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If the reader, knowing something of the strange career of Harden-Hickey, wonders why one writes of him appreciatively rather than in amusement, he is asked not to judge Harden-Hickey as one judges a contemporary.
They are arranged neither according to time nor subject, but on an aesthetic plan of their author's, after the fashion of a literary nosegay. As extracts from several have already been given, we need not enlarge on them here. Their language is extremely pure, and almost entirely free from that poetical colouring which is so conspicuous in contemporary and subsequent prose-writing.
The force which the adventurer collected for the purpose was inadequate, and his plans were unskilfully arranged. He was himself slain in the streets, at the very commencement of the action; whereupon, in the quaint language of the contemporary chronicler, "the hearts of his soldiers sank in their shoes," and they evacuated the city with much greater rapidity than they had entered it.
Next in order of development after the miracle or mystery plays, though contemporary in their popularity, came what we called "moralities" or "moral interludes" pieces designed to enforce a religious or ethical lesson and perhaps to get back into drama something of the edification which realism had ousted from the miracles.
"Thinkest thou we can do that, my Phyllis, any better than now?" asked Sir Norman Hylton. "We can all try," said Amphillis, softly. "And God, our God, shall bless us." She had one brother, Count Loys the First of Flanders, who fell at Crecy. Many modern writers call her Jeanne; but her name in the contemporary public records of England is invariably Margareta.
And if he looked at the subject as calmly as he would look at a controversy respecting the Roman Comitia or the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemote, he would probably think that the absence of contemporary evidence during so long a period was a defect which later attestations, however numerous, could but very imperfectly supply.
Not a Lerma, certainly; for France was not Spain, nor was Henry IV. a Philip III. The Huguenot duke was an inferior financier to his Spanish contemporary, if it were the height of financial skill for a minister to exhaust the resources of a great kingdom in order to fill his own pocket.
Modern nations, careful of their own remembrances, snatch from oblivion the history of human revolutions, which is, in fact, the history of ardent passions and inveterate hatred. It is not the same with respect to the revolutions of the physical world. These are described with least accuracy when they happen to be contemporary with civil dissensions.
This time of confusion when, as the contemporary chronicle says, "every man did that which was good in his own eyes," was brought to an end by the accession to the throne of Henry II, a man whose personal abilities and previous training enabled him to bring the royal authority to greater strength than ever, and to put an end to the oppressions of the turbulent nobles.
His library was a curious medley of books, if those on military science and agriculture are omitted. There is a fair amount of the standard history of the day, a little theology, so ill assorted as to suggest gifts rather than purchases, a miscellany of contemporary politics, and a very little belles-lettres.
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