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the object of which was to bring about peace between France and Spain and to restrain France from invading the Low Countries, was mainly due to Temple's energy, and established his reputation as a diplomatist. He continued to carry out the policy of the Allied Powers at the Hague, and became, not unnaturally, especially obnoxious to the French Government, at whose instigation he was abruptly recalled in 1669. He retired to Sheen, where he employed himself with gardening and in the composition of several of his best treatises. He was recalled to active service in 1674, and displayed his independence as a statesman by refusing to sign the treaty proposed after the peace of Nimeguen. In 1681 he withdrew finally from public employment. The rest of his life was passed in retirement, from which William III in vain attempted to attract him. He died in 1699.

Sir William Temple has a place of his own among English writers, and will be studied for the purity and elegance of his English when greater thinkers, whose forms of expression are uncouth, are neglected.

Temple is master of a style which is seen to most advantage in memoirs and essays of the lighter kind. This style he may almost be said to have originated. He seldom fails to gratify his reader, and he has occasional passages of great splendour and dignity.

Sir James Mackintosh says of Temple, 'in an age of extremes he was attached to liberty, and yet averse from endangering the public quiet.' It is not altogether fanciful to say that the political and domestic character of Temple is reflected in his Letters, Essays, and Memoirs. In an evil hour for his reputation as a critic, he lavished praise on the so-called Letters of Philaris, and provoked a controversy for ever memorable in literary annals. He was the patron of Swift, who has hardly done justice to his memory.

1. Giants in Wit and Genius exceptional productions of Nature.

I HAVE long thought, that the different abilities of men, which we call wisdom or prudence, for the conduct of public

affairs or private life, grow directly out of that little grain of intellect or good sense which they bring with them into the world; and that the defect of it in men comes from some want in their conception or birth.

Dixitque semel nascentibus auctor,
Quicquid scire licet.

And though this may be improved or impaired in some degree, by accidents of education, of study, and of conversation and business, yet it cannot go beyond the reach of its native force, no more than life can beyond the period to which it was destined by the strength or weakness of the seminal virtue.

If these speculations should be true, then I know not what advantages we can pretend to modern knowledge by any we receive from the ancients; nay it is possible, men may lose rather than gain by them; may lessen the force and growth of their own genius by constraining and forming it upon that of others; may have less knowledge of their own, for contenting themselves with that of those before them. So a man that only translates, shall never be a poet, nor a painter that only copies, nor a swimmer that swims always with bladders. So people that trust wholly to other's charity, and without industry of their own, will be always poor. Besides who can tell, whether learning may not even weaken invention in a man that has great advantages from nature and birth; whether the weight and number of so many other men's thoughts and notions may not suppress his own, or hinder the motion and agitation of them, from which all invention arises; as heaping on wood, or too many sticks, extinguishes a little spark that would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame. The strength of mind, as well as of body, grows more from the warmth of exercise than of clothes; nay, too much of this foreign heat rather makes

men faint, and their constitutions tender or weaker than they would be without them. Let it come about how it will, if we are dwarfs, we are still so though we stand upon a giant's shoulders; and even so placed, yet we see less than he, if we are naturally shorter sighted, or if we do not look as much about us, or if we are dazzled with the height, which often happens from weakness either of heart or brain.

In the growth and stature of souls, as well as bodies, the common productions are of indifferent sizes, that occasion no gazing, nor no wonder: but though there are or have been sometimes dwarfs and sometimes giants in the world, yet it does not follow, that there must be such in every age, nor in every country; this we can no more conclude, than that there never have been any, because there are none now, at least in the compass of our present knowledge or enquiry. As I believe there may have been giants at some time and some place or other in the world, or such a stature, as may not have been equalled perhaps again in several thousands of years, or in any other parts, so there may be giants in wit and knowledge, of so over-grown a size, as not to be equalled again in many successions of ages, or any compass of place or country. Such, I am sure, Lucretius esteems and describes Epicurus to have been, and to have risen, like a prodigy of invention and knowledge, such as had not been before, nor was like to be again; and I know not why others of the ancients may not be allowed to have been as great in their kinds, and to have built as high, though upon different schemes or foundations. Because there is a stag's head at Amboyse of a most prodigious size, and a large table at Memorancy cut out of the thickness of a vine stock, is it necessary that there must be, every age, such a stag in every great forest, or such a vine in every large vineyard; or that the productions of nature, in any kind, must be still alike, or

something near it, because nature is still the same? May there not many circumstances concur to one production that do not to any other, in one or many ages? In the growth of a tree, there is the native strength of the seed, both from the kind, and from the perfections of its ripening, and from the health and vigour of the plant that bore it: there is the degree of strength and excellence in that vein of earth where it first took root; there is a propriety of soil, suited to the kind of tree that grows in it; there is a great favour or disfavour to its growth from accidents of water and of shelter, from the kindness or unkindness of seasons, till it be past the need or the danger of them. All these, and perhaps many others, joined with the propitiousness of climate to that sort of tree, and the length of age it shall stand and grow, may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane-tree, that shall deserve to be renowned in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other countries or times.

May not the same have happened in the production, growth, and size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it, than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or animal?-Essay, Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning.

2. Of Gardening.

I MAY perhaps be allowed to know something of this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the state, and what invitations they may hope for into other's scenes.

For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of my youth itself, so

they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say, that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavoured to escape from them into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths or circles of life.

The measure of choosing well is, whether a man likes what he has chosen; which, I thank God, has befallen me; and though, among the follies of my life, building and planting have not been the least, and have cost me more than I have the confidence to own, yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years without ever going once to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make so small a

remove.

That which makes the cares of gardening more necessary, or at least more excusable, is, that all men eat fruit that can get it; so as the choice is only, whether one will eat good or ill; and between these the difference is not greater in point of taste and delicacy, than it is of health: for the first I will only say, that whoever has used to eat good will do very great penance when he comes to ill: and for the other, I think nothing is more evident, than as ill or unripe fruit is extremely unwholesome, and causes so many untimely deaths, or so much sickness about autumn, in all great cities where it is greedily sold as well as eaten; so no part of diet, in any season, is so healthful, so natural, and so agreeable to the stomach, as good and well-ripened fruits; for this I make. the measure of their being good: and let the kinds be what

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