Born, at Boughton Malherbe, Kent, 30 March 1568. Early education at Winchester College. Matric. New College, Oxford, 5 June 1584. Removed to Queen’s College; B.A., 8 June 1588. Travelled on Continent, 1588–95. Student of Middle Temple, 1595. Sec. to Earl of Essex, 1595–1601. In Italy, 1601–03. Knighted, 1603. M.P. for Appleby, 1614; for Sandwich, 1625. Served on various embassies abroad. Provost of Eton, 1624–39. Died, at Eton, Dec. 1639. Buried there. Works: “The Elements of Architecture,” 1604; “Epistola ad Marcum Velserum Duumvirum,” 1612; “Epistola de Caspare Scioppio,” 1613; “Ad Regeme Scotia reducem … Plausus,” 1633. Posthumous: “Parallel between Robert, late Earl of Essex, and George, late Duke of Buckingham,” 1641; “Short View of the Life and Death of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,” 1642; “A Panegyrick of King Charles,” 1649; “Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,” ed. by Izaak Walton, 1651; “The State of Christendom,” 1657; “Letters to Sir Edmund Baker,” 1661; “Letters to the Lord Zouch,” 1685. Collected Works: “Poems,” ed. by A. Dyce, 1843.

Personal

  And thus the circle of Sir Henry Wotton’s life—that circle which began at Bocton, and in the circumference thereof did first touch at Winchester School, then at Oxford, and after upon so many remarkable parts and passages in Christendom—that circle of his Life was by Death thus closed up and completed, In the seventy and second year of his age, at Eton College; where, according to his Will, he now lies buried, with his motto on a plain Grave-stone over him: dying worthy of his name and family, worthy of the love and favour of so many Princes, and persons of eminent wisdom and learning, worthy of the trust committed unto him, for the service of his Prince and Country.

  On the 15 July 1619, he returned from his Embassy at Venice with a vain hope of obtaining the office of Secretary of State, but missing his design, I cannot yet tell to the contrary but that he was sent to Venice again. Sure ’tis, that about 1623 he had the Provostship of Eaton Coll. confer’d upon him, which he kept to his dying day, being all the reward he had for the great services he had done the Crown of England.

  Sir Henry Wotton had the happiness to possess one of those rare characters in which it is difficult to say whether the useful or the agreeable was most to be observed. He was equally remarkable for a keen and sober sagacity, a brilliant wit, and a lively and jocose humour. He was not only a profound scholar, but well skilled also in all those elegant and delicate arts a just judgment in which has acquired since his time the appellation of taste. The severity of his studies, and the abstract forms of an academical life, had not prevented him from being one of the best bred men in England…. He lived beloved, respected, and admired; and descended into the grave with a character wholly unimpeached, and without leaving a single enemy.

  It appears to have been the peculiar privilege of sir Henry Wotton, and may be regarded by posterity as the most conclusive evidence of his merits, to have secured to himself through life, and amid all the vicissitudes of his fortune, the affection, the esteem and the cooperation of the master-spirits of the age in which he flourished.

  Eton has never seen within her walls a more accomplished gentleman in the best sense of the word, or a more judicious ruler, than she received in 1625, when Sir Henry Wotton became her Provost.

  In the afternoons he had always a hospitable table, at which there was a perpetual succession of guests to keep up nice philosophic talk; and on these occasions two or three of the most hopeful pupils of the College were always present. His wit and his great store of reminiscences made his own conversation delightful. He had seen or known intimately not only Essex, Raleigh, and the other Elizabethan statesmen, but also most of the great foreigners of the age—Beza, Casaubon, Guarini, Sarpi, Arminius, Kepler, and princes and artists without number. Bacon had not disdained to pick up anecdotes from his cousin Wotton, and even to register his apothegms; and, among Wotton’s most interesting letters, is one to Bacon, thanking him for a gift of three copies of his “Organum,” and promising to send one of them to Kepler. When any one within the circle of his acquaintance was going abroad, nothing pleased him better than to furnish the necessary advices and letters of introduction. One of his amusements in summer was angling; and Walton speaks of his delight when the month of May came and he could go out with his rod…. All in all, he deserved his reputation as one of the most accomplished and benevolent old gentlemen of his time; and it is pleasant yet to look at his portrait, representing him seated in his furred and embroidered gown, as Provost of Eton, leaning against a table, his head resting on his left hand, and his wise, kind face looking straight towards you, as if listening so courteously.

  He is the type of the successful all-round man, trying his hand at the education of boys. That one of the most distinguished diplomatists in his latter days should undertake the control of a school and the study of pedagogics, is an experiment little likely in our days or in the future to be repeated. If, therefore, the attempt, from the side of the accomplished gentleman, to become a schoolmaster has become impossible from the specialisation which now characterizes or is destined apparently to characterize teaching, it only remains for the schoolmasters to know their own work thoroughly, and to endeavour to approach Sir Henry Wotton by their grace of bearing, their culture, not only of learning, but of arts, of actions, of conversation, and of piety. He is accurately described as Sir Henry Wotton, Gentleman and Schoolmaster. Schoolmasters have before them still the desirability of the same combination. The circumstances of the age may demand the reversal of the order. Now it is schoolmaster and gentleman. The combination is essential for high work, and no example would more pointedly illustrate this than that of Sir Henry Wotton.

General

  Sir Edward (Henry) Wotton’s verses of a happie lyfe, he hath by heart.

  Though he was justly esteemed an elegant scholar, and an able critic, his works abound with exotic idioms; nor has he escaped censure for his pedantry. But it should be considered that he wrote in an age, when, to write like a pedant, was to write like a gentleman; or, to speak more properly, like a king.

  The poetry of Wotton, though chiefly written for the amusement of his leisure, and through the excitement of casual circumstances, possesses the invaluable attractions of energy, simplicity, and the most touching morality; it comes warm from the heart, and whether employed on an amatory or didactic subject, makes its appropriate impression with an air of sincerity which never fails to delight.

  There is a vein of quiet self-respect running through this piece of profound and yet stately homage,—this distant and restrained adulation of a royal lady. It is in no way unworthy of the man who, in his last years of peaceful retirement at his beautiful manor of Bocton, wrote that admirable hymn, happily never yet suffered to drop out of our memories and hymnals:—

  Of poetry he wrote but little; but of that little two pieces at least have obtained a permanent place in English literature, his “Character of a Happy Life,” written probably circ. 1614; and the lines, “On his mistress the Queen of Bohemia,” circ. 1620. Of the apophthegm “the style is of the man,” it would be difficult to find better illustrations. As in a mirror, they reflect the high refined nature of one who, living in the world, and a master of its ways and courtesies, was yet never of it—was never a worldling.

  The spirit of “The State of Christendom” written shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth, and the largest and most important of Wotton’s extant prose writings, is that of a self-confident aggressiveness without arrière-pensèes.

  The poem, [“Elizabeth of Bohemia,”] first appeared (with music), in 1624, in Michael Este’s “Sixt Set of Bookes,” etc.: was afterwards printed in “Wit’s Recreations,” 1640, in “Wit’s Interpreter,” 1671, and in “Songs and Fancies to Severall Musicall parts, both apt for Voices and Viols,” Aberdeen, 1682. It also found its way, with variations, among Montrose’s “Poems;” and Robert Chambers (ignorant of Wotton’s claim to the authorship) printed it in his “Scottish Songs” as “written by Darnley in praise of the beauty of Queen Mary before their marriage.” It has been a favourite mark for the second-rate imitator; and “additional verses” are common…. “How happy is he born and taught.” These lines were printed by Percy from the “Reliquiæ Wottonianæ:” believed to have been first printed in 1614. Ben Jonson admired and had them by heart, and in 1619 quoted them to Drummond as Wotton’s. They are also said to be almost identical with a German poem of the same age…. Wotton may have seen the original in one of his several embassies to Germany on behalf of Elizabeth of Bohemia.

  Wotton was an amiable dilettante or literary amateur, with a growing inclination to idleness in his later years…. Wotton’s literary occupations at Eton led to little practical result. His history of England did not progress beyond the accumulation of a few notes on the characters of William I and Henry VI…. He contemplated a life of Martin Luther, but never began it, and he promised, shortly after Donne’s death in 1631, to write a life of the dean as introduction to “Eighty Sermons” by Donne. The publication was delayed until Wotton’s life should be ready. Wotton applied to Izaak Walton, whose acquaintance he had made through Donne, to collect materials, and Walton says that he “did but prepare them in a readiness to be augmented, and rectified by Wotton’s powerful pen” (1640), but Wotton never worked upon Walton’s draft, and Walton’s biography of Donne alone survives…. Wotton’s poems are the most valuable of his literary remains.