It would not be unreasonable to ascribe to his backwardness in solicitation the small share of honours which Sir William Temple received from his royal masters; certainly disproportionate to those which others received, who served the Crown in civil stations. But the transaction which he describes as a nine days' wonder, still ranks in history among the greatest of diplomatic achievements; and the name of Temple is compensated in posthumous fame for the nobility which was denied to its illustrious bearer.

CHAPTER IX.

RECEPTION OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE BY FRANCE AND SPAIN.FURTHER DISCUSSIONS. MARITIME QUESTIONS.-PARLIAMENT. TEMPLE MENTIONED AS SECRETARY OF STATE. APPOINTED AMBASSADOR AT AIX.- CHARLES'S COMMUNICATIONS WITH LOUIS.

PEACE OF AIX.

1668.

THE

HE treaty was now to be communicated to the representatives of France and Spain. Its reception by the former strengthens what has been said of the character of the proceeding.

If Temple was rightly informed, D'Estrades had relied upon the forms of the Dutch constitution for delaying the treaty:-"Eh bien! D'ici à six semaines nous en parlerons." "Upon our giving him part," writes Temple, " of the whole business, he replied coldly, that he doubted we had not taken a right way to our end; that the fourth article (whereby his master was restrained from war, even in the case of Spain's rejection of the terms,) was not in terms very proper to be digested by a king of twenty-nine years old, and at the head of eighty thousand men; that if we had joined both to desire his master to prolong the offer he had made of a cessation of arms till the time we proposed, and withal not to move his arms further

in Flanders, though Spain should refuse, we might hope to succeed; but if we thought to prescribe him laws, and force him to compliance by leagues between ourselves, or with Spain, though Sweden and the German princes should join with us, he knew his master ne flécheroit pas, and that it would come to a war of forty years. From this he fell a little warmly upon the proceedings of the States, saying, they knew his master's resolutions upon those two points, neither to prolong the cessation proposed beyond the end of March, nor to desist the pursuit of his conquests with his own arms, in case Spain consented not to his demands within that term. He said, his Majesty, not being their ally, might treat and conclude what he pleased, without their offence; but for the States, who were their nearest ally, to conclude so much to his master's disrespect at least, and without communicating with him (the ambassador) at all during the whole treaty, he must leave it to his master to interpret as he thought fit.”*

Of the same tendency was the language of D'Estrades, in a long discourse which Temple himself had with him; wherein " the manner and the déshonnêteté" of the Dutch proceeding were severely handled. "For us," he says, "his master can take nothing ill, because all he desired was but our neutrality, and to keep us from a defensive league with Spain. But, by hands that hear it from some of his family, I hear they resent his Majesty's part in it enough too." Temple, ignorant of the reasons which Louis had to set at nought the public

feeling of England, "wondered that the French King or his ministers should expect nothing of this kind, when there was not a shopboy in England or Holland that did not know, and say upon occasion, it was neither of our interest to let Flanders fall into the French hands, nor to let the power of France grow to that excess, that those princes or states who had hitherto treated with them upon equal terms, should be forced to do it hereafter with their hats in their hands. For the manner of it, on our side, and the Dutch, I told him, ceremony was used only when men are secure and at leisure, but always forgotten (and indeed not expected) in haste or danger. Whether this be the way I ought to treat this matter, it were fit I knew your lordship's opinion; till then, I use it as the most natural to me, because the true, and likely to be believed. However, I always say, that if the French mean what they say, and will have peace, his Majesty offers it, and has no other design; but if they will have war, they may have enough of it."*

This important despatch concluded with a passage, in which may be traced the gaiety of Temple's disposition, from which, on this occasion, great success, and some flattery, had driven away the spleen :-"I am engaged to spend this evening at M. De Witt's, with the Prince of Orange (whom I have seen only once upon my return), where we are all to play the young men, and be as merry as cards and eating and dancing can make us ; for I do not think drinking will have any great share. The

*Feb. 3. Sel. Lett. p. 14, 15.

next day, M. De Witt is at leisure to have a match at tennis, where I hope to acquit myself better than tonight, if I have not forgot all the abilities I ever had.

"Your lordship sees what a worthy minister you have helped his Majesty to, that spends his time and his master's money at this rate; and therefore the best thing you can do is, to hasten the ratification, that I may be gone to Brussels, and grow into some order again, and persuade the Marquis to some more in the conduct of the peace than he has yet shewed in that of the war. We are here afraid of nothing but some brusque answer from him to disconcert our whole affair; though we have omitted no cares to prevent it.” *

History has condescended to notice the entertainment to which this letter refers, but she is silent as to the part which Temple bore in it. We know not whether his neglected abilities were revived at the card-table or at supper, but in the dance he was outdone. The Grand Pensionary himself, older than Temple, and Dutchman as he was, is recorded as having "danced the best of any man in the room."+ We are not told, whether this masterly performance was enacted by the great statesman as a cavalier seul, or whether Temple, Dhona, and De Witt celebrated the Triple Alliance in a pas de trois.

But De Witt practised other arts than those which he learnt from his dancing-master. The princes of the house of Nassau were invited, as

* Sel. Lett. p. 10. Feb. 3. 1667-8.

+ Campbell's Mem. of DeWitt, lx. He was now forty-three years old.