THE MIDDLE CLASS.

13

times supposed that he sided with the party of aristocratic instincts against democratic tendencies; if he did, it was because the former represented tradition, authority, rule, as against freedom, independence, self-government. No man ever had fewer aristocratic sympathies. Men of low origin rising to great positions are often unduly dazzled and impressed by the atmosphere in which they find themselves. Laud was neither dazzled nor impressed; he had not a touch of meanness in his composition. He had a keen eye for men of weight-the King, Buckingham, Strafford,-these were great influential factors in politics, and Laud gravitated to them; but for birth and position he had no sort of respect. One of the reasons why he made such universal enemies-enemies in every class and every rank-was that he heeded distinctions so little; whether the offender was earl or barber, if he offended he must suffer, He was hard on the people, and they hated him; he was hard on the nobility, and they would not protect him. His origin was constantly made the subject of taunt and ridicule in later life. Heylyn describes how he found him walking in his garden, looking troubled at a lampoon that he had found on the walk, flung over the wall; not so much at the fact that he had not, as he said, the good fortune

to be born a gentleman, as at the virulence and illfeeling that such an attack betokened; and it is evident that he was very genuinely pleased with Heylyn's apt and humorous quotation, of a certain pope who said of himself that he was "illustri domo natus," i.e. a broken-down shed that let in the light. Laud's morbid sensibility to libels and lampoons is among the most curious traits of his character: his entries in the Diary on the receipt of one of them became pathetic and soft to a strange degree in a man of so flinty a purpose. But this is a side issue. It must be borne in mind that he was of ordinary burgher origin, brought up in middle-class traditions. However, his education began early, his home traditions were probably never very strong, and he was never married-that is to say, he had none of the temptations to the domestic point-ofview, which is so characteristic of the English middle-class.

In the first entry in the Diary occur the words, "In my infancy I was in danger of death by sickness." In 1596 the only entry is, "I had a great sickness." In 1597 the only entry is, " And another." And it is so all along. In 1619, he "falls suddenly dead for a long time at Wycombe;" he is taken ill in his coach; he has a very "fierce salt rheum in the left eye that almost endangers it;" "became

STRONG CONSTITUTION.

15

suddenly lame, whether through some humour falling down upon my left leg, or through the biting of bugs, I know not." The Diary is full of these, almost as full as George Eliot's. But Laud never diagnoses his sensations. I think it is important to keep this knowledge in our minds about him; neither his portrait nor his public acts would betray it. He never broke down; he never took a holiday; he never took any exercise. A public man is even censured nowadays if he does not take a respite from his official labours, and refresh the jaded brain with sea or glacier air. Laud never left England. There is little trace of his having left his work, and this when, besides being a very active Archbishop-not, however, with the care of the colonial Churches-he was also Prime Minister and President of the Board of Trade, with a seat on the Foreign Committee, besides discharging spontaneously year after year for Oxford and Dublin Universities, in his capacity as Chancellor, duties which whiten the hairs of Heads of houses when undertaken most unwillingly for a period of two years. The fact was that Laud, like his friend and ally Strafford, was possessed of what has been well called an obstinate indoors constitution. He was never well, never incapacitated. A week after breaking a sinew of his leg he

16

THE THORN IN THE FLESH.

officiated at the marriage of the Duke of Buckingham's daughter.

Constant ill-health with conscientious strongwilled people seems to act as a perpetual stimulus to action. On gentler meditative souls it sometimes traces gracious saintly lines; but not on men of tougher fibre-they need the counter-irritation of work and life, otherwise they chafe and writhe. If they get work, they take it greedily; they do not become valetudinarians; they do not succumb; they busy themselves in details, and thus contrive to stifle the constant feeling of uneasiness: at the same time it keeps them alive to graver questions. Invalids are generally idealists. When, on the other hand, men of superb physique and superabundant vigour find themselves at a great centre, they are apt to fritter themselves away upon material surroundings and absorbing attention to details. Absorption in details was a temptation of Laud's, too; but the pressure of malaise kept him from losing himself in fancied effectiveness; he kept his principles in view. No doubt his principles erred on the side of being too material, but they were principles; he worked not by the impulse of the moment, but on certain deliberate lines.

A SEVERE SCHOOLMASTER.

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CHAPTER II.

“I HAD the happiness," Laud says, "to be edu、 cated under a very severe schoolmaster." He was also a perceptive one; he said of the boy, just as it has probably been said of dozens of clever lads who never do emerge to greatness, that he would make a name some day. His high spirit, his quick apprehension, and, curiously enough, the strange stuff of his dreams, aroused great expectations. "When you are a little great person," said this austere tutor, alluding to Laud's stature, "I hope you will remember Reading school." The boy's industry, in spite of his invalid constitution, was very great; and there was a curious solidity of judgment and quiet independence of temper noted even in those early days. At sixteen he went to Oxford, to St. John's, a humble pile of mottled flint and gray stone; its stately garden front and academic grove were of Laud's own later contriving. A year after his admission he was chosen scholar, partly on

C