Edward Wotton

“ Sir Edward Villiers, his half-brother on the father's side, he either preferred, or removed (call it how you will) from his stepmother's eye to the presidentship, where he lived in singular estimation for his justice and hospitality, and died with as much grief of the whole province, as ever any governor did before, his religious lady, of sweet and noble direction, adding much to his honour. The eldest of the brethren, and heir of the name, was made a baronet, but abstained from court, enjoying, perhaps, the greater greatness of self-fruition. ”

“ Science also attracted him, and he is said when in his twentieth year to have 'read in Latin three lectures "do oculo," wherein he described the form, the motion, and the curious composure of the eye' (Walton) , At Oxford, despite Wolton's five years' seniority, he began a friendship with John Donne [q. v.] , which was only terminated by the latter's death. Alberico Gentili [q. v.] , professor of civil law, also became warmly attached to him. Wotton's father died in 1587, leaving him a beggarly annuity of a hundred marks. ”

“ Wotton, after proceeding Master of Arts in his twentieth year, left Oxford, and passed a year in France; and then going on to Geneva, formed there the friendship of Casaubon and of Beza. He remained nine years in Germany and Italy, 307and returned to England an accomplished and enlightened, as well as a learned man; being, says his biographer, “a dear lover of painting, sculpture, chemistry, and architecture.” He was soon appreciated by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, then high in favour with Elizabeth; and became one of that nobleman’s secretaries, and the most devoted of his friends. ”

“ This gentleman, chiefly on account of his mother's descent, was created a baron of this realm by the title of Lord Wotton of Wotton in Kent, by letters patent bearing date at St. Johnstone's (Perth) in Scotland, August 31, 1650, and in September, 1660, was naturalised by authority of parliament, together with his sisters. He was likewise in 1677 created Earl of Bellomont in Ireland, and, dying without issue, left his estates to his nephew Charles Stanhope, the younger son of his half-brother the Earl of Chesterfield, who took the surname of Wotton. ”

“ The first part of this prayer the gods granted at the intercession of his mother and of Momus; but the rest, by a perverse wind sent from Fate, was scattered in the air. Then Wotton grasped his lance, and, brandishing it thrice over his head, darted it with all his might; the goddess, his mother, at the same time adding strength to his arm. Away the lance went hizzing, and reached even to the belt of the averted Ancient, upon which, lightly grazing, it fell to the ground. ”

“ Sir Henry Wotton has been allowed by all critics to be a man of real and great genius, an upright statesman, a polite courtier, compassionate and benevolent to those in distress, charitable to the poor, and in a word, an honest man and a pious christian. As a poet he seems to have no considerable genius. ”

“ The poetry of Wotton, though chiefly written for the amusement of his leisure, and through the excitement of casual circumstances, possesses the invaluable attractions of energy, simplicity, and the most touching morality; it comes warm from the heart, and whether employed on an amatory or didactic subject, makes its appropriate impression with an air of sincerity which never fails to delight. ”

“ He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for, while he lived at Horton, he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countess dowager of Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatick entertainment.
He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking chambers in the inns of court, when the death of his mother set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent, and sir Henry Wotton's directions ”

“ In vain Wotton protested. The French king affected to be sorry. The Constable said that France was large; things happened which ought not to happen, yet could not be helped; the adventurers should be put down, if possible.
"These men brought nothing with them out of England," Wotton doggedly replied, "and were in such good credit with the people in France that nobody would lend them a shilling, and yet had they found ships which they had armed, and manned with good numbers of soldiers. What would the queen's highness think?" ”

“ Many are in Italian and bear Wotton's pseudonym of Gregorio de' Monti. Wotton's complete correspondence was collected in Mr. Pearsall Smith's ‘Life and Letters’ (Oxford, 1907, 2 vols.) .
Wotton's poems are the most valuable of his literary remains. Of the twenty-five poems included in the ‘Reliquiæ’ only fifteen are attributed to Wotton. The ten which are assigned to other pens include the well-known poem, beginning ‘The World is a bubble,’ which is assigned in the ‘Reliquiæ’ to Francis Bacon ”

“ Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire:
O, precious ransom! which once paid,
The Consummatum est was said. [81]
And said by him, that said no more,
But sealed it with his sacred breath:
Thou, then, thus hast dispurged our score,
And dying wert the death of death;
Be now whilst on thy name we call,
Our life, our strength, our joy, our all.
Sir Henry Wotton.
Stretched on the cross, the Saviour dies,
Hark! his expiring groans arise!
See, how the sacred crimson tide
Flows from his hands, his feet, his side.
But life attends the deathful sound,
And flows from every bleeding wound ”

“ The French king, in answer to Wotton's demands, promised that he should be arrested, a promise that was not fulfilled. On 7 April he was indicted for treason with Sir Nicholas Throckmorton [q. v.] and others. On the 17th Wotton wrote asking what measures were to be taken, as Pickering was then in Paris and was acquainted with the cipher Wotton used in his correspondence. But, alarmed by the proceedings against him, or won over by Wotton, Pickering now began to inform against his fellow-conspirators. ”

“ Up in the mountains near a rocky gorge, where the wind swept and the wild pines grew, stood Wotan, king of the gods, and before him, awaiting his orders, was his favorite daughter, Brünnhilde, the Walküre.
She was very beautiful, more beautiful than any woman who ever breathed. Her hair was golden bright, her figure queenly. When she moved, the motion of a bird was not more fleet and graceful, and her face was what you might suppose the face of a goddess would be. She-46- wore long white robes and glistening armor, and the wings in her bright helmet were like snow. ”

“ Absolutely penniless, Wotton bent all his energies anew to the task of obtaining lucrative employment. In the spring he published his short and jejune tract on architecture, a paraphrase of Vitruvius, which Chamberlain described as ‘well spoken of, though his own castles have been in the air’ (Cal. State Papers, 10 April 1624) . James I suggested that he might in course of time succeed Sir Julius Cæsar as master of the rolls, and gave him the reversion. Happily a more suitable office was found for him. In April 1623 Thomas Murray's death had vacated the provostship of Eton. ”

“ Wotton is a priest, who did not care to own himself a priest because he came to ask you if you would kindly get Madam Elizabeth murdered. Whereat, like a poor sane fool, you bade him to the devil and he is gone.”
Bedingfield, who recognised nothing in this lucid explanation, demanded another and heard it, and yet another and was unconvinced.
Chrysostom yawned at him. “You are impossibly and incredibly sane. Therefore I think life will be amusing at Woodstock. ”

“ Owing to the almost perfect identity of these verses with some by a German poet, George Rudolph Weckerlin, a doubt has been expressed in a German work as to whether they are to be considered the production of Sir Henry Wotton, or a translation from the Geistliche und weltliche Gedichte of Weckerlin, a lyrical poet of considerable eminence and popularity in his day, and who died in London in 1651. Weckerlin was employed in important affairs connected with the Protestants in Germany during the Thirty Years' War, as secretary to an embassy in London from that country ”

“ Wotton, though very wise, loves quietness.’ On 6 July the treaty of Edinburgh was signed, and Wotton and Cecil returned to London. Wotton remained in attendance upon the privy council until March 1564–5, when he was sent with Montagu and Haddon to Bruges to represent the grievances of English merchants to the Netherlands government, and to negotiate a commercial treaty. The negotiations dragged on for eighteen months, and it was not till October 1566 that Wotton returned to London. He died there on 26 Jan. 1566–7, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral ”

“ Hagen (whom we shall meet actively engaged in the contest later) , the loveless offspring of the Niblung. And the demi-god it is who is doomed. Wotan is called upon to perform his act of renunciation. As things go in the theatre, his recital is thought overlong and undramatic, and the thoughtless laugh at the spectacle of a sad god. Can we forget that it is at this supreme moment that the god embodies that which is at once the loftiest and the most profoundly melancholy conception of the Germanic conscience? He recognizes the necessity and the justice of the destruction of his race. ”

“ The man resisted, when up came Bedingfield's brisk step, and he cried: “What, Chrysostom! Well met, man! Here's Mr. Wotton, of Norfolk, an old friend of Sir Gilbert Trench, to dine with us. He is a great traveller, so you may make a match with him. My cousin Chrysostom Bagpuize, Mr. Wotton.”
They came into the light of the hall and bowed to each other. Mr. Wotton, a little dark man, was all smiles. “Forgive a shy man's surprise, sir. ”

“ There are authors whose living voices, if we know them in the flesh, we seem to hear in our ears as we peruse their works. Of such was Mr. Jowett, sometime Master of Balliol College, a good man, now with God. It has ever seemed to me that friends of Walton must thus have heard his voice as they read him, and that it reaches us too, though faintly. Indeed, we have here ‘a kind of picture of his own disposition,’ as he tells us Piscator is the Walton whom honest Nat. and R. Roe and Sir Henry Wotton knew on fishing-days. ”

“ These were the thoughts that then possest the undisturbed mind of Sir Henry Wotton. Will you hear the wish of another Angler, and the commendation of his happy life [Jo. Da.] , which he also sings in Verse.
Let me live harmlesly, and near the brink Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling place, Where I may see my quil or cork down sink, With eager bit of Pearch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think, Whilst some men strive, ill gotten goods t'imbrace; And others spend their time in base excess Of wine or worse, in war and wantonness. ”

“ In 1593 Wotton wrote to Lord Zouch: "Here I am placed to my great contentment in the house of Mr. Isaac Casaubon, a person of sober condition among the French." The learned professor soon became very fond of Wotton, so far as to allow him to get into debt for his board and lodging, and the young man left Geneva without paying his debts, leaving Casaubon to face his numerous creditors in the town. Casaubon was in despair; but fortunately the episode ended satisfactorily, for Wotton lived up to his character, and paid his debts in full as soon as he was able. ”

“ From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs ”

“ And the same night that he had his induction, he said to Mr. Woodnot, "I now look back upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if I had attained what then I so ambitiously thirsted for. And I now can behold the Court with an impartial eye, and see plainly that it is made up of fraud and titles, and flattery, and many other such empty, imaginary, painted pleasures; pleasures, that are so empty, as not to satisfy when they are enjoyed. ”

“ Wotton practised at Eton a lavish hospitality, and delighted in the society of his friends, chief among whom in his last years were Izaak Walton and John Hales, a fellow of Eton. Wotton was almost as enthusiastic an angler as Walton. Angling occupied, he said, ‘his idle time not idly spent,’ and he designed an account of the sport in anticipation of Walton. ”

“ But the word for lie—being the hinge upon which the conceit was to turn—was not so expressed in Latin, as would admit—in the hands of an enemy especially—so fair a construction as Sir Henry thought in English.’ Later in the ‘Life’ (ibid. 138–9) , Walton writes that ‘a friend of Sir Henry Wotton’s being designed for the employment of an Ambassador, came to Eton’ (of which Wotton was Provost) ‘and requested from him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations ”

“ Human beings, with here and there an exception, are dull and tedious, each resembling the other, and each needlessly laborious to increase that resemblance. In this respect all parts of the world are alike,—and therefore the happiest traveller is he who keeps mostly alone, and uses his eyes, and communes with his own thoughts. The actual life of Wootton is, doubtless, much like that of other hamlets,—a "noiseless tenor" of church squabbles, village gossip, and discontented grumbling, diversified with feeding and drinking, lawn tennis, matrimony, birth, and death. ”