E. 9. Baines Library of 10-75-40 าง. Replace PREFACE. Ir, in making a selection from British statesmen, those only were taken to whom the character of Hero may be ascribed, we should have but scanty volumes. If every politician were included who has been important in his own day, we should have a library interesting only to the minute historian. Preserving the distinction between biography and history *, it is desirable to give such Lives as illustrate each succeeding age: such biography will not supply the place of history; but, without it, history will be less perfectly understood and remembered. I have said, of one of the statesmen whose lives occupy this volume, that he was neither a hero nor a genius; and the same remark is applicable to the other. This want of a distinctive character, nay, even the absence of fanaticism, political or religious, has greatly augmented my difficulty in writing, and will probably lessen the interest in reading, the Lives of Cecil and Danby. *See Vol. I. p. 2. But there are special reasons for writing each of them. Cecil's life occupies a period, from the death of Burleigh to the time at which Eliot began to be known, of which there is no notice in this collection. And Cecil too is a man to whom, perhaps from the greater eminence of his father, less than justice has been done. The times in which Danby lived will, unquestionably, be illustrated by the Lives of other statesmen, who have been more honoured by posterity. But Danby through the greater part of his life stood alone, and his story requires to be told by itself. He, 'too, has scarcely met with justice, contemporaneous or posthumous. The two Lives are brought together, although the former ought to have preceded the Lives of the men of the Commonwealth, because they are both written in the same spirit. I have endeavoured to give as much interest to my narrative as is consistent with the deficiencies which I have acknowledged, by recurring to original information wherever I could obtain it. I lament that I have obtained nothing from Hatfield House or Hornby Castle: this defect is not owing to any want of courtesy on the part of the marquis of Salisbury or the duke of Leeds, but from the state in which, from accidental circumstances, the family manuscripts are at this moment placed. Of the Cecil papers, indeed, there have already been voluminous publications; but I have lately been informed that the original correspondence between Robert Cecil and James VI. of Scotland, which escaped a former search (see p. 80.), have been recently discovered a confirmation is thus afforded to an opinion which I have given in this volume and on a former occasion, that the publication of sir David Dalrymple does not contain that correspondence. Athenæum Club, March 16. 1838. T. P. C. |