Of a people in this temper Charles II. was the natural and rightful
head. He may have been a pantomime King, but he was a King, and with all
his geniality he let nobody forget it. He was not, indeed, the aimless
flaneur that he has been represented. He was a patient and cunning
politician, who disguised his wisdom under so perfect a mask of folly
that he not only deceived his allies and opponents, but has deceived
almost all the historians that have come after him. But if Charles was,
as he emphatically was, the only Stuart who really achieved despotism,
it was greatly due to the temper of the nation and the age. Despotism is
the easiest of all governments, at any rate for the governed.
It is indeed a form of slavery, and it is the despot who is the slave.
Men in a state of decadence employ professionals to fight for them,
professionals to dance for them, and a professional to rule them.
Almost all the faces in the portraits of that time look, as it were,
like masks put on artificially with the perruque. A strange unreality
broods over the period. Distracted as we are with civic mysteries and
problems we can afford to rejoice. Our tears are less desolate than
their laughter, our restraints are larger than their liberty.
STEVENSON[1]
A recent incident has finally convinced us that Stevenson was, as we
suspected, a great man. We knew from recent books that we have noticed,
from the scorn of "Ephemera Critica" and Mr.
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