by communicating that discovery 
 to his father-in-law, was the first to promote the improvement 
 of bleaching in Britain. For Mr Macgregor he also invented 
 a steam-drying apparatus, which materially aided the manu- 
 facturers, the caHco printers, and bleachers of cotton and 
 linen fabrics in this country, to produce speedily and sell 
 cheaply. 
 
 Watt's mind had such a bent towards invention, that he 
 found not occupation only, but amusement also, in contri- 
 vances and discoveries. In 1780 he patented a machine for 
 copying letters, drawings, &c. ; in 1783 he communicated to 
 Priestley and De Luc the discovery of the composition of 
 water; and in 1784 his letter to the latter was read before 
 the Royal [Philosophical] Society, after which he was chosen 
 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He had a 
 like honour conferred upon him, in 1785, by the Royal 
 Society, in London ; and two years thereafter was elected a 
 corresponding member of the Batavian Society. In 1806 
 the honorary degree of LL.D. was voted to him by the 
 University of Glasgow ; and ten years later he was made a 
 member of the National Institute of France. 
 
 In the year 1800 he retired from the Soho manufactory, 
 with a more than handsome competence, and transferred 
 his interest in it to his two sons, James and Gregory — the 
 
The Habit of Invention. 307 
 
 latter of whom, however, died of consumption in 1804. 
 This was the beginning of a series of afflicting deaths, in 
 rapid succession, of persons dearly beloved by Watt — fore- 
 warnings of the inevitable visitant to every man. Every 
 one feels the loneliness of age, when companions and friends 
 are taken away, So, when Dr Roebuck, in 1794; Dr 
 Black and WilHam Withering, (the botanist,) in 1799; Dr 
 Darwin, in 1802; Professor Robinson, in 1805; Dr Bed- 
 dowes, in 1,808; Mr Boulton, in 1809; Dr P. Wilson, in 
 181 1 ; De Luc, in 1817, passed away. Watt felt as if "in 
 danger of standing alone among strangers," and was sad- 
 dened by the thought. 
 
 But invention had then almost grown from a habit to an 
 instinct. He had, in 1787, practised four new methods of 
 making lamps, the secrets of which he imparted to Argand ; 
 in 1788 he constructed an instrument for measuring the 
 specific gravity of liquids ; in 1789 he found out a way to 
 make tubes of elastic resin \vithout dissolving it. His 
 thoughts were often engaged in contemplating the applica- 
 tion of steam to navigation, and the construction of a steam- 
 chaise; he had, in 1786, a wheel carriage "of some size 
 underhand," and expressed himself as at that time " resolved 
 to try if God would work a miracle in favour of these 
 carriages." But the hour of such a development had not 
 come, and the true flash of inventive thought on this matter 
 was reserved for one who, then but a boy, was acting as 
 cowherd to widow Ainsley, on the farm of Dewley, and 
 Watt had died before the rail and wheel had been induced 
 by George Stephenson to enter into wedded life as "man 
 and wife." 
 
 In 1785 he turned some of his "idle thoughts" to the 
 
3o8 James Watt. 
 
 making, of an arithmetical machine, capable of performing 
 the processes of multiphcation and division; in 1791 he 
 produced an artificial alabaster, almost as hard and as tran- 
 sparent as marble ; between 1802-11 he was amusing himself 
 with constructing a likeness-lathe for copying sculptures, 
 &c., and some specimens of the work it achieved were 
 distributed among the mechanist's friends as " the produc- 
 tions of a young artist, just entering on his eighty-third 
 year," thus leading the way to the mechanico-glyptic 
 processes of Bute, Collas, Cheverton, &c. 
 
 In 1789 Watt bought a small estate, named Heathfield, 
 of about forty acres of poor land, with a house on it, in 
 Staffordshire, but in the neighbourhood of Soho and Bir- 
 mingham, by proximity to which it acquired value in his 
 eyes. In consequence of this property qualification he was 
 summoned, in 1803, to undertake the burdensome honour of 
 the shrievalty, but resisted, and was released from the duty 
 of serving. He also, in his later years, purchased property 
 in Brecon and Radnor, on the margin of the Ython and 
 " the sylvan Wye," pitching his home tent at the farmhouse 
 of Doldowlod ; and, as resident there, he was surhmoned to 
 act as sheriff of the latter county, but again successfully 
 resisted. In these two homes he collected round him the 
 famihar furniture and friends of every-day life ; in them he 
 spent his studious hours, his seasons of social intercourse, 
 his long, lapsing, delightful fits of novel reading ; in them 
 he pursued his inventive amusements, and his passion for 
 horticulture and the raising of fruit ; in them he was mildly 
 subject to " the assiduous legislation of Mrs Watt," by whose 
 kindly but imperative methodicality and decision he, with a 
 few occasional but short-lived and good-natured attempts at 
 
The Way to Dusty Death, 309 
 
 rebellion, especially in the matters of late hours and snuff, 
 suffered himself to be ruled and overruled. He slept long 
 and late, walked about modestly, amused himself simply, 
 lived frugally, read much, thought much, spoke gravely, but 
 with a spice of dry humour, was impressive in his manners, 
 attractive in conversation, and much given to salient anec- 
 dote and sly fun. 
 
 James Watt, who in boyhood was an almost constant 
 sufferer from pain, and whose days in manhood's prime 
 were seldom free from ailments, grew in his old age stronger 
 and healthier. For many years he enjoyed immunity from 
 sickness, but in the autum of 18 19 he became ill. Devoutly 
 recognising the unspairing messenger, he felt ready for the 
 solemnest event of existence — Death. On the 19th August 
 he expired at Heathfield, in calm, unsorrowing hope in God ; 
 and a thinker less was on the earth. He was interred in the 
 parish church of Hands worth, near the remains of ,his help- 
 fellow and friend, Matthew Boulton, and over his tomb a 
 memorial sculpture, from the chisel of Chantrey, preserves 
 for posterity the outward semblance of the utiliser of one 
 of the most gigantic energies of nature — a force so mighty, 
 that it already supplies a labour-power nearly equal to that 
 provided by the strength of 500,000,000 men, and so econo- 
 mical, that an equivalent force to that expended by a man 
 during a long day's work can be produced at a cost of less 
 than a farthing. From so much drudgery, then, does it exempt 
 man, or the animals which man would otherwise employ in 
 industries; so much food as would be required for the 
 agents of such immense labours it releases for other pur- 
 poses ; and it leaves to mankind and his living helpers the 
 vegetable products of the soil for their sustenance ; while it 
 
3IO James Watt, 
 
 moves its huge metal limbs, and gathers the nutriment of 
 the gigantic force which all but vitalises it, from the great 
 coal-fields of the earth ; besides, by its speed of movement 
 and its little cost, it cheapens commodities, and so increases 
 the entire sum of human comforts. 
 
 Yet all this has been the result of one thought flashed by 
 Providence into a fit recipient soul, and thereafter perse- 
 veringly outworked by a stmggling thinker, plodding slowly 
 on to the accomplishment of his great ends, and at last 
 succeeding in placing within man's grasp a power that may 
 be yoked to the cotton mill, the mine, the forge, the pottery, 
 the printing-press, the railway carriage, the mighty merchant- 
 man, in unresisting subservience. So great is thought — so 
 glorious the endowment placed within, and forming the 
 being of each individual of the race of man — so singularly 
 fertile in ingenuity is that unique Reason with which God 
 has blessed humanity, that inborn activity and motive-power 
 which has been bestowed upon us that we might " subdue" 
 nature. There is surely no argument for the glory of 
 humanity so potent as this of the might that resides in these 
 very minds of ours, and enables them to rule over the 
 energies, forces, and powers of earth, ocean, and air. But 
 if this be a demonstration of the incalculable worth and 
 preciousness of thought, and of the soul, in which thoughts 
 are begotten, how great is the condemnation it brings 
 against those who neglect the culture of the capacities by 
 which human life is so heightened and brightened, civilisa- 
 tion so aided, and man so much more released from the 
 anxieties connected with his sustenance and comfort. In 
 every point of view thought is power — a power always best 
 
Estimate of His Character. 311 
 
 used and applied in submission to its own and Nature's 
 laws. 
 
 Lord Francis Jeffrey, Watt's friend the Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer, -has so eloquently descanted on the hfe, labours, and 
 character of " the great improver of the steam-engine ; but in 
 truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in 
 its utility, ... its inventor^' in words so well and so 
 widely known, that we forbear to quote the exquisite phrases 
 of a eulogy as lofty in language as it is accurate in fact ; — 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the Introduction to the " Monastery," 
 has pictured him so well and so lovingly, as he saw him 
 once, in iSfy, on a visit to his native country; — Lord 
 Brougham, in a work to which we have already referred, 
 has noted the prominent characteristics of his public labours 
 and his private life so carefully and elaborately ; — Arago's 
 Eloge is so ornate and fascinating ; — Muirhead's " Life of 
 James Watt" is so full, though so dull, disjointed, and dis- 
 orderly ; — the speeches delivered by the most eminent men 
 of the time in civic, political, scientific, and artistic circles, 
 at the meeting held in London, June 1824, when a monu- 
 ment in Westminster Abbey was voted to the chief inventor 
 of the age ; and many other publications, — have so illus- 
 trated the various and varied phases of his intellectual life, 
 that we cannot compass here even an abridgment of their 
 numerous excellencies j nor do we feel that our space can 
 allow of a selection from these able materials, so widely 
 attainable. Almost every point has been touched with a 
 pencil of light in the monumental inscription written by 
 Lord Brougham for the statue in Westminster Abbey, 
 which is as follows : — 
 
312 James Watt, 
 
 Not to perpetuate a Name 
 
 Which must endure while the peaceful Arts flourish 
 
 But to show 
 
 That mankind have learned to honour those 
 
 Who best deserve their gratitude 
 
 ^ The King 
 
 His Ministers and many of the Nobles 
 
 And Commons of the Realm 
 
 Raised this Monument to 
 
 JAMES WATT 
 
 Who directing the force of an original genius 
 
 Early exercised in philosophic research 
 
 To the improvement of the 
 
 Steam-engine 
 
 Enlarged the resources of liis country 
 
 Increased the power of man 
 
 And rose to an eminent place 
 
 Among the most illustrious followers of Science 
 
 And the real banefactors of the world 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Ballantyne, Roberts^ <St^ Company, Printers, Edinburgh. 
 
POPULAR WORKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 "WILLIAM: p. nim:m:o, 
 
 EDINBURGH, 
 
 AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS, 
 
 Crown Svo, handsomely Tbound in cloth antique, price 3s. 6d., 
 
 HEAVEN OUR HOME. 
 
 "This volume proves in a manner as beautiful as it is convincing, the doctrine of 
 THE Recognition of Friends in Heaven. ... It demonstrates thk Interest which 
 THOSE in Heaven feel in Earth, and proves, with remarkable clearness, that such 
 an interest exists, not only with the Almighty, and among the angels, but also among 
 the spirits of departed friends." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "This work gives positive and social views of Heaven, as a counteraction to the 
 negative and unsocial aspects in which the subject is so commonly presented."— 
 English Churchvian. 
 
 SIXTY-SEVENTH THOUSAND. 
 
 Now ready, a CHEAP EDITION of 
 
 HEAVEN OUR HOME. 
 
 FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. Crown Svo, limp cloth, price Is. 6d. 
 
 -♦- 
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Crown Svo, handsomely bound in cloth antique, price 3s. 6d. each, 
 
 MEET FOE HEAVEN. 
 
 ""We are not in the least surprised at so many thousands of copies of this anony- 
 mous writer's books being bought up. We set-m to be listening to a voice .and language 
 ■which we never heard before. Matter comes at command; words flow with unstudied 
 ease; the pages are full of life, light, and force; and the result is a stirring volume, 
 which, while the Christian critic pronounces it free from affectation, even the man 
 of taste, averse to evangelical religion, would admit to be exempt from ' cant.' " — Lon- 
 don Patriot. 
 
 TWENTY-FIFTH THOUSAND. 
 
 LIFE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 "This Is certainly one of the most remarkable works which have been issued 
 from the press during the present generation, and we have no doubt it will prove as 
 acceptable to the public as the two attractive volumes to which it forms an appro- 
 priate and beautiful sequel."— C/.e/^ex/iaHi Journal. 
 
 SEVENTEENTH THOUSAND. 
 
POPULAR WORKS 
 
 "ACROSS THE RIVER" SERIES OF POPULAR BOOKS. 
 
 In 18mo, finely printed on toned paper, cloth antique, circuit and red edges, 
 price Is. 6d. each. 
 
 ACROSS THE RIVER: Twelve Views of Heaven. By 
 
 Norman Macleod, Henky Allon, James Hamilton, and Others. 
 
 "When we say that the writers of the views contained in this sensible and deeply 
 instructive little volume embraces the names of such men as Drs Norman Macleod, 
 Chalmers, Candlish, Hamilton, and Spence, Henry Allon, William Jay, &c., we be- 
 lieve we have said more in its belialf than all the encomiums we might use would ex- 
 press. Nevertheless, we cannot refrain from delivering our mind about it, to the 
 effect that a more charming httle work has rarely fallen under our notice, or one that 
 will more faithfully direct the steps to that better land it should be the aim of all to 
 seek."— Bells Messenger. 
 
 EMBLEMS OF JESUS: or, Illustrations of Emmanuel's 
 
 Character and Work. 
 
 LIFE THOUGHTS : Selected from the Writings of the Rev. 
 
 W. MORLEY PUNSHON. 
 
 COMFORT FOR THE DESPONDING; or, Words to Soothe 
 
 and Cheer Troubled Hearts. 
 
 " Whoever is the author or compiler of this precious little treasure, he merits, and 
 will receive, the thanks of thousands of troubled spirits and desponding hearts." — 
 Caledonian Mercury. 
 
 " We strongly recommend this work to all who are inclined to despond and take a 
 ploomy view of their circumstances. To all such characters it is worth far more than 
 its weight in gold." — Belfast Hews Letter. 
 
 THE CHASTENING OF LOVE ; or, Words of Consolation 
 
 to the Christian Mourner. By Joseph Parker, D.D., Manchester. 
 
 GLADDENING STREAMS ; or, The Waters of the Sanctu- 
 
 ary. A Book for Fragments of Time on Each Lord's Day of the Year. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD DIVINES. Two Series. 
 
 The object of this small volume is to give, for the first time, a selection of the most 
 eloquent and glowing passages of the old divines, (whose works are now a sealed book 
 to the general reader,) and to do this in such a way as at once to bring out the pecu- 
 liarities of each writer and preacher, and to form instructive and fruitful reading. 
 The Editor has taken every care to comprehend in the series the most celebrated of 
 these worthies, a biography of each of whom precedes the specimens. 
 
 THE CEDAR CHRISTIAN. By the Rev. Theodore L. 
 
 Cutler. 
 
 Foap. 8vo, cloth elegant, price 2s. 6d., 
 
 CHRISTIAN COMFORT. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "EMBLEMS OF JESUS." 
 
PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 
 NEW SERIES OF STANDARD RELIGIOUS WORKS. 
 
 Demy ISmo, cloth, antique, bevelled boards, red edges, Is. each, 
 
 BAXTER'S CALL TO THE UNCONVERTED. With Life 
 
 of the Author. 
 
 BOSTON'S CROOK IN THE LOT. With Life of the 
 
 Author. 
 
 HALL'S BREATHINGS OF THE DEVOUT SOUL, AND 
 
 MEDITATIONS AND VOWS. With Life of the Author. 
 
 BUNYAN'S GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF 
 
 SINNERS. 
 
 DYER'S FAMOUS TITLES OF CHRIST. With Life of 
 
 the Author. 
 
 BEECHER'S LIFE THOUGHTS. With Life of the Author. 
 
 Crown 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, price 3s. 6d., 
 
 THE MAN OF BUSINESS, CONSIDERED IN SIX ASPECTS. 
 
 A BOOK FOR YOUNG MEN. 
 
 By Rev. J. W. ALEXANDER, JOHN TODD, STEPHEN H. TYNG, 
 AND Others. 
 
 In post 8vo, price 6s. 6d., 
 
 THE FAMILY AND ITS DUTIES, 
 
 WITH OTHER 
 
 ESSAYS & DISCOURSES FOR SUNDAY READING. 
 
 By ROBERT LEE, D.D., 
 
 Minister of Greyfriars, 
 
 Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Edinburgh, 
 
 &c., &c. 
 
POPULAR WORKS 
 
 NEW PEESENTATION SERIES OP STANDAED WOEKS. 
 
 In small crown 8vo, printed on toned paper, bound in cloth extra, gilt edges, 
 bevelled boards, with Portrait engraved on Steel, price 3s. 6d. each, 
 
 WISDOM, WIT, AND ALLEGORY, 
 
 Papei-s from " The Spectator," with Portrait of Addison. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: A BIOGRAPHY, 
 
 With Portrait. 
 
 MUNGO PARK'S TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
 
 With Portrait of Park, and an Additional Chapter, detailing the Progress of African 
 Discovery down to the Present Time. 
 
 WALLACE, THE HERO OF SCOTLAND: A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 By JAMES PATERSON. With Portrait. New Edition. 
 
 Other Volumes in Preparation. 
 
 ^_ 
 
 Also, uniform with the above Works, in size, style, and price, 
 
 A NEW SEEIES OP POETICAL GIFT-BOOKS. 
 
 LIFE-LIGHTS OF SONG. 
 
 A SELECTION OP POETRY. 
 
 1. SONGS OF GOD AND NATURE, 
 a. SONGS OF LOVE AND BROTHERHOOD. 
 3. SONGS OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 
 Edited by DAVID PAGE, F.G.S., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "iNTRODUCTOKy TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY," ETC. 
 
 Each Volume is sold separately/, and is in arrangement and appearance quite 
 comj^lite in itself. 
 
 *»* These elegant and useful Series of Books, while specially adapted for School Prizes, 
 also form admirable volumes for general presentation. 
 
 In square imperial 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges, price 6s., 
 
 THE NATIONAL MELODIST. 
 
 WITH SYMPHONIES AND ACCOMPANIMENTS FOR THE PIANOFORTE. 
 
 Edited by J. C. KIESER. 
 
 This- is a very excellent Collection of First-class Music, .as the name of the Editor 
 •will sufficiently testify, and it forms a handsome and suitable presentation volume. 
 
PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 
 POPULAR EDITION OF THE POETS. 
 
 In foolscap 8vo, printed on toned paper, elegantly bound in cloth extra, gilt, gilt 
 edges, price 3s. 6d. each ; or in morocco antique, price 6s. 6d. eacli. 
 
 Each Volume contains a fine Portrait of the Author, engraved on Steel, together with Six 
 full-page 'iLlmtrations on Wood, and a Vignette Tdle-Page. 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 Complete, including "Tales of a Wayside Inn." 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 LORD BYRON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 THOMAS MOORE'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 JOHN MILTON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S COMPLETE WORKS. 
 
 With Two fine Portraits on Steel and Vignette Title-pages. 2 vols. 
 
 JAMES THOMSON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 JAMES BEATTIE'S AND OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S 
 POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 Complete in One Volume. 
 
 THE CASQUET OP GEMS. 
 
 A CHOICE SELECTION FROM THE BRITISH POETS. 
 UNIFORM WITH THE POPULAR EDITION OF THE POETS, 
 
 BTJNYAN'S 
 
 PILaEIM'S PROGEESS AND HOLY WAE. 
 
 Complete in One Volume, with Portrait on Steel, Six Ml-page Illustrations on Wood, 
 and Vignette Title-page. 
 
POPULAR WORKS 
 
 RED-LINE" EDITION OF THE POETS, 
 
 In crown 8vo, printed on fine paper, with border lines in red, 
 
 bound in cloth, extra, gilt, gilt edges, price Gs. each ; or in morocco extra, 
 
 or antique, 12s. each. 
 
 HENEY W. LONGFELLOW'S POETICAL WOEKS. 
 
 Complete, including "Tales of a "Wayside Inn," with fine Portrait on Steel, and Nine 
 full-page Illustrations and Vignette Title-page. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 With fine Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 LORD BYRON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 With fine Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 THOMAS MOOEE'S POETICAL WOEKS. 
 
 With fine Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 WILLIAM WOEDSWOETH'S POETICAL WOEKS. 
 
 With fine Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 WILLIAM COWPEE'S POETICAL WOEKS. 
 
 With fiue Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 JOHN MILTON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 With fiue Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEAEE'S COMPLETE WOEKS. 
 
 With fine Portraits on Steel and Vignette Title-pages. 2 vols. 
 
 JAMES THOMSON'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 With fine Portrait on Steel, and Eight full-page Illustrations and 
 Vignette Title-page. 
 
PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 
 NEW SERIES OF POPULAR SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 
 
 In foolscap 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth limp, price Is. 6d. each, 
 
 HANDY OUTLINES of USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 A NEW SERIES OF POPULAR ELEMENTARY SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 
 
 Edited by DAYID PAGE, F.G.S., 
 
 Author of "Text-Book of Geology," "Elements of Physical Geography," &c. 
 
 The object of these " Outlines " is to afford in the briefest possible spuce an instruc- 
 tive and attractive epitome of the subjects to which they refer. It is intended that 
 the Series will embrace a wide range in Natural Science, Geography, History, and 
 General Literature. Each volume of the Series will be prepared on a uniform plan, 
 and, in all cases where the subject requires it, illustrations and maps wiU be freely 
 used. 
 
 Designed primarily for self-instruction, they will also be admirably adapted for 
 Class-Books. The "Handy Outlines" will be well printed in a bold clear type, on 
 superior paper, and, as the title implies, in a compact and handy form. The first 
 volume is now ready, and the succeeding will appear at short intervals. 
 
 I. THE EARTH'S CRUST : A Handy Outline of Geology. 
 
 II. THE EARTH'S SURFACE : A Handy Outline of Physi- 
 
 cal Geography. 
 
 III. THE EARTH'S WATERS : A Handy Outline of Hydro- 
 graphy. 
 
 IV. THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE : A Handy Outline of 
 
 Meteorology. 
 
 V. THE EARTH'S LIFE : A Handy Outline of Physiology. 
 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 In demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, with Steel Portrait, price 5s., 
 
 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
 
 OP 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 FROM THE TEXT OF JOHNSON, STEEVENS, AND REED. 
 
 With Biographical Sketch by Mary Cowden Clarke. 
 
 %* This Edition is printed from a beautiful new type cast for the purpose, and in 
 the CHEAPEST and best People's Edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare 
 ever published. 
 
POPULAR T70EKS PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 
 Uniform with Lord Macaulay's " ENGLAND." 
 
 ♦ 
 
 A KEW AND POPULAR EDITIOIT OP 
 
 THE HISTOEY OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER III. TO THE UNION. 
 
 By PATPJCK FRASER TYTLER, F.R.S.E. & FA.S. 
 
 The former Editions of this preat National "Work having been produced under cir- 
 cumstances which limited its circulation to the wealthy few, the present Publisher is 
 glad to state that he is now in a position to issue it at a price which will place it within 
 the reach of alL 
 
 From the " Times." 
 
 "The want of a complete History of Scotland has been long felt ; and from the speci- 
 men which the volume before us gives of the author's talents and capacity for the task 
 he has undertaken, it maj' be reasonably infen-ed that the deficiency will be very ably 
 suppUed. The descriptions of the battles are concise, but full of spirit Tiie events are 
 themselves of the most romautic kind, and are detailed in a very picturesque and 
 forcible style." 
 
 From the "Quarterly Review." 
 
 "The most brilliant age of Scotland is fortunate in having found a historian whose 
 sound judgment is accompanied by a graceful liveliness of imagination. We venture 
 to predict that this book will soon become, and long remain, the standai-d History of 
 Scotland." 
 
 The New Edition of Mr Tytler's "History of Scotland" will be issued in a style 
 uniform witli the People's Edition of Lord Macaulaj-'s " History of England," and Sir 
 Archibald Alison's " History of Europe." It will be carefully printed on superior 
 paper, .and will be completed in Sixteen Monthly Parts, crown 8vo, — forming Four 
 handsome Volumes. 
 
 Four Volumes handsomely bound in cloth, price 4s. 6d. each. 
 Sixteen Parts, price Is. each. 
 
 WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDEES. 
 
 Edited by ALEXANDER LEIGHTOIf. 
 
 Iri announcing h ONE SHILLING EDITION of the BORDER TALES, the Pub- 
 lisher does not consider it necessary to say anything in recommendation of a work 
 which has s'-ood the test of a general competition, and which has increased in public 
 favour with its years. Equally suited to all classes of readers, it has been received 
 with delight in the' School-room, the Drawing-room, the Parlour, and the Village 
 Reading-room. Many of the Tales have been publicly read. The high tone of its 
 morality renders it an admirable small Library for young members of tlie family. 
 
 Each volume.will contain 28s pages, and the whole will be completed in twenty 
 volumes, to be published monthly. 
 
 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM P. NIMMO.