BOOKS.

MR. FROUDE ON QUEEN ELIZABETH.*

lime commencing the reign of Queen Elizabeth Mr. Froude has entered upon the most important as well as the most interesting portion of his work, and appears to be aware that upon its success depends his future reputation as an historian. He approaches it therefore, with care and deliberation. He has devoted greater pains than usual to its composition, and has studied with more than ordinary circumspection the sources out of which he has constructed his narrative. It is scarcely necessary to remark that he has consulted the works of his predecessors in the same field, from Camden down to Miss Strickland. The groat collections of contemporary letters and State papers in the British Museum and the Rolls House have been examined by him, and his pages are copiously interspersed with .quotations derived from these authorities. The treasures of Hatfield Hous; where are preserved the private papers of the great Cecil, have been submitted to his inspection, and from these he has derived results which he characterizes as being of" inestimable value."

These sources, however, did not satisfy the inquiries which Mr. Fronde thought it necessary to institute. Like every careful student of history, he is aware that there are two sides to every question, and that were he to limit himself to the English view of the reign, he would at best have gained only such an interpreta- tion of it as it has received from one class of exponents, while the opinions of others, perhaps better informed, would have escaped him. It is duo to Mr. Froude to state that he has taken consi- derable pains to learn not only the truth, but the whole truth. It is chiefly from the correspondence of the Count do Feria, the Bishop of Aquila, and their successors, that lie has derived the greater portion of his new materials, and these constitute the chief attraction of the present volumes. The agents of Philip II. during their residence at the English Court regularly transmitted to their master detailed reports of the proceedings of Elizabeth, • History of England from the Fall of Woleey to the Death of Elizabeth. By .1. A. Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Reign of Elizabeth, Yoh. I and II. London: Liongnpun. 1869.

her Council, and her Court. Many considerations induce us to assign to these despatches an exceptional degree of importance. Throughout the greater part of the Queen's reign it was to Philip that the English Catholics looked for advice, support, and money ; and it was the chief duty of his ambassadors to keep the party together and to communicate to them the wishes of the Court of Spain. Hence Mr. Fronde argues, and we think with reason, that the Spanish Ambassador must have possessed sources of information infinitely superior to those usually enjoyed by the representatives of foreign States; and he affirms that in no instance where their statements can be tested by independent criticism has he found them to have been seriously mistaken. For the purpose of examining those documents the author paid a visit to Simancas (eight miles distant from Valladolid), where they are deposited, and there—thanks to the enlightened liberality of the Spanish Government—lie had unrestricted access to every document in the entire collection.

So much, then, for Mr. Froude's documentary evidence, which, as we perceive, is superior in extent and importance to that which. has been enjoyed by every previous inquirer. Let us now examine the mode in which he has dealt with these materials.

The narrative which he has constructed presents all the merits and all the defects of his peculiar mode of dealing with history. The diction is clear, precise, and accurate ; written with care, with taste, and with vigour, it engages the attention of the reader at the outset and secures it to the end. Its simplicity, however, is not spontaneous; it is the result of a painful elaboration. Epithets have been studiously weighed, and clauses carefully balanced. Much of the charm of the work arises from the story being told iu the words of the original actors in this great drama ; we hear them speak as they spoke three centuries ago, and they toll their tale in language which has the ring of the golden age of our literature. Further, we read the inner thoughts of the Ministers of England and Spain, France and Scotland, as they are recorded by themselves ; their hopes and fears, their plotting and counterplotting, their bold assertions and unscrupulous denials, here stand out in their unvarnished simplicity. Mr. Froude has, for the most part, woven these extracts skilfully into his narrative ; but he sometimes over- charges it, and by so doing mars the effect which he otherwise might have produced had he employed them more sparingly.

On the other hand, the defects in the treatment of the subject are grave and radical. They are not accidental errors, which lie conspicuously upon the surface, but they pervade the whole fabric and texture of the work. They are interwoven with its plan and developed at each step of its progress. There is the absence of that which constitutes the essence of all true histori- cal investigation—a calm and conscientious development of truth from the midst of error, the balancing of conflicting testi- monies, together with the resolve to follow truth to which side soever it may ultimately lead. Mr. Froude is too passionate a writer to be a trustworthy guide through the mazes of history. He speaks as an advocate might do, powerfully, wo admit, and cleverly ; but advocat-s try to Make the brst case they can for their client, and they think it no harm to throw a little glamour before the eyes of the jury. Ho attempts to disguise it, but his partiality is conspicuous throughout. Air. Fronde has always one character to exalt and another to depreciate, and the ideal excel- lencies of the one are heightened by being brought into sharp contrast with the fancied short6omings of the other. In the former volumes of this work we have seen Henry lauded and Fisher and More maligned. Pole has been invaluable ; through six volumes he has been the mark for the bitterest invective, and at the beginning of the seventh he is sent to Tartarus with a parting malediction. His place, however, is speedily filled up by Mary Stuart, who, we foresee, is to he the foil to Elizabeth throughout the remainder of the narrative.

We must, however, do Mr. Fronde the justice to poiut out that neither does this undue praise nor this undeserved censure spring from his political or religious prejudices, both of which are made subservient to other considerations. The pailizanship upon which we have thought it necessary to comment is simply- the natural requirement dins mode of dealing with history. The ob- ject of history, as understood by our author, is not so much to elicit truth as it is to produce effect. For this end all else is sacrificed. His narrative is an unhesitating concession to the demands of the sensational school of readers ; and it bears the same relation to history, in the true sense of the word, as "The Woman in White " and " Lady Audley's Secret" bear to romantic narrative as represented by Sir Walter Scott.

The first volume opens with a sketch of the state of parties and the general condition of England upon the accession of Elizabeth, and then introduces us to the young Queen herself. She was the type of the national sentiment; she could not stand still, yet she could not advance in any direction without giving offence to some party which was strong at home, and looked abroad for en- couragement and material support. Her own creed, as publicly profeesed, was a confused Protestantism, which evaded doctrinal

difficulties and confined itself chiefly to anathemas of Rome; but in her heart there was a strewg leaning to her father's faith, which, if she had: been unfettered by political considerations, would have become the national religion. But her name had long been identified with the anti-papal party, and upon her accession to the throne she gave them to understand that they should certainly be protected, and possibly might be established. The correspondence of the English clergy at this time shows the agonies of uncertainty and terror into which they were thrown by the Queen's indecision. Six months after her accession she still heard Mass in her own private chapel, and long after that form of worship had been superseded by the English ritual, a crucifix and lighted candles stood upon the altar, to the dismay of Parker and Jewel. She outraged without hesitation the feelings of the Protestant party. On Corpus Christi Day, in the first year of her reign, she attended, divine service in her chapel ; but she placed herself within the sanctuary, close to the altar, and made the French noblemen sit by her side, much to the scandal of the Catholics. De Quadra proceeds :—" Some English prayers and psalms, and I know not what, were read, after which were to have followed some chapters; but, as the chaplains began one chapter after another, the Queen cried out, ' Not. that, I know that already ; read something else.' When called upon by De Feria to explain the doctrines which her people were to believe, she first told him that the Confession of Augsburg would be received, and when he expressed his surprise, she added that it would not be precisely that Confession; it would be some- thing like it, and yet different ; "in fact," she said, " she believed almost as the Catholics believed, for she held that God was really present in the Sacrament."

Of the Protestants of the Elizabethan age, Mr. Froude enter- tains no exalted opinion, and he does not hesitate to express it openly and manfully. They were returned refugees—men who had prudently kept out of the way while their opinions were dangerous to themselves, but who had re-appeared when it was safe, and might be advantageous. The Aylmers, the Jewels, the Grindals, were not of the metal which makes martyrs ; they had conviction enough—though Jewel, at least, had saved his life by apostacy—to be quite willing to persecute their adversaries. In harmony with these sentiments is the author's conception of the validity of English orders, as conveyed through Parker and his successors; it is a thing merely of this world, a convenient politi- cal arrangement. "The Anglican hierarchy" (we must here quote the author's own words), " far unlike its Catholic rival, was a child of convulsion and compromise ; it drew its life from Elizabeth's throne, and, had Elizabeth fallen, it would have crumbled into sand. The Church of England was as a blab lopped off from the Catholic trunk ; it was cut away from the stream by which its vascular system had been fed, and the life of it as an independent and corporate existence was gone for ever. But it bad been taken up and grafted upon the State. If not what it had been, it could retain the form, of what it had been—the form which made it respectable, without the power which made it dan- gerous. The Queen dressed up her bishops as counterfeits of the Catholic hierarchy, and, half in reverence, half in contempt, she compelled them to assume the name and character of a priest- hood which both she and they in their heart of hearts knew to be on illusion and a dream. The image, in its outward aspect, could be made to correspond with the parent tree; and to sustain the illusion, it was necessary to provide bishops who could appear to have inherited their pawns by the approved method—.ms suc- cessors of the Apostles."

Mr. Fronde has entered with considerable minuteness into the Queen's flirtations with Lord Robert Dudley, and the suspicious circumstances by which they were attended. The story of Cumnor, and of the death of the Countess there, is well known.; but it now receives a strange illustration from a letter written, by De Quadra to.the Duchess of Parma, who (it will be remembered) was the head of time Spanish Government at Brussels. On the 3rd of September the Queen had declared her intention to marry the Archduke Charles of Austria ; on the 11th of the same month she informed De Quadra that she had changed her mind, and did not intend to marry. After his conversation with the Queen, and while he was yet speculating upon her irresolution and caprice, he met Cecil, whom lie knew to be in disgrace, and whom Dudley was endeavouring to deprive of his office as the Queen's confidential adviser. Cecil explained the secret of her changed determination ; ruin was impending over her by her intimacy with Lord Robert, " who had made himself master of the business of the State and of the person of the Queen," to the extreme injury of the realm, with the intention of marrying ber. They were thinking of destroying Lord Robert's wife. They had given out that she was ill, but she was not ill at all. She was perfectly well, and was taking care not to be poisoned. On the day after this conversation the Queen, on her return from hunting, told the Bishop that Lord Robert's wife was dead, or nearly so, and begged bim to say nothing about it. "Assuredly," he continues, "it is a matter full of shame and infamy.-Since this was written the death of Lord Robert's wife has been given out publicly. The Queen said in Italian, ‘Que si ha rotto it collo.' It seems that she fell down a staircase."

There was an inquiry, and it was given out that the matter should be carefully investigated. Dudley affected no sorrow for his wife's death, but he expressed the utmost alarm for " the talk which the wicked world would use." He was probably innocent of a direct participation in the crime, but the unhappy lady was sacrificed to his ambition. She was murdered by persons who hoped to profit by his elevation to the throne ; and Dudley him- self, aware that if the murder could be proved public feeling would forbid his marriage with the Queen, used private means to prevent further investigation.

This happened in September. Towards the end of the follow- ing January Sir Henry Sidney, who had married Lord Robert's sister, came to De Quadra; and informed him that the Queen and Dudley were lovers, and that they intended honest marriage. They were determined, be said, to restore the Catholic religion, and were anxious that the Bishop should obtain the concurrence, and, if necessary, the help of Philip towards their plans, without which Elizabeth did not dare to take the step. Cecil, however, discovered the intrigue, affected to acquiesce in it, worked him- self into its management, and contrived to thwart it. Still, she continued to play with her passion. On June 24, a party was given by Dudley to the Queen, at which the Bishop was present. In the afternoon these three persons were in a barge, watching the games on the river. She and Lord Robert began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said that, as the Bishop was on the spot, there was no reason why theyshould not he married. The Bishop replied, with gravity, that if they would be guided by him they would shake off the tyranny of their oppressors, they would restore religion and good order, and then they could many when they pleased. He does not tell us how the conference ended ; but it is obvious, from subse- quent parts of his correspondence, that he still had hope of her return to the faith of the Catholic Church.

The affairs of Scotland occupy a prominent place in these volumes, and herein the history of Mary Stuart naturally attracts our chief attention. Mr. Fronde regards her with un- disguised aversion, and represents her character as utterly worth- less and abandoned. Her intimacy with Rizzio was unmistakeably criminal. At all times of the day he was found with her in her private apartments. She kept late hours, and be often remained with her till midnight. Her aversion to Darnley grew daily more intense. " The Queen repenteth her of her marriage," wrote one of Elizabeth's agents in Scotland," and she bateth the King and all his kin." Rizzio's murder was deliberately planned and executed by Darnley, and as deliberately planned and executed was the murder of Darnley by Maly. Poison was first tried, but it failed to do its work ; and ere long the coarser but more effectual agency of gunpowder freed the Queen from her odious husband.

At this point the interest of the second volume ceases, and we must await the remainder of Mr. Froude's history to observe how he deals with the various questions which arise from the view which he here takes of Mary's criminality.

Regarding the work as a whole, we have read it with pleasure, but not with satisfaction. As a contribution to historical litera- ture it occupies a high position, but not the highest. It has the merit of bringing forward, for the first time, many documents of considerable importance ; and facts already well known are here placed in a point of view at once original and striking. Circum- stances hitherto disregarded or misunderstood become intelligible by being placed in juxtaposition to others with which they have been supposed to have had no immediate connection. But the nobler result which might have been attained is sacrificed to the peculiar mode of treatment which the author has been pleased to adopt, and which is everywhere perceptible. Mr. Fronde is no historian in the higher sense of the word. He must be contented to achieve only a partial and a temporary success. His writings will be widely read and generally admired, for they aro well adapted to please the popular taste. But they will satisfy only those who take a superficial view of history ; who, having skimmed over the surface for its interest and its excitement, care comparatively little for its justice and its truthfulness.