Sir William Temple, 1628–1699. Born, in Blackfriars, 1628. At schools at Penshurst and Bishop’s Stortford, till 1643. Lived at home, 1643–45. Matric. Emmanuel Coll., Camb., 1645(?). Travelled on Continent, 1647–53(?). Married Dorothy Osborne, 1654. Member of Irish Convention at Restoration, 1660. M.P. for Carlow, 1661. Abroad on business of State, 1665–69. In retirement at Sheen, 1669–73. In Holland on State business, 1673–76, 1678–79. Retired from public life, 1685. Died at Moor Park, Surrey, 27 Jan. 1699. Works: “Poems” (under initials: Sir W. T.) [1670?]; “Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands,” 1672; “Miscellanea” (anon.), 1680; “Memoirs of what past in Christendom from…. 1672…. to … 1679,” 1692; “An answer to a scurrilous pamphlet” (anon.; attrib. to Temple), 1693; “An Essay upon Taxes” (anon.), 1693; “An Introduction to the History of England,” 1695. Posthumous: “Letters written by Sir W. Temple during his being Ambassador at the Hague,” ed. by D. Jones, 1699; “Letters written … both at home and abroad,” ed. by J. Swift (3 vols.), 1700–03; “Miscellanea” (2nd ser.), ed. by J. Swift, 1701. Collected Works: ed. by J. Swift (2 vols.), 1720.

Personal

  He died at one o’clock this morning, 27th January, 1698–9, and with him all that was good and amiable among men.

  A diplomatist and man of the world, prudent, wise, and polite, gifted with tact in conversation and in business, expert in the knowledge of the times, and in not compromising himself, adroit in pressing forward and in standing aside, who knew how to attract to himself the favour and the expectations of England, to obtain the eulogies of men of letters, of savants, of politicians, of the people, to gain a European reputation, to win all the crowns appropriated to science, patriotism, virtue, genius, without having too much of science, patriotism, genius, or virtue.

  Moor Park, the country home of Sir William Temple, stood not far from London, in a pleasant landscape, surrounded by its trim lawns and productive gardens. The house was plain; its owner was not wealthy; but he was famous for honesty in politics, for his success in cultivating fruits and vegetables, and for some knowledge of the classics. He wrote essays that are scarcely remembered, and produced grapes and peaches that were probably much better appreciated by his friend Charles II. or William III. Moor Park itself, and perhaps its owner, would long since have been forgotten had it not contained within its quiet shelter a dark and turbid genius, slowly struggling upward to renown, and a pale and thoughtful girl, studious at once and beautiful, whose name and fate were never to be separated from that of her modern Abelard.

  “Sir William Temple’s person,” says the nameless writer of “a short character” prefixed to his works, “is best known by his pictures and prints. He was rather tall than low; his shape, when young, very exact; his hair a dark brown, and curled naturally, and, whilst that was esteemed a beauty, nobody had it in greater perfection; his eyes grey, but lively; and his body lean, but extreme active, so that none acquitted themselves better at all sorts of exercise.” What principally strikes us in Temple’s intellect is its singular measure, solidity, sagacity. In negotiating he timed his movements with admirable skill; he succeeded in whatever he undertook; he was the author of the most famous alliance in that generation, and nobody has detected a flaw in his plans, or proved that in his diplomacy he should have acted otherwise than he did. The same sagacity appears in his political speculations; he keeps close to the facts, and does not begin to speculate till he has mastered them. Such he was as a man of practice and a thinker, attempting comparatively little, and doing what he attempted with thoroughness. When we view him on the æsthetic side, we see the same characteristic appearing in the shape of refined taste. He did not attempt works of the imagination, but he studied the beauties of order and finished rhythm, and even in his most didactic compositions the language and the similitudes have a refined elevation.

  Throughout his whole career, the conduct of Sir William Temple was marked by a cautious regard for his personal comfort and reputation; which strongly disposed him to avoid risks of every kind, and to stand aloof from public business where the exercise of eminent courage and decision was required. His character as a patriot is therefore not one which calls for high admiration; though it ought to be remarked in his favour, that as he seems to have had a lively consciousness that neither his abilities nor dispositions fitted him for vigorous action in stormy times, he probably acted with prudence in withdrawing from a field in which he would have only been mortified by failure, and done harm instead of good to the public. Being subject to frequent attacks of low spirits, he might have been disabled for action by the very emergencies which demanded the greatest mental energy and self-possession. But as an adviser, he was enlightened, safe and sagacious. As a private character, Sir William was respectable and decorous: his temper, naturally haughty and unamiable, was generally kept under good regulation; and among his foibles, vanity was the most prominent.

  He had great dignity; he had wealth; a sort of earlier Edward Everett—as polished and cold and well-meaning and fastidious; looking rather more to the elegance of his speech than to the burden of it; always making show of Classicism—nothing if not correct; cautious; keeping well out of harm’s way, and all pugnacious expressions of opinion; courteous to strong Churchmen; courteous to Papists; bowing low to my Lady Castlemaine; very considerate of Cromwellians who had power; moulding his habit and speech so as to show no ugly angles of opinion anywhere, but only such convenient roundness as would roll along life’s level easily to the very end.

  Sir William himself, in his youthful days, had been one of Sacharissa’s most ardent admirers, and made no secret of the regard he retained for her in later days. His betrothed bride often alludes playfully to his silent adoration of this fair lady, in whom all perfections were supposed to meet. If she praises Lady Ann Wentworth, who she calls the finest lady she knows, she hastens to add, with that arch smile we know so well, “One always excepted,” and when she sends her lover her own portrait, at his request, begs that it may not presume to disturb my Lady Sunderland’s which always hangs in his closet.

General

  In my first setting out, I never read any Art of Logic or Rhetoric. I met with Locke, he was quite insipid to me. I read Sir William Temple’s “Essays” too then, but whenever there was anything political in them, I had no manner of feeling for it.

  Wrote always like a man of sense and a gentleman; and his style is the model by which the best prose writers in the reign of Queen Anne formed theirs.

  Of all the considerable writers of this age, Sir William Temple is almost the only one that kept himself altogether unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentiousness which overwhelmed the nation. The style of this author, although extremely negligent, and even infected with foreign idioms, is agreeable and interesting. That mixture of vanity which appears in his works is rather a recommendation to them. By means of it we enter into acquaintance with the character of the author, full of honour and humanity, and fancy that we are engaged, not in the perusal of a book, but in conversation with a companion.

  Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before this time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded.

  Temple is a very sensible writer, and draws more from his own stock of observation and reflection than is usual with the writers of the present day…. Temple, whatever topic he treats, always entertains: he has an easy regular stream of good sense, which never overflows, or fails, or stagnates.

  Sir William Temple is another remarkable writer in the style of simplicity. In point of ornament and correctness, he rises a degree above Tillotson; though, for correctness, he is not in the highest rank. All is easy and flowing in him; he is exceedingly harmonious; smoothness, and what may be called amenity, are the distinguishing characters of his manner; relaxing, sometimes, as such a manner will naturally do, into a prolix and remiss style. No writer whatever has stamped upon his style a more lively impression of his own character. In reading his works, we seem engaged in conversation with him; we become thoroughly acquainted with him, not merely as an author, but as a man; and contract a friendship for him. He may be classed as standing in the middle, between a negligent simplicity, and the highest degree of ornament, which this character of style admits.

  I have heard that, among works of prose, Pope was most fond of the second part of Sir William Temple’s “Miscellanies.”

  Swift represents him as having brought English style to perfection. Hume, I think, mentions him; but of late he is not often spoken of as one of the reformers of our style—this, however, he certainly was. The structure of his style is perfectly modern; and I have not marked above half a dozen words that are become obsolete. He has, indeed, several gallicisms, but they are chiefly in letters, written in Flanders and Holland, when he was every day speaking French.

  The day light of pure taste rose, when Sir William Temple put his pen to paper, and committed his lucubrations to the press. On every account I recommend his Works to a conspicuous place in the library of every youthful and aged person, who has the literary renown of his country at heart. Temple was among the earliest of the polishers of our prose; and bringing to his works liberal principles, a cultivated taste, and a kind heart, it is not to be wondered at that his popularity has been so great, as it is generally allowed to be.

  It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing. We should prefer saying—of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both writers; but in the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and his Earl’s mantle before him; the commoner in his elbow chair and undress.—What can be more pleasant than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out in the essays, penned by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador.

  The style of his essays is, on the whole, excellent,—almost always pleasing, and now and then stately and splendid. The matter is generally of much less value…. He was no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation,—a man of the world amongst men of letters,—a man of letters amongst men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the ambassador and cabinet councillor; mere politicians by the essayist and historian. But neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot to him any very high place. As a man, he seems to us to have been excessively selfish, but very sober, wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness;—to have known better than most people know what he really wanted in life; and to have pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity;—never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by bad or by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he desired success,—to prefer security, comfort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from greatness;—and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant energy of the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes appears to resemble the moderation of virtue. But we must own, that he seems to us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him—we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality,—but with many of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong passions and strong temptations, have left to posterity a doubtful and checkered fame.

  Next to Dryden, the second place among the polite writers of the period from the Restoration to the end of the century has commonly been given to Sir William Temple. His “Miscellanies,” to which principally this praise belongs, are not recommended by more erudition than a retired statesman might acquire with no great expense of time, nor by much originality of reflection. But, if Temple has not profound knowledge, he turns all he possesses well to account; if his thoughts are not very striking, they are commonly just. He has less eloquence than Bolingbroke, but is also free from his restlessness and ostentation. Much also, which now appears superficial in Temple’s historical surveys, was far less familiar in his age: he has the merit of a comprehensive and a candid mind. His style, to which we should particularly refer, will be found, in comparison with his contemporaries, highly polished, and sustained with more equability than they preserve, remote from any thing either pedantic or humble. The periods are studiously rhythmical; yet they want the variety and peculiar charm that we admire in those of Dryden.

  Sir William Temple was the D’Ossat of England; but in the views and the style of his “Observations,” his “Miscellaneous Works,” and his “Memoirs,” he is far inferior to our diplomatist.

  His mode as an author agrees with his maxims as a politician. His principles and style are homogeneous; a genuine diplomatist, such as one meets in the drawing-rooms, having probed Europe and touched everywhere the bottom of things; tired of everything, especially of enthusiasm, admirable in an arm-chair or at a levee, a good story-teller, waggish if need were, but in moderation, accomplished in the art of maintaining the dignity of his station and of enjoying himself.

  He seems to have been a man of deep tenderness and strong personal feelings, a great favourite with children, a passionate lover, a fond husband, a constant friend. As his likes were strong, so were his dislikes; he had such an aversion for some men as to be impatient of their conversation.

  When the critical admirers of the prose style of Sir William Temple ask us to believe that the distinguished diplomats “advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it well can bear,” they ask too much. In marking the progress and development of English prose style from the overcharged rhetoric of the sixteenth century to a more simple and perspicuous arrangement of sentences, Temple was no doubt an important unit; but Cowley, Tillotson, Barrow, Jeremy Taylor, Dryden, and Locke also contributed, in their several degrees of excellence, to create a new standard of refinement and verbal purity in our language. The elegance and naïveté of Sir William Temple’s style are illustrated nowhere better than in his letters. He had a happy knack of suiting his manner and wording to the character of the person addressed.

  As an author he ranks high, not so much because his works show great power of genius, as because he was one of the first to obtain a mastery over the great and difficult art of English prose composition.

  In a treatise on “Ancient and Modern Learning,” written in his most chaste and dignified prose, he supported the cause of the Ancients. Avowedly the essay is rather literary than critical: and here and there remarks are introduced which give a graceful turn to the paragraphs, but could hardly be gravely employed as arguments in the controversy. Legendary resources are drawn upon so as to embellish with something of biographical detail what are little more than names in ancient literature. In many passages Temple has doubtless laid himself open to the ridicule which has been thrown upon him with much skill, but little measure, by Lord Macaulay. But the intention of the essay has been purposely distorted by Macaulay. Appeals made by Temple to the general impressions which are to be drawn from classical legends or literature, are twisted by Macaulay into positive assertions falsely claiming historical basis…. The treatise is of little value save for its gracefulness of language and tone, but it served very well to give to English readers an introduction to a topic in the literature of their more polite and facile neighbours. What it wants in criticism, it here and there supplies by a humour which Macaulay leaves out of sight.

  It is the fault of Temple’s discourses that they are too much like popular lectures by a very ignorant man who presumes upon his genteel appearance and elegant delivery. There are no productions which must be read more exclusively for their manner and not for their matter. Temple tells us nothing very agreeably, and then, while we are applauding, he dares to assert that there is no more for us to know. He was not a scholar, nor a critic, nor a geographer, nor even a botanist, and yet scholarship, criticism, geography, and botany, are the themes of his four principal essays. His discourse on learning, by a man who could not construe a page of Greek, set Bentley lashing his sides, and woke a din in which the clear falsetto of Temple was entirely drowned. Nevertheless, Temple is eminently readable. We forgive his parental condescension, his patent ignorance, in the delight and surprise of his modern tone. When he babbles of his oranges and his figs, and says he must leave the flowers to the ladies; when he talks of a friend of his who has a gamekeeper who is a Rosicrucian, and a laundress who is firm in the philosophy of Epicurus; when he laughs and sparkles over his runic nonsense and his Phalaris forgeries like some fine blue-stocking in a Congreve comedy—we feel that English prose has come to the birth, and that here is a man at last who can write about Nothing like a gentleman.

  If wise as a serpent he was timid as a dove…. Temple’s memoirs give a lively picture of the mortifications he underwent as he gradually dwindled into a cipher…. At length he escaped to his books and gardens, and spent the rest of his life in the enjoyment of a character for consummate statesmanship, which he took care never to bring to the test. Wisdom and virtue he certainly did possess, but both with him were too much of the self-regarding order. His claims to rank as a restorer of English prose are better founded, though these, too, have been exaggerated. Johnson’s assertion that Temple was the first writer who attended to cadence in English prose merely evinces how completely the power of appreciating the grand harmonies of the Elizabethan period had died out in the eighteenth century. He must, notwithstanding, be allowed an honourable place among those who have rendered English prose lucid, symmetrical, and adapted for business; and Macaulay has justly pointed out that the apparent length of his sentences is mainly a matter of punctuation. The elegance of the writer, and the egotistic caution of the man, are excellently represented by the concluding passage of his “Memoirs.”

  His style, at its best extremely engaging, manifests the new form—plain, but carefully balanced and polished. From the agreeable nature of the subjects, and the air of gentlemanly but not too patronising condescension which it displays, it exercised great influence on a generation which thoroughly respected “quality.” Once (in the thousand times quoted close of his “Essay on Poetry”) Temple went higher than Dryden, higher than any one of his own school, in developing the music of prose; in the context of this and in many other places he goes very high.

  As a writer, apart from a weakness for gallicisms, which he admitted and tried to correct, his prose marked a development in the direction of refinement, rhythmical finish, and emancipation from the pedantry of long parentheses and superfluous quotations. He was also a pioneer in the judicious use of the paragraph. Hallam, ignoring Halifax, would assign him the second place, after Dryden, among the polite authors of his epoch. Swift gave expression to the belief that he had advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it could well bear; Chesterfield recommended him to his son; Dr. Johnson spoke of him as the first writer to give cadence to the English language; and Lamb praises him delightfully in his “Essay on the Genteel Style.” During the eighteenth century his essays were used as exercises and models. But the progress made during the last half-century in the direction of the sovereign prose quality of limpidity has not been favourable to Temple’s literary reputation, and in the future it is probable that his “Letters” and “Memoirs” will be valued chiefly by the historian, while his “Essays” will remain interesting primarily for the picture they afford of the cultured gentleman of the period. A few noble similes, however, and those majestic words of consolation addressed to Lady Essex, deserve and will find a place among the consecrated passages of English prose.