Born 1653: died 1734. An English historian, sixth son of Dudley North, fourth Baron North. He was attorney-general to the queen (Mary of Modena). He wrote the abusive “Examen” of White Kennett’s “History of England” (1740), the “Lives” of his brothers, “A Discourse on the Study of the Laws” (first printed in 1824), “Memoirs of Music” (first printed in 1846), etc. He is one of the chief authorities on the history of the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and is remembered for his partizanship toward his brothers.

Personal

  Roger North was in no respect a famous man. His estimate of himself, that he was “a plant of a slow growth, and when mature but slight wood and of a flashy growth,” is perhaps over-modest, and yet it is evidently not far from the mark. During his early manhood he was, so to speak, in tutelage to his brothers: to John, the future master of Trinity, while at Cambridge; to Francis, the lord chief justice and lord keeper, while at the bar. He never occupied any prominent position, and his fairly successful professional career was the result not so much of his own merit as of his position as “favourite” to the great and successful lawyer, the “bond of the faggot.” His mind, though active and from boyhood ingenious, was not very powerful; and though his senses were unsealed and his judgment clear, and though he participated fully in the general zeal for culture which marked the period, his professional duties left him little time to become more than an interested and interesting student of music, mathematics, morals, politics, and a score of other subjects.

  Roger North was held in great and increasing respect by his neighbours as an authority on questions of law, and was frequently consulted by the magnates of the county, and sometimes chosen to arbitrate when disputes arose. On one occasion he was called in to settle some difference between Sir Robert Walpole and his mother. The country people called him “Solomon,” as in his early days the pamphleteers had styled him “Roger the Fiddler.” He retained his vigour and brightness of intellect to the last, and one of his latest letters was written when he was nearly eighty years old, in answer to some one who had applied to him for advice as to the best course of reading for the bar.

  He liked painting and yachting as well as the toughest quillets of the old law, and was altogether a character.

Lives

  Francis, Lord Keeper Guilford, was younger son of the lord North before mentioned. Burnet and Kennet have given no very favourable character of the keeper: his relation, Roger North, has defended him in a very bulky work; which, however, does not contribute much to raise our ideas either of the writer or his subject. If that performance and its companion, the Examen, had nothing else ridiculous in them, it would be sufficient to blast their reputation, that they aim at decrying that excellent magistrate, the lord chief justice Hale; and that Charles the second, and that wretch the duke of Lauderdale, the king’s taking money from France, and the seizure of the charter of London, are some of the men, and some of the measures, the author defends!… It is very remarkable that two peers of this race have suffered by apologies written for them by two of their own relations; but with this difference naturally attending the performances of a sensible man and a weak one: Dudley, lord North, has shown himself an artful and elegant historian; Roger North, a miserable biographer.

  Roger North’s life of his brother, the lord Keeper, is the most valuable specimen of this class of our literature; it is delightful, and much beyond any other of the writings of his contemporaries.

  This old piece of legal biography, which has been lately republished, is one of the most delightful books in the world. Its charm does not consist in any marvellous incidents of Lord Guilford’s life, or any peculiar interest attaching to his character, but in the unequalled naïveté of the writer—in the singular felicity with which he has thrown himself into his subject—and in his vivid delineations of all the great lawyers of his time. He was a younger brother of the Lord Keeper, to whose affection he was largely indebted, and from whom he appears to have been scarcely ever divided. His work, in nice minuteness of detail, and living picture of motive, almost equals the auto-biographies of Benvenuto Cellini, Rousseau, and Cibber. He seems to be almost as intensely conscious of all his brother’s actions, and the movements of his mind, as they were of their own. All his ideas of human greatness and excellence appear taken from the man whom he celebrates. There never was a more liberal or gentle penetration of the spirit. He was evidently the most human, the most kindly, and the most single-hearted, of flatterers. There is a beauty in his very cringing, beyond the independence of many. It is the most gentleman-like submission, the most graceful resignation of self, of which we have ever read.

  In compiling these affectionate memorials of his brothers, the writer appears to have been chiefly actuated by his regard and veneration for their memory. Having survived them all, he was distressed to find the names of those whom he had so loved and honoured, passing rapidly into oblivion. During their lives, his happiest moments were spent in their society; and after their death, he found his greatest consolation in recording their history. This he has done with a minuteness of detail, which to himself appeared to require an apology, but which, in fact, is one of the most attractive qualities of his style. His writings have the effect of introducing the reader, as it were, into the presence of the party, so lively and natural are the touches of his pen.

  Roger North’s “Life of the Lord-Keeper,” which, like Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” interests us highly, without giving us a very exalted notion of the author. Notwithstanding its extravagant praise of the hero of the tale, its inaccuracies, and its want of method, it is a most valuable piece of biography, and, with Roger’s lives of his brothers, “Dudley and John,” and his “Examen,” ought to be studied by every one who wishes to understand the history and the manners of the reign of Charles II.

  One of the most entertaining books [“Life of Lord Keeper Guilford”] in our language.

  The labour that North bestowed upon the lives of his brothers was extraordinary. The life of the lord keeper was written and rewritten again and again. Defaced though the style is by the use of some unusual words, there is a certain charm about it which few readers can resist, and the “Lives of the Norths” must always remain an English classic, and a prime authority for the period with which it deals.

  The biographies and autobiography … are very good literature, though Dr. Jessopp is hardly warranted in styling them English classics. They are neither planned with classic symmetry nor executed with classic elegance, but are charming from their artless loquacity and the atmosphere of fraternal affection in which they are steeped, as well as most entertaining from their wealth of anecdote and their portraits, partial, but not intentionally unfair, of remarkable men. Two elements in these books are sharply contrasted, the political and the anecdotic. The former affords a melancholy but useful representation of the factious unreason of political parties in that age, especially Roger’s, and of the prejudices which kept Englishmen apart until they learned toleration from Locke and Hoadly.

  The whole is written in a curious and very piquant style, strangely free from any of the new classicism, but as strangely crossed between the older conceit and the new slang. North is Harrington plus L’Estrange.