The book noticed in the last chapter is the most important that Newcastle ever wrote; but he also wrote poems and plays. Granger says:—[161]

“William, Marquis of Newcastle, who amused himself at this period with poetry and horsemanship was, as a natural consequence of his rank, much esteemed as a poet. His poetical works, which consist of plays and poems, are very little regarded; but his fine book of horsemanship is still in esteem.”

Another critic held a far higher opinion of Newcastle’s plays and poems, and praised him also as a patron of men-of-letters. Langbaine, who was almost his contemporary, says:—[162]

“To speak first of his acquaintance with the Muses, and his affable deportment to all their votaries, no person since the time of Augustus better understood dramatic poetry, nor more generously encouraged poets; so that we may truly call him our English Mecaenas. He had a more particular kindness for that great master of dramatic poesy, the excellent Jonson, and ‘twas from him that he attained to a perfect knowledge of what was to be accounted true humour in comedy. How well he has copied his master, I leave to the critics: but I am sure our late, as well as our present Laureate, have powerful reasons to defend his memory. He has writ four Comedies, which have always been acted with applause; viz., Country Captain, ... Humorous Lovers, ... Triumphant Widow, and Variety. We have many other pieces writ by this ingenious Nobleman, scattered up and down in the poems of his Duchess; all which seem to confirm the character given by Mr. Shadwell, ‘That he was the greatest master of wit, the most exact observer of mankind, and the most accurate judge of humour that ever he knew’.”

It is only fair to add that on page 104 of a later edition of the same book, published in 1699 and entitled, “The Lives And Characters Of The English Dramatick Poets, First Begun By Mr. Langbain, Improved and Continued Down To This Time By A Careful Hand,” we read, concerning the above notice of Newcastle:—

“Mr. Langbain has always a good word for quality; he can see no Blemish in a Person that has a Title, tho’ he be so sharp-sighted in all those of a lower station; and he is so transported on the worthy Nobleman” (Newcastle) “that he baulks the Curiosity of his Readers, for some Account of his Life, to vent a clumsey Flattery”.

Let us hear another critic. Walpole says:[163] “As an author he is familiar to those who scarce know any other author ... from his book of horsemanship.... He was fitter to break Pegasus for a manage than to mount him on the steeps of Parnassus.... One does not know whether to admire the philosophy or smile at the triflingness of this[164] peer, who after sacrificing such a fortune for his Master and enduring such calamities for his country, could accommodate his mind to the utmost idleness of literature.”

In this instance, the critic has been criticised. Newcastle’s “elegant and retired studies,” says Lodge,[165] “his adoption of which in truth denoted the greatness of his spirit, a late noble person has endeavoured to ridicule ... with less taste and justice than are commonly to be found in his censures, and with more than his usual spleen”. Lodge is probably right in saying that, although Newcastle “could not claim the higher attributes of a dramatic author ... he was a close observer, and a faithful delineator of the characters and manners of ordinary society”.

It would be impossible to give long extracts from Newcastle’s plays here; but one or two are offered from “The Humorous Lovers,” a comedy of which even Walpole says that it was “acted by his Royal Highnesses servants,” that it “was received with great applause, and esteemed one of the best plays at that time”.

The characters figuring in one scene were “Courtly, A gentleman in love with Emilia,” and “Emilia, a gentlewoman in love with Courtly”.

Act V. Scene I.

Enter Courtly and Emilia.

Near the end of the play, the same characters are again alone together upon the stage.

The two next extracts from the same play may serve as specimens of Newcastle’s verse. In each case the speaker is a sane man feigning madness. In the first he is addressing his lady-love.

As the poet, soon after this, becomes indecent, we will not read any more of this effusion, which, if not exactly Dantesque, is not entirely devoid of humour.

In the second poem, the sham madman again addresses the lady who is in love with him.

It is curious that Pepys should have attributed this play to the Duchess. On 30 March, 1667, he wrote in his Diary: “To see the silly play of my Lady Newcastle called ‘The Humorous Lovers’; the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her.”

Of another play attributed to Newcastle, “Sir Martin Marall,” Pepys wrote on 16 August, 1667: “My wife and I to the Duke’s playhouse, where we saw the new play acted yesterday, ‘The Feign Innocence, or Sir Martin Marall’; a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as everybody says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other that certainly ever was writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit therein, not fooling.”

After all this high praise, it is painful to a writer of a panegyric on Newcastle, to read in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica that he “translated MoliÈre’s L’Etourdi under the title ‘Sir Martin Mar-All’”. Almost worse still is it to read, in The Dictionary of National Biography, that Newcastle “translated MoliÈre’s L’Etourdi, which Dryden”—not Newcastle—“converted into a play”.

Whatever may have been the assistance rendered by Dryden in what Pepys calls the making of this play, he certainly wrote its prologue and epilogue, which may be found in his collected works. They are by no means the most brilliant efforts of Dryden’s genius.

The severe critic of Langbaine’s worship of nobility, already quoted, says of Newcastle’s play, “The Triumphant Widow”: “This was esteemed a good Play, and Mr. Shadwell had so good an opinion of it, that he borrowed a great part thereof to compleat his Comedy called Bury Fair”.

In a poem entitled “The Philosopher’s Complaint,” Newcastle professes to watch a philosopher in his study, through a cranny in the wall. He hears him bewailing his fate in being a man and not a beast. The poem is long. Here are a few verses:—

Probably Newcastle shone more as a patron, than as a producer, of literature. Besides the men-of-letters whom he placed on the staff of his army in the North, he befriended Ben Jonson, a poet who was often in need of help in a pecuniary form, and also Shadwell, who, like Newcastle, only on an infinitely humbler scale, had lost a large part of his fortune in the service of his King. Both Jonson and Shadwell were Poets Laureate. Shirley and Flecknoe were also patronized by Newcastle.

Here is a begging letter from Ben Jonson to Newcastle: “My Noblest Lord and Best Patron. I send no borrowing epistle to provoke your lordship, for I have neither fortune to repay, nor security to engage that will be taken; but I make a most humble petition to your lordship’s bounty to succour my present necessities this good time of Easter, and it shall conclude all begging requests hereafter on behalf of your truest beadsman and most thankful servant, B. J.” (Harleian MSS. 4955).[167] In another letter he thanks Newcastle for his “lordship’s timely gratuity”.

One of Newcastle’s most intimate literary friends was not a poet, but a dry old philosopher. A good many letters written to Newcastle by Hobbes, the author of Leviathan, are among the Welbeck manuscripts, and from these a few extracts shall be given. At the time they were written, Hobbes was travelling with the young Earl of Devonshire, then a lad of 17 or 18.

“Thomas Hobbes to (the Earl of Newcastle).

“Thomas Hobbes to (the Earl of Newcastle).

“The Same to the Same, at Welbeck.

The greater part of the letters of Hobbes consists of disquisitions upon certain matters connected with optics, and especially upon some experiments made by Warner. They go far to show that Newcastle was interested in science, as well as in literature, pictures, and music. Hobbes also frequently expresses pleasant anticipations of discussions on philosophy with Newcastle when he shall visit him at Welbeck.

Another, and an even better-known philosopher, Des Cartes, is said to have been a friend of Newcastle. Surely Walpole was too severe when he accused a companion of Des Cartes and Hobbes of “accommodating his mind to the utmost idleness of literature”.

Newcastle seems to have made scientific experiments on his own account. In a Preface which he wrote to his wife’s Philosophical and Physical Opinions, he says: “Dr. Payne, a divine and my chaplain, who hath a very witty, searching brain of his own, being at my house at Bolsover, locked up with me in a chamber to make Lapis Prunellae, which is saltpetre and brimstone[168] inflamed, looking at it a while, I said, Mark it, Mr. Payne, the flame is pale like the sun and hath a violent motion in it, like the sun; saith he, It is so, and the more to confirm you, says he, look what abundance of little suns, round the globe, appear to us everywhere, just the same motion as the sun makes in every one’s eyes. So we concluded the sun could be nothing else but a very solid body of salt and sulphur, inflamed by his own violent motion upon his own axis.”

So much for scientific inference. But observe what presently follows:—

“This,” he concludes, “is my opinion, which I think can as hardly be disproved as proved; since any opinion may be right or wrong, for anything that anybody knows, for certainly there is none can make a mathematical demonstration of natural philosophy”.

Well! The exact sciences have advanced a little since such a statement as that could be made.