The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 | Page 2

uncle, was
subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen,
began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated
Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The
Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of
Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and
discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students.
Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought
from Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance
which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact,
that fifty years later he was so absurd as to set up his own authority
against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He

made no proficiency, either in the old philosophy which still lingered in
the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord
Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak
of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally
ignorant contempt.
"After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a
degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a
lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read,
but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and
acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a
Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as
might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received
a rambling education, who had not thought deeply, who had been
disgusted by the morose austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded
from childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to
feel an impartial contempt for them all.
"On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter
Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people
were, like their father, warm for the Royal cause. At an inn where they
stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with
inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this
instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought
before the Governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even
in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed
to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and
was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.
"This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He
was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have
been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed
an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her
sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and
she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a
novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship
commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament;

the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King
Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to
his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less
gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for
his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the meantime besieged by as many
suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most
distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity,
the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious father, destitute also of
the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was
perhaps a more formidable rival in love than either of them would have
been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged,
describes him as an 'insolent foole,' and a 'debauched ungodly cavalier.'
These expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young
and dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was
fond of dogs, of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie
on modern hearthrugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest
functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure her a fine Irish
greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering,
though his father was then only Lord General, and not yet Protector.
Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears
never to have regretted her decision; though, in a letter written just at
the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent
dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from
reminding Temple with pardonable vanity, 'how great she might have
been, if she had been so wise as