in the 'Reliquiæ,' but of which the actual result may be epitomised as the conclusion of a treaty (that of Xanten) which the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands were manifestly resolved not to allow to be carried into execution, while James I consented to its being deprived ɔf even such force as it possessed. Although Wotton finally induced James to relieve him from the responsibility unjustly laid upon the English ambassador of having brought about the loss of Wesel, it is clear that, however decorous in his expressions, he was very much disgusted with the whole business. Possibly, as Mr Smith suggests, a diplomatist accustomed to the slow and smooth procedure of Venetian negotiations felt in Holland (if the expression be appropriate) like a fish out of water; but, if there was any awkwardness in the agent, there was in his master a weakness which, on this occasion at all events, approached the contemptible.

We must perforce be extremely brief in touching on the remainder of Wotton's diplomatic career. Yet his second embassy to Venice (we omit any reference to his first visit to the Palatine Court at Heidelberg, and the fresh failure of the attempt to establish a working alliance between Savoy and the German Protestant Princes) was hardly less successful than his first; and it includes one of the most interesting and, till lately at all events, obscurest episodes in Venetian history-the story of the so-called 'Spanish Plot' of 1618. On his return to Venice in 1616 Wotton had resolved on keeping quiet, and living 'più da filosofo che da cortigiano'; and he had found the Venetians themselves far less eager for the prosecution of religious reforms than anxious about the preservation of the security of the commonwealth. France and Spain were now on friendly terms; and though, or perhaps because, the Spanish Government itself was weak, its Italian viceroys, both at Milan and at Naples, were intent upon increasing their power at the expense of those Italian States which had retained their independence. Out of this general situation was born that 'Spanish Plot,' of which Mr Horatio Brown, in his excellent short History of Venice,' gives a sufficient account. Ranke, with his usual acumen, had divined its real character when he observed that, if the word 'plot implies an express combination for the definite purpose

of a design to be executed in a particular way at a particular day and hour, then this was no plot; if, on the other hand, the word expresses merely a general understanding and the preparation of the necessary machinery by persons intending to conclude a definite agreement as to its execution, then this design amounted to a plot, which the Venetians nipped in the bud.

The Duke of Ossuna, Viceroy of Naples, had conceived the idea of overrunning Venice with his fleet; and the project, after it had been betrayed to the Signoria by the Frenchman, Jacques Pierre, had not died out after this betrayal, Pierre still keeping up his communications with Ossuna. It is not easy, if it be possible, to decide whether there was an understanding between Ossuna, whose schemes ended in inaction, and the Marquis de Bedmar, the Spanish ambassador at Venice, who certainly planned the seizure of the Venetian town of Crema by the Viceroy of Milan, Don Pedro di Toledo, and who was obliged to quit Venice on the discovery of the 'Plot'; or whether, as seems more probable, each of the two viceroys was acting on his own account. Another element of difficulty lies in the absence of any documentary evidence showing how Ossuna kept up his communications with the plotters at Venice, and how he obtained information of the discovery of his designs.

In reply to the latter question, an interesting attempt was made not long ago to prove that Ossuna's familiar, the celebrated Spanish writer Quevedo, whose great design of undoing the wealth of Venice by diverting her Levant trade to Brindisi was broached in 1628, resided at Venice during the period preceding the discovery and at the time of the discovery itself. But, though Dr Eyssenhardt has thrown much light upon the subject by giving wider publicity to two documents unknown to Ranke-a despatch from Bedmar to Philip III, and a protocol of the sitting of the Spanish Council at which Bedmar was recalled he cannot be said to have succeeded in proving Quevedo's sojourn in Venice. This assumption rests solely on the (rather foolish) biography of Quevedo by his

* See 'Die Verschwörung gegen Venedig im Jahre 1618' ('Sammlung gemeinverständl. wissenschaftl. Vorträge,' No. 56), Hamburg, 1858. The documents referred to in the text were first made public by FernandezGuerra-y-Orbe.

nephew, P. A. de Tarsia, printed in 1662, twenty years after Quevedo's death, and thirty-four after the events in question. And the attempt to connect Quevedo's supposed presence in Venice with the famous Foscarini case (in which the Council of the Ten confessed having been deceived into a tragic miscarriage of justice), and even with the affairs of Lady Arundell, in which Wotton played a rather sorry part, cannot be described as more than an ingenious fancy.

Apart from this business, Wotton, fortunately for himself, stood in no relation to the plot or its disclosures. In his own picturesque language, the Republic was 'artificially kept at excessive charge by a mad Viceroy and a winking Pope, the King of Spayne in the meanwhile standing at the benefit of time or fortune, ready to authorise or disavow the event according to the success.' His own activity during his second embassy enjoyed the constant goodwill of the Venetian authorities, and did much to keep up the good understanding with the Republic which, both at the time and in the long run, could not but benefit England's political influence and commercial interest. James I about this time allowed English ships to enter the Venetian service, besides equipping a fleet himself; and the appointment of an English consul by the English merchants at Venice in 1608 was followed by that of his successor by Wotton and the Trinity House. Nor was the religious question altogether shelved. To this period belongs the design of a Protestant college at Sondrio in the Valtelline, which, as Wotton hoped (though with some misgivings whether as many 'instruments' would be found for the propagation of 'truth' as for that of untruth'), might beat the Jesuits on their own ground by sending forth agents into the Protestant States of Italy. The plan, which had the approval of Bacon, was in 1610 communicated to the Protestant Princes of the Union; but they, as Gardiner rather severely says, 'had no time to spare for such solemn trifling.'

Wotton's negotiations in Germany on this and on more pressing subjects during his homeward journey from Venice in the summer of 1619 came to no result; but there is nothing to show that on his return he received a cold welcome from King James, as had been

confidently predicted by Chamberlain. When in July 1620 he once more set forth for Venice, he was charged with an extraordinary embassy on his way, to no less a personage than the Emperor Ferdinand II. The situation, critical in the highest degree for the King and Queen of Bohemia and for the cause of German Protestantism, is perhaps a little crudely stated by Mr Smith. But there can be no doubt as to the absolute correctness of the remark that it would be difficult to imagine a more hopeless errand' than Wotton's embassy, and that it mattered little that he was by no means the right instrument for such an employment.' The catastrophe of Prague overtook the mission and frustrated its intention; and though, by way of a compliment to King James, the Emperor suspended the case against the Winter King for more than two months, the English ambassador's protest against the invasion of the Protectorate was laid ad acta. Izaak Walton's story of Wotton's handing over to the wife of his Viennese host the Emperor's parting gift of a jewel must be taken for what it is worth-which is very little, since, as Mr Smith shows, it was customary for ambassadors, if their requests were not granted, to refuse or leave behind them the gifts offered to them on their departure.

Wotton's third embassy to Venice, which began with a poor reception, resented by the returning ambassador with no measured display of wrath, proved comparatively uneventful. Among the chief political questions with which it had to concern itself were those of the troubles, boding so much ill to Venice that the Collegio would have welcomed English interference, and of the Spanish marriages, whereby any such interference was rendered hopeless. On the other hand, the danger threatening Venice from the Grisons was quite sufficient to prevent the authorities from replying by anything beyond 'a great deal of good language' to Wotton's solicitations for money to enable Mansfeld to keep the field with an army in the service of the Elector Palatine; and the cause of that unfortunate Prince and Wotton's highspirited mistress' sank more and more into a forlorn hope. In addition to lesser personal troubles, Wotton was overwhelmed by the death, in 1623, of the man whom he revered above all others, whose intimacy

with him had been the profoundest inspiration of his life.

Of Wotton's years of retirement at Eton nothing more need be said on this occasion, if only because the narrative of his 'decline' (as most men would call it) is enshrined for ever in the immortal pages of Izaak Walton. In his letters and recorded conversation of this period the echoes of his diplomatic life and its aspirations are few, apart from his letters to the Queen of Bohemia and her faithful John Dyneley. But Wotton's withdrawal from public affairs had not dulled his interest in them; and, though it was from spiritual motives-at least chiefly such-that he had become an ordained minister of the Prince of Peace, he could record, without any attempt to veil his contentment in clerical phrase, that the King of Sweden hath landed, with 200 ships, a great army of some 40,000 in Germany, with intention (if party of our religion be not all drowsy) to redress the common cause.' And, a little later, he could rejoice at the tidings of the conclusion of the League of Heilbronn between some of the Circles of the Empire and the Swedes, and declare his conviction that war itself is a great refiner of spirits in little time.' He lived to witness, in 1638, the overthrow of the warlike hopes of the Queen of Bohemia's eldest surviving son and his brother Rupert; and to the cause of the Palatine house he might have applied, as he did to that of the Scottish troubles, the consolatory verse, 'Est bene non potuit dicere; dixit Erit.' The high-spirited hopefulness which remained with him to the last (for he died, as we now have it on Sir Maxwell Lyte's authority, on December 5, 1639) is not less characteristic of Wotton's last days than the tranquil cheerfulness which is known to have pervaded them. Neither side of his complex nature should be ignored; but it is the active and aspiring part of him which his last biographer's researches into the story of his life have illustrated with unexpected freshness and fulness.

6

It is a pleasing fancy of Mr Sinith that the device 'Esto perpetua,' which is not known to have been used as the Eton motto before 1635 (when Wotton was provost), was chosen by him, as suggested by the dying prayer of Fra Paolo for his native city.