BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.*

LOVERS of English literature will thank Mr. Nimmo for this fine reprint in one volume of two celebrated books. Yet these books are more celebrated than read, and owe at present most of their fame to Charles Lamb's eulogies. That excellent critic thought so highly of the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, that he holds "no casket to be rich enough and no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel." And he never mentions without praise its authoress, "that princely woman, thrice noble Margaret of Newcastle." A perusal of the "Life" so landed, and of the princely woman's " True Relation of her Birth, Breeding, and Life," may lead one to doubt the justice of Lamb's admiration, but not its sincerity. He was just the • The life of William Cormdish, Duke of Newcastle ; to which is edited, The True seat', f ray Birth, Breeding, and Life. by Marone, Duchess of Newcastle. Edited by C. H. Frith, M.A. London: John C. Nimmo. 1886.

man to care little or nothing for the fact that as a contd.

bution to military history this " Life " is all but worthless. The occasional incidents and anecdotes which Mr. Frith quite justly depreciates, gave Lamb his desire, and "sent not lean- ness withal into his soul." And he would have relished Mr. Frith's extract from the Clarendon State Papers which records, amongst other interesting details, how Newcastle, at Marston Moor, was charged by Cromwell before he could take the pipe of tobacco which he had called for. Lamb, too, was amused no doubt, and not in the least offended, by the curious note in which the Duchess parallels her husband with Caesar for courage, prudence, good-nature, and wit, and claims for him that "in some par- ticulars he did more than Omar ever did." Was Pepys thinking of this note, inter alia, when he vilipended "the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife ; which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him ?" If he was, the shamefully rude old diarist may not have been quite so much biassed as Mr. Frith thinks he was by his personal recollections of the authoress. But Mr. Frith is, of course, well within the mark when he contends that Lamb's "larger sympathy and keener insight enabled him to perceive in the style and in the writer those finer qualities which the more conventional judgment of Pepys had refused to recognise." We must add, too, that when a man like Evelyn "was much pleased with the habit, garb, and discourse of the Duchess," it matters little that her dress should seem " so antick and her deportment so ordinary " to a man like Pepys. This, however, is a point that is too trifling for consideration. All that interests us now in connection with the Duchess of Newcastle, is the quality of her literary powers. For her hero has become quite dim to us; and we remember better Clarendon's bitter remark that my Lord of Newcastle was no more fit to be a General than a Bishop, than we do his brilliant character- sketch of the horse-loving Marquis. The character-sketch is, indeed, one of those portraits which no biographer can leave- unquoted ; and it properly finds a place in Mr. Frith's preface.

Yet we value still more highly Mr. Frith's own appreciation of the book which he has edited in a way that needs no praise. " Its special interest," he says, " lies in the picture of the exiled

Royalist cheerfully sacrificing everything for the King's causrr

struggling with his debts, talking over his creditors, never losing confidence in the ultimate triumph of the right, and on his return setting to work uncomplainingly to restore his rained estate. It lies in the portrait drawn of a great English nobleman of the seventeenth century, his manners and his habits, his occupations and amusements, his maxims and opinions." These are recorded, he goes on to say, "with the loving fidelity of a Boswell ;" and although the comparison does not strike us as particularly happy, Mr. Frith hits the right nail on the head when he insists upon the fact that for the description of her husband's daily life the Duchess depended on her own recollections, while for that part of her book which treats of his warlike exploits, she relied on information received from his secretary, John Rolleston. And Master Rolleston, it seems, was either too unobservant or too reticent to make the best use of the opportunities afforded to him by his position. Yet if he had used them to the uttermost, it may be doubted whether any more instructive lesson could have been drawn from his revelations than the altogether harmless one which Mr.

Frith draws hypothetically thus Had Newcastle been a more capable General, the Northern army might have forestalled the New-Model." There is a sawdusty flavour about this remark ; and, Booth to say, there is a sawdusty flavour about the whole of the first book of the "Life." But we can recom- mend it cheerfully to readers well provided with good-nature and leisure ; and the Duchess's own preface is amusing and characteristic to the last degree. The third book, from the eighth section to the fifteenth inclusive, is excellent reading, and as a sample of the aathoress's matter and manner, we shall quote this account of the Duke's diet

In his diet be is so sparing and temperate, that be never eats or drinks beyond his set proportion, so as to satisfy only his natural appetite. He makes but one meal a day, at which he drinks two glasses of small-beer, one about the beginning, the other about the end thereof, and a little glass of sack in the middle of his dinner ; which glass of sack he also uses in the morning for his breakfast with a morsel of bread. His supper consists of an egg, and a draught of small-beer. And by this temperance be finds himself very health- ful, and may yet live many years, he being now at the age of seventy- three, which I pray God from my soul to grant him."

And here we must leave "the thrice noble, high and puissant Prince, William Cavendish, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of New-

castle," for those who choose to make his better acquaintance. He was called upon to play a part in life which for its true performance demanded a brain and will of sterner stuff than his were made of; but his grandeur, generosity, and loyalty, his steady and forward courage, and that tincture of a romantic spirit which Sir Philip Warwick deplores, make his character far more worth studying than his actions, which, pace the Duchess, were inconsideraMe, or than his writings, which, pace Mr. Frith, are insupportable.

A few words about " the thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent Princess," his wife, are all that we find room for Her autobiography is open enough to criticism in all con- science ; but we are unwilling to believe that Lamb's "incom- parable Princess" either is or will be to most readers, "merely the fantastic figure which flits for a moment across the pages of Pepys." If the comparison were not for obvious reasons unfair, we might, indeed, admit that plebeian Manon Phlipon out- shines patrician Margaret Lucas by many lustres. But we prefer to regard the latter by herself alone, and to make no attempt to fix her place in the hierarchy of celebrated women. And within the limits at our disposal, we can hit upon no handier way of procedure than by guessing at those touches in the life of the Duchess which may have drawn from the great

humonrist those words of praise which, humanly speaking, have immortalised her. Lamb, then—but the reader will remember that we are going entirely by guess-work—may have been charmed into an acquiescent mood by the opening sentences of the epistle prefixed to A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life, by Margaret, _Duchess of Newcastle. The carious

complacence with which the writer accepts the criticism that her wit might be stronger than her brain, but not, as she in- dignantly hints, than her reason, marks, if we are not mistaken, that twilight of the mind which had such charms for him. And in any case, if our fancy has misled us, there can be little doubt that her emphatic assertion that her brain was stronger than her wit, and her reason as strong as the effeminate sex requires, would have mightily " arrided " him. Her views on

memory, too, would have done the same, and we must quote here a little in e.utenso :— " I do believe Homer, as great and excellent poet as he was, could not repeat his poems by heart, nor Virgil, nor Ovid, nor any other ; nor Euclid repeat his demonstrations, numerations, and the like, with- out book, nor Aristotle, who I have heard was a great philosopher, the explanation of his opinions by heart ; for I have heard that his memory failed him in the writing, for that he bath sometimes con- tradicted himself ; and my Lord, who bath written hundreds of verses, songs, and themes, could not repeat three by heart."

The reason that is as strong as the effeminate sex requires, would clearly, like Falstaff, give us no reasons if reasons were plentiful as blackberries. Are we wrong in supposing that Lamb, with his shuddering objection to acquiring knowledge by

some awkward process of intuition in another life, would have lent a pleased but not quite serious ear to prattle like the

above? Are we wrong, too, in supposing that he was pleased with the notion of the authoress "only walking a slow pace in my chamber, whilst lily thoughts run apace in my brain, so that

the motions of my mind hinder the active exercises of my body ;" or that he was ready to accept with gravity his favourite's plea that when writing on philosophical subjects, she had some few places translated to her out of Descartes, he " being Latin, and that she began to write so early that she had not lived so long as to be able to read many authors ?" Naturally, the philoso- phical writings of such a writer were entirely valueless, nor would Lamb have conned a page of them ; but he would probably have contended that "philosophical opinions," as the Duchess under- stood the term, were worthless in any case, and none the more so for being the children of ignorance instead of erudition. It is likely, too, that he may have exulted in the following im- passioned expansion of Homer's,

" deb, dporreimir real imeipoxor elefeercet Wear "- " For though I wish none worse than they are, yet it is lawful for me to wish myself the best, and to do my honest endeavour therenuto. For I think it is no crime to wish myself the exactest of Nature's works, my thread of life the longest, my chain of destiny the strongest, my mind the peaceablest, my life the pleasantest, my death the easiest, and the greatest saint in heaven."

There is a note here of something other than that "vanity which is so natural to our sex, that it would be unnatural not to be so ;" and although Mr. Frith calls it merely " superfeminine," it sounded, we may take it, more sweetly to Lamb's finer ear. Lamb would, we imagine, be delighted rather than annoyed by the end which comes, soon after these soaring thoughts, as a kind of anti-climax :—" Neither did I intend this piece for to delight, but to divulge ; not to please the fancy, but to tell the truth, lest after-ages should mistake in not knowing I was daughter of one Master Lucas, of St. John's, near Col- chester, in Essex, second wife to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle; for my Lord having had two wives, I might easily have been mistaken, especially if I should die and my Lord marry again." This was written in 1636, eleven years before the Life" of " my Lord" was published, and twenty years before his death, which occurred three years after her own in 1676. Opinions have varied, and will continue to vary, about the literary value of the book before us ; but after all it is a book that every one who has the time to spare would do well to read, and a book which (in its present form) every one who has the money to spare would do well to buy.