known by his Comus, and when Francis Quarles was by far the most popular poet of the day, is surprising in a contemporary, and gives evidence of a critical perception, which is at all times rare. Nay, more, it goes far to exalt the poetic genius of Wotton himself that he was able to recognise the uniqueness of Milton's power both in tragic and in lyric verse. Most of the great men of the first half of the seventeenth century appreciated the young poet as a scholar of some performance and greater promise; while he was regarded by the critics of the latter half as a powerful and pragmatical pamphleteer. His poetry was but little read and understood by his contemporaries, though by it his genius has been correctly measured by posterity. That Wotton should have been so far before his age in his estimate therefore marks him at once as a critic of the highest rank, who makes a critical discovery and does not content himself with the mere repetition of critical commonplaces. Thus as a poet, letter-writer, critic, and man of letters he must always hold a high place among the strong men of his nation and of his time.

Enough has, perhaps, already been said in depreciation of his diplomatic capacity, and the grumbling comments of Chamberlain and Carleton have been duly noticed in their place. But this much must be said for Wotton, that he went upon all his embassies with a single-hearted purpose of telling the strict truth, a virtue which was so rare in his day that his very truthfulness gained for him the reputation of surpassing diplomacy, not to say dissimulation. Ambassadors were, in his view, "spies of the time," and it is only unfortunate for his rank amongst his fellows that he did not commonly use the results of his espial to great advantage. That he formed a dignified and picturesque figure in all the Courts to which he was sent on the Continent goes without saying; that his speeches to the sovereigns upon whom he waited were eloquent and able is no less true; that he struggled hard to press his point has already been seen, and that he was sincerely anxious to serve his country cannot in any way be doubted. That he was commonly unsuccessful in his more important missions was in part due to his inaptitude for diplomatic problems of grave and profound interest, Reliquiæ, p. 306. "Ambassadors (in our old Kentish language) are but spies of the time."

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and in part that James, out of the fulness of his fussy wisdom, sent him more than once to solve the insoluble. As an ambassador, then, Wotton was no ordinary, but a striking and almost romantic figure on the stage of European politics, whose hard destiny it was to be entrusted with matters beyond his capacity, but who came back from every embassy with his character unblemished, and who spent his all in the service of his King and his country. Faults he may have had in his method of conducting business; he may not always have followed his principle of consistently telling the truth; he may have neglected one old friend at least, and slandered Carleton, as Carleton asserts. But there can be no question that he was in the main a man of great honesty, who did his utmost to perform his duties exactly, and whose failure was due to want of supreme diplomatic capacity, and to no carelessness of his own. He was not a great ambassador, but he was nobler than many of his fellows, and where he failed he incurred no disgrace.

As Provost of Eton Wotton was in his right place, and he fulfilled his duties there with rigid and scrupulous care. Enlightened beyond his age in matters educational, he did much to increase the prosperity of Eton; and he was the trusted friend alike of the Fellows and the pupils. Whenever he went into the school he contrived to leave behind him some choicely compacted aphorism, which would be likely to profit the scholars. Indeed, in this art of condensing his thoughts into aphorisms he has few superiors; scarcely a single letter to his friends on the most trivial subject fails to contain at least one pithy saying wittily couched in pregnant and pointed language. He was not, perhaps, a great man, though he possessed not a few of the elements of greatness: but with some exceptions, which have been duly noticed, during the larger part of his life he showed himself to be a good man. He was a sound and loyal Churchman of a somewhat mystical turn of mind, and he passed away in good time for himself-before the breaking out of that relentless Civil War, in which so many that were noble and good found a little-honoured death. His life was rather a series of "uncompleted cadences" than one continuous flow of song, and his snatches of immortal verse make that incompleteness only the more striking and impressive. Cowley, with whose elegy these scattered notes must come

to an end, passed through the whole of that sad yet noble contest, and lived to experience the gratitude which a royal favourite wrung from the King he had laboured to serve. His poem is of the eulogistic type and is overloaded with far-fetched conceits; but for all that the turgid lines contain a larger pinch of truth than is commonly used to season such spicy dishes of posthumous praise :

"What shall we say, since silent now is he,

Who, when he spoke, all things would silent be?
Who had so many languages in store,

That only Fame shall speak of him in more?
Whom England now return'd no more must see;
He's gone to heaven, on his fourth embassy.1
On earth he travell'd often, not to say

H' had been abroad to pass loose time away:
For, in whatever land he chanc'd to come,
He read the men and manners, bringing home
Their wisdom, learning, and their piety,
As if he went to conquer, not to see.
So well he understood the most and best
Of tongues that Babel sent into the West;
Spoke them so truly, that he had (you'd swear)
Not only lived, but been born everywhere.
Justly each nation's speech to him was known;
Who for the world was made, not us alone.
Nor ought the language of that man be less,
Who in his breast had all things to express :
We say that learning's endless, and blame Fate
For not allowing life a longer date.

He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find,
But found them not so large as his own mind:
But, like the brave Pellean youth, did moan,
Because that art had no more worlds than one.
And when he saw that he through all had past,
He died, lest he should idle be at last." 3

A fourth to his three embassies to Venice.

2 An allusion to his State of Christendom.
Cowley, Works (1672), Miscellanies, pp. 5, 6.

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THE HUMOURIST

ROBERT BURTON

'Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem
Circa mite solum Tiburis et monia Catili:
Siccis omnia nam dura deus proposuit, neque
Mordaces aliter diffugiunt sollicitudines."

HORACE, Odes I. xviii. 1-4.

MAN of a retiring disposition, who has thought much and read more, is apt to become whimsical in his ways, and to seek every opportunity of avoiding the society of all save a few intimates, who are themselves sparingly admitted into his company. If he be a fellow of his College in residence, and, at the same time, a clerk in Holy Orders, the moment he has performed his sacred office, he has frequently a habit of stealing off to his beloved books, and of reading, marking, and inwardly digesting, as the Catechism commands. In the Combination-Room he may be a witty and facetious companion when the humour takes him; but he commonly sits silent, looking into his glass if he drink wine, and into vacancy if he do not. He loves what is called a brown study, which he seldom leaves in company; and if he be disturbed in his reflections, he is wont to answer at random. His life is essentially solitary, and solitude is the common source of melancholy. His books are his consolation; but even these will not wholly lift the surrounding shadow, and despite of the fact that woman introduced sin into the Garden of Eden, he realizes that “ man was not made to live alone." Yet when he meets the individual woman, singly or in the aggregate, he is so far from attempting to correct the error of his life that his knees knock together, and, if he can, he turns down a by-street to avoid the enchanting and ensnaring presence. His mother and his sisters do not alarm his sensitive soul; he cannot marry them ;—the Prayer-Book forbids any such unholy alliance ;—but they are the only women who do not cause