Characters From the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century

Part Iii, Vol. Ii, P. 290: 'the King's Forces, by the Directions of

Dr. Chillingworth, had provided certain Engines, after the manner of the Roman Testudines cum Pluteis, wherewith they intended to Assault the City between the South and West Gates; They ran upon Cart-Wheels, with a Blind of Planks Musquet-proof, and holes for four Musqueteers to play out of, placed upon the Axle-tree to defend the Musqueteers and those that thrust it forwards, and carrying a Bridge before it; the Wheels were to fall into the Ditch, and the end of the Bridge to rest upon the Towns Breastworks, so making several compleat Bridges to enter the City. To prevent which, the Besieged intended to have made another Ditch out of their Works, so that the Wheels falling therein, the Bridge would have fallen too short of their Breastworks into their wet Mote, and so frustrated that Design.'

ll. 26 ff. Hopton took Arundel Castle on December 9, 1643, and was forced to surrender on January 6 (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 330-5). Aubrey says that Chillingworth 'dyed of the morbus castrensis after the taking of Arundel castle by the parliament: wherin he was very much blamed by the king's soldiers for his advice in military affaires there, and they curst that little priest and imputed the losse of the castle to his advice'. (Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 172). The chief actor in the final persecution was Francis Cheynell (1608-65), afterwards intruded President of St. John's College and Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford; see his Chillingworthi Novissima. Or, the Sicknesse, Heresy, Death, and Buriall of William Chillingworth (In his own phrase) Clerk of Oxford, and in the conceit of his fellow Souldiers, the Queens Arch-Engineer, and Grand-Intelligencer, 1644.

53.

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 55; Life, ed. 1759, pp. 24, 25.

Weakness of character disguised by ready wit, pleasant discourse, and charm of manner is Clarendon's judgement on Waller. They had been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them. To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent. 'His company was acceptable, where his spirit was odious.' The censure was the more severe because of the part which Waller had just played at Clarendon's fall. The portrait may be overdrawn; but there is ample evidence from other sources to confirm its essential truth.

Burnet says that 'Waller was the delight of the House: And even at eighty he said the liveliest things of any among them: He was only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded. But he never laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, tho' a witty, man' (History of His Own Time, ed. 1724, vol. i, p. 388). He is described by Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, pp. 276-7.

Clarendon's character was included by Johnson in his Life of Waller, with a few comments. Page 179, l. 1. a very rich wife, Anne, only daughter of John Bankes, mercer; married 1631, died 1634. 'The fortune which Waller inherited from his father, which must have been largely increased during his long minority, has been variously estimated at from £2,000 to £3,500 a year; adding to this the amount which he received with Miss Bankes, said to have been about £8,000, and allowing for the difference in the value of the money, it appears probable that, with the exception of Rogers, the history of English literature can show no richer poet' (Poems of Waller, ed. Thorn Drury, vol. i, p. xx).

l. 4. M'r Crofts, William Crofts (1611-77), created Baron Crofts of Saxham in 1658 at Brussels. He was captain of Queen Henrietta Maria's Guards.

l. 6. D'r Marly. See p. 92, l. 21, note.

ll. 10-14. Waller's poems were first published in 1645, when Waller was abroad. But they had been known in manuscript. They appear to have first come to the notice of Clarendon when Waller was introduced to the brilliant society of which Falkland was the centre. If the introduction took place, as is probable, about 1635, this is the explanation of Clarendon's 'neere thirty yeeres of age'. But some of his poems must have been written much earlier. What is presumably his earliest piece, on the escape of Prince Charles from shipwreck at Santander on his return from Spain in 1623, was probably written shortly after the event it describes, though like other of his early pieces it shows, as Johnson pointed out, traces of revision.

l. 21. nurced in Parliaments. He entered Parliament in 1621, at the age of sixteen, as member for Amersham. See Poems, ed. Drury, vol. i. p. xvii.

Page 180, l. 5. The great instance of his wit is his reply to Charles II, when asked why his Congratulation 'To the King, upon his Majesty's happy Return' was inferior to his Panegyric 'Upon the Death of the Lord Protector'--'Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth' (quoted from Menagiana in Fenton's 'Observations on Waller's Poems', and given by Johnson). See Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 271.

54.

Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State, In Mr. Hobbes's Book, Entitled Leviathan. By Edward Earl of Clarendon. Oxford, 1676. (pp. 2-3.)

It is a misfortune that Clarendon did not write a character of Hobbes, and, more than this, that there is no character of Hobbes by any one which corresponds in kind to the other characters in this collection. But in answering the Leviathan, Clarendon thought it well to state by way of introduction that he was on friendly terms with the author, and the passage here quoted from his account of their relations is in effect a character. He condemned Hobbes's political theories; 'Yet I do hope', he says, 'nothing hath fallen from my Pen, which implies the least undervaluing of Mr. Hobbes his Person, or his Parts.'

Page 181, l. 21. ha's, a common spelling at this time and earlier, on the false assumption that has was a contraction of haves.

55.

Bodleian Library, MS. Aubrey 9, foll. 34-7, 41, 42, 46-7.

The text of these notes on Hobbes is taken direct from Aubrey's manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library. The complete life is printed in Brief Lives by John Aubrey, edited by Andrew Clark, 1898, vol. i, pp. 321-403.

Aubrey collected most of his biographical notes, to which he gave the title '[Greek: Schediasmata.] Brief Lives', in order to help Anthony à Wood in the compilation of his Athenæ Oxonienses. 'I have, according to your desire', he wrote to Wood in 1680, 'putt in writing these minutes of lives tumultuarily, as they occur'd to my thoughts or as occasionally I had information of them.... 'Tis a taske that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me.' Independently of Wood, Aubrey had collected material for a life of Hobbes, in accordance with a promise he had made to Hobbes himself. All his manuscript notes were submitted to Wood, who made good use of them. On their return Aubrey deposited them in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the library of which is now merged in the Bodleian.

The notes were written 'tumultuarily', jotted down hastily, and as hastily added to, altered, and transposed. They are a first draft for the fair copy which was never made. The difficulty of giving a true representation of them in print is increased by Aubrey's habit of inserting above the line alternatives to words or phrases without deleting the original words or even indicating his preference. In the present text the later form has, as a rule, been adopted, the other being given in a footnote.

'The Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesburie' is by far the longest of Aubrey's 'Brief Lives', but it does not differ from the others in manner. The passages selected may be regarded as notes for a character.

Page 183, ll. 1 ff. Aubrey is a little more precise in his notes on Bacon. 'Mr. Thomas Hobbes told me ... that he was employed in translating part of the Essayes, viz. three of them, one whereof was that of the Greatnesse of Cities, the other two I have now forgott' (ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 83). On the evidence of style, Aldis Wright thought that the other two essays translated by Hobbes were 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation' and 'Of Innovation': see the preface to his edition of Bacon's Essays, 1862, pp. xix, xx. The translation appeared in 1638 under the title Sermones fideles, sive interiora rerum.

l. 4. Gorhambury was Bacon's residence in Hertfordshire, near St. Alban's, inherited from his father. Aubrey described it in a long digression 'for the sake of the lovers of antiquity', ed. Clark, vol. i, pp. 79-84, and p. 19.

Continue reading Characters From the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century free in the Wunder reader →