(October, 1829.) Memoirs of Larr FANSHAWE, Wife of the Right Honourable Sir Richard Fanshawe, Baronet, Ambassador from Charles the Second to the Court of Madrid in 1665. Written by herself. To which are added, Extracts from the Correspondence of Sir Richard Fanshawe. 8vo. pp. 360. London: 1829. THERE is not much in this book, either of individual character, or public story. It is, indeed, but a small affair-any way; but yet pleasing, and not altogether without interest or instruction. Though it presents us with no traits of historical importance, and but few of personal passion or adventure, it still gives us a peep at a scene of surpassing interest from a new quarter; and at all events adds one other item to the great and growing store of those contemporary notices which are every day familiarizing us more and more with the living character of by-gone ages; and without which we begin, at last, to be sensible, that we can neither enter into their spirit, nor even understand their public transactions. Writings not meant for publication, nor prepared for purposes of vanity or contention, are the only memorials in which the true "form and pressure" of the ages which produce them are ever completely preserved; and, indeed, the only documents from which the great events which are blazoned on their records can ever De satisfactorily explained. It is in such writings alone,-confidential letters-private diaries-family anecdotes-and personal remonstrances, apologies, or explanations, that the true springs of action are disclosed-as well as the obstructions and impediments, whether in the scruples of individuals or the general temper of society, by which their operation is so capriciously, and, but for these revelations, so unaccountably controlled.They are the true key to the cipher in which public annals are almost necessarily written; and their disclosure, after long intervals of time, is almost as good as the revocation of their writers from the dead-to abide our interrogatories, and to act over again, before us, in the very dress and accents of the time, a portion of the scenes which they once guided or adorned. It is not a very striking portion, perhaps, that is thus recalled by the publication before us; but whatever interest it possesses is mainly of this character. It belongs to an era, to which, of all others in our history, curiosity will always be most eagerly directed; and it constantly rivets our attention, by exciting expectations which it ought, in truth, to have fulfilled; and suggesting how much more interesting and instructive it might so easily have been made. voted attachment, and participated not unworthily in all his fortunes and designs, was, consequently, in continual contact with the movements which then agitated society; and had her full share of the troubles and triumphs which belonged to such an existence. Her memoirs ought, therefore, to have formed an interesting counterpart to those of Mrs. Hutchinson; and to have recalled to us, with equal force and vivacity, the aspect under which those great events presented themselves to a female spectatress and sufferer, of the opposite faction. But, though the title of the book, and the announcements of the editor, hold out this promise, we must say that the body of it falls far short of performance: and, whether it be that her side of the question did not admit of the same force of delineation or loftiness of sentiment; or, that the individual chronicler has been less fortunately selected, it is certain that, in point both of interest and instruction; in traits of character, warmth of colouring, or exaltation of feeling, there is no sort of comparison between these gossiping, and, though affectionate, yet relatively cold and feeble, memoranda, and the earnest, eloquent, and graphic representations of the puritan heroine. Nor should it be forgotten, even in hinting at such a parallel, that, in one important respect, the royalist cause also must be allowed to have been singularly happy in its female representative. Since, if it may be said with some show of reason, that Lucy Hutchinson and her husband had too many elegant tastes and accomplishments to be taken as fair specimens of the austere and godly republicans; it certainly may be retorted, with at least equal justice, that the chaste and decorous Lady Fanshawe, and her sober diplomatic lord, shadow out rather too favourably the general manners and morals of the cavaliers. After all, perhaps, the true secret of her inferiority, in all at least that relates to political interest, may be found in the fact, that the fair writer, though born and bred a royalist, and faithfully adhering to her husband in his efforts and sufferings in the cause, was not naturally, or of herself, particularly studious of such matters; or disposed to occupy herself more than was necessary with any public concern. She seems to have followed, like a good wife and daughter, where her parents or Lady Fanshawe was, as is generally known, her husband led her; and to have adopted the wife of a distinguished cavalier, in the their opinions with a dutiful and implicit conHeroic Age of the civil wars and the Protec-fidence, but without being very deeply moved torate; and survived till long after the Res- by the principles or passions which actuated toration. Her husband was a person of no mean figure in those great transactions; and she, who adhered to him with the most de those from whom they were derived; while Lucy Hutchinson not only threw her whole heart and soul into the cause of her party This gift of dreaming dreams, or seeing visions, seems, indeed, to have been hered. tary in the family; for the following is given on the credit of the fair writer's own experience. When she and her husband went to Ireland, on their way to Portugal, they were honourably entertained by all the distinguished royalists who came in their way. Among others, she has recorded that, but, like Lady Macbeth or Madame Roland, | years, to see my daughter a woman: to which they imparted her own fire to her more phlegmatic answered, It is done: and then, at that instant, I helpmate,-"chastised him," when neces- awoke out of my trance; and Dr. Howlsworth sary, "with the valour of her tongue," and did there affirm, that that day she died made just fifteen years from that time."-pp. 26-28. cheered him on, by the encouragement of her high example, to all the ventures and sacrifices, the triumphs or the martyrdoms, that lay visibly across her daring and lofty course. The Lady Fanshawe, we take it, was of a less passionate temperament; and her book, accordingly, is more like that of an ordinary woman, though living in extraordinary times. She begins, no doubt, with a good deal of love and domestic devotion, and even echoes, from that sanctuary, certain notes of loyalty; but, in very truth, is chiefly occupied, for the best part of her life, with the sage and serious business of some nineteen or twenty accouchemens, which are happily accomplished in different parts of Europe; and seems, at last, to be wholly engrossed in the ceremonial of diplomatic presentations, the description of court dresses, state coaches, liveries, and jewellery, the solemnity of processions, and receptions by sovereign princes,-and the due interchange of presents and compliments with persons of worship and dignity. Fully onethird of her book is taken up with such goodly matter; and nearly as much with the genealogy of her kindred, and a faithful record of their marriages, deaths, and burials. From the remainder, however, some curious things may be gathered; and we shall try to extract what strikes us as most characteristic. We may begin with something that preceded her own recollection. The following singular legend relates to her mother; and is given, it will be observed, on very venerable authority: Dr. Howlsworth preached her funeral sermon, in which, upon his own knowledge, he told, before many hundreds of people, this accident following: That my mother, being sick to death of a fever three months after I was born, which was the occasion she gave me suck no longer, her friends and servants thought, to all outward appearance, that she was dead, and so lay almost two days and a night but Dr. Winston, coming to comfort my father, went into my mother's room, and looking earnestly on her face, said she was so handsome, and now looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead; and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this, he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knollys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was, and said,. Did not you promise me fifteen years, and are you come again already? which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but, some hours after, she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, I will acquaint you, that, during the time of my trance, I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish nor describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me, cloathed in long white garments, and methought I fell down with my face in the dust; and they asked me why I was troubled in so great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen "We went to the Lady Honor O'Brien's, a lady that went for a maid, but few believed it! She was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. There we staid three nights. The first of which I was surprised by being laid in a chamber, where, about one o'clock, I heard a voice that wakened me. I drew the curtain, and, in the casement of the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning into the window, through the casement, in white, with red hair, and pale and ghastly complexion. She spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard, thrice, A horse!' and then, with a sigh more like the wind than breath, she vanished, and, to me, her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end, and my night-clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never woke during the disorder I was in; but at last was much surprised to see me in this fright, and more so when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept any more that night, but he entertained me with telling me how much more these apparitions were usual in this country than in England! and we concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want from the power of the devil, which he exercises of that knowing faith, which should defend them among them very much." Ingenious and orthodox as this solution of the mystery must be allowed to be, we confess we should have been inclined to prefer that of the fair sleeper having had a fit of nightmare; had it not been for the conclusive testimony of the putative virgin of the house of Thomond, who supplies the following astonishing confirmation; and leads us rather to suspect that the whole might have been a trick, to rid herself the sooner of their scrupulous and decorous company. shawe, the lady of the house came to see us, "About five o'clock," continues Lady Fansaying she had not been in bed all night, because a cousin O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, and that he died at two o'clock, and she said, I wish you to have had no disturbance, for 'tis the custom of the place, that, when any of the family are dying, the shape of a be dead. This woman was many ages ago got woman appears in the window every night till they with child by the owner of this place, who murdered her in his garden, and flung her into the river under the window, but truly I thought not of it when I lodged you here, it being the best room in the house. We made little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone suddenly." We shall close this chapter, of the supernatural, with the following rather remarkable ghost story, which is calculated, we think, to make a strong impression on the imagination. Our diligent chronicler picked it up, it seems, on her way through Canterbury in the year | ink, and paper, which was your father's trade, and 1663; and it is thus nonourably attested: by it, I assure you, we lived better than those who liberty."-pp. 37, 38. were born to 20001. a year, as long as he had his "And here I cannot omit relating the ensuing story, confirmed by Sir Thomas Batten, Sir Arnold Breames, the Dean of Canterbury, with many more gentlemen and persons of this town. "There lives not far from Canterbury a gentleman, called Colonel Colepeper, whose mother was widow unto the Lord Strangford: this gentle man had a sister, who lived with him, as the world said, in too much love. She married Mr. Porter. This brother and sister being both atheists and living a life according to their profession, went in a frolick into a vault of their ancestors, where, before they returned, they pulled some of their father's and mother's hairs! Within a very few days after, Mrs. Porter fell sick and died. Her brother kept ber body in a coffin set up in his buttery, saying it would not be long before he died, and then they would be both buried together; but from the night after her death, until the time that we were told the story, which was three months, they say that a head, as cold as death, with curled hair like his sister's, did ever lie by him wherever he slept, notwith standing he removed to several places and countries to avoid it; and several persons told us they also had felt this apparition." We may now go back a little to the affairs of this world. Deep and devoted attachments are more frequently conceived in circumstances of distress and danger than in any other: and, accordingly, the love and marriage of Sir Richard Fanshawe and his lady befel during their anxious and perilous residence with the court at Oxford, in 1644. The following little sketch of the life they passed there is curious and interesting: "My father commanded my sister and myself to come to him to Oxford, where the Court then was; but we, that had till that hour lived in great plenty and great order, found ourselves like fishes out of the water, and the scene so changed, that we knew not at all how to act any part but obedience; for, from as good a house as any gentleman of England had, we came to a baker's house in an obscure street; and from rooms well furnished, to lie in a very bad bed in a garret, to one dish of meat, and that not the best ordered, no money, for we were as poor as Job, nor clothes more than a man or two brought in their cloak bags: we had the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns and men: at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plagues, sometimes sicknesses of other kind, by reason of so many people being packed together, as, I believe, there never was before of that quality; always in want, yet I must needs say, that most bore it with a martyr-like cheerfulness. For my own part, I began to think we should all, like Abraham, live in tents all the days of our lives. The king sent my father a warrant for a baronet, but he returned it with thanks, saying he had too much honour of his knighthood, which his majesty had honoured him with some years before, for the fortune he now possessed."-pp. 35-37. They were married very privately the year after; and certainly entered upon life with little but their mutual love to cheer and support them; but it seems to have been sufficient. "Both his fortune and my promised portion, which was made 10,0001, were both at that time in expectation; and we might truly be called merchant adventurers, for the stock we set up our trading with did not amount to twenty pounds betwixt us; but, however, it was to us as a little piece of armour against a bullet, which, if it be right placed, though no bigger than a shilling, serves as well as ■ whole suit of armour; so our stock bought pen, The next scene presents both of them in so amiable and respectable a light, that we think it but justice to extract it, though rather long, without any abridgment. It is, indeed, one of the most pleasing and interesting passages in the book. They had now gone to Bristol, in 1645. "My husband had provided very good lodgings for us, and as soon as he could come home from the council, where he was at my arrival, he with all expressions of joy received me in his arms, and gave me a hundred pieces of gold, saying, I know thou that keeps my heart so well, will keep my fortune, which from this time I will ever put into thy hands as God shall bless me with increase;' and now I thought myself a perfect queen, and my husband so glorious a crown, that I more valued myself to be called by his name than born a princess; for I knew him very wise and very good, and his soul doated on me,-upon which confidence I will tell you what happened. My Lady Rivers, a brave woman, and one that had suffered many thousand pounds loss for the king, and whom I had a great reverence for, and she a kindness for me as a kinswoman, in discourse she tacitly commended the knowledge of state affairs; and that some thereof, as my Lady Aubigny, Lady Isabel Thynne, women were very happy in a good understanding and divers others, and yet none was at first more capable than I; that in the night she knew there came a post from Paris from the queen, and that she would be extremely glad to hear what the queen commanded the king in order to his affairs; saying, if I would ask my husband privately, he would tell me what he found in the packet, and I might tell her. I, that was young and innocent, and to that day had never in my mouth What news?' began to think there was more in inquiring into public affairs than I thought of; and that it being a fashionable thing would make me more beloved of my husband, if that had been possible, than I was. When my husband returned home from council, after welcoming him, as his custom ever was, he went with his handful of papers into his study for an hour or more; I followed him; he turned hastily, and said, What wouldst thou have, my life?' I told him, I heard the prince had received a packet from the queen, and I guessed it was that in his hand, and I desired to know what was in it; he smilingly replied, My love, I will immediately come to thee; pray thee go, for I am very busy: when he came out of his closet I revived my suit; he kissed me, and talked of other things. At supper I would eat nothing; he as usual sat by me, and drank often to me, which was his custom, and was full of discourse to company that was at table. Going to bed I asked again; and said I could not believe he loved me if he refused to tell me all he knew; but he answered nothing, but stopped my mouth with kisses. So we went to bed; I cried, and he went to sleep! Next morning early, as his custom was, he called which I made no reply; he rose, came on the other to rise, but began to discourse with me first, to side of the bed and kissed me, and drew the curtains softly, and went to court. When he came home to dinner, he presently came to me as was usual, and when I had him by the hand, I said, Thou dost not care to see me troubled;' to which he, taking me in his arms, answered,' My dearest soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like that: But when you asked me of my business, it was wholly out of my power to satisfy thee; for my life and fortune shall be thine, and every thought of my heart in which the trust I am in may not be revealed: But my honour is my own; which I cannot preserve if I communicate the prince's 4 Q ment and manners;-and discover what indi- | were produced on the society of Athens or vidual corruptions spring from political dishonour-what domestic profligacy leads to the sacrifice of freedom-and what national virtues are most likely to resist the oppressions, or yield to the seductions of courts. Of all these things History tells us littleand yet they are the most important that she could have been employed in recording. She has been contented, however, for the most part, with detailing merely the broad and apparent results-the great public events and transactions, in which the true working principles of its destiny have their end and consummation; and points only to the wrecks or the triumphs that float down the tide of human affairs, without giving us any light as to those ground currents by which its central masses are governed, and of which those superficial appearances are, in most cases, the necessary though unsuspected effects. Sparta by the battles of Marathon or Salamis we are indebted not so much to the histories of Herodotus, Xenophon, or Thucydides, as to the Deipnosophists of Athenæus-the anecdotes of Plutarch-the introductory and incidental passages of the Platonic dialoguesthe details of some of the private orationsand parts of the plays of Plautus and Terence, apparently copied from the Greek comedies. For our personal knowledge of the Romans, again, we do not look to Livy, or Dionysiusor even to Cæsar, Sallust, or Tacitus; but to Horace, Petronius, Juvenal, and the other satirists-to incidental notices in the Orations and Dialogues of Cicero-and above all to his invaluable letters, followed up by those of Pliny,-to intimations in Plutarch, and Seneca, and Lucian-to the books of the Civil lawand the biographies and anecdotes of the Empire, from Suetonius to Procopius. Of the Every one feels, we think, how necessary feudal times-the heroic age of modern Euthis information is, if we wish to understand rope-we have fortunately more abundant and what antiquity really was, and what manner minute information, both in the Romances of of men existed in former generations. How chivalry, which embody all the details of vague and unsatisfactory, without it, are all upper life; and in the memoirs and chronicles public annals and records of dynasties and of such writers as Commines and Froissart, battles of how little interest to private indi- which are filled with so many individual picviduals of how little use even to philosophers tures and redundant particularities, as to leave and statesmen! Before we can apply any us scarcely any thing more to learn or to wish example in history, or even comprehend its for, as to the manners and character, the temactual import, we must know something of per and habits, and even the daily life and the character, both of the age and of the per- conversation of the predominating classes of sons to which it belongs-and understand a society, who then stood for every thing in good deal of the temper, tastes, and occupa- those countries: And, even with regard to tions, both of the actors and the sufferers. their serfs and vassals, we are not without Good and evil, in truth, change natures, with most distinct and intelligible lights-both in a change of those circumstances; and we scattered passages of the works we have almay be lamenting as the most intolerable of ready referred to, in various ancient ballads calamities, what was scarcely felt as an inflic-and legends relating to their condition, and in tion, by those on whom it fell. Without this such invaluable records as the humorous and knowledge, therefore, the most striking and more familiar tales of our immortal Chaucer. important events are mere wonders, to be For the character and ordinary life of our stared at altogether barren of instruction-more immediate ancestry, we may be said to and probably leading us astray, even as occasions of sympathy or moral emotion. Those minute details, in short, which History has so often rejected as below her dignity, are indispensable to give life, certainty, or reality to her delineations; and we should have little hesitation in asserting, that no history is really worth any thing, unless it relate to a people and an age of which we have also those humbler and more private memorials. It is not in the grand tragedy, or rather the epic fictions, of History, that we learn the true condition of former ages the real character of past generations, or even the actual effects that were produced on society or individuals at the time, by the great events that are there so solemnly recorded. If we have not some remnants or some infusion of the Comedy of middle life, we neither have any idea of the state and colour of the general existence, nor any just understanding of the transactions about which we are reading. For what we know of the ancient Greeks for example for all that enables us to imagine of thing it would have been to hem or even what effects 4 owe our chief knowledge of it to Shakespeare, and the comic dramatists by whom he was succeeded-reinforced and supported by the infinite quantity of obscure and insignificant matter which the industry of his commentators has brought back to light for his elucidation-and which the matchless charm of his popularity has again rendered both interesting and familiar. The manners and habits of still later times are known to us, not by any means by our public histories, but by the writers of farces and comedies, polite essays, libels, and satires-by collections of private letters, like those of Gray, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Lord Orford-by private memoirs or journals, such as those of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, Swift's Journal to Stella, and Doddington's Diaryand, in still later times, by the best of our gay and satirical novels-by caricature prints-by the better newspapers and magazines,-and by various minute accounts (in the manner of Boswell's Life of Johnson) of the private life and conversation of distinguished individuals. The work before us relates to a period of which we have already very considerable memorials. But it is, notwithstanding, of alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chancery | coach, the soldiers stood to their arms, and the Lane, at my cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at lieutenant that held the colours displaying them, the entry that went out of King Street into the which is never done to any one but kings, or such bowling-green. There I would go under his window as represent their persons: I stood still all the and softly call him; he, after the first time except- while, then at the lowering of the colours to the ed, never failed to put out his head at the first call; ground, they received for them a low courtesy from thus we talked together, and sometimes I was so me, and for himself a bow; then taking coach, with wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and very many persons, both in coaches and on foot, I out at my heels. He directed how I should make went to the duke's palace, where I was again remy addresses, which I did ever to their general, ceived by a guard of his excellency's, with the Cromwell, who had a great respect for your father, same ceremony of the king's colours as before. and would have bought him off to his service, upon Then I was received by the duke's brother and any terms. near a hundred persons of quality. I laid my hand upon the wrist of his excellency's right hand; he putting his cloak thereupon, as the Spanish fashion is, went up the stairs, upon the top of which stood the duchess and her daughter, who received me with great civility, putting me into every door, and all my children, till we came to sit down in her excellency's chamber, where she placed me upon her right hand, upon cushions, as the fashion of this court is, being very rich, and laid upon Persian carpets." "Being one day to solicit for my husband's liberty for a time, he bid me bring, the next day, a certificate from a physician that he was really ill. Immediately I went to Dr. Batters, that was by chance both physician to Cromwell and to our family, who gave me one very favourable in my husband's behalf. I delivered it at the Council Chamber, at three of the clock that afternoon, as he commanded me, and he himself moved, that seeing they could make no use of his imprisonment, whereby to lighten them in their business, that he might have his liberty upon 40001. bail, to take a course of physic, he being dangerously ill. Many spake against it; but most Sir Henry Vane, who said he would be as instrumental, for ought he knew, to hang them all that sat there, if ever he had opportunity; but if he had liberty for a time, that he might take the engagement before he went out; upon which Cromwell said, 'I never knew that the engagement was a medicine for the scorbutic! They, hearing their general say so, thought it obliged him, and so ordered him his liberty upon bail." These are specimens of what we think Dest in the work; but, as there may be readers who would take an interest in her description of court ceremonies, or, at least, like to see how she manages them, we shall conclude with a little fragment of such a description. "This afternoon I went to pay my visit to the Duchess of Albuquerque. When I came to take The two dukes embraced my husband with great kindness, welcoming him to the place, and the Duke of Medina Celi led me to my coach, an honour that he had never done any but once, when he waited on your queen to help her on the like occasion. The Duke d'Alcala led my eldest daughter, and the younger led my second, and the Governor of Cadiz, Don Antonio de Pimentel, led the third. Mrs. Kestian carried Betty in her arms." There is great choice of this sort for those who like it; and not a little of the more solemn and still duller discussion of diplomatic etiquette and precedence. But, independent of these, and of the genealogies and obitua there is enough both of heart, and sense, and ries, which are not altogether without interest, observation, in these memoirs, at once to repay gentle and intelligent readers for the trouble of perusing them, and to stamp a character of amiableness and respectability on the memory of their author. (November 1825.) Memoirs of SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq. F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reign of Charles II. and James II., comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith, A. B., of St. John's College, Cambridge, from the original Shorthand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by RICHARD LORD BRAYBROOKE. 2 vols. 4to. London: 1825. We have a great indulgence, we confess, and tastes, and principles, have been comfor the taste, or curiosity, or whatever it may monly found associated or disunited: And be called, that gives its value to such publica-as, in uncultivated lands, we can often judge tions as this; and are inclined to think the of their inherent fertility by the quality of the desire of knowing, pretty minutely, the man- weeds they spontaneously produce - so we ners and habits of former times,-of under- may learn, by such an inspection of the moral standing, in all their details, the character and growths of a country, compared with its sub ordinary way of life and conversation of our sequent history, what prevailing manners are forefathers a very liberal and laudable de- indicative of vice or of virtue-what existing sire; and by no means to be confounded with follies foretell approaching wisdom - what that hankering after contemporary slander, forms of licentiousness give promise of com with which this age is so miserably infested, ing purity, and what of deeper degradationand so justly reproached. It is not only curi- what uncertain lights, in short, announce the ous to see from what beginnings, and by what rising, and what the setting sun! While, in steps, we have come to be what we are:-like manner, we may trace in the same records But it is most important, for the future and the connection of public and private morality, for the present, to ascertain what practices, and the mutual action and reaction of govern |