The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 | Page 3

to have taken hold of the offer of H.C.'
"Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The
relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke
of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready
to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is, indeed,
a very distorted view of Temple's character. Yet a character, even in the
most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds,
generally retains something of its outline. No caricaturist ever
represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any
libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to
Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the
eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of

philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in
an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful
appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who
were ready to fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and
their persecuted Church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and
irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly
behind his back, and addressed to himself some very tender and
anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his
honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by
the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple. 'We talked
ourselves weary,' she says; 'he renounced me, and I defied him.'
"Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not
accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time.
But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent,
sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master
of the French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing
essays and romances, an employment which at least served the purpose
of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved
of these early compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there
is one passage on Like and Dislike, which could have been produced
only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations,
and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.
"Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his
mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of
them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt
whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a
number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many.
Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation
is so well worth reading."
Here Macaulay indulges in an eloquent but lengthy philippic against
that "vile phrase" the "dignity of history," which we may omit,--taking
up the thread of his discourse where he recurs to the affairs of our two
lovers. "Thinking thus,"--concerning the "dignity of history,"--"we are
glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more about the loves

of Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century, to be sure,
Louis the Fourteenth was a much more important person than Temple's
sweetheart. But death and time equalize all things. Neither the great
King nor the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of
Marli nor Mistress Osborne's favourite walk 'in the common that lay
hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep
sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads,' is anything to
us. Louis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the ruins
of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof
of Chicksands. But of that information, for the sake of which alone it is
worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love letters
which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase
equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in State papers
taken at random. To us surely it is as useful to know how the young
ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago,
how far their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies,
what degree of liberty was allowed to them, what use they made of that
liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in men, and what
proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors,
as to know all about the seizure of Franche-Comté and the Treaty of
Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at
least as important as the mutual relations of any two Governments in
the world; and a series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable, and
sensible girl, and intended for the eye of