Motley and His Monument
Thirty years ago, a handsome boy — famous among his classmates for his poetical quotations, and his Byronic shirt-collar — graduated at Harvard University. He was only seventeen. Coming from an aristocratic family of old Dorchester, it was not predicted of him that he ever would rise beyond the elegant literateur — scribbling a few dashing magazine articles, or perhaps a circulating-library novel. The articles were in time forthcoming, and appeared in the New York Review and the ancient North American. The novels, too, appeared — a brace of them — and after a very brief career, were gathered to the silent dead, and slept among the poems of the “Milford Bard” and the speeches of Counsellor Phillips. It was easy to predict flashing review articles and romances; but no one suspected that in the handsome John Motley lay the “terrible toiler,” who would yet immortalize his name in seven magnificent volumes of the History of the Netherlands. Five of these volumes lie before us, as we write on this bright spring morning; the other two are on their triumphal march towards us. When the great work is complete, it will stand as the noblest monument of historical genius since Prescott was laid in Mount Auburn, and Lord Macaulay was laid in Westminster Abbey.
In comparing the last instalment of Mr. Motley’s history with the previous volumes, we are struck with their superior originality and depth of research. The salient incidents in the “Rise of the Dutch Republic” — the horrible blood-hound raid of Alva through the Low Countries — the romance of Count Egmont — the thrilling siege of Leyden — the solemn grandeur of Silent William’s career of patriotism and patience, which no one has ever painted indeed like Motley — the final catastrophe of that career, were all more or less familiar to every well-read student of history. But the new volumes are literally new. They put a window into the secret history of that eventful age. We stand quietly by, and look into the very ‘penetralia of Queen Elizabeth’s Cabinet — nay, into that proud woman’s selfish soul. And after the sharp scrutiny, we are compelled to confess that she is not as great a Queen Bess, nor as “good a Queen Bess,” as we had once been taught to believe her. We also get wonderful glimpses into the interior life of the young Dutch Republic; and after a thorough study of such men as modest Maurice Nassau, sagacious Olden Barneveld, and sharp-witted Paul Buys, we own to a prodigious liking for them all. We even fancy the slashing, dashing freebooter Martin Schenk; and half wish that he were alive again, in order to reenforce Fort Sumter, under the very nose of General Quattlebum. But the rarest revelation of Motley’s book is that of the ghostly chamber of the Palace of the Escurial, where sits, day and night, the old Popish spider, spinning his everlasting net of tyranny, and intrigue, and hellish hate — the hardest, coldest, most infernal picture of a “spiritual wickedness in high places” that modern history has furnished. Philip of Spain is to Motley what the second King James is to Macaulay. He delights to paint the gloomy Spanish tyrant so black, that ordinary human blackness shows almost white on the hideous background. A good service to our race has the Dutch historian rendered, by gibbeting the career of Philip, for the study and the detestation of all coming times; nor from that gibbet of deserved infamy will any future chronicler find it easy to take the loathsome carrion down. The world will love to draw the comparison between Protestant William of Nassau, and Philip, the foster-child of Rome and the Inquisition.
The labor which these two latest volumes must have cost the “handsome youth” of Dorchester, is beyond the conception of those who knew him in his sophomoric days. Reams of dispatches had to be overhauled. Tons of dusty volumes ransacked. Whole boxes of chaff had to be winnowed, in order to come at a few precious grains of truth. Several months were spent in the single task of reading the vast secret correspondence of Spain and its proconsuls, from the “Archives of Simancas.” As we sit comfortably on our lounge, and fallow the thrilling narrative of Spanish prowess, and of indomitable Dutch bravery — as we watch the siege of Antwerp, or listen to wordy debates in Queen Elizabeth’s council-chamber, or gaze at the inglorious rout of the Invincible Armada — we can have but little idea of the wear j years of study with which Mr. Motley has purchased for us our hour of intellectual luxury. It is like the pearl which beams on the brow of a bride. We admire the soft hue of the brilliant; but we do not see the pearl-diver venturing his own life at the bottom of the sea, or lifted half dead into his boat, with the blood gushing from bis nostrils. Hard work is it, and slow, for a historian to build such a monument as this which Motley has reared to Dutch heroism and Protestant faith; but when once built, it bears its builder’s name to after generations, and will prove to be a “monumentum agre perennius.”
These volumes before us are not without their faults, which slightly mar the effect of their undisputed splendor. The style is sometimes affected and overwrought. Occasionally it is singularly careless; and on a few occasions the mirthfulness of the satire is out of place. We do not think the style of the newer portion superior to the older; and we heartily wish that Mr. Motley had let alone all flings at the Genevan theology. Those gibes and jeers might better have been left to sleep under the elms of Cambridge.
No one can read these most masterly volumes without a temptation to throw them down at every few pages, in sheer indignation at the shameful political and military blunders which they so truthfully describe. The History of the United Netherlands is one of the most provoking of all histories. At one moment we are provoked at the obstinacy of Admiral Treslong — then at the rashness of Saint Aldegonde — then at the stupid folly of hard-drinking Count Hobenlo, for losing the town of Bois-le-Due — then at the intolerable blunders of “unlucky Koppen Loppen.” We lose all patience with Queen Elizabeth, for her stingy clutch of her pennies while her troops were starving among the fens of Holland. Her ill-timed parsimony, coupled with her cheap professions of sympathy, remind us of the windy exhorter in the class-meeting, who boasted that his religion only cost him twenty-five cents a year! “The Lord have mercy on your stingy soul I” exclaimed the indignant class-leader. “We get out of patience, too, with the foppish Liecester;
and feel indignant that such a curl-pate should have represented Old England on the soil of Holland, in the days of Bacon. Sidney, and Shakespeare. We are annoyed with his whimpering love-makings, in the midst of the stern strife of liberty with despotism, and only despise him less than we do the fickle folly of his royal mistress. But much as this history provokes us, it all the more delights us as a glorious epic of Protestant heroism. It stirs. the Dutch blood in our veins. We feel proud of claiming descent from the men who stood around William the Silent, and from the heroes of Leyden, who fought the Spaniards without the city walls, and starvation within the walls, until they contested with the dogs for the bones and offal of the streets. xls we lay down these records of godly patience and valor, we think of what Thomas Carlyle once said to us, in commenting on the pluck of the besieged citizens of Leyden. “The Dootch,” said he, in his broad Scotch style, “are the brawvest people in the wurld. Men have roon after a red rag of a Frenchman; but the defence of Dootch Protestants against Spain, is the grondest thing in history. Ah! when Phee-lip sent the Duke of Alva and his Popish cut-throats to do the beesiness for Holland, those Dootchmenws squelched him as ye wad squelch a rotten egg! Ye may depend, that there was niver a brawver thing than thot in all moodern times!” To all which, we — sitting under our catalpa this morning, with these splendid pages of Motley before us — do most cordially respond, Amen!