electioneering operations illustrates the social and political ethics of the age rather than his own. The characters of Lord Guilford's contemporaries in the higher judiciary are drawn with less reticence and extraordinary force-such portraits as those of 'Silenus' Saunders and Jeffreys, in their way, are immortal, the latter more especially so because Macaulay's portrait owes to it some of its most telling features; while the finer touches which reveal the biographer's antipathy against Sir Matthew Hale are at least equally to the credit of his artistic skill. By the side of these portraits of legal luminaries may be mentioned the admirable portrait of one whose light was hid behind the backstairs-Will Chiffinch.

To the literary ability of Roger North, the second of these Lives, that of Sir Dudley North, the great Turkey merchant, afterwards, at a critical season, appointed sheriff of London by a more than doubtful process dictated by the policy of the court', bears signal witness. This biography depicts, with singular fidelity and force, the career of a young man of family who, virtually, began his mercantile life as supercargo on a ship bound for Archangel, and ended it as treasurer of the Turkey company at Constantinople. The account, derived from him by his brother, of the Turkish system of government (the description of avanios or exactions from Christian states and persons is specially interesting), law and society, is as full of interest as, when first made known, it must have been of novelty; and the personal character of the great merchant-whose eastern notions were not, like his mustachios, suppressed on his return home-is brought out with much affectionate humour. The honours gained by Sir Dudley North after his return nearly involved him in serious trouble after the revolution of 1688: Roger's account of his brother's examination before the House of Commons is one of the best-told episodes in the story. The third of the Lives, that of John North, master of Trinity college, Cambridge, has a very different interest; it relates the story of the life of a Cambridge don, first at Jesus, where

education' and of Sidney (sarcastically) as 'a stubborn Asserter of the Good Old Cause.'

1 An account of these proceedings, from the point of view of those who took the lead in opposing them, will be found in a book based on materials constituting a most valuable addition to the memoir-literature of this period, Papillon, F. W., Memoirs of Thomas Papillon of London, Merchant (1623-1702). Thomas Papillon, of distinguished Huguenot descent, was twice an exile—once for joining in an effort to restore Charles I to power, once for his action with regard to the London charter and North's election. He was member for Dover both before and after his second absence from England.

his younger brother was his pupil but where he grew tired of the 'grave, and perhaps empty seniors,' then at Trinity lodge, where he was on uneasy terms with the fellows, very unpopular with the undergraduates and 'so nice that he never completed anything' in the way of a book. In the end, his intellectual powers decayed with those of his body; through life, his greatest happiness seems to have been the occasional society of his brothers.

Roger, the sixth and youngest of his father's sons, was, as has been observed, born to be the biographer of those among them whose worldly success had outstripped his own. He judged himself humbly, but without hypocrisy-though not of prime of my rank, yet not contemptible.' His tastes were intellectual: mathematics and music had a special attraction for him, and, of amusements, he preferred that of sailing. That he had a genuine literary gift, he seems hardly to have suspected-for he never himself published anything but A Discourse of Fish and Fish Ponds (1683); but, during the long evening of his life (from 1690 to 1734), which he spent in his own house at Rougham in Norfolk, after, as a nonjuror, he had given up practice at the bar, he wrote the Lives of which mention has been made and his own Autobiography. The latter breaks off with an account of his long services as trustee under Sir Peter Lely's will, which, like those by him performed under that of his brother Lord Guilford, long occupied most of his leisure. But, though only a fragment, and a repetition, here and there, of what he had already told in the Lives of his brothers, it is not the least engaging of his productions, and, occasionally, lifts an unsuspected corner of his inner nature-as in the strange passage concerning a man's right to end his own existence. In a lighter vein is the comparison-which must amuse readers of The Rape of the Lock-of the life of men to a game at ombre.

The merits of Roger North's biographies consist in their transparent candour, combined, as it is, with a shrewdness partly due to experience and partly to an innate insight, and in a naturalness of style which, at the same time, is always that of a well-bred scholar. He never shrinks from the use of an idiomatic phrase or proverbial turn, still less from that of an apposite anecdote; but they never have the effect of interrupting the pleasant, if somewhat sedate, progress of his narrative. The minutiae' for which he goes out of his way to apologise are, of course, welcome in themselves to readers of later generations; but the effect of each biography, as a whole, is not trifling or petty, and the dignity of the

E. L. IX. CH. VIII.

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theme-whether it be that of legal eminence, mercantile enterprise, or scholarly calm-is invariably maintained without any apparent effort. Here and there, although he is constantly referring to the fuller treatment a subject has received in his Examen, Roger North becomes lengthy; but the total effect of his Lives, as that of all biographies of real excellence, is not less entertaining than it is instructive for those who are open to the appeal of a human life intelligently, truthfully and sympathetically told.

CHAPTER IX

MEMOIR-WRITERS, 1715-60

The

UNDER the first two Georges, English society became consolidated into what Disraeli, with his accustomed iridescence, described as a 'Venetian oligarchy.' Placemen in, and patriots out of, office flit across the scene. The big county interests of the aristocracy rule, subject to occasional correction from the growing power of finance or the expiring growls of the city mob, and Walpole and Pelham, or their inferiors, pull the strings. nation, hoping eternally to see corruption extinguished and a new era of virtue and public spirit inaugurated, is, again and again, disappointed. Placemen and patriots cross over, and the game begins anew. But, behind the chief actors in the comedy, may be perceived a slowly gathering knot of observers and note-takers, the chroniclers and memoir-writers of the period. They offer us a unique and fascinating picture of the privileged classes who then presided over the fortunes of the country; and they open a new chapter in literary history. Through them, the eighteenth century is self-portrayed with a vivid insight and picturesqueness probably unrivalled, save in the parallel descriptions of French society from 1648 to 1789.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, one must imagine, was a lady of far more masculine understanding and knowledge than most of the classical ladies of whose attainments Johnson thought highly. As a descriptive topographer, she was a keen observer, not superior to the love of gossip, with a quick eye for the telling features of a story or a situation and an easy, effective style. Her manner is one of conscious superiority. She belonged to the great whig aristocracy which ruled England. Her father, Evelyn Pierrepont, was connected with the Evelyns of Wootton, and married Mary Feilding, daughter of the earl of Denbigh, from one of whose brothers Henry Fielding the novelist descended. Mary

was born in May 1689; a year later, her father became earl of Kingston and, at the whig triumph of 1715, duke of Kingston; she was brought up, carelessly enough, in a library. One of her girl friends was Anne Wortley Montagu, a granddaughter of the first earl of Sandwich (Pepys's chief), whose father had, on marrying an heiress, taken the name Wortley. Anne's favourite brother Edward, a most unromantic young man, was strongly attracted by Lady Mary's lucidity of both mind and visage. A number of letters between them are extant. The young pair were, unmistakably, in love; but Kingston was inexorable on the subject of settlements and tried to coerce his daughter into another match; whereupon, she eloped with Edward Wortley (August 1712). With the whigs' advent to power, the period of narrow means came to an end, and Edward, a relative of Halifax, became M.P. for Westminster and, in 1716, was appointed ambassador to the Porte. In 1717, the couple journeyed to Constantinople, by way of Vienna and Belgrade. Her most vivid letters were written during this period and remain an imperishable monument of her husband's otherwise undistinguished embassy; for it was upon his successors that devolved the important task of concluding the peace of Passarowitz. It must not be supposed that we have the letters in their original form. Moy Thomas came upon a list of letters written by the ambassadress, with notes of their contents. The published letters correspond but imperfectly to the précis, and only two are indexed as copied at length. Of those remaining to us, some that had been copied were reproduced with small alteration; the majority were reconstructed from the diary in which she was accustomed to note the events and thoughts of every day, and from which she had presumably drawn freely for the original correspondence; others, less finished in form, for the most part, have been found and incorporated since. The substance of many letters hitherto unknown was given as late as 1907 by 'George Paston' in her Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times. The Turkish Letters (May 1716-November 1718), which are the most finished and the most original, were evidently prepared for publication, though they were not actually published until after Lady Mary's death. They were, no doubt, handed round among the writer's private friends. The prefaces are dated 1724-5 and are attributed to Mary Astell; and the early editions include a frontispiece, 'Lady M-y W-r-t-l-y M-nt-g-e The Female Traveller, in the Turkish Dress.' Lady Mary, in this respect at all events, was a precursor of Lady Hester Stanhope. Besides assuming Turkish