She had a lively horror of scandal, and desired that those about her, if they could not contrive to be virtuous, should at least be discreet. It was detestable to her to hear the gallants of the court boasting of their conquests. She said, in her amusing way, that if she herself could ever have been persuaded to leave the path of propriety, she must have chosen for a paramour some unctuous and secret prelate, but that she had never discovered one whom she could trust. It was her temperament, both of heart and brain, which led her to welcome the new spirit in Malherbe, whose simple, firm and lucid verses responded, after a revel of romanticism, to her classic craving for harmony and dignity. In Racan's pastoral poems, she welcomed a recovered love of country pleasures, and the graceful convention of a shepherd. She liked private letters, hitherto so pompous, to be composed in such terms that one seemed to hear the writer's voice chatting at the chimney-corner. Richelieu, although M. Magne denies the legend of his 'Discours sur 'l'Amour,' used to come to the Blue Room to have a good laugh with its delightful occupant, and everyone unbent in her sweet and easy presence. Tallemant has a story of no less dignified a personage than the Cardinal de La Valette romping with the Rambouillet children, and discovered by the Marquise hiding from them under a bed.

The close of the life of this marvellous woman was a sad one. She outlived all her early friends, even outlived the prestige of her own Blue Room. Six days after her death, Robinet composed a sort of funeral ode to her memory, closing with an epitaph, which, as neither M. Magne nor M. Collas happens to quote it, and it is little known, may be given here. It was written in January 1666 :

Ci gist la divine Arthénice,

Qui fut l'illustre protectrice

Des Arts que les neuf Sœurs inspirent aux humains.
Rome luy donna la naissance;

Elle vint retablir en France

La gloire des anciens Romains.

Sa maison, des vertus le temple,

Sert aux particuliers d'un merveilleux exemple,

Et pourrait bien instruire encor les souverains.

This is not very good poetry, but it would be difficult to sum up more neatly the services of Madame de Rambouillet to France and to civilisation.

EDMUND GOSSE.

FOX

George the Third and Charles Fox. The Concluding Part of the American Revolution. By the Right Hon. SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, Bart., O.M. vol. 1. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1912.

T is more than thirty years since a young statesman of

author of one of the greatest of biographies, gave to the world a portly volume called 'The Early History of Charles James Fox.' Even the high literary renown of Mr. Trevelyan gained fresh lustre from that publication. A rare gift of historical portraiture, an uncommon familiarity with the social life of the period, the charm of style and the shrewd common sense that marked every page, raised the book above the level of all other monographs of its time, and no one has questioned its right to be included in every representative library. Yet, some of its warmest admirers are conscious of its grave faults. The title of the book is a misnomer; its construction chaotic. So few of its pages are devoted to its putative hero, and so many to certain of his contemporaries, that it might with justice have been christened 'The Strange Career of Mr. John Wilkes,' or 'The Early History of King George the Third.' Nor are its only blunders those of form. From first to last its author is swayed by the gospel according to Lord Macaulay. Unhappily, the attempt to trace an ancient lineage for the Liberal party of Mr. Gladstone's time by claiming a sort of apostolic descent from the Rockingham Whigs via Charles Fox has led the disciples of this creed to imagine that their political ancestors possessed the larger portion of the virtues and wisdom that they regard as their own. Thus, both Sir George Trevelyan and his Gamaliel, reading the history of the eighteenth century through the spectacles of the nineteenth, have overestimated the importance of one small Whig faction, and this attitude seems to colour all their judgments of men and events.

It is an obvious truth that the great Whig party, founded upon the principles of the revolution, was rent into fragments by schism, as every political party must be, as soon as the necessity for its existence came to an end. It was brought into being in order to maintain the Hanoverian succession and to

establish the principle of parliamentary government. Since the first two Georges were content with their Dogeship the last object was regarded as an accomplished fact in the early days of Walpole's long reign of power, while all fear of the Pretender ceased with the débâcle of '45. When George the Third ascended the throne, the fight for the spoils of victory had reduced the parliamentary system to a contest between rival factions, and the disorganisation of the great political machine which had manufactured the revolution gave the young king the opportunity of strengthening his prerogative. Unconstitutional though such an attempt may have been, and however disastrous we may consider its consequences, no conscientious historian will contend that the action of the monarch united the scattered forces of the Whigs and welded them once again into a compact and regenerate party. It is impossible to disregard the one paramount truth that they had ceased to represent, as at their origin they had represented, the will of the nation, which regarded the growing despotism of George the Third with lazy tolerance, and looked coldly upon the struggles of the varied factions that opposed his ministers in order to obtain a share of place and power. The mobs of sailormen and weavers that rose in riot from time to time cared nothing for the pretensions of the rival political gangs, breaking heads and windows because they were hungry, without knowing whether the Grenvilles or the Rockinghams ruled in Parliament. Until the American war there was only one great popular upheaval, occasioned by the tyranny of the House of Commons in repudiating the choice of the Middlesex electors, an agitation which owed all its force to the wily dexterity and personal magnetism of John Wilkes.

Apart from the desire to build up a respectable political pedigree, there seems little reason why the Macaulay school should have chosen the Rockingham party from among the heterogeneous minority that opposed the ministers of George the Third as their parliamentary ancestors. Only the imagination of a partisan can detect a resemblance between the principles of this small junto and the dogmas that have been the glory of latter-day Liberalism. It repealed the Stamp Act solely at the dictation of Chatham, who, perceiving its invertebrate character, declined to have any truck with its leader. It treated Wilkes, after he was made an outlaw, with base ingratitude, only espousing his cause later, because the Middlesex

election had become the burning question of the day. Its first brief tenure of office showed it destitute of unity, and though it gained strength in opposition during the American war through the support of Chatham and the adherence of Charles Fox it was never popular with the people of England, who were wise enough to realise that it was only a branch of the old Whig stem, and like the parent trunk had fallen into uselessness and decay. Its one glorious possession was the genius of Edmund Burke.

It is necessary to challenge the pretensions of the Victorian Liberals to an apostolic succession from the Rockingham Whigs because this odd fallacy has tinged the pages of Sir George Trevelyan's new volume upon Fox with the same lurid hues that coloured the one written thirty years ago. Once again he storms at Sandwich and Rigby, Germain and Weymouth, in the same spirit in which he might have declaimed against Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Smith in defence of Mr. Gladstone. Although we may rejoice that the Georgian politicians are so real to him, it is less satisfactory to note that a distinguished author is reminiscent of the methods of a Stanhope or an Adolphus. The old faults in construction are as apparent as before. The book is called ' George the Third and Charles Fox,' but little is said about the king, and not much more about the statesman. Most of the work is devoted to an account of the American revolution, conceived in the partisan spirit of George Bancroft, interspersed with philippics against the English ministers. Yet no biography will ever be deemed excellent when its hero is not displayed as the central figure, or if the various personages depicted in its pages are served up in turn like the comedians of a music-hall. One may go further, and assert that the historian can make a great advance in his art by studying the methods of the novelist, by telling his story in narrative form, without revealing the wand of the showman, as though it were a real story and not merely a series of quotations from old documents; by paying due attention to dramatic construction; and by resuscitating his characters and making them live again as they did actually live before. Doubtless these are high ideals-the methods in fact of Thomas Carlyle-but Sir George Trevelyan attained them in some measure in' The Early 'History of Charles Fox,' and therein lay the secret of his success. He might have done better still, if he had not been handicapped by the false doctrine of the apostolic succession,

which led him to lose his sense of proportion in the mazes of polemics.

Since the days of George Bancroft historical opinion with regard to the American revolution has been modified, if not entirely changed. The impartial criticism of Lecky and the lapidarian labours of Justin Winsor and his colleagues, have proved that the great revolt was not wholly the result of the sufferings of the colonists, or the oppression and incapacity of English statesmen. One need not belong to the school of historic fatalism to concede that America would have revolted even had Chatham stood in the place of Grenville and Charles Townshend, or if the eloquence of Otis or the statecraft of Samuel Adams had never sown the seeds of rebellion. As in all great wars, the origin of the American revolution was commercial. The restrictions of the navigation laws, which were a direct tax upon colonial trade for the benefit of English merchants and manufacturers, and the ' writs of assistance,' which gave the custom-house officials, under a system of general warrants, the power to search private houses for smuggled goods, had kindled the flames of disloyalty long before George Grenville passed the Stamp Act. Indeed, unless the whole commercial relationship between England and the colonies had been transformed, the rebellion must have occurred within the space of a few years, even had the English parliament surrendered its right to tax America in order to provide a military force for its protection. Yet, the Livery of London, sound Whigs to a man, who, after hostilities had commenced, bombarded George the Third with their petitions, addresses and remonstrances, urging him to dismiss his ministers and stop the war, would have bitterly opposed a repeal of the navigation laws, which was the only means by which the result they desired could have been attained. Doubtless, the English statesmen who insisted upon imposing the various import duties upon the exasperated colonies helped to precipitate the struggle, but their measures, tactless though they now appear, hardly did more to incite the Americans to resistance than the encouragement of their sympathisers in England. The American Revo'lution was not a quarrel between two peoples,' writes Mellen Chamberlain,*' but, like all those which mark the progress of

* 'Narrative and Critical History of America,' Justin Winsor, vol. vi. p. I.

VOL, CCXVI, NO, CCCCXLI,