BOOKS.

FORSTER'S HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS.* ALTHOUGH formally belonging to the class of review articles, these volumes have essentially more of the book characteristics than any collection which has appeared. Two of the essays, forming a considerable portion of the entire work, are now printed for the first time, namely, the " Plantagenets and Tudors," and the

" Grand Remonstrance." The whole possesses a unity in the field of inquiry and exposition by which no other collection is charac- terized. Even Macaulay treats so great a multiplicity of subjects that their number rather suggests the ready writer, than the man of genius devoting himself to a literary mission. Mr. Forster on the other hand confines himself to that which is well known to be his special pursuit, the political and literary history of England, principally of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His Statesmen of the Commonwealth shows that the Great Civil War had peculiarly occupied his close attention for at least a quarter of a century. His well-known Life of Goldsmith proves in its more incidental sketches how extensive had been his study of the fugitive as well as the standard literature of the eighteenth cen-

; how much he had unearthed of the obscure litterateurs, as well as how much he knew of the more prominent writers and their patrons. With the exception of the essay on the Political or Constitutional History of England to the death of Elizabeth, these volumes are limited to periods to which the main studies of the writer have been devoted. The " Great Remonstrance," and the reprint from the Edinburgh _Review on the Civil Wars and Cromwell's character, treat of the twenty most stirring years of the seventeenth century. The biographies of De Foe, Steele, Churchill, and Foote, naturally embrace a view of the century some ten years before the English Revolution of 1688 to some dozen years before the French Revolution of 1789 ; though by an artifice of composition the times immediately following the Resto- ration, are also included. Even Constitutional History is by no means a new subject with the essayist. The preface to the com- plete edition of his " Statesmen " in 1840, went cursorily over the ground which he has now again surveyed with greater maturity of judgment, greater mastery of his materials, and a more de- veloped style. The sketch of what is rightly called our constitutional history, though it is also political and Parliamentary, is we think the most complete, finished, and useful paper in the collection. Taking for his text Burke's image of the hereditary family character of Eng- lish freedom with its "pedigree and illustrating ancestors," " its bearings and ensigns armorial," " its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and titles," Mr. Forster traces the gradual growth of English constitutional li- berty from the charter of Henry the First, on which it is said the Great Charter was subsequently modelled, until, at the close of her reign, Elizabeth spontaneously went down to Parliament and abandoned the grievance of monopolies at the demand of her peo- ple. With legal knowledge and critical acumen Mr. Forster ra- pidly travels over five centuries, displaying the points of the lead- mg charters, acts of Parliament, or text-books e.g. of Bracton and Fortescue, that mark an advance in constitutional rights, presenting the characteristics of the chief monarchs and their reigns, noting briefly the historical circumstances which influenced the growth of popular power, and marking the spirit of each par- ticular age. We do not say that much of this is new, or that we always agree with the writer in his conclusions, or that the style is always free from an attempt to get force out of inflation, which sometimes leads to a rather one-sided representation. But a new light is thrown upon the growth of constitutional freedom and popular power, by the skill with which the salient proofs of the writer's views are marshalled and brought close together, as well as by the acumen of the remarks. The work also possesses a popular attraction in its critical and animated style, which his- torical disquisitions do not always attain. These last points are better indicated by example than description. Character of John.—" Of the character of this prince it is needless to speak. It belongs to the few in history or in human nature of which the infamy is altogether black and unredeemed. The qualities which degraded his youth grew with his years ; combined with them, he had just enough of the ambition of his race to bring forth more strongly the pusillanimity of his spirit ; and thus he was insolent and mean, at once the most abject and the most arrogant of men. The pitiless cruelties recorded of him surpass belief; and the reckless madness with which he rushed into his quarrels, was only exceeded by his impotent cowardice when resistance showed its front. He deserted the people when the people joined him against the Church, he deserted the Church when the Church joined him against the people. Yet what resulted from the very vice and falsehood of so despicable a nature was in itself the reverse of evil. A man more able, though with an equal love of tyranny, would have husbanded, and kept, his power; this man could only feel that he existed when he knew that he was trampling on his fellow men, and making his power intolerable, he risked and lost it. The conclusion which would infer that with the barons, and not with the people, the substantial benefit remained, is far too i hastily formed. What in its beginning was the claim of one powerful faction in the realm as against its feudal lord, became in the end a demand for rights to be guaranteed to the general community-. It was but a month before the gathering at Runnymede that an unavailing attempt was made to detach the greater barons from the national confederacy, by offering to themselves and their immediate followers what the Great Charter was to secure to every freeman."

The First Political Song.—" The conflict had continued some time, and Henry [the Third] was twenty-six years old, when his necessities again com- pelled hum to call together a Parliament ; but twice his bidding was refused, • Historical and Biographical Essays. By John Forster. In two volumes- Published by Murray.

and the messengers who bore the refusal might have added the unwonted tidings, that songs sung against the Favourite, and filled with warnings to the Sovereign, might daily be heard in the streets. Amid other signs and

portents of social change had now arisen the political ballad. In it shone forth the first vera effigies of the Poitevin bishop of Winchester ; nimble at

the counting of money as he was slow in expounding the gospel ; sitting paramount, not in Winchester, but in Exchequer ; pondering on pounds, and not upon his holy book ; postponing Luke to lucre ; and setting more

store by a handful of marks than by all the doctrines of their namesake saint. Would the King avoid the shipwreck of his kingdom ? asked the singer. Then let him shun for ever the stones and rocks (Roches) in his way."

Reign of Henry 117.—" The consequences of this reign were momentous. With at least the nominal cooperation of the constituted authorities of his empire, a legitimate King had been deposed ; and never was it afterwards

disputed, that the solid and single claim of the dynasty which took his place, rested upon the ability of Parliament, or of the power which those Lord; and Barons with all England armed behind them represented, so to alter the succession. By the wording of the acts of settlement connected with the change, that most essential principle of popular right was fully admitted; and from them were derived the historical and legal precedents which, down to our own time, have proved most advantageous to the people. Nor did the first prince of the house of Lancaster accept them grudgingly. Wary as he was bold, the policy of Bolingbroke continued to be the policy of

Henry IV. The Parliamentary authority which had given him power, and the popular sympathies which had confirmed his title, were in every pos-

sible way promoted by him during the fourteen years of his great though

still disputed rule ; and no one who examines the preambles and other wording of the statutes that were passed in his reign, can fail to be struck

with the sense of how much the commonest orders of the people must have risen since the date of the reign of John, in all that, with the sense of per- sonal power, brings the sure hankering after political privilege, gradual

means to estimate freedom at its value, and strength ultimately to win it.

It was this Sovereign whom his House of Commons startled with the pro- posal that he should seize the temporalities of the Church, and, after gene-

ral and reasonable endowment of all the clergy, employ them as a fund re- served for the exigencies of the State. The proposal failed, unluckily for the Church itself, but it led to some important checks on clerical privilege; and the thirty articles which, two years later, were not only proposed but

conceded, for the regulation of the King's household and government, have been declared by Mr. Hallam, an authority well entitled to respect, to form a noble fabric of constitutional liberty, hardly inferior to the petition of right. The Sovereign was required to govern by the advice of a permanent council; and this council, together with all the judges and the officers of

the royal household, were bound by solemn oath to Parliament to observe and defend the amended institutions. It established in effect the principle of ministerial responsibility."

The object of the essay entitled " The Grand Remonstrance" is to expose the misrepresentations of Clarendon in the account which he gives of its passage through the House of Commons and the subsequent order for printing it—to point out the way in which succeeding historians have almost servilely followed Cla- rendon, and to justify the great leaders of the popular party by telling the true story of the whole proceedings. This last Mr. Forster is enabled to do by the aid of the blurred and very rough manuscript jottings of an account of the debates by D'Ewes, pre- served in his journals at the British Musuem. The report, if it can be called such, has rather to be partially deciphered than read, but it enables Mr. Forster to tell at large the whole history of the measure and the debates upon it. Whether he may not occasionally bear harder upon Clarendon than the facts warrant, when we take into consideration the licence of party politics, and the fact that the historian was writing a general narrative some time after the event, and without much documentary help, may be a question. From early association and probably some natural bias, the essayist is prone to exalt unduly the opposition states- men of the Commonwealth, and to press unduly upon the consti- tutional Royalists, as the constitution was then understood ; we do not mean as regards general principles, but particular actions. Although limited in point of time to two months, the essay ex- tends over more space than the previous survey of five hundred years. Part of it, however, is devoted to a powerful analysis of the Remonstrance itself, its great length preventing Mr. Forster from reprinting it. And this is by no means the least interesting part, from the picture of the permeating tyranny by which the ministers and agents of Charles the First Sought to extort money under colour of law. It was not the mere exactions that vexed and oppressed the nation, though they were considerable to a people not so used to taxation as their descendants, but the trouble, expense, and annoyance that accompanied them. The wonder is not that England rebelled, but that she did not rebel sooner.

The " Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell" is an attack upon the prejudiced notions which Mr. Banks of Corfe Castle promulgated in his account of that family seat, and an estimate of Cromwell based upon a review of Guizot's History. The biographical no- tices have all this distinctive character ; they were wanted. Who- ever wished to learn anything of Steele and Foote, beyond what a biographical dictionary or a preface might supply, must get it as he could. The same remark, though in a less degree, might be made on De Foe and Churchill. In narrating the career of these men Mr. Forster has supplied a literary necessity. By interspers- ing his biographical account with full and kindly illustrations of their characters, notices of their principal works, and occasional sketches of their contemporaries and their times, he has enabled the general reader to dispense with recourse to the originals, and presented him with a coup d'ceil of the London literary world for a century. Of these four lives two have already appeared in the " Travel- ler's Library," namely those of De Foe and Steele. The life of

Steele seems to have had its origin in Mr. Forster's mind in the de- preciatory and contemptuous opinion expressed of him by Lord Macaulay, in comparison with Addison. To some extent Mr. Forster's essay consequently takes a controversial shape, and as large a space is devoted to the proof of Steele's merits by pleasant deductions from his works as to the life itself. Foote is not only the notice which was perhaps most wanted; but is the best done. His works dealing with the perishable fashions of his days, and being little known and likely to remain so by the world at large, a condensed presentation of the most striking parts of the best is not only useful as a literary notice, but furnishes a picture of the times. Foote's celebrity arising from the readiness, aptness, and felicity of his jokes, the display of his mental traits are more broadly telling to the mass of readers, than the delicate pictures of character and manners, or the genial morality of Steele.