Charles II., he had been advanced to an earldom by Anne, and in the interval had been decorated with the Garterthe first knight since the accession of the Stuarts who had received this honour beneath the rank of an earl. His mode of living had changed with his rising fortunes. In his youth he had apparently occupied chambers in the Temple; his short married life with Margaret Blague had been passed in apartments near Whitehall; his middle age had been spent in the dignified but active seclusion of Cranbourne. In the beginning of the eighteenth century he moved into Godolphin House in London, situated on the site which is now occupied by Stafford House. It should, perhaps, be mentioned to his credit that his wealth had not increased as rapidly as his fortunes, and that he carried with him into his retirement an income of only 1,000l. a year. The queen, indeed, in removing him from office promised him a pension of four times that amount. 'But the promise was forgotten, ' and Godolphin had too much dignity to remind her that 'she had ever made it.' It so happened, however, that Godolphin's eldest brother died without issue in the same month in which Godolphin fell, and that the minister in consequence succeeded to the family estates. It happened, too, that he was not destined long to survive his fall. When he left office he was already suffering from a painful disease. On September 15, 1712, he died. We have endeavoured with Mr. Elliot's assistance to trace the career of a man who rose from small beginnings to great fortunes, who stood at the helm of State during a momentous struggle, and whose conduct is still involved in mystery which cannot be entirely cleared away. No one, indeed, doubts the justice of the character which was passed on him by Smollett, that he was an able, cool, dispassionate 'minister, who had rendered himself necessary to four suc'cessive sovereigns, and managed the finances with equal 'skill and integrity.' But then, indeed, many high authorities contend that his integrity as a politician was not equal to his integrity as a financier; and that the minister whose honesty at the Treasury was above suspicion was guilty of gross and continual treachery outside his office. If the accusations which thus rest on Godolphin are well founded, his character was one of the most contradictory which was ever known; for in this case he must have been honest at his office and dishonest in the council chamber a faithful servant in one place, a traitor at the other. So contradictory a nature is not usual in real life, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, With Evelyn, Godolphin is 'excellent' almost as invariably as with Homer Achilles is swift-footed; while, if Godolphin were a traitor, it is hardly possible that William III. should not have known the fact; and yet with this knowledge he begged him to remain in office. But, if the accusations against Godolphin fall, it may reasonably be asked how the inconsistencies of his career can be explained. If it be true that Godolphin was the warm supporter of either of the rival dynasties, it is difficult to account for his conduct to the other. If, in Macaulay's language, he had indeed betted deep on the Revolution, it is impossible to resist the historian's conclusion that he thought it time to hedge. We differ from Macaulay not in his conclusion, but in his premiss. We do not believe that Godolphin had ever betted deep on the Revolution or on any other cause. His reserved and cautious temperament kept him from committing himself to either king. He stood, in his relations to his sovereign, in very much the position in which the permanent Secretary of the Treasury stands today to the Prime Minister. That high official in our own time finds no difficulty in rendering loyal service to Lord Salisbury because he has rendered service equally loyal to Mr. Gladstone. He does not even find it inconsistent with his duty to remain on terms of friendship with the leader of the Opposition because he enjoys the confidence of the leader of the Government. And similarly Godolphin saw no inconsistency in serving William because he had served James, or even in remaining the friend of James while he held office under William. The explanation which we have thus hazarded is no doubt at variance with modern notions. But then we shall never thoroughly appreciate the conduct of previous generations if we persist in regarding it from the standpoint from which we survey modern politics. Such a minister as we believe Godolphin to have been would have been both an anachronism and an impossibility under any system of party government. Party government, however, did not exist in the seventeenth century; it was only being slowly elaborated in the reign of Anne. We are aware, too, that the explanation which we have hazarded may seem to detract from Godolphin's reputation as a statesman. But, then, if by a statesman is meant a man who elaborates and conducts a comprehensive scheme of policy, we should be the last to claim any such designation for Godolphin. We place him as a constitutional statesman far below his great contemporary Somers; as a fiscal statesman far below his other great contemporary, Charles Montague. But as a minister, or as an administrator, we believe him to have been superior to both these men, and to all the other men who attained prominence in his time. To put the matter in another light, we do not believe that he would ever have designed Charles Montague's financial measures; but we have no doubt that he made the money which Charles Montague raised go much further than Charles Montague would have done. From the circumstances of the war, England required a great administrator, and the want was amply supplied by Godolphin's presence at the Treasury. Whether, however, we have succeeded or not in supplying the key to Godolphin's character, we may at least trust that we shall have induced our readers to turn for themselves to Mr. Elliot's pages; while we hope that the success which he may have achieved may induce him to persevere in his literary labours, and to devote such further leisure as his political avocations may afford him to the illustration of some other character, or some other period, in the history of this great country. ART. II.-1. The Encyclopædia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature. Ninth Edition. Vols. I.-XXV. 4to. Edinburgh: 1875-1888. 2. The Dictionary of National Biography. By LESLIE STEPHEN. Vols. I.-XVII. 8vo. London: 1877-1888. 3. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, founded mainly on the Materials collected by the Philological Society. Edited by JAMES A. H. MURRAY. Vol. I. 4to. Oxford: 1888. WE E have placed these colossal works at the head of these pages for the express purpose of paying the tribute of respect and gratitude which is due to the enterprising publishers, the energetic and judicious editors, and the host of learned and studious men, who have combined to place before the British public a vast and exhaustive repertory of the science, the literature, and the language of this country in the present age. No more complete survey of all that is known to our contemporaries has ever been given to the world. These three works embrace the history of the arts and sciences, the history of Englishmen in a biographical form, and the history of the English language. They mark, it may be said, the high-water mark of the literary acquirements of this century. They show with what incredible industry and capacity a vast number of intelligent minds are engaged in every region of inquiry and in every branch of research, from the earliest to the latest times, radiating from this centre through the world, and depositing in these great monuments of learning the fruits of accumulated knowledge. These are, in our eyes, the proudest and most precious results of the literature of the age. The prime duty and glory of literature is to be the storehouse and the guardian of knowledge. There are thousands of readers who quench their thirst for novelty with the trifles and ephemeral publications of the hour, which are but the surf on the edge of the rising tide; but they forget that the treasure-house of literature lies behind them, and that nothing is worthy of a permanent place within its walls but that which belongs to the records of our race and the creative powers of wise and far-searching minds. But whilst we pay a willing homage to these great literary achievements, we must acknowledge our entire inability to approach them with the ordinary weapons of criticism. We do not make war with giants or attempt to scale the pyramids. It would be invidious to select from their multifarious contents, embracing every conceivable subject, any single fraction of the whole. The observations we have to make are addressed not to any particular department of art or science, but to the character and execution of these works in their totality. Severed into parts these gigantic volumes represent the contents of a library, and every article might be discussed on its own merits. But that which strikes us most forcibly is the combination of varied talent, experience, and industry which has brought together so vast and miscellaneous an amount of knowledge in a common form; and in what we have to say we shall confine ourselves to the history and structure of these works rather than to the details of their execution. If we had to speak at large of the current literature of the age, we should be obliged to confess that there has not been for many years a period more absolutely devoid of originality and genius. The fire which burned with such intensity in the earlier half of the present century is in its ashes. That astonishing array of writers of the first rank, in poetry, in fiction, in history, in philosophy-writers so eminent and so original that their fame went forth into all lands and secured them a place in the records of all time— is extinct. Perhaps in science and in history some exceptions may still be found; but even in these branches the most eminent names belong rather to the past than to the present. In the myriad of books which are poured forth in everincreasing numbers by the press it is rare to meet with one which will outlive the year or which deserves a longer life. The reason is plain: such books are not created by the energy of the mind, but are manufactured from old materials. There is no greater proof of the extremely superficial character of modern education than the superficial character of the current literature. In place of grasping the substance of the great men and the great writers of old, people content themselves with their shadows on the wall. Biography, which is at this moment the most popular form of literature, consists in reducing to the smallest possible compass the heroes and sages of the past, and in inflating the posthumous reputation of the men of yesterday by ransacking their desks and publishing their private letters. Indeed, it is a curious characteristic of the literature of the day that biography preponderates to an enormous extent over every other branch of composition. It would seem as if the present generation had nothing better to write about than |