that his name would live as an enduring synonym for blood. But to marry six wives, solely on licentious grounds, is a proceeding so striking and so uncomplicated that no delusion could possibly come over the performer and certainly not over a watchful people. Yet something akin to delusion there certainly was; its causes however were several and complex, and lust was the least potent of them. The statement may seem strange, but there was little of desire in Henry’s composition. A monster he possibly was of some sort of folly; but strange as it may seem he was a monster of folly precisely because he was the opposite of a monster of passion. Unhappily unbounded lust is now and then a feature of the impassioned temperament. It is never seen however in the less impassioned, and Henry was one of the less impassioned. The want of dignity is itself a striking feature in the character of passionless and active men, and want of dignity was the one conspicuous defect in Henry’s conduct in his marriage affairs. Perhaps too, dignity—personal or national—is, like quietness and like kindliness, among the later growths of civilisation.

No incident or series of incidents illustrative of character in any of its phases, no matter how striking the incidents, or how strong the character or phase of character, have ever happened once only. If libertinism, for example, had ever shown itself in the selection and destruction of numerous wives, history would assuredly give information pertinent thereto: it gives none. Nothing happens once only. Even the French Revolution, so frequently regarded as a unique event, was only one of several examples of the inherent and peculiar cruelty of the French celt.[1] The massacre of Bartholomew was more revolting in its numbers and in its character. The massacre of the commune, French military massacres and various massacres in French history deprive the “great” Revolution of its exceptional character. But to return. There were licentious kings and princes before Henry, granting he was licentious, and there have been notably licentious kings and princes since: their methods are well known and they were wholly unlike his.

Certain incidents concerning Henry’s marriages are of great physiological interest: a fat, bustling, restless, fitful, wilful man approaching mid-life—a man brim full of activity but deficient in feeling, waited twenty years before the idea of divorce was seriously entertained; and several more years of Papal shiftiness were endured, not without petulance enough, but seemingly without storm or whirlwind. When Jane Seymour died, three years of single life followed. It is true the three years were not without marriage projects, but they were entirely state projects, and were in no way voluptuous overtures. The marriage with Anne of Cleves was a purely state marriage, and remained, so historians tell us, a merely nominal and ceremonial marriage during the time the King and the German princess occupied the same bed—a circumstance not at all indicative of “monstrous” passion. The very unfaithfulness of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard is not without its significance, for the proceedings of our Divorce Court show that as a rule (a rule it is true not without exceptions) we do not find the wives of lustful men to be unfaithful. In the case of a Burns or a Byron or a King David it is not the wife who is led astray; it is the wives of the Henrys and the Arthurs, strikingly dissimilar as they were in so many respects, who are led into temptation.

No sane man is the embodiment of a single passion. Save in the wards of a lunatic asylum a simple monster of voluptuousness, or monster of anger, or monster of hate has no existence; and within those wards such monsters are undoubted examples of nerve ailment. It is true one (very rarely one only) passion may unduly predominate—one or more may be fostered and others may be dwarfed; but as a very general rule the deeper passions run together. One passion, if unequivocally present, denotes the existence of other passions, palpable or latent—denotes the existence, in fact, of the impassioned temperament. Henry VIII., startling as the statement may seem, had no single, deep, unequivocal passion—no deep love, no profound pity, no overwhelming grief, no implacable hate, no furious anger. The noisy petulance of a busy, censorious, irritable man and the fretfulness of an invalid are frequently misunderstood. On no single occasion did Henry exhibit overmastering anger. Historians note with evident surprise that he received the conclusion of the most insulting farce in history—the Campeggio farce—with composure. When the Bishop of Rochester thrust himself, unbidden, into the Campeggio Court in order to denounce the king and the divorce, Henry’s only answer was a long and learned essay on the degrees of incestuous marriage which the Pope might or might not permit. When his own chaplains scolded him, in coarse terms, in his own chapel, he listened, not always without peevishness, but always without anger. Turning to other emotions, no hint is given of Henry’s grief at the loss of son after son in his earlier married years. If a husband of even ordinary affection could ever have felt grief, it would surely show itself when a young wife and a young mother died in giving birth to a long-wished-for son and heir. Not a syllable is said of Henry’s grief at Jane Seymour’s death; and three weeks after he was intriguing for a Continental, state, and purely diplomatic marriage. It is true that he paraded a sort of fussy affection for the young prince Edward—carried him indeed through the state apartments in his own royal arms; but the less impassioned temperament is often more openly demonstrative than the impassioned, especially when the public ear listens and the public eye watches. Those who caress in public attach as a rule but little meaning to caresses. If Henry’s affections were small we have seen that his self-importance was colossal; and the very defections—terrible to some natures—of Anne Boleyn and of Catherine Howard wounded his importance much more deeply than they wounded his affections.

If we limit our attention for a moment to the question of deep feeling, we cannot but see how unlike Henry was to the impassioned men of history. Passionate king David, for example, would not have waited seven years while a commission decided upon his proposed relationship to Bathsheba; and the cold Henry could not have flung his soul into a fiery psalm. The impassioned Burns could not have said a last farewell to the mother of his helpless babe without moistening the dust with his tears, while Henry could never have understood why many strong men cannot read the second verse of “John Anderson my Jo” with an unbroken voice.