SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (October 1838)

Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple.  By the Right Hon. Thomas peregrine Courtenay.  Two vols. 8vo.  London:  1836.

Mr. Courtenay has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament.  He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party.  His conduct has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory.  But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and goodwill of many who strongly dissent from his opinions.

This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay’s leisure, is introduced by a preface in which he informs us that the assistance furnished to him from various quarters “has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life.”  We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it.  He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of power.

The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of diligence, care, good sense, and impartiality; and these qualities are sufficient to make a book valuable, but not quite sufficient to make it readable.  Mr. Courtenay has not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and compression.  The information with which he furnishes us, must still, we apprehend, be considered as so much raw material.  To manufacturers it will be highly useful; but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the idle consumer.  To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write.