him with a siken halter;' even his rival Bacon made this inemorable acknowledgment, in reminding the judges, that such a man was not every day to be found, nor so soon made as marred.' When his successor was chosen, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, in administering the oath, accused Coke of many errors and vanities for his ambitous popularity.' Coke, however, lost no friends in this disgrace, nor relaxed his haughtiness; for when the new chief justice sent to purchase his Collar of S. S., Coke returned for answer, that he would not part with it, but leave it to his posterity, that they might one day know they I had a chief justice to their ancestor.'

In this temporary alienation of the royal smiles, Coke attempted their renewal by a project which involved a domestic sacrifice. When the king was in Scotland, and Lord Bacon, as lord-keeper, sat at the head of affairs, his lordship was on ill terms with Secretary Winwood, whom Coke easily persuaded to resume a former proposal for marrying his only daughter to the favourite's eldest brother, Sir John Villers. Coke had formally refused this match from the high demands of these parvenus. Coke, in prosperity, sucking at ten thousand a year, and resolv ing to give only ten thousand marks, dropped some idle words, that he would not buy the king's favour too dear;' but now in his adversity, his ambition proved stronger than bis avarice, and by this stroke of deep policy the wily lawyer was converting a mere domestic transaction into an affair of state, which it soon became. As such it was evidently perceived by Bacon; he was alarmed at this projected alliance, in which he foresaw that he should lose his hold of the favourite in the inevitable rise once more of his rival Coke. Bacon, the illustrious philosopher, whose eye was only blest in observing nature, and whose mind was only great in recording his own meditations, now sat down to contrive the most subtile suggestions he could put together to prevent this match; but Lord Bacon not only failed in persuading the king to refuse what his majesty much wished, but finally produced the very mischief he sought to avert-a rupture with Buckingham himself, and a copious scolding letter from the king, but a very admirable one ; and where the lord keeper trembled to find himself called Mr Bacon.'

There were, however, other personages, than his maJesty and his favourite, more deeply concerned in this business, and who had not hitherto been once consulted-the mother and the daughter! Coke, who, in every day concerns issued his commands as he would his law-writs,and at times boldly asserted the rights of the subject, had no other paternal notion of the duties of a wife and a child than their obedience!

Lady Hatton, haughty to insolence, had been often forbidden both the courts of their majesties, where Lady Compton, the mother of Buckingham, was the object of her ladyship's persevering contempt. She retained her personal influence by the numerous estates which she enjoyed in right of her former husband. When Coke fell into disgrace, his lady abandoned him! and, to avoid her husband, frequently moved her residences in town and coun. try. I trace her with malicious activity disfurnishing his house in Holborn, and at Stoke,‡ seizing on all the plate and moveables, and, in fact, leaving the fallen statesman and the late lord chief-justice, empty houses and no comforter! The wars between Lady Hatton and her husband were carried on before the council-board, where her ladyship appeared, accompanied by an imposing train of noble friends. With her accustomed haughty airs, and in an imperial style, Lady Hatton declaimed against her tyranni

These particulars I find in the manuscript letters of J. Chamberlain. Sloane MSS, 4173, (1616.) In the quaint style of the times, the common speech run, that Lord Coke had been overthrown by four P-Pride, Prohibitions, Præmunire, and Prerogative. It is only with his moral quality, and not with his legal controversies that his personal character is here concerned.

133.

In the Lambeth manuscript, 936, is a letter of Lord Bacon to the king, to prevent the match between Sir John Villiers and Mrs Coke. Art. 68. Another, Art. 69. The spirited and copious letter of James, to the Lord Keeper, is printed in Leuters, Speeches, Charges, &c., of Francis Bacon,' by Dr Birch, p. Stoke-Pogies, in Buckinghamshire; the delightful seat of J. Penn, Esq. It was the scene of Gray's Long Story,' and the chimneys of the ancient house still remain, to mark the locality; a column, on which is fixed a statue of Coke, erected by Mr Penn, consecrates the former abode of its illustrious inhabitant.

cal husband, so that the letter-writer adds, 'divers said that Burbage could not have acted better.' Burbage's famous character was that of Richard the Third. It is extraordinary that Coke, able to defend any cause, bore himself so simply. It is supposed that he had laid his domestic concerns too open to animadversion in the neglect of his daughter; or that he was aware that he was standing before no friendly bar, at that moment being out of fa vour; whatever was the cause, our noble virago obtained a signal triumph, and the oracle of law,' with all his gravity stood before the council-table hen-pecked. In June, 1616, Sir Edward appears to have yielded at discretion to his lady, for in an unpublished letter I find, that 'his curst heart hath been forced to yield to more than he ever meant; but upon this agreement he flatters himself that she will prove a very good wife.'

In the following year, 1617, these domestic affairs totally changed. The political marriage of his daughter with Villiers being now resolved on, the business was to clip the wings of so fierce a bird as Coke had found in Lady Hatton, which led to an extraordinary contest. The mother and daughter hated the upstart Villiers, and Sir John, indeed, promised to be but a sickly bridegroom. They had contrived to make up a written contract of marriage with Lord Oxford, which they opposed against the proposal, or rather the order, of Coke."

The violence to which the towering spirits of the conflicting parties proceeded is a piece of secret history, of which accident has preserved an able memorial. Coke, armed with law, and, what was at least equally potent, with the king's favour, entered by force the barricadoed houses of his lady, took possession of his daughter, on whom he appears never to have cast a thought till she became an instrument for his political purposes, confined her from her mother, and at length got the haughty mother herself imprisoned, and brought her to account for all her past misdoings. Quick was the change of scene, and the contrast was as wonderful. Coke, who, in the preceding year, to the world's surprise, proved so simple an advocate in his own cause in the presence of his wife, now, to employ his own words, got upon his wings again,' and went on as Lady Hatton, when safely lodged in prison, describes, with 'his high-handed tyrannical courses,' till the furious lawyer occasioned a fit of sickness to the proud crest-fallen lady. Law! Law! Law!' thundered from the lips of its oracle; and Lord Bacon, in his apologetical letter to the king for having opposed his ' riot or violence,' says, 'I disliked it the more, because he justified it to be law, which was his old song.'

The memorial alluded to appears to have been confidentially composed by the legal friend of Lady Hatton, to furnish her ladyship with answers when brought before the council-table. It opens several domestic scenes in the house of that great lord chief-justice; but the forcible sim. plicity of the style in domestic details will show, what I have often observed, that our language has not advanced in expression since the age of James the First. I have transcribed it from the original, and its interest must plead for its length.

'MADAM,

To Lady Hatton.

10th July, 1617. 'Seeing these people speak no language but thunder and lightning, accounting this their cheapest and best way to work upon you, I would with patience prepare myself to their extremities, and study to defend the breaches by which to their advantage they suppose to come in upon me, and henceforth quit the ways of pacification and composition heretofore, and unseasonably endeavoured, which, in my opinion, lie most open to trouble, scandal and dan ger; wherefore I will briefly set down their objections, and such answers to them as I conceive proper.

The first is, you conveyed away your daughter from her father. Answer, I had cause to provide for her quiet. Secretary Winwood threatening that she should be mar ried from me in spite of my teeth, and Sir Edward Cook dayly tormenting the girl with discourses tending to bestow her against her liking, which he said she was to submit to his; besides, my daughter daily complained, and sought to me for help; whereupon, as heretofore I had accustomed, I bestowed her apart at my cousin-german's house for a few days, for her health and quiet, till my own busi. ness for my estate were ended. Sir Edward Coke never asking me where she was no more than at other times, when at my placing she had been a quarter of a year from him, as the year before with my sister Burley."

'Second. That you endeavoured to bestow her, and to bind her to my Lord of Oxford without her knowledge and

consent.

Upon this subject a lawyer, by way of invective, may open his mouth wide, and anticipate every hearer's judgment by the rights of a father; this, dangerous in the president to others; to which, nevertheless, this answer may be justly returned.

Answer. My daughter, as aforesaid, terrified with her father's threats and hard usage, and pressing me to find some remedy from this violence intended, I did compassionate her condition, and bethought myself of this contract to my Lord of Oxford, if so she liked, and thereupon I gave it to her to peruse and consider by herself, which she did; she liked it, cheerfully writ it with her own hand, subscribed it, and returned it to me; wherein I did nothing of my own will, but followed her's, after I saw she was so adverse to Sir Thomas Villiers, that she voluntarily and deliberately protested that of all men living she would never have him, nor could ever fancy him for a husband.

'Secondly. By this I put her in no new way, nor into any other that her father had heretofore known and approved; for he saw such letters as my lady of Oxford had writ to me thereabouts; he never forbad it; he never disliked it; only he said they were then too young, and there was time enough for the treaty.

Thirdly. He always left his daughter to my disposing and my bringing up; knowing that I purposed her my fortune and whole estate, and as upon these reasons he left her to my cares, so he eased himself absolutely of her, never meddling with her, neglecting her, and caring nothing for her.

The third. That you counterfeited a treaty from my Lord of Oxford's to yourself.

quester the mother from her own child. she only endeavour ing the child's good, with the child's liking, and to her preferment; and he, his private end against the child's liking, without care of her preferment; which differing respects, as they justify the mother in all, so condemn they the father as a transgressor of the rules of nature, and as a perverter of his rights, as a father and a husband, to the hurt both of child and wife.

Lastly, if recrimination could lessen the fault, take this in the worst sense, and naked of all the considerable circumstances it hath, what is this, nay, what had the execti ting of this intention been comparatively with Sir Edward Cook's most notorious riot, committed at my Lord of Ar. guyl's house, when without constable or warrant, associated with a dozen fellows well weaponed, without cause being be forehand offered, to have what he would, he took down the doors of the gate-house and of the house itself, and tore the daughter in that barbarous manner from the mother, and would not suffer the mother to come near her; and when he was before the lords of the council to answer this outrage, he justified it to make it good by law, and that he foured the face of no greatness; a dangerous word for the encouragement of all notorious and rebellious malefactors; especially from him that had been the chief justice of the law, and of the people reputed the oracle of the law; and a most dangerous bravado cast in the teeth and face of the state in the

king's absence; and therefore most considerable for the maintenance of authority and the quiet of the land; for if it be lawful for him with a dozen to enter any man's house thus outrageously for any right to which he pretends, it is lawful for any man with one hundred, nay, with five hundred, and consequently with as many as he can draw together, to do the same, which may endanger the safety of the king's person, and the peace of the kingdom.

The fifth, that you having certified the king you had received an engagement from my Lord of Oxford, and the

'Secondly, the end justifies, at the least, excuses, the fact; for it was only to hold up my daughter's mind to her own choice and liking: for her eyes only, and for no other's, that she might see some retribution, and thereby with the more constancy endure her imprisonment, having this only antidote to resist the poison of that place, company, and conversation; myself and all her friends barred from her, and no person nor speech admitted to her ear, but such as spoke Sir Thomas Villier's language.

The fourth. That you plotted to surprise your daughter to take her away by force, to the breach of the king's peace and particular commandment, and for that purpose had assembled a number of desperate fellows, whereof the consequence might have been dangerous; and the affront to the king was the greater that such a thing was offered, the king being forth of the kingdom, which, by example, might have drawn on other assemblies to more dangerous attempts. This field is large for a plentiful babbler.

'Answer. I know no such matter, neither in any place was there such assembly; true it is I spoke to Turner to provide me some tall fellows for the taking a possession for me, in Lincolnshire, of some lands Sir William Mason had lately dis-seized me; but be it they were assembled and convoked to such an end, what was done? was any such thing attempted? were they upon the place? kept they the heath or the highways by ambuscades? or was any place, any day, appointed for a rendezvous? No, no such matter, but something was intended; and I pray you what says the law of such a single intention, which is not within the view or notice of the law? Besides, who intended this-the mother? and wherefore? because she was unnaturally and barbarously secluded from her daughter, and her daughter forced against her will, contrary to her vow and liking, to the will of him she disliked; nay, laws of God, of nature, of man, speak for me, and cry out upon them. But they had a warrant from the king's order from the commissioners to keep my daughter in their custody yet neither this warrant nor the commissioners' did prohibit the mother coming to her, but contrarily allowed her; then by the same authority might she get to her daughter, that Sir Edward Cook had used to keep her from her daughter; the husband having no power, warrant, or permission from God, the king, or the law, to se

the

bring it to him, or to send it him; or not having it, to sig ify his name to who brought it, and where he was; you refused all, by which you doubled and trebled a high contempt to his majesty.

Answer. I was so sick on the week before, for the most part I kept my bed, and even that instant I was so weak as I was not able to rise from it without help, nor to endure the air; which indisposition and weakness my two physicians, Sir William Paddy and Dr Atkins, can affirm true; which so being, I hope his majesty will graciously excuse the necessity, and not impose a fault, whereof I am not guilty; and for the sending it, I protest to God I had it not; and for telling the parties, and where he is, I most humbly beseech his sacred majesty, in his great wis dom and honour, to consider how unworthy a part it were in me to bring any man into trouble, from which I am su far from redeeming him as I can no way relieve myself, and therefore humbly crave his majesty, in his princely consideration of my distressed condition, to forgive me this reservedness, proceeding from that just sense, and the rather, for that the law of the land in civil causes, as I am informed, no way tieth me thereunto.'

Among other papers it appears that Coke accused his lady of having embezzled all his gilt and silver plate and vessel, (he having little in any house of mine but that, his marriage with me brought him) and instead thereof faisted in alkumy of the same sorte, fashion, and use, with the illusion to have cheated him of the other.' Coke insists on

the inventory by the schedule! Her ladyship says, made such plate for matter and form for my own use at Purbeck, that serving well enough in the country; and I was loth to trust such a substance in a place so remote, and in the guard of few; but for the plate and vessel he saith is wanting, they are every ounce within one of my three houses." She complains that Sir Edward Coke and his son Clement had threatened her servants so grievously, that the poor men run away to hide themselves from his fury, and dare not appear abroad. "Sir Edward broke into Hatton House, seized upon my coach and coach horses, nay, my apparel, which he detains thrust all my servants out of doors without wages; sent down his men to Corfe to inventory, seize, ship, and carry away all the goods, which being refused him by the castle keeper, he threats to bring your lordship's warrant for the performance there of. But your lordship established that he should have the use only of the goods during his life, in such houses as the same appertained, without meaning, I hope, of depriving me of such use, being goods bought at my marriage, or

dexes. The plan is vast, as the rapidity with which it was pursued: Bayle finely characterizes it by a single stroke Its immensity tires even the imagination.' But the truth is, this mighty labour turned out to be a complete failure: there was neither order nor judgment in these masses of learning; crude, obscure, and contradictory; such as we might expect from a man who trusted to his memory, and would not throw away his time on any correction. His contradictions are flagrant; but one of his friends would apologize for these by telling us that 'He wrote every thing which offered itself to his imagination; to-day one thing, to-morrow another, in order that when ne should revise it again, this contrariety of opinion might induce him to examine the subject more accurately.' The notions of the friends of authors are as extravagant as those of their enemies. Barthius evidently wrote so much, that often he forgot what he had written, as happened to another great book-man, one Didymus, of whom Quintilian records, that on hearing a certain history, he treated it as urterly unworthy of credit; on which the teller called for one of Didymus's own books, and showed where he might read it at full length! That the work failed, we have the evidence of Clement in his Bibliotheque curieuse de Livres difficiles à trouver,' under the article Barthius, where we discover the winding up of the history of this book. Clement mentions more than one edition of the Adversaria; but on a more careful inspection he detected that the old title pages had been removed for others of a fresher date; the booksellers not being able to sell the book practised this deception. It availed little; they remained with their unsold edition of the two first volumes of the Adversaria, and the author with three thousand folio sheets in manuscript-while both parties complained together, and their heirs could acquire nothing from the works of an author of whom Bayle says that his writings rise to such a prodigious bulk, that one can scarce conceive a single man could be capable of executing so great a variety; perhaps no copying clerk, who lived to grow old amidst the dust of an office, ever transcribed as much as this author has written.' This was the memorable fate of one of that race of writers who imagine that their capacity extends with their volume. Their land seems covered fertility, but in shaking their wheat no ears fall.

Another memorable brother of this family of the Scribleri is the AB8bé De Maroltea, who with great ardour as a man of letters, and in the enjoyment of the leisure and opu lonce so necessary to carry on his pursuits, from an entire absence of judgment, closed his life with the bitter regrets of a voluminous author; and yet it cannot be denied that he has contributed one precious volume to the public stock of literature; a compliment which cannot be paid to some who have enjoyed a higher reputation than our author. He has left us his very curious Memoirs.' A poor writer indeed, but the frankness and intrepidity of his character enable him, while he is painting himself, to paint man. Gibbon was struck by the honesty of his pen, for he says in his life, 'The dulness of Michael de Marolles and Anthony Wood* acquire some value from the faithful representation of men and manners.'

I have elsewhere shortly noticed the Abbé De Marolles in the character of a literary sinner; but the extent of his sins never struck me so forcibly as when I observed his delinquencies counted up in chronological order in Niceron's Hommes illustres.' It is extremely amusing to detect the swarming fecundity of his pen; from year to year. with author after author, was this translator wearying others, but remained himself unwearied. Sometimes two or three classical victims in a season were dragged into his slaughter-house. Of about seventy works, fifty were versions of the classical writers of antiquity, accompanied with notes. But some odd circumstances happened to our extraordinary translator in the course of his life. De L'Etang, a critic of that day, in his Régles de bien traduire,' drew all his examples of bad translation from our abbé, who was more angry than usual, and among his circie the cries of our Marsyas resounded. De L'Etang, who had done this not out of malice, but from urgent necessity to illustrate his principles, seemed very sorry,

and was

I cannot subscribe to the opinion that Anthony Wood was aduil man, although he had no particular liking for works of imagination; and used ordinary poets scurvily! An author's personal character is often confounded with the nature of his work. Anthony has sallies at times to which a dull man could not be subject; without the andour of this hermit of literature, where would be our literary history?

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He has

desirous of appeasing the angried translator. One day in Easter, finding the abbé in church at prayers, the critic fell on his knees by the side of the translator: it was an extraordinary moment, and a singular situation to terminate a literary quarrel. You are angry with me,' said L'Etang, and I think you have reason; but this is a season of mera cy, and I now ask your pardon.'-' In the manner,' replied the abbé, which you have chosen, I can no longer defend myself. Go, sir! I pardon you.' Some days after the abbé again meeting L'Etang, reproached him with duping him out of a pardon which he had no desire to have bestowed on him. The last reply of the critic was caustic: 'Do not be so difficult; when one stands in need of a gencral pardon, one ought surely to grant a particular one.' De Marolles was subject to encounter critics who were never so kind as to kneel by him on Easter Sunday. Besides these fifty translations, of which the notes are often curious, and even the sense may be useful to consult, his love of writing produced many odd works. His volumes were richly bound, and freely distributed, for they found no readers! In a Discours pour servir de Preface sur les Poetes traduits par Michel de Marolles,' he has given an imposing list of illustrious persons and contemporary authors who were his friends,' and has preserved many singular facts concerning them. He was, indeed, for so long a time convinced that he had struck off the true spirit of his fine originals, that I find he at several times printed some critical treatise to back his last, or usher in his new version; giving the world reasons why the versions which had been given of that particular author, Soit en prose, soit en vers ont été si peu approuvées jusqu' ici.' Among these numerous translations he was the first who ventured on the Deiponsoppists of Athenæus, which still bears an excessive price. He entitles his work, Les quinze Livres de Deiponosophistes d' Athenée, Ouvrage delicieux, agreablement diversifié et rempli de Narrations sçavantes sur toutes Sortes de Matiéres et de Sujets.' prefixed various preliminary dissertations: yet not satisfied with having performed this great labour, it was followed by a small quarto of forty pages, which might now be consi dered curious; Analyse, en Description succincte des Choses contenues dans les quinzes Livres de Deiponosophistes.' He wrote, Quatrains sur les Personnes de la Cour et les Gens de Lettres,' which the curious would now be glad to find. After having plundered the classical geniuses of antiquity by his barbarous style, when he had nothing more left to do, he committed sacrilege in transla ting the Bible; but, in the midst of printing, he was sud denly stopped by authority, for having inserted in his notes the reveries of the Pre-Adamite Isaac Peyrere. He had already revelled on the New Testament, to his version of which he had prefixed so sensible an introduction, that it was afterwards translated into Latin. Translation was the mania of the Abbé de Marolles. I doubt whether he ever fairly awoke out of the heavy dream of the felicity of his translations; for late in life I find him observing, 'I have employed much time in study, and I have translated many books; considering this rather as an innocent amusement which I have chosen for my private life, than as things very necessary, although they are not entirely useless. Some have valued them, and others have cared little about them; but however it may be, I see nothing which obliges me to believe that they contain not at least as much good as bad, both for their own matter and the form which I have given to them.' The notion he entertained of his translations was their closeness; he was not aware of his own spiritless style; and he imagined that poetry only consisted in the thoughts, not in the grace and harmony of verse. He insisted that by giving the public his numerous translations, he was not vainly multiplying books, because he neither diminished nor increased their ideas in his faithful versions. He had a curious notion that some were more scrupulous than they ought to be respecting translations of authors who, living so many ages past, are rarely read from the difficulty of understanding them; and why should they imagine that a translation is injurious to them, or would occasion the utter neglect of the originals? We do not think so highly of our own works,' says the indefatigable and modest Abbé; but neither do I despair that they may be useful even to these scrupulous persons. I will not suppress the truth, while I am noticing these ungrateful labours; if they have given me much pain by my assiduity, they have repaid me by the fine things they have taught me, and by opinion which I have conceived that posterity, more

tho