THE DUKE OF BERWICK.*
Quid ferre recusent, quid valeant humeri, is a question which prose authors as well as poets ought to consider most heedfully. Had Colonel Wilson done so, he clearly might have given us a very entertaining book. His subject was by no means badly chosen. The Duke of Berwick, and James II., in his relations to that cleverest of all the Stuart bastards, are anything but thread- bare topics, while the Colonel's literary acquirements and exten- sive reading would have qualified him admirably for handling such a theme. Unfortunately for himself and for his readers, he has chosen to write a detailed account of that portion of our his- tory which Macaulay has made his own. It is true that the Colonel has strong French and Irish sympathies, which justify him, to a certain extent, in attempting to tone down and varnish over the ultra-Dutch pictures of the great Whig historian, but he is altogether unequal to so difficult and ambitious a task. Even were his knowledge of those stirring times as wide and accurate as Macaulay's, he would still be emphatically no match for the object of Lord Melbourne's humorous envy. He has given abundant proofs that he can upon occasion write neatly and well, but as a rule, his style may be described as Carlyle-and- water, with a very large infusion of water. We may, perhaps, give some specimens of this unhappy imitation of what is
happily inimitable, yet we hardly care to do so. It is so hopelessly bad that it is scarcely worth critical powder and shot. But even here we have some sneaking sympathy with this light-hearted soldier. Carlyle's descriptions of Dunbar and Worcester are really so much more life-like than Macaulay's de- scriptions of Sedgemoor and the Boyne, that a military man may be pardoned for endeavouring to repaint these battles in a similar style. None the less must we admit that his failure is complete. If Carlyle's battle-pieces are as superior to Macaulay's as Vernet's are to Barker's, Colonel Wilson's battle-pieces are mere sign- board daubs, compared with the brilliant and highly finished, if somewhat artificial, battle-pieces of Macaulay.
We believe that a life of Berwick might be made an interesting book, but a detailed account of his campaigns would certainly not be interesting. War is monotonous work at the best, and war histories are apt to be very monotonous indeed. It is other- wise when great captains of mighty genius are engaged. The marvellous campaigns of Napoleon and Hannibal are fraught with interest of the deepest kind, but the life of a second-rate com- mander is almost as tedious as the life of a second-rate bishop written by a near relation. It need scarcely be added that our imagined life of Berwick should not exceed in bulk that ex- cellent little book, the Life of Nelson, by Southey. And after all, such a book must owe its success in the main to the literary tact and skill of its author. A lively and intelligent writer, who did not wander from the point, would find many opportunities for displaying flashes of sagacity.in describing the career of a man who, like Ulysses, had "seen the ways and cities of many men." Vivacity, however, is indispensable here, for Berwick's dull and respectable character are only too faithfully reflected in his solid and rather tedious Memoirs. Such a biographer—and indeed any biographer of this celebrated bastard—must begin his life with Count Hamilton's famous story about the Duke of York and Arabella Churchill How the future king of England, like Tam o' Shanter, " kenned what was what fu' brawlie," has been capitally told by the prince of scandalmongers, and not the least amusing part of this amusing anecdote is that it has been accepted as literally true by subse- quent writers. They forget that James was indifferent to per- sonal beauty, and Miss Churchill's plain face had probably more attractions than her shapely ankles for the lover of Catherine Sedley. Be this as it may, the children of James Stuart and Arabella Churchill suggest some curious reflections on the doc- trine of heredity. A clever son, we think, must have a clever mother, but the converse of this proposition is by no means true. Of all Letitia Bonaparte's numerous progeny, only one showed a spark of genius. James II., although headstrong and obstinate, was anything but rash and reckless. Miss Churchill, no doubt, had her full share of the family acquisitiveness, a quality rarely found apart from prudence ; and we are not surprised to hear of the son who took after her—it is the celebrated Montes- quieu who tells us—that he was " l'homme de son siecle a qui le Ciel avait accords de meilleur heur in prudence." The brother of this model man was an ill-conditioned lout, who got fuddled every day, and perhaps threw back to some hard- drinking Devonshire ancestor. Berwick himself married, in 1695, • James Me Second and the Duke of Berwick. By Charles Townshend Wilson. London: Henry S. Mos and Co. the beautiful widow of the celebrated Sarsfield. She died in 1698, when, says a good judge, St. Simon, " elle &oft h la premiere fleur de son age, belle, touchante, faith k peindre, une nymphe." In April, 1690, the widower married Anne Bulkeley, daughter of his father's major-domo ; and this second wooing must have been very short in doing, if we are to acquit him of something worse than the coldness of a Churchill. Colonel Wilson does not carry his account of Berwick beyond the death of James II., and the exploits of his hero as a Marshal of France must be sought for elsewhere. This, we think, is a mistake, and the Colonel would have done better in breaking comparatively fresh ground. Almanza is by no means so hackneyed a theme as the Boyne, or even as Steinkirk, and Lord Stanhope mows the fields of history with a scythe less keen by far than that of Lord Macaulay. We have not attempted anything more than a desultory estimate of some parts of Berwick's character. Colonel Wilson makes wild work with the dignity of history, and it would be a mistake per- haps to treat this book too seriously. We read of dragoons being " heavily hammered ;" of a " higgledy-piggledy state of men and things ;" of Irishmen " amorous of l'arme blanche;" and how, when Derry is relieved, the garrison " cuts into hunches of British pork and drains jorums of British beer with a merry air, as though boiled rat and Munster-fed dog had been hideous dreams of Walkerian indigestion." We wonder what the Colonel had himself been eating when he penned this outrageous sentence, but serious criticism is obviously out of place, so for a short space we will fall in with our author's humour, and let him speak for himself. His knowledge of books, we said, quite qualifies him for the task of writing an amusing and instructive life of Berwick. It is not surprising therefore that we come across many things which, if old, are always welcome ; Lord Dartmouth's note on Burnet's History of his own Times, to wit :—" I wrote," writes his lordship, in the first volume of this book, "that I did not believe the Bishop designedly published anything he believed to be false ; therefore I think myself obliged to write in this that I am fully satisfied that he published many things that he knew to be so." The lie direct, says the Colonel, could hardly be better given to the Right Reverend Father in God. Perhaps not, but there is a brief and business-like note of Swift's on one of the Bishop's statements which is still more emphatic :—" This, I take it, is a lie." Again—a very old favourite this, but let it pass : —" Before the battle [of Steinkirk], William is reported to have exclaimed, ' Ne pourrai-je done battre ce petit bossu ?' After the battle, on hearing the remark, Luxembourg wittily replied, Qu'en sait-fl ? Il ne m'a jamais vu que par devant.' " And It propos of Steinkirk, we may point out to the Colonel that he makes the battle begin before sunrise and end after sunset, and that, too, in August, and yet calmly remarks that Luxembourg said it was the bloodiest fight, for the short time it lasted, during the war.
We are not quite sure that the Colonel is right in the derivation he gives of "Tory" from the Irish word toirighim, "to pursue for plunder ; " but we welcome his explanation of " martinet," which, it appears, is as unjust and as unfair a word as " hector " or 4' epicure " :— "To purge the French Army of obsolete routine, [is the Colonel an Irishman?] to stimulate the flagging zeal of officers and kindle the martial spirit of soldiers, Louvois instituted Inspectors of cavalry and infantry. The first appointed was Lieutenant-Colonel Martinet, of the Regiment du Roi, a corps formed in 1662 as a model for French foot. Neither noble nor courtier, this Martinet, only the promising boy of a respectable bourgeois family, such as Lonvois, from a fellow-feeling per- haps, delighted to patronise. Intelligent, energetic, and highly edn- cated, Martinet was of immense use in his generation, and yet his name is a by-word among us,—the synonym not of sterling leadership, but of stupid pedantry. The blockhead, whose military ideas are limited to the tailor's shop and ' marching-past like a wall,' is described as a Martinet!"
The Colonel, as perhaps might be inferred from the last sen- tence, is a pessimist as regards the present state of our Army ; but his criticisms, though severe, are not very original, and instead of quoting them, we will quote an anecdote which is germane to the question of to-day
Berwick bears witness to the spirit and discipline of Turkish armies two oenturies ago, and doubtless the physical qualities of Ottoman sol- diers remain excellent. [Kinglake, it may bo remarked, holds the same opinion.] Their present inferiority proceeds from degenerate morale, not from relaxed muscle ; men have not deteoriated, the NAN is wanting ; ' un bras vent cent mille bras, cent mille bras ne Talent pas nn bras: Here is a glimpse of ancient Turkish military administration. The Pasha in command—at an affair near Perth, where his troops had been worsted—informed the Grand Vizier of the defeat of the flank move- ment in these words,—' They charged us like lions, but were received by devils.' In reply, the 'Vizier spat in his frier', and ordered him to be strangled, pour encourager les autres." The desultory nature of Colonel Wilson's book has affected us- with its influence, so we turn back to express our amused sur- prise at his statement that "dalliance with democratic emotions= destroyed " the Duke of Monmouth. The force of alliteration could hardly go further. Yet this is a trifle to the statement that on the morning of the battle of the Boyne " the sun rose like a god." We can fancy a god rising like the sun, but we would ask what god the sun rose like ? and once more, whether the Colonel is not an Irishman? But it is unfair not to give- some of the Colonel's happier thoughts ; they abound in the volume, and the following may be taken as specimens of them. Of James I. he says, " Having filled the country with moral dynamite, the British Solomon' slept with his fathers ;" and of men to whom Exeter Hall and other religious edifices are not quite strange, " Many a veteran, graceless in lusty manhood, grows rigidly Catholic or noisily Evangelical as grey hairs and infirmities multiply." We have probably said enough to show- that while we are unable to praise this book of Colonel Wilson's as a success, there is every probability that his next book may be one. We are sure he can make it a success if he likes, -and we heartily hope that he will do so.
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