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CHARLES JAMES FOX
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CHARLES JAMES FOX
A COMMENTARY
ON HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER
BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
EDITED BY
STEPHEN WHEELER
EDITOR OF "LETTERS AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
OF LANDOR," AND OF "LETTERS OF W. S. LANDOR,
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC "
WITH A PORTRAIT
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON : JOHN MURRAY
1907
PRINTED BY
HAZKI.L, WATSON AND VINKY, I,D.
LONDON AND AYLESBOBY.
ENGLAND
CONTENTS
FAGK
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR . . . . vii
COMMENTARY ON MEMOIRS OF MR. FOX . . 1
DEDICATION TO PRESIDENT MADISON . . 5
ADVERTISEMENT 13
LANDOR'S PREFACE 16
1. A GEORGIAN STATESMAN .42
II. WAR AND POLICY 67
III. THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS .... 69
IV. IRELAND AND THE UNION 86
V. VISIT TO THE CONTINENT 94
VI. GHENT AND ANTWERP Ill
VII. DUTCH NETHERLANDS 116
VIII. COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS 127
IX. MR. FOX IN PARIS 169
X. COURT OF BONAPARTE 176
XL MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS . . . .198
XII. LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX . . . .210
XIII. SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX . . . .226
XIV. POSTSCRIPT , 236
INDEX .247
INTRODUCTION
ABOUT the middle of the last century Walter
Savage Landor, then living placidly for the most
part, but with intervals of indignation, at Bath,
was provoked by the remark of The Quarterly
Review that, among authors of any sort of note,
he alone clung with equal pertinacity to his ancient
abuse of Bonaparte as a blockhead and coward,
of Pitt as a villain, of Fox as a scoundrel, of
Canning as a scamp. 1 This drew from the un-
subduable old Roman, as Carlyle called him, a
letter addressed to The Examiner? in which he
1 Referring to the abuse of the Duke of Wellington, to which some
English writers had degraded themselves, the reviewer had said : "But
the truth is, and we are bound to tell it, it was the Liberal press
in France that in this matter gave law to our patriots. . . . When
French people could no longer resist the evidence of all great gifts
and noble qualities with which that record was filled, when they owned
that it would not do to persist in their old vein of disparagement . . .
when this was the result in France, the home faction saw it was time
to consider the matter, and they undoubtedly showed and continue to
show signs of repentance. The exceptions are few. . . . Among
authors of books of any note, verse or prose, we recollect of none
unless Mr. W. Savage Landor, who, however, clings with equal per-
tinacity to his ancient abuse of Bonaparte as a blockhead and a coward,
of Byron as a rhymer wholly devoid of genius or wit, of Pitt as a
villain, of Fox as a scoundrel, of Canning as a scamp, and so on."
Quarterly Review, vol. 86, p. 130 (Dec. 1849).
1 Examiner, January 15, 1850. The letter is reprinted in
Lander's Last Fruit off an Old Tree, p. 339.
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
appealed to every one who had read his writings,
however negligently or malignantly, to avow the
injustice of the charge. That he had not always
been content to use the most deferential forms
when speaking of those eminent persons will be
seen from his Commentary on John Bernard
Trotter's Memoirs of the Latter Years of the Right
Honourable Charles James Fox.
Landor's Commentary, though written toward
the end of 1811 and printed early in 1812, is now
published for the first time. The manuscript must
have been destroyed ages ago. Of the printed
copies one only seems to have survived. This is
in the possession of the Earl of Crewe, who kindly
allowed me to transcribe it. On the fly-leaf is
the following manuscript note, written by his lord-
ship's father, Lord Houghton, then Mr. Monckton
Milnes :
" I believe this volume to be unique. Mr. Lan-
dor told me he was aware of the existence of
no other copy. The whole edition was wasted,
with the exception of this copy, which the author
gave to Mr. Southey.
" RICHD. M. MILNES."
Trotter's Memoirs of 'Charles James Fox appeared
in 1811, and quickly ran through three editions.
The book was dedicated to the Prince Regent
in recognition, amongst other things, "of that
interesting sensibility which endears you so much
A LITERARY SENSATION ix
to those who are acquainted with you in their
private circle and of your public virtues, which
are drawing upon you the love, admiration and
blessings of this great empire."
Trotter's work made a considerable stir at the
time, and was reviewed by Canning and Ellis in
the twelfth number of The Quarterly Review.
Of the author one may read in The European
Magazine for 1806 that in the August of that
year Mr. Fox, Secretary of State, appointed
Mr. Trotter, nephew of his late friend, the Bishop
of Down, to be his private secretary ; and Trotter's
narrative shows that before then he had been
on intimate terms with his patron, whom he visited
at St. Anne's Hill and accompanied on a tour to
the Low Countries and France in 1802.
The earliest reference to Landor's Commentary
is in a letter Southey wrote to him on February 10,
1812. 1 In this Southey says that he had received
from Mr. John Murray a parcel containing, among
other things, an unfinished Commentary upon
Trotter's book. Southey proceeds :
" Aut Landor, aut diabolus. From the manner,
from the force, from the vehemence, I concluded
it must be yours, even before I fell upon the
passage respecting Spain 2 which proves it was
yours. I could not lie down this night with an
1 The correspondence between Southey and Landor is given in
Forster's Walter Savage Landor: a Biography, London, 1869.
7 See below, p. 182.
b
x INTRODUCTION
easy conscience if I did not beseech you to sus-
pend the publication till you have cancelled some
passages : that attack upon Fellowes 1 might bring
you into a court of justice. ... It would equally
grieve me to have the book supprest, or to have
it appear as it is. It is yours all over the non
imitabile fnlmen."
It was at Southey's request that Mr. Murray,
in 1811, had agreed to bring out Lander's Count
Julian: a Tragedy. But Landor sent his Com-
mentary to the same house without consulting
Southey, who first heard of it, as we have seen,
not from Llanthony, where Landor was now
living, but from London. Mr. Murray may have
asked him to look over the proof-sheets of the
work or rather of portions of it, for Southey
had not yet seen the Dedication or the Postscript
in the hope that the author might be induced by
a third party to tone down certain passages. This
at least seems a fair inference from letters which
have still to be quoted.
The first is Landor's reply, dated February 15,
1812, to his friend. Had he never mentioned,
he asked Southey, that he was writing this same
Commentary ? In truth, Landor proceeds, he had
a habit of not recollecting how much or how
little of his thoughts and intentions he had
imparted to his correspondents, to whom there-
1 See note on p. 146.
ORIGIN OF THE "COMMENTARY" xi
fore he must sometimes appear the most barren
of tautologists and sometimes more reserved than
a Jesuit or a Quaker. What a mistake, though,
it was to judge people by their letters ; or, for
that matter, by anything they write. Look at
those letters of some eminent authors then recently
published, and how the world was taken in by
them. " Why," says Landor, " not twenty men
know that Addison and Pope abounded in the
worst basenesses, or that Swift was anything
better than a satirist and misanthropist."
But about the Commentary, Landor would do
precisely as Southey recommended. Would
Southey point out other passages which had
better be cancelled. It had come to be written,
Landor explained, in this way. He had been
trying to compose an oration which should be
more in the Athenian style than speeches delivered
in the English Parliament or the French Academy.
Beginning with an apology for praising the living
rather than the dead, he had pronounced a eulogy
on Warren Hastings, comparing him with Charles
James Fox but admitting that the great Indian
ruler might possibly have been deaf to the voice
of misery and of justice. Then he had compared
him with Lord Peterborough and likewise with
Wellington, proving to his own satisfaction that
Wellington was at any rate the equal either of
Peterborough or Hastings. But of what avail
xii INTRODUCTION
to write orations in the Athenian or any other
style ?
" After all, who will read anything I write ?
One enemy, an adept in bookery and reviewship,
can without talents and without industry, suppress
in a great degree all my labour, as easily as a
mischievous boy could crush with a roller a whole
bed of crocuses. Yet I would not destroy what
I had written. It filled, indeed, but eight or nine
sheets ; interlined, it is true, in a thousand places
and everywhere close. I transferred, then, what-
ever I could conveniently, with some observations
I had written on Trotter's silly book, and preserved
nearly half, I think, by adopting this plan."
Landor is amazed that Mr. Murray should
object to publish his Dedication to Madison,
President of the United States. In his own
opinion it was a very temperate effusion, and, he
believes, not ineloquent. America had not de-
clared war against us yet ; as a matter of fact,
hostilities did not begin till the following summer ;
and Landor wished to point out what harm a
war would do to America. How deplorable that
free men should contend with the free ! The
Dedication was the best thing he had ever written,
and contained, he said, the best part of the afore-
said oration. He would ask Mr. Murray to send
it to Southey, along with a piece aimed at Saurin,
Attorney-General of Ireland, but not mentioning
that gentleman by name, nor subject, Landor
HISTORICAL PARALLELS xiii
thinks, to the cognisance even of an Attorney-
General's law. As the piece in question is in
the Postscript to the Commentary and is in-
cluded in the present volume, the reader may
form his own opinion as to Landor's interpretation
of the law of libel.
Thus we have it from Landor that he had
composed an oration, portions of which he after-
wards incorporated in the Commentary and in a
Dedication prefixed to it. The parallels between
Warren Hastings and Fox and between the Earl
of Peterborough and Wellington appear to have
been discarded. I can find no trace of the former
in other works by Landor, but Peterborough has
an imaginary conversation with Lord Chatham,
and a remark made in the conversation between
Talleyrand and Louis XVIII. may have been
suggested by some passage in the missing parallel.
" Fortunate," the French statesman is made to
say, " that the conqueror of France bears no resem-
blance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough
(I shudder at the idea) would have ordered a file
of soldiers to seat your majesty in your travelling
carriage, and would have reinstalled you at
Hartwell." l
Very characteristic of Landor is the plea that his
memory a singularly retentive one was apt to
play him false. So also is the notion that Gifford,
1 Landor's Works ; iii. 388,
xiv INTRODUCTION
editor of Tlie Quarterly Review, lay ever in wait
for him. Already, it will be noted, he had learnt
that Mr. Murray was uneasy about the Dedica-
tion. On this point there is other evidence.
Gifford, who was furious about Landor's pamph-
let, had written to Mr. Murray : " I never read
so rascally a thing as the Dedication. It shows
Landor to have a most rancorous and malicious
heart. Nothing but a rooted hatred of his country
could have made him dedicate his Jacobinical book
to the most contemptible wretch that ever crept
into authority" 1 James Madison, that is, President
of the United States.
One can but hope that Landor was spared the
perusal of this appreciation of his character.
Southey, it is plain, did his best to avert an
explosion. His reply to Landor's letter is a
masterpiece of tact. Writing on February 21,
1812, he told his friend that he had now read
the Dedication and Postscript, and found them
full of perilous stuff; but he stated his objections
so politely that even Landor could not have
taken offence. He thought Landor had " plucked
George Rose most unmercifully." As a matter
of fact, Southey declared, Rose had done more
good than the whole gang of reformers had even
proposed to do. "The encouragement of the
1 Memoirs of John Murray, 1891, i. 199. The American President
was spoken of more civilly by The Quarterly Review, April, 1878, in an
article on the life and times of President Madison.
PERILOUS PASSAGES xv
benefit societies, the population and poor returns,
and the naval schools we owe to G. Rose." But
the passages which were either distinctly action-
able or likely, if published, to give their author
other cause for regret, were those, Southey wrote,
relating to Croker ; the recommendation for with-
holding supplies ; the mention of Lord Chatham,
Lord Riversdale, Fellowes, and Kett ; and what
was said of the Irish Attorney- General. Southey's
letter ended as follows :
" Your prose is as much your own as your
poetry. There is a life and vigour in it to which
I know no parallel. It has the poignancy of
champagne and the body of English October.
Neither you nor Murray gave me any hint that
the Commentary was yours, but I could not look
into these pages without knowing that it could
not be the work of any other man. God bless
you. R. S."
In the same letter Southey advanced the theory,
which sounds oddly enough now, that President
Madison was in the pay of Bonaparte. " The
American Government," he said, " dream of con-
quering Canada on the one hand, and Mexico
on the other ; and happy would Bonaparte be if
he could see them doing his work."
Lander's reply was dated March 2, 1812. He
perceived, he said, that Mr. Murray was inclined
to suppress the Commentary ; " whether for pay,
xvi INTRODUCTION
or prejudice, or fear, I cannot tell." It had not
been advertised among forthcoming books, though
Mr. Murray had received it in December. As
for Southey's suspicions about Madison, Landor
could never believe that the President was in
Bonaparte's pay, or that Americans need be paid
to resent the indignities and hardships they suffered
under our tyrannical maritime laws. The Orders
in Council ought to have been revoked. " I pray
fervently to God," says Landor, "that no part
of America may be desolated ; that her wilder-
nesses may be the bowers and arbours of liberty ;
that the present restrictions on her commerce
may have no other effect than to destroy the
cursed trafficking and tricking which debases
the brood worse than felonies and larcenies ; and
that nothing may divert their attention from their
own immense neighbourhood, or from the de-
termination of helping to set free every town
and village of their continent."
A war, Landor went on to say, between England
and America would be a civil war ; a detestable
thing, only to be pardoned when there was some
ferocious and perfidious tyrant to be brought to
justice. The two peoples spoke the same language.
The Americans read Paradise Lost. Their children,
if not consumed with fire and sword, would indulge
their mild and generous affections in the perusal
of Southey's Curse of Kehama. Surely there
AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER xvii
must still be in America many who retained in
all their purity the principles which had driven
their ancestors from England ; and one such
family, Landor declared, was worth all the tur-
bulent slaves and nobles in Poland, or all the
thoughtless heads devoted for Ferdinand VII. of
Spain.
A day or two after he despatched this letter,
Landor received from Southey further information
about Mr. Murray's attitude. Southey wrote :
" I have a letter this evening from Murray,
which I would enclose to you if it were not for
the time which would be lost in sending it round
for a frank. The sum of it is that it would relieve
his mind from some very natural and very un-
pleasant feelings if you would allow him to procure
another publisher for this Commentary, into whose
hands he will deliver it ready for publication, and
with whom he will settle for you. This is purely
a matter of feeling and not of fear. He is, on the
score of The Quarterly Review, under obligations
to Canning, and would on that account have
refused to publish any personal attack upon him.
The manuscript he never read, looking forward
to the perusal of the book as a pleasure. What
he wishes will be no inconvenience to you, and no
doubt you will readily assent to it.
" * I confess,' he says, ' I hesitatingly propose
this, for I fear even you could not now speak of
this to the author in any way that would not
offend him. I will, however, leave it entirely to
you ; and if you say nothing about it, I will publish
xviii INTRODUCTION
it without any trouble to you or Mr. L., however
painful, from my peculiar situation, it will prove
to me.' These are his words. For my own part,
I should feel any fear of giving you offence as the
only thing which could occasion it. It is but for
you to signify your assent to Murray in a single
line, and the business is settled without any injury
to any person's feelings. That it is purely a matter
of feeling with him I verily believe. The not
reading the manuscript was a compliment to the
author, and a mark of confidence in him."
The late Dr. de Nod Walker, who knew Landor
well, told me that there were only three men whose
remonstrances the irascible genius could always
listen to without losing his temper. The amiable
Southey was one of them, Dr. Parr was doubtless
another, and Francis Hare may have been the
third. Southey 's letter, just now quoted, produced
nothing worse than a threat from Landor that he
would borrow 5,000 and start a private printing
press, whence could be issued, without the aid
or obstruction of publishers, pamphlets which
would set the public mind more erect, and throw
ministerial factions into the dust. As for the
Commentary it was condemned, he said, to eternal
night. He had just written to Mr. Murray and
sent Southey the extract from his letter. This is
what he had said :
"Deceived or not deceived, the fault was not
mine that you first undertook it yourself, that you
"THAT SCOUNDREL CANNING" xix
next proposed to find another who would under-
take it, and that at last you relapse even from
that alternative. I am not surprised that, in
these circumstances, you find some vexation. Had
you in the beginning pointed out such passages
as you considered dangerous to publish (although
this very danger would have shown the necessity
of them), I would have given them another
appearance and stationed them in another place."
To Southey Landor imparted his conviction
that Mr. Murray had been persuaded to withdraw
from any part in the publication of the Commentary
" either by Canning or some other scoundrel whom
I have piquetted in the work." This ingenious
theory is followed by some remarks on the law
of libel. Landor had been reading the corre-
spondence of Erasmus. " How infinitely more
freedom," he observes, " as well as more learning,
was there in those days ! " What now was to be
desired, he thought, was to adopt the principle
ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non
audeat. In other words, there should be no
libel without falsehood. Landor winds up with
a hit at the followers of the late Mr. Fox, saying :
"It is delightful to see how the Foxites have
disabled themselves from serving the Regent.
The people will be able to pay taxes two years
more, and these fellows will then excite them
to some expression of their discontent ; they will
force themselves into the places of Government ;
xx INTRODUCTION
they will govern with as much corruption and
fraudulence as their predecessors ; and as much
timber will be wanted for gibbets as for fleets."
To return to the Commentary. " Condemned
to eternal night " was Lander's own verdict ; and
but for an accident, the sentence would have been
executed. Southey, however, as we have seen,
kept a copy of it which passed, after his death,
into the hands of Lord Houghton. What that
lover of books and excellent critic thought of
it we know from his essay on Lander's life and
works first published in The Edinburgh Review,
and reprinted, with additions, in Monographs. It
contains, he wrote, "perhaps more fair and
moderate political and literary judgments, delivered
in his own humour, than any work of his earlier
or maturer years. It should be reprinted in
any new edition of his collected works." Lord
Houghton quoted more than one vigorous passage
from the Commentary, considering that these
were not inapplicable to the contests and difficulties
of the time when he himself was writing. It is
not impossible that the reader may light upon
other passages which have their bearing on the
questions of our own day.
Landor, when he wrote the Commentary, was
a man of six and thirty. He was living with
his young wife who was not at all interested
cither in politics or literature in the wilds of
LANDOR AS A SOLDIER xxi
Llanthony, his Welsh estate. Already known
to men of letters, or to some of them, as the
author of Gebir, that curious romance of the
Hyksos invaders of Egypt, he had also published
a volume or two of occasional poetry, much of it
in Latin, and at the instigation of Sir Robert
Adair and Dr. Parr had contributed political
articles to The Courier. In 1808, laying aside
the pen for the sword, he had gone, well furnished
with money, to aid the Spaniards in their struggle
against Bonaparte. On reaching Coruna he gave
ten thousand reals to the cause and, raising a
troop of volunteer cavalry, set out to join the
Spanish general, Don Joachim Blake.
When Spain from base oppression rose,
I foremost rushed against her foes
he says in one of his poems ; but, with the
exception of a few skirmishes, he saw no fighting,
and returned to England, with the honorary
rank of Colonel in the Spanish army, before the
close of the year. The adventure must be recalled
because it helps to explain some of the references
in the Commentary to the operations in the
Peninsula.
The three years that followed Landor's Spanish
campaign were spent at Bath and Llanthony. Dur-
ing this time he wrote Count Julian: a Tragedy,
spent large sums on projects for developing his
xxii INTRODUCTION
Welsh estate, and married. Early in the spring
of 1811 he was at a ball in the Bath Assembly
rooms, and, his eye falling on an unknown beauty,
he had exclaimed : " By heaven ! that's the nicest
girl in the room, and I'll marry her." The wedding
took place about the end of May, 1 and before the
close of the year Landor was at work on the
Commentary.
Lander's allusions elsewhere to Charles James
Fox are not numerous, and the more important
ones may be quoted. In his Imaginary Conver-
sation with an English visitor at Florence he
represents himself as saying :
" I believe there has rarely been a weaker or a
more profligate statesman than Mr. Fox : but he
was friendly and affectionate ; he was a gentleman
and a scholar. When I heard of his decease, and
how he had been abandoned at Chiswick by his
colleagues in the ministry, one of whom, Lord
Grey, he had raised to notice and distinction, I
grieved that such indignity should have befallen
him. . . . Many were then lamenting him, all who
had ever known him personally; for in private life
he was so amiable that his political vices seemed
to them but weaknesses."
In what he called " Reflections on Athens at
the death of Pericles," printed with the first
1 The register of St. James's Church, Bath, has the following entry :
May 24, 1811, Walter Savage Landor to Julia Thuillier, a minor, of
Walcot. Witnesses, James Thuillier, Thos: Barrow, Susan Amyatt.
SOME OPINIONS ON FOX xxiii
edition of his Pericles and Aspasia, Landor said
of Fox :
" He was unlucky in all his projects. On one
occasion he said he had a peace in his pocket, when
he no more had a peace in it than he had a guinea.
He was, however, less democratic, less subversive
of social order and national dignity, than his rival."
In the letter to The Examiner, which has already
been referred to, Landor wrote :
" My intimacy with the friends and near relatives
of Mr. Fox would certainly have closed my lips
against the utterance of the appellation of scoundrel
in regard to him. He had more and warmer
friends than any statesman upon record : he was
the delight of social life, the ornament of domestic.
Mr. Fox was a man of genius, and (what in the
present day is almost as rare) a gentleman."
An epigram on Fox will be found among Landor 's
Latin poems.
In reprinting the Commentary it has been thought
better to break it up into chapters, to provide a few
notes, and to expand the extracts from Trotter's
Memoirs which, though widely read at the time,
are now little known. The additions made to the
extracts are within brackets ; the footnotes, chapter
and page headings, table of contents and index
are all new. A few corrections in the text have
been made from Landor's own list of errata. With
one or two exceptions his spelling has been followed,
xxiv INTRODUCTION
but it seemed an excess of pedantry to repeat such
solecisms as Charlcsis, Foods, Gustavusis, for the
usual form of the possessive case. A couple of
lines in his poem of " Gunlaug and Helena " were
thus printed in the earlier editions:
! could I loose our blissis bar,
I burn for wedlock and for war.
In the rare Simonidea, where the poem is first
found, he appends a note saying:
" I am forced to adopt here the oldest and best
form of spelling. In future I shall employ it with-
out force. It is impossible that one s following
another should make a separate syllable, though it
might be the sign of one."
The collected edition of Landor's Works referred
to in the notes is that brought out by Mr. Forster
in 1876. 1 Landor's Letters addressed to Lord
Liverpool on the Preliminaries of Peace, which are
once or twice quoted, were published anonymously
in 1814; but the book is not in the British Museum,
and I have only met with two copies of it, one of
which, with corrections in the author's handwriting,
I found among other papers in Landor's writing-
desk. Other works cited in the notes will be
well known ; except, perhaps, a pamphlet entitled :
Circumstantial Details of the Long Illness and Last
1 The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor. Chapman & Hall,
1876.
A SCARCE VOLUME xxv
Moments of the Right Hon. Charles James Fox,
together with Strictures on his Public and Private
Life, dedicated to Lord Morpeth. Second edition,
1806.
The collation of the copy of the Commentary in
Lord Crewe's possession is as follows : Octavo,
5 J by 8^ inches. Fly-leaf with Lord Houghton s
manuscript note on the reverse ; short title (with
blank reverse), pp. i-ii ; title-page (with blank
reverse), pp. iii-iv ; Dedication, pp. v-xiii ; p. xiv
is blank ; Advertisement, pp. xv, xvi ; Preface,
pp. i-xxxv ; p. xxxvi is blank ; Text, pp. 37-227 ;
an unnumbered page of errata and a blank leaf.
The imprint at the foot of the page of errata
reads : " T. Davison, Lombard Street, Whitefriars,
London."
S. W.
COMMENTARY
ON
MEMOIRS OF MR. FOX
COMMENTARY
ON
MEMOIRS OF ME. Fox
LATELY WEITTEN
LONDON
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY
T. DAVISON, LOMBARD STREET, FLEET STREET
AND SOLD BY J. MURRAY, FLEET STREET
1812
DEDICATION
TO THE
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 1
THE volume, Sir, which I offer to your attention
is written by a man who has neither hopes nor
fears from any faction in this country ; who never
served any, who never courted any. In com-
menting on the Memoirs of Mr. Fox, it must
refer occasionally to his adversary. It contains
such observations as experience would suggest on
the conduct of those two statesmen, 2 whose talents
a little while since appeared the most conspicuous ;
but who now, on their barren eminences, serve
only to light up a beacon for their countrymen,
not to mistake a torrent of eloquence, or a brilli-
ancy of reply, for the characteristics of wisdom
and the tests of policy. Unhappily, each of these
ministers hath left his party and his advocates
1 James Madison, fourth President of the United States ; elected
1809, re-elected 1813.
1 William Pitt, the younger, and Charles James Fox.
5
6 DEDICATION
behind him, and on] the system of the one or the
other will the government of this kingdom be
conducted. Each faction is aware of its errors,
yet considers it a just homage to the memory
of its prophet to toil through the same wilderness
unto their natural termination.
Although the country groans under heavier
taxes than the most rapacious invader ever imposed
on the conquered ; although from this little island,
in a period of adverse and of hopeless war, 1 more
is confiscated than was extorted by Nero 2 himself,
amidst all his prodigalities, from the whole world
at peace ; yet the partizans of every administra-
tion talk of the prudence and successes of their
respective leaders. We have a surer criterion.
Supposing a country not to be actually, nor to
have lately been, in the occupation of an enemy,
there is one infallible way of judging whether a
ruler rules it well or otherwise. Are the people in
abundance ? in security ? If they are, they are
well governed. If they are not, and have not been
for several years, and are not likely to be for
several years more, then have they been, and are
1 Speaking of William Pitt, Mr. Lecky says: "Until his death
English operations on the Continent present few features except those
of extreme costliness and almost uniform failure." England in the
Eighteenth Century, v. 347.
1 " Italy, in the time of Nero, contained, at the lowest calculation,
twenty-six millions of inhabitants, and did not pay so much in taxes
as the city of London, with its appurtenances, 'in the late war."
LANDOR, Imag. Conv., 1826, ii. 157.
THE SCOURGE OF WAR 7
too surely, not under a moderate, and equable, and
protecting government, but under a cruel, de-
grading, and ignominious subjection. It is their
indefeasible right and bounden duty to destroy it,
by withholding all supplies 1 from their taskmasters,
and cutting off all resources. Far be every such
condition of things from England and America.
I presume to dedicate this book to the wisest
and most dignified chief magistrate that presides in
the present day over the destinies of a nation,
because on his humanity and power, the little
freedom that remains among his fellow-creatures
now principally depends.
You have witnessed, Sir, how dreadful has been
the scourge of war, to countries less deserving and
less capable of liberty than America. To bemoan
it for the horrors of death and the pangs of
separation would be only to raise the animal cry
common to our species in all ages ; but the wars
arising from the French revolution have been
wars against all social and liberal principles, all
virtues, all conscience. Wherever they have ex-
tended no man has a home, no man has a country ;
old attachments are torn away, new ones are dis-
couraged. Between the government of Napoleon
and the British, no people is permitted to regulate
its own affairs, to renovate or strengthen its
1 Southey wanted to omit "the recommendation to withhold
supplies." FOBSTEB'S Landor, i. 362.
8 DEDICATION
institutions, to chastise, or correct, or abolish, its
abuses. We rivet the chain, he breaks the limb in
striking the link asunder.
Your importance, your influence, and, I believe,
your wishes, rest entirely on the comforts and
happiness of your people. A declaration of
hostilities against Great Britain 1 would much and
grievously diminish them, however popular it
might be in the commencement, however glorious
it might be in the result. My apprehension lest
this popularity should in any degree sway your
counsels is the sole reason by which I am deter-
mined in submitting to you these considerations.
Popularity in a free state like yours, where places
are not exposed to traffic, nor dignities to accident, 2
is a legitimate and noble desire ; and the prospects
of territory are, to nations growing rich and
powerful, what the hopes of progeny are to in-
dividuals of rank and fortune. A war between
America and England would at all times be a
civil war. Our origin, our language, our interests,
are the same. Would it not be deplorable, would
it not be intolerable to reason and humanity,
that the language of a Locke and a Milton should
1 The American declaration of war against England was signed by
President Madison on June 18, 1812.
1 "Dignities exposed to accident." When the Duke of Richmond,
in the House of Lords (June 14, 1779) taunted Thurlow with his low
birth, the Chancellor retorted by suggesting that the noble lord was
"the accident of an accident." STANHOPE'S History of England, vi.
262.
ENGLAND AND AMERICA 9
convey and retort the sentiments of a Bonaparte
and a Robespierre ? Your merchants have endured
much privation and much injury ; but their capital
has only been thrown back on their own country,
and given a fresh vigour to the truest and most
practical independence. You have all the requisite
materials, and nearly all the requisite hands, for
manufacturing whatever you can consume. Nothing
but a war can prevent the complete and almost
immediate attainment of this object. Consider,
Sir, what are the two nations if I must call
them two which are about, not to terminate,
but to extend their animosities by acts of violence
and slaughter. If you think as I do and free
men, allowing for the degree of their capacities,
generally think alike you will divide the creatures
of the Almighty into three parts : first, men
who enjoy the highest perfection of liberty and
civilisation ; secondly, men who live under the
despotism of one person or more, and are not
permitted to enjoy their reason for the promotion
of their happiness ; and thirdly, the brute creation,
which is subject also to arbitrary will, and whose
happiness their slender power of reasoning (for
some power they have) is inadequate to promote.
These three classes, in my view of the subject,
stand at equal distances. I confess, the utter
extinction of the whole Chinese empire, and of
every mortal in it, would affect me infinitely less
2
10 DEDICATION
than the slaughter of a thousand Tyrolese, with
the subjugation of the remainder. 1 Because in a
series of years the one country would be covered
again, like the surface of a pond, with its minute
and indistinguishable leaves, as at present, or men
more conscious of their dignity would succeed.
But the other would impress the rising generation
with a memorable and most disheartening example,
how futile and vain may be the aspirations of
virtue, how sterile may be the love of our
country, how triumphant and insuperable may be
despotism.
Providence hath ordained you, Sir, not only to
preside over the United States, but to watch with
vigilance, and to protect with jealousy, the welfare
of a whole continent. Indeed, the peace and
prosperity of your own people require that all
your neighbours should enjoy the same equality
of laws, the same freedom from foreign and
turbulent and conflicting governments. In the
struggle of Spain for independence, it would have
been unjust and wicked to have detached from
her the Southern colonies. That independence is
now impossible, 2 because it is unwished. Instead
of aiming her whole force against the usurper,
1 " I can never be induced to imagine that the extinction of all the
tribes in Africa, and all in Asia, with half of the dwellers in Europe,
would be so lamentable as the destruction of Missolonghi, or even as
the death of Bozzaris. " LANDOB, Works, vi. 294.
1 Chili declared its independence of Spain in 1810. Paraguay rose
against the Spanish yoke in the following year.
THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY 11
she has directed great part of it to subdue the
spirit of liberty in that hemisphere where alone
the spirit of liberty never will be subdued. You
have little necessity and little time for deliberation.
Terminate the sufferings, confirm the hopes, fulfil
the ardent, the incessant wishes of a gallant and
grateful people ; and never let the repairer of
rotten cabinets crush it under the lumber of the
Bourbons. If hostilities should be the consequence
of this glorious resolution you will have secured
to your interests a warlike and powerful and
immovable ally on your own borders, and every
wise and every free man in all quarters of the
world will call heaven to witness the justice of
your cause, and pray most devoutly for your
success.
ADVERTISEMENT
THE appearance of this work has been delayed
some time by the scruples and remonstrances of
the Publisher. Finally, the Author chose rather
to cancel much than to alter any thing ; he
chose, in many instances, rather not deliver his
sentiments at all, than to deliver them hesitatingly
and ineffectually. For, indeed, what is integrity
but wholeness ? and how can a writer be said to
have spoken the truth, if he hath absconded
from any part of it ; if he hath exposed and
abandoned it to misconstructions, leaving it liable
to receive a fresh and different impression from
every tide of humour and opinion ? To fall short
of it is as criminal as to exceed it ; and pecu-
liarly and miserably base is it, to be terrified
into dumbness by loud outcries or by the peril of
laws falling down upon us, from the alleys and
by-paths we must go through. At the same time,
it is neither wise nor decorous to draw a crowd
after us of
Some in rags, and some in tags,
And some in silken gowns?
to raise a reputation by working on the discom-
posed passions of the many, or on the weak
reasonings of the more.
1 The old nursery rhyme, beginning : " Hark ! hark ! the dogs do
bark, the beggars are come to town."
13
PREFACE
WHEN an author writes on any political sub-
ject, he begins by assuring the reader of his
impartiality. In presenting to the public my
Commentary on the Memoirs of Mr. Fox, I think
it necessary to premise what will probably seem
very different from this custom and this object.
I would represent his actions to his contempo-
raries as I believe they will appear to posterity.
I would destroy the impression of the book before
me, because I am firmly persuaded that its
tendency must be pernicious. The author is an
amiable man ; so was the subject of his memoir.
But of all the statesmen who have been concerned
in the management of our affairs during a reign
the most disastrous in our annals, the example
of Mr. Fox, if followed up, would be the most
fatal to our interests and our glory. The proofs
and illustrations of this assertion will be evident
on perusing the Commentary. There is no con-
stitutional principle which he has not, at one
time, defended, at another time assailed. The
15
16 PREFACE
preservation of the King's dominions in Germany,
he said, was folly and madness in Mr. Pitt ; in
his own administration he had the impudence to
assert, that Hanover should be as dear to an
Englishman as Hampshire. 1 A clear proof to
what extent he knew the interests, or consulted
the feelings, of Englishmen. Pensions and sine-
cures were abominations. 2 He kisses the King's
hand, and sees his name written out fairly again,
above its old erasure, 3 and shuffles into the House
to confirm the greatest sinecure of all, and the
most flagrant instance of ungenerous cupidity that
any red-book in Europe has unfolded. That a
man should be made auditor of his own accounts
1 But it was William Pitt the elder, not Mr. Fox, who said that
Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire. This was one of the
' ' strong expressions " which he used when, in 1757, he brought down to
the House a message from George II. asking for aid in the defence of
the Electoral dominions, and moved for a grant of 200,000. " One
cannot say which was most ridiculous," Horace Walpole wrote,
" the richest prince in Europe begging alms for his country, or
the great foe of that country becoming its mendicant almoner."
WALPOLE, Memoirs of George II., ii. 313. See STANHOPE, History of
England, iv. 90.
2 In the House of Commons, on March 13, 1797, Fox reproached
Pitt and Grenville with securing sinecures to themselves, while they
were loading the people with taxes.
1 " On the 9th of May [1798] a Board of Privy Council being held at
St. James's, Mr. Faulkner, as Clerk of the Council, presented the list
to the King when his Majesty with his own hand drew his pen across
the name of Mr. Fox. Mr. Fox, in his private letters, refers to this
event with great equanimity. ' I believe,' he says, ' the late Duke of
Devonshire is the only instance in this reign of a Privy Councillor
being turned out in England."' STANHOPE'S Pitt iii. 128. Fox, who
had been made a Privy Councillor in March, 1782, was removed in
1798 for having proposed, at a dinner, the toast of ' ' our sovereign, the
people." He was reappointed on February 5, 1806.
PRECIPICE OF REVOLUTION 17
with the public, and receive a large salary for
this auditorship ; l that, in short, he should be paid
a large salary for receiving one, and for doing no
earthly thing else, is enough in itself to goad a
free people, laden and overburdened with debts,
to the precipice of revolution. It is an absurdity
so insulting to the understanding, as is not to be
paralleled in any book of mysticism. The pro-
posal of it evinces an injustice, a baseness, a
dereliction of principle, so brutally bare, obtrusive,
and unblushing, that, if there be any honest man
among his friends, and endowed with ordinary
prudence, let him skulk into the crowd and be
well supported by his party, or never cast a
stone at Mr. Pitt.
The conduct of the Whig minister 2 in regard
to Spanish America proves how wide is the
difference between a debater and a statesman,
between the versatile suitor of popularity and the
true lover of justice. To those who are still
1 Lord Grenville, having formed the Ministry of all the Talents
(February, 1806) in which he was First Lord of the Treasury, was per-
mitted by an Act (46 George III., c. 1) to execute the office of Auditor
of the Exchequer by deputy. He had held this sinecure, worth 4,000
a year, since February, 1794. See below, page 53.
* That Laudor held Fox responsible for the disasters which befell our
military adventures in South America is proved by what he says further
on (see page 126). The charge, however, is not supported by the
facts. It was Windham, and not Fox, who was to blame. et Mr.
Windham," Lord Holland wrote, " though he plumed himself on his
disdain of all popular clamours, had greatly heated his imagination with
the prospect of indemnifying ourselves in the new world for the dis-
appointments which we had sustained in the old." Further Memoirs of
the Whig Party, p. 112.
3
18 PREFACE
gaping at his prophetic spirit, 1 I would remark,
that an ingenious man who takes the opposite
side of an argument, when rich and luxurious
tradesfolks are pricked and cockered into a war,
against a revolutionary and military nation, may
predict much mischief with much certainty. Mr.
Pitt, we are informed, was equally aware of it,
but resigned his opinion to preserve his power.
Such also is the mechanism of our polity: the
commencement of a war will always conciliate to
the interests of a minister a very large party of
the mercantile and monied, who are ready for
loans and contracts ; and the aristocracy is brought
closer to him by the innumerable posts and em-
ployments dependent or consequent on hostilities.
The pleasure of succeeding to this patronage was
not to be resisted by a set of people whose poverty
alone had made them patriots. 2 The freedom of
1 Fellowes, in The Critical Review for March, 1808, wrote of Fox :
' ' His remonstrances, his exhortations and suggestions, like the pre-
dictions of Cassandra, to which they were often compared, were
neglected and despised till the time in which they might have been
executed had glided away. The history of the [French] revolutionary
war will bear testimony to the truth of this observation."
z Compare the lines in Landor's Gebir :
Here also those who boasted of their zeal,
And lov'd their country for the spoils it gave.
Book III., 286, 1st ed.
In the passage that follows, Landor refers to the ill-starred expedition
sent to Rio de la Plata, early in 1807, under General Whitelocke.
Buenos Ayres had been taken in June, 1806, by Sir Hope Popham
and General Beresford. The news reached England in September, and
extravagant hopes were excited of founding a British dominion in
South America. Whitelocke's expedition, in the early part of 1807,
ended in a crushing disaster.
BUENOS AYRES 19
a vast continent, the alliance of a generous people,
the various products of a most fertile country, the
hopes held out and pledges given by the conquerors,
every sentiment of glory, every prospect of advan-
tage, every regard to the honour of those whose
intelligence, promptitude, and moderation had
secured the territory, must be resigned and
abandoned, that tax-gatherers, and excisemen, and
commissioners, and notaries, and purveyors, and
governors, and deputy-governors, and Heutenant-
governors and deputy-lieutenant governors, might
be appointed ; J none of them, however unimportant,
from the city or the colony, but from the insides
and outsides of the gaming-houses in St. James's
Street ; and that especial care should be taken,
not to conciliate our new subjects, but to provide
for all sorts and conditions of men the best fitted
to exhaust a country. The people did their duty :
may all people do the same ! They rose, and
crushed their oppressors. No inquiry was insti-
tuted at home, no culprit was punished, no
minister was arraigned. A wretched man, whose
tyranny and cowardice were notorious long before,
was declared unworthy of command, and this
1 Speaking in the House of Commons in June, 1807, Canning
denounced the late Ministry for their designs in South America.
Buenos Ayres, he said, had acquired a vast importance in their eyes,
not from its importance to the commerce, or navigation, or to the
general resources of the country, " but because it was a place
that afforded room for the appointment of collectors, comptrollers,
searchers, and tide-waiters."
20 PREFACE
important discovery was communicated in the
Gazette. 1
Thus ended an expedition, sent out under the
same auspices as a former one to Quiberon, 2 and
another to Ferrol. 3 In one single chapter are
recorded the three most disgraceful transactions
in British history ; and the disgrace is neither in
the corruption or the fatuity which occasioned
the choice of the commanders, nor in their
cowardice and incapacity. These are only the
sewers through which it runs. It lies in the
basest of all fear: the fear of looking back, the
fear of stopping to acknowledge, or advancing
1 General Whitelocke, on his return from his disastrous expedition
to Buenos Ayres (1807), was tried by court martial, cashiered, and
declared unfit to serve the King in any capacity. " What Whitelocke
did in Buenos Ayres," The Spectator said the other day, " should still
bring a blush to our cheek."
3 The reference might be to the expedition of French Emigres to
Quiberon in 1795. < ' Windham, the new War Minister, built his
greatest hopes on an expedition of French aristocrats and malcontents
to Quiberon Bay ; but this force, sumptuously provided with money
and munitions of war, and supported by a powerful fleet, was pulverised
by Hoche as soon as it landed." LORD ROSEBERY'S Pitt, p. 131. Or was
Laudor thinking of Sir E. Pellew's attack on Quiberon Bay, June 4,
1800, when some French batteries were destroyed but we could not
reduce Fort Penthievre?
3 A British force under General Sir James Murray Pulteney was sent
against Ferrol in August, 1800. The troops landed, but Pulteney
thought the place too strong to be taken except by regular siege, and
re-embarked them. The naval officers thought the place might easily
have been captured. See LANDOR'S Imaginary Conversations. " Neither
the general nor any person under him knew its fortifications or its
garrison. They saw the walls and turned back, although the walls
on the side where they landed were incapable of sustaining one
discharge of artillery, and the garrison consisted of half a regiment.'
Works, vi. 24.
WALCHEREN DISASTERS 21
to interrogate. When calamities come down so
thick together ; when merely the vile instrument
is broken and cast off, not the workman dismissed
for choosing and employing it ; when a general
is rewarded by appointing him minister of
war, 1 for no other services than flying from an
invalid garrison and dismantled fortress, what
hope is there of any thing prosperous, until
the elements of a state produce a change of
season ? I am afraid it is only by severe and
stormy weather that such a pestilence can be
stopped.
One party can accuse the other with equal
justice. Such being the case, no culprit of rank
and connections, no officer so high that his
criminality can involve our safety and our honour,
will be punished by any thing more severe than
verbal censure. Really it is ridiculous to talk of
disgracing, for instance, a man 2 who has had the
baseness to praise a naval officer to the people
and to malign him to the sovereign ; whose folly
and that of his defenders is so signal that nothing
but the hand of Providence could have stamped
1 Sir James Murray Pulteney became Secretary at War in 1807.
* A reference to General Lord Chatham, who commanded the troops
in the ill-fated expedition to Walcheren, 1809. On February 14,
1810, Lord Chatham "delivered clandestinely to the King a paper
justifying himself and in some degree inculpating the Navy and even
the Admiralty." LORD HOLLAND'S Further Memoirs of the Whig Party,
p. 33. The matter was referred to in the House of Lords five days
later. Landor's verses on Walcheren will be found in his Works,
viii. 43.
22 PREFACE
it, nothing but the power of divine indignation
and justice could have driven them to the ex-
posure of his documents. If any such person is
known to exist at this moment, and not to be
out of favour, where favour is, or ought to be,
a reward for active and transcendent virtues, I
need make no apology for the force of my ex-
pressions. No name is mentioned ; T disclaim all
reference, all allusion. If the stigma flies forth
against any, it must be by its own peculiar
aptitude and attraction. According to the reports
which are prevalent, and which I would rather
refute than repeat, the quarters of a brave and
active officer were taken from him, he was cast
out to die amongst the pestilential marshes, that
the state turtles of this glutton might have a
commodious kitchen ! He was not to be disturbed,
or spoken to, or called on, until several hours
after noon ; he was not to be seen while he was
dressing ; he was not to be intruded on at his
breakfast ; he was not to be molested at his
dinner ; he was not to be hurried at his wine ;
he was not to be awakened at his needful and
hardly earned repose. 1
Commodus and Elagabalus ! Ye lived amongst
1 See Lander's Imaginary Conversations : <e Of our generals, the
most distinguished then employed was a body that rose from bed after
midday, of which when orders were requested, the first answer was,
His lordship is at breakfast ; the second, His lordship is at lunch ; the
third, His lordship is at dinner." Imag. Conv. 1824, i. 141. This
passage was afterwards transferred to another conversation, when the
EXALTED DELINQUENTS 23
a coarse, reviling people ! Your memories have
been followed up, and hooted at, most inde-
corously ; we are taught better manners ; we see
such actions as yours, and hold our peace ! But
I should be more contented, I must acknowledge
it, if I could discover in history where any people
hath been so fortunate as to survive such delin-
quency in the higher officers of state ; if I could
find that nation in existence twenty years after
such politicians and such polity. This idea of
degradation and ruin stands so closely and so
awfully before me, I lose for a moment all view
of that vast colossus 2 which overshadows the
whole continent of Europe, and which will never
be considered as the cause, however he may be the
instrument, of our subjugation. If we had only
the weakest enemy, in addition to such corruption
at home, such oppression of taxes on the inter-
mediate ranks, such proscription of talents on
the one side, such prostitution on the other, and
such utter exclusion of all dissidents in religion,
when the national church is in a deplorable
minority, our ruin would be equally certain, though
somewhat longer delayed.
last answer became, " His lordship is dead drunk " ( Works, 1876, vi.
248). Lord Holland said of the general : " His indolence in office
had . . . become so notorious that he was nicknamed in the navy the
late Lord Chatham." Further Memoirs, p. 32.
8 Landor makes Pitt say : ' ( I have failed in every thing I undertook,
and have cast in solid gold the clay colossus of France." Works, iii.
188.
24 PREFACE
With what contempt have we often spoken of
the Turks ! l yet the counsels of this people seem
to be more systematic than ours, amidst all then-
troubles and revolutions. Their defects have been
fewer and less calamitous, and, fanatics and mis-
creants as they are, their toleration has been less
circumscribed by bigotry. And yet the nation
whose sacred rights they think it necessary to
qualify, is open to the descents and insinuations
of a powerful and triumphant enemy. Let us not
deceive ourselves, and fancy we are rich, and
mighty, and unassailable, because we can still raise
money ; our methods of raising money are certain
signs of our necessities, and the power of raising it
is no proof of any power beyond. Nations have
trampled down their oppressors without coin and
without credit. Those who are angry that this
country, in which there are such splendid dinners
and crowded drawing-rooms, should be compared
with Turkey, must be reminded that pleasure and
wit are but fallacious symbols of eternity to a state.
The guests of Pompey, in his rich pavilion at
Pharsalia, looked down with disdain on Csesar the
last evening of their lives. But posterity is just,
even among the most vulgar and illiterate. A
1 " The only people of whom he [Landor] writes with constant respect
are the Turks : ' coming from Turkey to France was like passing from
lions to lap-dogs : they alone of all nations have known how to
manage the two only real means of happiness, energy and repose.'"
LORD HOUGHTON in Edinburgh Review, July, 1869, p. 244.
CJESAR, POMPEY, BONAPARTE 25
little dog is universally called Pompey ; a great
dog, Caesar. We despise the character of Pompey,
in despite of some virtues ; we admire the charac-
ter of Caesar, in despite of many vices. Such an
effect hath superior energy on the soul of man.
Nature not only permits us, but commands us, to
reverence it, even when its direction is sinister
to our happiness. It is not from the traditionary
verbiage of pedagogues, who hate and love, despise
and admire, by prescription, that we feel animated
at the achievements of heroes. It is from the
intuitive and certain knowledge of our hearts, that
there is a conservate power within us, against
corruption and against violence ; and that nothing
good or glorious is impossible to those whose
strength and spirit are bent resolutely on the
exploit. Even bad men are viewed differently
from other bad men, by a force of mind. In
Bonaparte, it is evident that anger and a jealousy
allied to fear, are the predominant passions ; while
the fire-side inmates of his heart, if I may venture
on the expression, are cruelty and fraud sure pro-
geny of such parents. No vices can be imagined
more hateful. But he never deserts his allies, he
never abandons his object ; he bestows no rewards
on the idle, he shelters no coward from punish-
ment. If he is censurable, it is in the opposite
extreme : not only does he raise up merit whenever
he discovers it, but with a spirit which might be
4
26 . PREFACE
called enthusiasm, if so revolutionary a conduct can
be spoken of so equivocally, he values it quite as
highly in the living as in the remotest of their
ancestors. By these means he has established his
own empire, and subverted others, which he never
could have done had his competitors adopted the
same. By the providence of God we have avoided
one vast mischief: we have not much extended
our dominions. To pave the road to conquests,
and to erect the outworks necessary for retaining
them, would consume almost all that is left to
us from the fragments of the constitution.
Although there may be some people so ignorant
and stupid as to believe that every act of coercion
is a proof of energy, and every enforcement of an
obsolete law a preservative of the rest, even those
men must be aware, from their own personal
feelings, that the less we expose of what is vulner-
able, the more is our bosom at peace. The Romans,
the Macedonians, and the French sunk under
despotism by their conquests ; and he who added
most to the dominions of each country added most
to its subjugation. Every free people, if it is wise
and powerful, will deprecate an accession of terri-
tory. In a state of successful war the prince
acquires new powers, bestows new offices, con-
ciliates new interests. Those who were under him
from their early days waste away in freedom as he
ascends in glory ; but in a nation whose laws are
FRENCH HARPIES 27
unequal, each individual is relieved a little in
proportion as the dominions of the state extend.
Hence a tyrant becomes more popular for war,
although its expenditure, even when successful,
adds other privations to those of liberty. The
French lately were free, as much as any people
so light and ignorant can ever be. Two men of
transcendent abilities, Cambaceres and Talleyrand,
men unrestrained by any sense of religion or any
principle of morality, have instructed a soldier
of fortune how to govern and keep that people
in subjection. Under his vast encampment such
is France these harpies devour the prey they have
collected, with incessant clamours against English-
men, as foreigners who have rashly drawn the
sword, and invaded them during the festival of
the Continent. To become the companions of a
conqueror is enough to remove the disgrace of
subjugation. Whether this be the opinion of
philosophers I cannot tell, nor whether it be a
point of speculation with those who deprecate any
violence of speech, or action, against the emperor.
I believe that, mingled with fear and treachery, it
finds a place even there ; but certain I am that
it is the prevailing sentiment of those who have
overturned old empires and established new ; that
it is the universal maxim of ardent minds, and the
military creed of revolutionary Europe. Woe be-
tide the government that forces men to deliberate
28 PREFACE
whether it be the more disgraceful to admit a
new dynasty, with economy and peace, or to
support an old establishment in irremediable cor-
ruption and in hopeless war. If ever the time
should arrive when the English must pay heavier
taxes, without attaining any proposed object,
than that object, if attained, would be worth ;
if nineteen in twenty should be so reduced
in circumstances that they cannot give their
children the same advantages of education and
of business as they themselves enjoyed ; it will
be then a duty to remove, by every effort and
at every peril, the causes, whatsoever they may
be, of so serious and mournful a calamity. It
will be their object and determination to render
it impossible for those who have brought about
such an evil to compass any more, or even to
make any attempt, however peaceable, for the
recovery of their possessions. Committees will
then be holden to decide on what has been
merited by public services, and to receive back
again what has been taken under false pretences.
A people conscious of its strength and dignity
will always be generous and mild : even the
French were not very ferocious, until they were
scourged and maddened by their wars. The idea
of vengeance has been too long associated with
the idea of retribution. England has wanted a
Cromwell and a Nassau ; she never has wanted
WORDS OF BAD OMEN 29
a Robespierre or a Bonaparte. On the other hand,
never, since the extinction of the Tudors, has she
betrayed so much indifference to public virtue, or
such proneness to the most ignominious of all
subjection. The case proposed by Montesquieu is
no longer hypothetical : the if ever is blotted from
the problem.
The Cumaeans, it is said, had not the common
sense to know that they possessed the right of
standing under their own porticos when it rained ;
but, probably, in some very foul weather, they took
shelter under the most ample and most protect-
ing. Open tyranny is not the greatest of all
evils. It is better to contend against any thing,
however inhuman and monstrous it may be,
possessing force, however great, let it only be
visible and definite in every limb and motion,
than to be drawn under in the fat folds of some
overwhelming hydra, and to be sucked away
insensibly at its leisure.
We have been, I shall not say at what period,
in a situation analogous to this, and yet we have
addressed one another in high language. But
words of encouragement, too often repeated, are
words of bad omen. Far be it from me to lower
the spirit or to damp the hopes of the public. I
foretold, but it was in private, that Fox would
be aconite where Pitt was wormwood. The
disasters of the country began with this heaven-
30 PREFACE
born minister; 1 happy were England had they
terminated with his heroic brother. The last of
these Dioscuri, by appearing on his war-horse at
the gate, gave warning to the wiser that the house
of their revels was about to fall. We have been
sitting like condemned criminals : the poison has
now deadened all the extremities, and is mounting
to the heart. Both parties have inveighed with
equal vehemence against the inequality and
insufficiency of our representative system ; both
projected, and both abandoned, the project of
reform. No person mixes in general society so
little as I do ; no man has kept himself so totally
detached from all factions ; yet I seldom meet a
person, whether on business or amusement, whether
a stranger or acquaintance, whose conversation does
not immediately turn on the calamities and dis-
graces we have suffered, and does not generally
end with the confession of an equal insufficiency,
in all who have been members of the cabinet.
In the beginning of the French revolution, when
the minds of men were heated by the rapidity
and importance of events, and when friendships
1 Mr. Gladstone, referring to the designation of Pitt as the ' ' heaven-
born minister," said in the House of Commons : ' ' I have understood
that that name came from the city of London at the time when Pitt
embarked this country in the unhappy policy of meeting the expenditure
of a revolutionary war, even from the first, by loan. "
According to Leigh Hunt, the Duke of Chandos, when Master of the
Horse, first applied the famous epithet to Pitt, ' ' which occasioned some
raillery." LEIGH HUNT'S Recollections of Byron, etc., ii. 67.
PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 31
were torn asunder by new and violent attractions
there still remained a delicacy of sentiment, and
a reluctance to touch that train which was liable
to such tremendous explosions. 1 At present there
is one common cause, and one universal opinion.
The leading men have been tried. The glebe is
effete ; the plough and harrow must go deeper ;
something new must be turned up ; but on the
same ground, and within the same inclosures.
We want fresh seed, and weightier, and sounder.
If ever there was a time when a revolution
would be disastrous, it is now ; if ever there was
one when it seemed inevitable, now is it. 2 What
are the signs and tokens of this awful visitation ?
Are they not suspended in the heavens, glaringly
visible, at the present hour ? Insolence and injus-
tice, imposture and self-sufficiency ; a prostration
of public virtue, an eye closed against inevitable
misfortune, an ear deaf to the most earnest
prayers of those who could profit but generally
by their advice, and a countenance which never
changes at the most irrefragable reproaches, and
the most deep disgrace. What can be expected
1 Landor, in one of his letters, says that Oebir was ' ' written in the
last century, when our young English heads were turned towards the
French Revolution, and were deluded by a phantom of Liberty, as if the
French could ever be free, or let others be." LANDOR'S Letters, etc.,
1897, p. 135.
2 "This country," so wrote Southey, May 14, 1812, "is upon the
brink of the most dreadful of all conceivable states an insurrection of
the poor against the rich." Life of Southey, p. 282.
32 PREFACE
from men who study not to be upright and
diligent in their offices, but merely con over
some petty cavil at their predecessors, and stoop
to ascertain, that they may reach, without ex-
ceeding, the limits of their iniquity? Is there
any one who has not been disgusted, and who
would not have been indignant formerly, when
the higher and more manly feelings had all their
painful play, at the recriminations of the opposite
ministers ? Virtue and truth lose their character-
istic loveliness when the veil is ript away by
such hands. When 'a Canning or a Castlereagh
tells us, with abhorrence, of a reversion or a
sinecure given to some abandoned gambler, by
the patron of his club, we are indeed indignant,
but not to our natural pitch : the sentiment flies
off in splinters, some on the giver, some on
the receiver, most on the accuser. We have
heard of family and of birth in parliament ; but,
if a nation is ruined, of what importance is it
whether it be ruined by a man of yesterday or
by a man of the day before ? The difference
is no greater, to those who survey the newest,
and the most ancient, at an equal elevation above
both.
To saunter with complacency, or with indiffer-
ence, by the channels of corruption, is not virtue.
It is only the Asiatic despot who is never to be
awakened from his slumber, when treachery is
CORRUPT GOVERNMENT 33
lurking in his courts, and enemies are thundering
at his gates. Such images were poetry and fable
to our ancestors : no phantasmagoria could bring
them to their bosoms. Yet virtuous men are
inert and passive now. Speak to them of cor-
ruption, they do not blush to tell you it is
necessary ; government could not go on without
it ; we are not what we were ; should we not
ourselves like a place ? " Yes," I answer, " and
the time is approaching when every man will
have his own ; but I would conjure you to
withhold from me, and from all whom I deem
estimable, the sure means of becoming worse men."
I consider the amalgam of rottenness and
soundness as a much greater curse than all the
poverty and distress arising from ministerial
profusion. There is infinitely more misery in the
world from wickedness than from want ; but they
are two gamesters that play into each other's
hand. If the higher classes hold out a glaring
example of rapacity, they will meet either with
vengeance or with imitation from those who walk
below. Whichever may happen, the country is
the sufferer. We have contemplated such enor-
mities of crime and such anomalies of law l as
1 As late as 1823 Sir James Mackintosh, in moving a resolution on
the " barbarous criminal laws," said : " We had two hundred laws
inflicting capital punishment in our Statute-book, and yet never acted
on more than twenty of them." See also Landor's imaginary con-
versation between the Grand Duke Leopold and President Du Paty
5
34 PREFACE
never were seen before in any land where the
images of liberty and justice, or even the naked
walls of a constitution, were left standing. If an
unfortunate mother, at a distance from home,
carrying with her a half-starved infant, along
roads covered with snow, should snatch a shirt
from a hedge to protect it from a miserable death,
she is condemned to die. That she never could
have known the law, that she never could have
assented to its equity, avails her nothing ; that
she was pierced by the cries of her own offspring ;
that it was not merely the instigation of want,
but the force of omnipotent nature, the very voice
of God himself, the preservation of a human
being, of her own, the cause of her wandering,
and her wretchedness, of her captivity and her
chains : what are these in opposition to an act
of parliament ? She dies. Look on the other side.
A nobleman of most acute judgment, 1 well versed
in all the usages of his country, rich, powerful,
(Works, iii, 51). In another conversation he makes Sir Samuel
Romilly say : " I am ready to believe that Draco himself did not
punish so many [offences] with blood as we do, though he punished
with blood every one indiscriminately." Works, iii. 163.
1 Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, for a long time Lord Privy Seal for
Scotland and President of the Board of Control for India. In 1785
he had carried a Bill to prevent the Treasurer of the Navy appropriating
public moneys to his private use, and in 1806 he was himself impeached,
but acquitted, on a charge of misappropriation. Landor attacked him
both in prose and verse. In the Apology for Satire (Poems, 1795) he
says :
" Invidious gods ! Why boasts the brave Dundas
A heart of iron and a face of brass ? "
See also the epigram in Lander's Works, viii. 124.
LORD MELVILLE 35
commanding, with a sway more absolute and
unresisted than any of its ancient monarchs, the
whole kingdom in which he was a subject, with
all its boroughs, and its shires, and its courts, and
its universities, and, in addition, as merely a fief, the
empire of all India ; who possessed more lucrative
patronage than all the crowned heads in Europe.
Let this illustrious character, to whom so many
men of rank looked up as their protector, and
wiiom senators and statesmen acknowledged as
their guide ; let this distinguished member of the
British parliament break suddenly through the
law which he himself had brought into the House
for the conservation of our property, without
necessity, without urgency, without temptation
and behold the consequence. True, he is im-
peached, but all the evidence of his guilt he is
permitted to withhold, by a special decision in
his favour, and the answers he returns to those
who are authorised to examine him are evasive
and jocose. One honest man, Admiral Nichols, 1
Controller of the Navy, scandalised at such scenes
of iniquity, hopeless of reforming them, and dis-
daining to sanction by his name and presence the
belief that a single act of fraud and peculation
1 Landor refers elsewhere to the conduct of Admiral Nichols :
" Finding no support, he threw up his office as Controller of the
Navy, and never afterwards entered the House of Commons." Works,
iv. 429. In the same conversation the Admiral is described as "a
just, a valiant, and a memorable man " (76. p. 427).
36 PREFACE
had been examined as it should be, threw up
his office instantaneously and retired from such
unworthy associates.
He resigned his place for no other reason
than because he was most fit for it, and for the
same reason I have often wondered how he ever
came to occupy it. Men are in governments
what words are in eloquence ; their position, their
relation, and their intrinsic qualities must be
considered. He who, with a fair-flowing wig,
might appear a respectable special pleader, 1 may
be incapable of coping with the impetuous and
versatile Bonaparte ; he who understands the
merit of a turtle and the duties of a toast-master
may be unsuccessful in his attacks both on his
enemies and his comrades ; those who write in-
genious and sharp satires may hope to arrive at
the glory of pretty smart duellists, may even be
1 The wearer of the ' ' fair flowing wig " was Spencer Perceval ;
the expert in turtles, General Lord Chatham ; the writer of sharp
satires and promising duellist, Canning. See Sydney Smith, in Peter
Plymley : " You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so
when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker [Canning]
and a second-rate lawyer [Perceval]. Of the first, no other good is
known than that he makes pretty Latin verses ; the second seems to
me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old
Bailey lawyer." S. SMITH'S Works, 1850, p. 491.
Landor, who disliked Canning, refers to his ignorance of French and
to his duel with Castlereagh in the verses beginning :
tc Canning, in English and in Latin strong,
Was quite an infant in each other tongue.
Proud, yet an easy embassy he sought
From the kind comrade he traduced and fought."
Dry Sticks, p. 147.
LESSONS OF HISTORY 37
taught dancing and french, however late ; but
they have yet to be informed that the arrangement
of a campaign is different from the construction
of a pentameter.
I never shall think it presumptuous to offer
such advice and such warning as men of reflection
are able to derive, and authorised to deliver, from
the experience of past ages. Those who are
ignorant whence arises the utility of history
cannot be supposed to be perfectly well informed
whence arises the pleasure it bestows. Believe
me, it is not a series of sieges and battles, of
dangers and escapes, of turns and reverses of
fortune, by which we are delighted : it is because
for the moment we fancy we have acquired so
much wisdom as would direct us in similar
situations ; it is a consciousness of knowledge and
a confidence of security. The mind is captivated
by these impressions, and proceeds without further
inquiry. No two human beings ever profited less
by them than Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox.
In the beginning of the war, the minister had
two objects : to preserve the balance of Europe,
and to maintain the constitution of the realm.
The idea of the balance of Europe was taken from
the states of Italy, but it is proper and requisite
to have a correct notion how it was managed.
" Questi potentati avenano ad avere due cure prin-
cipali : 1'una, che un forestiero non entrasse in
38 PREFACE
Italia con armi ; 1'altra che nessuno di loro occupasse
piu stato." 1 Such are the words of Machiavelli.
At the commencement of the French revolution,
all the more extensive states of Europe seemed
ready to resolve themselves into their component
parts. The conjunctures of this period seemed to
portend that what we had been waging so many
wars to bring about would be accomplished by its
own conflicting elements. The conceptions of the
great disposer were swelling into full maturity.
The minister of the day laboured himself into
blindness 2 by striving to undo what he would, if
he could have seen one inch before him, have
considered his highest glory, and his most per-
manent blessing, to have achieved. The spirit of
liberty was abroad, and the sound of it was
tremendous when it flashed into those quarters
where there was none. If Mr. Pitt found it or
made it requisite to coerce the new opinions, it was
his policy to keep a formidable force within the
realm, surely not to send it out. It would also
have been in readiness, and without exciting any
previous suspicion, to take advantage of whatever
calamity might befall the infant republic. Pur-
1 Machiavelli, // Principe, cap. xi. Elsewhere Landor gives the
English : " Machiavelli, in speaking of the Italian league says, ' These
potentates had two principal views : one that no foreigner should enter
Italy in arms ; the other, that none of the princes or states should
attempt an increase of territory.' " Letters to Lord Liverpool, p. 64.
2 Landor may be referring to Lord North, whose sight, however,
began to fail in 1787, and who soon afterwards became totally blind.
BALANCE OF POWER 39
suing quite a different plan, he succeeded in
nothing but in preventing the demolition of the
French monarchy, which, under another and more
formidable dynasty, has swallowed up all the rest.
The balance of Europe would have been settled
to the full satisfaction of its most romantic admirers
if we never had entered into a continental war, for
it is certain that the Netherlands would have thrown
off the yoke both of Austria and of France. This
one event would have preserved the balance ; no
other could. But a court war was necessary to
create that danger in the midst of which ah 1
clamours for reform were to be stifled. A sense
of common danger united all parties in France,
who now began to see clearly that the dismember-
ment of their country was intended. Valenciennes 1
was taken in the name of the emperor of Germany,
and the West Indian islands 2 were surrendered to
1 After a siege lasting nearly four weeks, the Duke of York, on
July 26, 1793, took possession of Valenciennes on behalf, not of the
French royal family, but of the Emperor. See Fox's speech in the
House of Commons, March 24, 1795 : " When we took Valenciennes,
instead of taking it for Louis XVII., we took possession of it in the
name of the Emperor Francis. When Conde surrendered, we did the
same thing. . . . Was it possible for any man to be so ignorant as to
doubt what our intentions were ? How, then, was it possible to suppose
that our conduct would produce on the inhabitants of France an effect
different from what it has done ? "
1 Fox said, in the speech quoted in the last note : " When Sir
Charles Grey and Sir John Jervis took Martinique, Guadaloupe, and
the rest of the French West India islands, did they take possession of
them for Louis XVII. ? No ! but for the King of Great Britain, not
to be restored to France when monarchy and regular government
should be restored, but to be retained as conquests if the chance of
war should leave them in our hands."
40 PREFACE
the king of Great Britain. The principles laid
down in our Bill of Rights were disclaimed and
reprobated, and it was understood universally
throughout Europe that England was hostile to
every people which might assert its ancient freedom.
Sceptres and crowns were soon trodden into the
dust, and we had nothing else in any country on
our side. Hence the preponderating power con-
tinued so, in our despite and its own. The present
state of Europe was fixt and settled, though
ignorance and prejudice concealed it from our
eyes, at the moment we declared hostilities. At
that instant the Destinies shook over Europe the
imperial mantle, and held up the iron crown.
Anarchy might have split France into fragments.
We warred against this only sure ally, and estab-
lished the military despotism we have ever since
been struggling to overthrow. Not a movement
of ours but fixes it more firmly ; not a shilling
we expend in other countries but goes ultimately
to its support. If our military and naval forces
were appointed to exert all their energies in con-
junction it might, and I believe it would, be
otherwise.
Let us now look at home ; let us look at the
constitution ; but, first, would it not be wiser to
look for it ? Surely it is the interest of the present
ministry to abandon the old rotten system. They
are supported by the people, because they are
THE PERCEVAL MINISTRY 41
thought more honest than their predecessors.
They are also more intelligent, more vigilant, more
active. How little is wanting to establish their
power ! The regent sees clearly that they alone
can serve him : how gladly would the nation
co-operate in confirming this favourable impression !
No administration ever had such general support.
It needs not to disburse the wages of iniquity :
the crutch of a former premier may be the cross of
Mr. Perceval. People are ready to pay their last
farthing for the war against Napoleon ; but if they
see it granted in pensions and sinecures, they will
reserve their arms, at least, for a vengeance more
practicable and more deep. What the constitution
now is may be doubtful ; but every man pretends
he can tell you what is injustice, what is oppression,
what is peculation, what is defeat, what is indigence,
what are inquisitorial taxes, and discretionary
power. Many of these expressions would indeed
have puzzled his father, but education of late years
has been prodigiously improved. It requires a
longer and more profound study to read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest, the voluminous folios of
our late assessments, under the assiduous tutorage
of the most acute tax-gatherer, than was required
not long ago to obtain all the degrees of an
university.
I do, from my heart, wish and desire the
permanence of the present ministry, but it is only
6
42 PREFACE
by justice that it can be permanent. If the clue of
those measures which they are now pursuing in
Ireland were traced to its utmost extent, it would
lead us through a labyrinth of defilement so dark
and horrible that, even with broad daylight before
us, we should almost doubt the practicability of
escape. Of what consequence is it to us if the
Irish choose to worship a cow or a potatoe ? Is
there any danger that the purity of our religion
should be contaminated by it, or that the purity of
our parliament should be sullied by their admission ?
If all the members returned were Catholics, still
what harm could they do ? But the supposition is
quite gratuitous, for it is certain that many, and
probable that the greater part, would be protestants.
What we hear of their discontent and turbulence is
fundamentally true, but much exaggerated. Their
writers are not remarkable for sobriety of discus-
sion, and they consider the au^o-t? as the principal
embellishment of style. We may attribute some-
thing to bad humour, and something to bad taste.
A history of the present times should not be written
in that country. Where indeed should it ? This
is not the period, nor is this the world, where
genius can exist without passion and without
sympathy.
COMMENTARY ON " MEMOIES
OF MR. FOX"
CHAPTER I
A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
Fox and his time Corruption in Parliament Pitt and the peerage
George III. and dukedoms Fox's History of James II. Dryden's
prose and verse Heroic poetry Pope's invention Fox as a letter-
writer Place-hunters Three in a bed Coalition ministries
Fox's French proclivities Only right when Pitt wrong.
[" I KNEW Mr. Fox, however, at a period when
his glories began to brighten when a philosophical
and noble determination had, for a considerable
time, induced him to renounce the captivating
allurements and amusements of fashionable life
and when, resigning himself to rural pleasures,
domestic retirement, and literary pursuits, he
became a new man, or rather, more justly may
I say, he returned to the solid enjoyment of a
tranquil, yet refined, rural life, from which he
had been awhile withdrawn, but had never been
alienated." TROTTER'S Memoirs, preface, viii.]
Page viii. " At a period when his glories began
to brighten." It was rather late in life for the
glories of a politician to begin to brighten.
Page ix. " It must be granted, too, that a
commercial and luxurious nation, however great,
44 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
is less favourable to the production of so extra-
ordinary a character as that of Mr. Fox, than one
in which simplicity and disinterestedness would be
the prevailing features." 1
Mr. Fox bore about him, until he advanced in
years, all the characteristics of an age the most
corrupt and profligate. One of simplicity and
disinterestedness is not perhaps that in which a
truly great man shines most conspicuously. Cato
and Brutus, who were more disinterested characters,
though not greater than Caesar, lived in an age of
impurity and corruption. 2 Hampden, Hutchinson,
Ludlow, Algernon Sydney, Milton, lived in the
most disgraceful days of England. They are, like
the lightning of heaven, more visible and awful
through the surrounding darkness. In the times
of the Curii and Camilli, Mr. Fox would have been
a prodigy of abomination. In those of Charles II. he
would have appeared one of the brightest and best
courtiers. He came forward into life with every
advantage, and the age was neither too light nor
too dark a background for the clear and steady
exhibition of his features. He found no fault in
1 Trotter adds : " The powerful weight of mercantile interests in
the councils of the English people, is decidedly adverse to the
germination, expansion, and glory of genius."
2 Landor, in the Pentameron, makes Petrarca say : " We are
reluctant to admit that the most wretched days of ancient Rome
were the days of her most illustrious men ; that they began amid the
triumphs of Scipio, when the Gracchi perished, and reached the worst
under the dictatorship of Csesar, when perished Liberty herself."
Works, iii. 494,
THE ENGLISH NOBILITY 45
the luxuries of this nation, and was deeply imbued
with that portion of its commercial spirit which
exacts no industry, and pays no tax the
aristocratical commerce of the gaming-table.
Page xi. " [Demosthenes had the great advant-
age of speaking to a large and independent popular
assembly.] Fox spoke to an assembly of too
aristocratic, as well as commercial, a cast," etc. l
The qualities are opposite. Both could not pre-
ponderate. In fact, there was very little of what
suits our notions of aristocracy. Brothers and sons
of noblemen were in the House of Commons, but
these had no aristocratical views or opinions. They
sat and rose only for places and for pensions : their
very seats were commercial. It is only an ex-
tremely small part of the English nobility itself
that can be called the aristocracy. Pitt, who
despised, or perhaps hated it, made it a complete
miscellany of fugitive pieces. 2 Whoever chose to
1 "To expect/' Trotter adds, "the same effects from his eloquence."
2 Elsewhere Landor says of W. Pitt: "Jealous of power and distrustful
of the people that raised him to it, he enriches and attaches to him the
commercial part of the nation by the most wasteful prodigality both
in finance and war, and he loosens from the landed the chief proprietors
by raising them to the peerage " Works, iv. 266. See also the con-
versation between Pitt and Canning, where Pitt is made to say : " I hate
and always hated these [the ancient aristocracy]. I do not mean the
rich : they served me. I mean the old houses : they overshadowed
me" Works, iii. 187. Sheridan, in the House of Commons, about
April, 1792, said: " Sixty or seventy peerages had been created under
the present administration [Pitt's] for no distinguished abilities, for no
public services, but merely for their interest in returning members to
Parliament."
46 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
desert the cause of the people in the lower house,
was cut out for the upper. He treated the lords
as Julius Csesar treated the senate at Rome. 1 At
last the King thought proper to keep a sort of side-
chapel for a sanctuary, and separated the ducal
dignity from the rest. 2 In honour and considera-
tion it was no longer a house of peers. The
people, in turning the new ones into ridicule, lost
by degrees a part of their respect for the more
ancient ; and the French revolution found nothing
but their reason, a feeble barrier among the vulgar,
to oppose. All their salutary prejudices were rooted
out ; the more acrimonious were left.
Page xii. " [Although he (Fox) distinctly saw
the ruin preparing by a rash and obstinate minister
(Pitt), for his country,] no expression of bitter-
ness ever escaped his lips. The name of that
minister," etc. 3
No more than against his opponents at cards.
If he lost to-night, he might win to-morrow.
Page xiv. [" Lord Holland, in his preface to
Mr. Fox's Historical Fragment, 4 has dwelt too
1 "Caesar with a senate at his heels." POPE, Essay on Man, iv. 258.
3 In November, 1789, Pitt asked for a dukedom for the Marquis of
Buckingham. " The King, however, refused. He had no objection
to create marquises and earls, but he had determined to reserve the
rank of duke for the royal family." STANHOPE'S Pitt, ii. 41.
3 ' ' The name," Trotter says, " of that minister (William Pitt), was
rarely, if at all, noticed by him, and never with acrimony."
4 A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second, by the
Right Hon. Charles James Fox, London, 1808. Lord Holland, who
FOX AS AN AUTHOR 47
much upon his uncle's solicitude as to historical
composition. Mr. Fox doubtless felt anxious to
keep it distinct, as he ought, from oratorical de-
livery ; but I am inclined to think that historic
matter flowed from him as his despatches did,
with facility and promptness. His manuscript of
the Fragment, of which a good part is in his
own handwriting, has but very few corrections or
alterations ; and his great anxiety (and very justly)
appears to me to have regarded facts, rather than
style."]
"Historical Fragment, etc." What shall we
think of a man's judgment, who, in writing a
history, had resolved to employ no other words
than a poet had employed in his verses, prefaces,
and dedications? Dryden, 1 of whom I speak, has
written on hardly any subject but poetry, and only
a part of his writings was known to Mr. Fox : the
rest has been published since, and is of little value.
Of his poems, a part seems to have been composed
in a brothel, the remainder in a gin-shop. His
prose is vigorous and natural. Those who call him
a copious writer would never have called him so
had he not been a careless one. In fact, he uses
any word that comes first. He had engaged with
edited the volume, says of his uncle : " Though he frequently com-
mended both Hume and Blackstone's style, and always spoke of
Middleton's with admiration, he assured me that he would admit
no word into his book for which he had not the authority of Dryden."
Preface, xl.
1 Of Drydeu, Landor says, elsewhere : "Alexander's Feast smells of
gin at second hand, with true Briton fiddlers full of native talent in the
orchestra." Works, iv. 602.
48 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
a bookseller to furnish so much j 1 and he made no
effort but to guard against
Immitis rupta tyranni
Fcedera. 2
He is never affected : he had not time for dress.
There is no obscurity, no redundancy ; but in every
composition, in poetry or prose, a strength and
spirit purely English, neither broken by labour
nor by refinement. Still, he is not what Mr. Fox and
others have called him, a great poet : for there is not
throughout his works one stroke of the sublime or
one touch of the pathetic, which are the only true
and adequate criteria; nor is there that just de-
scription of manners in his dramas, which is very
important, though secondary. For these reasons,
he will never be considered by good judges as equal
to Otway, to Chatterton, to Burns, or even to
Cowper. He was at repose, and free from all those
trifling and pretty inventions which many have
considered as indications and proofs of the truly
poetical mind. There is a species of these which
imposes alike on the undisciplined and scholastic.
I mean the invention, or rather, the modification
of machinery. People of an ordinary cast in the
republic of letters grow no less weary at hearing of
just taste, than the vulgar in Athens were at hear-
1 Dryden's connection with Jacob Tonson lasted from 1769 till his
death. Coleridge talked of ' ' Dryden's slovenly verses written for the
trade." H. C. ROBINSON'S Diary, ii. 58.
* Virgil, Georgics, iv. 492.
POPE AND DRYDEN 49
ing of Aristides the just. When our heroic verse
was perfected, as it was by Dryden, and others had
employed it with success, something new was
demanded. Poems then began to contain as much
imagery as toy-shops do, and about as valuable.
The Rape of the Lock was admired, not for its
easy and light touches of humour, but for what was
called the invention of Pope, his application of the
machinery. It was not perceived nor suspected,
that there is more real invention in the Epistle oj
Eloise to Abelard., although so much is copied
from the original. Warton 1 was unable to trace
it in the discovery, the arrangement, the concentra-
tion of what is scattered by passion, in the poet's fine
tact developing that idiosyncrasy which is peculiar
to one person in one situation, and his power of
enforcing those appeals which reach in a moment
every heart alike. There was nothing of this in
Dryden, nor is there anything which could be very
useful to Mr. Fox. He certainly left behind him
no treasury of expressions which contained anything
convertible to the purposes of an historian.
1 Speaking of The Rape of the Lock, Dr. Joseph Warton says : " The
insertion of the machinery of the sylphs in proper places, without the
least appearance of its being awkwardly stitched in, is one of the
happiest effects of judgment and art." Essay on the Genius and
Writings of Pope, 3rd ed., p. 225. As every one knows, Addison
had discouraged Pope from inserting the machinery (Ib. p. 160).
When he comes to the Eloise and Abelard, Warton says : ' ' Pope was
a most excellent improver, if no great original inventor. . . . How
finely he has worked up the hints of distress that are scattered up and
down in Abelard's and Eloisa's Letters, and in a little French history
of their lives and misfortunes." Essay on Pope, p. 309.
7
50 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
Page xv. [" His (Fox's) letters are perfect in
their kind, more agreeable as they have nothing
of his egotism than those of Cicero, and more
solid than those of Madame de Sevigne'. Those
which I have been able to present to the reader are
models of English composition, as well as valuable
depositories of the critical opinions of Mr. . Fox
upon the most excellent authors of ancient and
modern times."]
" His letters, etc." Compare them with Cicero's !
What ! are we as much interested by the occur-
rences and opinions in these, nearly all of which
are intrinsically of small moment, as by the
events which agitate the soul of Cicero in the
most important era of the Roman common-
wealth ? Even if Mr. Fox had said anything
about the great characters of the day, could
we be as much interested, however personally
and painfully we have felt from them, about
the actions of a Pulteney and a Whitelocke, as
we are by those of Csesar and Cato, of Antony
and Brutus ? The style is unimportant in both.
Who would pick out a solecism from the con-
flagration of a city, or listen to an harmonious
sentence in the very downfall of a republic ?
The history of Mr. Fox was written with no
carelessness, most certainly, but with incorrect-
ness, and, I think, with weakness. His reasonings
are ill-expressed and disorderly ; his deductions
inconsequent, his expressions neither clear nor
A PATRIOT'S GRIEF 51
compact. Cumberland, 1 with a shrewdness of
criticism which he never showed before, pointed
out these defects in his review.
Pages xv.-xvii. " [His Historical Fragment was
written under the disadvantage of his frame
of mind being somewhat affected by a tinge of
melancholy. . . . Public affairs were so manifestly
tending to a crisis when he wrote, and the
minister had so much weakened and impaired the
constitution, that Mr. Fox could not but grieve
for his feelings were warm, and his mind of a
truly patriotic cast. ... In having recourse to
history, still continuing his exertions in favour
of liberty, he showed the generous struggles of
a noble mind to serve his country and posterity
in the only way left open to him ; and if a shade
of melancholy pervades it, the source from which
it certainly sprung (for he was easy in circum-
stances, and truly happy in domestic life) is the
most honourable and venerable sentiment which
can exist in the human breast] grief for a
wronged and unhappily misguided country."
As if a country could be happily misguided !
In the Dii me maK perdant, pejus perdant, etc.,
of the Romans, there was an idiomatic intensity :
and the Greeks had a similar expression of their
feelings. We in these countries have nothing
like it, except among the secretary's countrymen
killed dead. Grief for a wronged country ! And
1 The first number (February 1, 1809), of The London Review, which
Richard Cumberland edited, contains an article by him on Mr. Fox's
Reign of James II.
52 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
yet this grieving patriot outraged the whole con-
tinent of South America ; a whole people, whose
arms and hearts were open to us, by refusing
them the appointment, the maintenance, the
security, nay, by heaven, the mere impunity of
their own civil officers, treating them worse than
the most atrocious enemies had been ever treated,
worse than any conquered colony of the demo-
cratic French, under the rancorous and vindictive
Pitt : sending tax-gatherers of all descriptions
into their country, and filling up every place
and appointment by creatures of his own, ruined
and desperate gamblers, whose rapine, if it drove
them into revolt, would at least have broken the
sinews of retaliating war.
[Pages xviii.-xix. " His return to politics . . .
suspended his History. The words of the noble
editor of the Fragment are very remarkable,
as to Mr. Fox foregoing his original intention
of retiring for a time from public life. 'The
remonstrances, however, of those friends, for
whose judgment he had the greatest deference,
ultimately prevailed.' Here is proof, from the
authority of Lord Holland, how reluctant Mr.
Fox was to abandon his intention. I know that
the basis of his determination was a solid and
grand one ; that occasionally at his breakfast-
table we had a little discussion on this point ;
and that Mrs. Fox and myself uniformly joined
in recommending retirement until the people felt
properly upon public affairs. I am sorry to be
POLITICAL STAGE TRICKS 53
compelled to say, that the friends who ' ultimately
prevailed ' calculated very ill upon political
matters, and did not sufficiently estimate the
towering and grand character of Mr. Fox."]
Page xix. " Until the people felt properly
upon public affairs." He should have lived, then,
until now. As far as he and his competitors are
concerned, the people never felt more correctly.
No more of staring dupery to chattering impostors,
mounting the same stage and exhibiting the same
tricks, after hooting them off, successively. If the
people feels less for freedom than it used to do,
it also feels less for faction. It has lost most of
its money, but it has recovered a part of its wits.
We must allow it a little time to get the better
of its shame, and it will be the same manly people
it was before.
Page xix. " The towering and manly char-
acter, etc." 1
What ! of a fellow who replied to one asking
a place of him, " We lie three in a bed already : " 2
who was instrumental in bringing an act before
Parliament, and in procuring it to be passed, to
the eternal shame and infamy of , which
should enable Lord Grenville to be the auditor
1 See last extract. Trotter wrote " towering and grand character."
1 The Courier of March 15, 1806, said, in a leading article : " To
use a pleasant but homely phrase of the new ministerialists, they now
lie three in a bed. The Foxite, and the Sidmouthite, and the
Grenvilleite now pig together, head and front, in the same truckle
bed"
54 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
of his own accounts ! who had the impudence
to say that Hanover should be as dear to English-
men as Hampshire. 1 Could an Englishman say
this ? Could it be uttered in the English
language ? Could it be inculcated, could it be
proposed, could it be suggested, to the English
people ? Louis, and James, and Barillon, were
in their graves. What man succeeded them ?
what man revived their projects ? Charles James
Fox ; the historian of their transactions, who had
just detected and exposed and reprobated their
crimes. Shame and contempt on those, who,
knowing these facts, profess themselves of his
party and call themselves after his name. To
what extremities will not faction urge them !
What practical lies will they not commit ! He
trod under foot every compact with his con-
stituents, every promise, every oath, solemnly
made before the people. The people was his
sovereign, but was Hanover their patrimony, or
their country ? He never came into office but
through a breach of honour, never without a
close and intimate coalition with men whom he
had frequently, and loudly, and justly, denounced
as worthy of the gallows. So atrocious is his
guilt, he never joined them but at the very
moment when their criminality was at the highest ;
and when, without his coalescence, the people
1 See note l on page 16.
AN ASSURED REPUTATION 55
would have dragged them to punishment or aban-
doned them to disgrace.
Page xxii. "Are the present race to go to
the grave without further knowledge of Mr. Fox
[than that conveyed in the Preface to the
Fragment] ? " l
He will not be quite so fortunate.
Fama loquetur amis. 2
He may surely expect a few quartos from the
pacific pen of Mr. Roscoe. 3
Et vituld tu dignus, et hie. 4
Page xxv. [" In early youth, I understand,
Mr. Fox was distinguished by extraordinary appli-
cation to study. He was abroad for a short
time at the early age of fourteen, to which may
be attributed, probably, that fluency, perfect
understanding, and good pronunciation of French,
which most eminently marked him, amongst his
countrymen, and even Frenchmen, at Paris. His
knowledge of Italian was nearly as great, and
probably to be attributed to the same cause. If
I were to sketch the divisions of his life, I would
form them into : His youth, warm and impetu-
ous, but full of extraordinary promise. His
middle age, energetic and patriotic. His latter
1 Trotter is alluding to Lord Holland's preface to Fox's Reign of
James II,
1 Catullus, Ixxviii., 10.
3 William Roscoe (1753-1831) had already published his lives of
Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X.
4 Virgil, Eclog. iii. 109.
56 A GEORGIAN STATESMAN
days, commencing from the French revolution,
simple, grand, and sublime."]
" His youth, warm and impetuous. His middle
age, etc." His youth was very well known to have
exceeded in every kind of profligacy the youth
of any Englishman his contemporary. To the
principles of a Frenchman he added the habits
of a Malay, 1 in idleness, drunkenness, and gaming.
In middle life he was precisely the opposite of
whoever was in power until he could spring
forward to the same station. Whenever Mr. Pitt
was wrong, Mr. Fox was right, and then only. His
morals, his taste, his literature, all were French ; 2
he grew rather wiser afterwards. His principles
were arbitrary when the government of France
was so. He approved of every change there,
whether of men or measures. The constituent
assembly, the convention, Brissot, Robespierre,
Tallien, Barras, Bonaparte, all these in succession
were the objects of his admiration. His sagacity
could find out something to palliate every crime
they committed. All were proposed to us as
worthy of our confidence : we could make peace
and treaties with all of them, we could do every-
thing with them but fight.
1 "Gaming, with the Malays, is a substitute for betel." LANDOR,
Works, iil 109.
2 " Mrs. Crewe told me," Samuel Rogers said, "that on some occa-
sion, when it was remarked that Fox still retained his early love for
France and everything French, Burke said : ' Yes ; he is like a cat he
is fond of the house, though the family be gone.' " Table Talk, p. 81.
CHAPTER II
WAR AND POLICY
Fox, the King, and the nation Easy temper and lax principles
Pitt's lost opportunity Traitorous Correspondence Bill Pitt's
passion Duel with Tierney Eloquence not statesmanship The
war with France Lord Hawkesbury's project Valenciennes and
Dantzig Expedition to the Dardanelles Slave trade A dis-
jointed ministry Posterity's judgment.
[Page 2. "The vulgar, whose prejudices it is
difficult to efface, and who are more prone to
depreciate than to make allowances for great
characters, have long imagined, and even still
continue to think, that Mr. Fox was a mere
dissipated man of pleasure. This idea had been
industriously cherished and propagated by a party,
whose interested views were promoted by keeping
from the councils of the nation a man so eminently
their superior. The unprincipled desires of selfish
ambition had kept him out of stations for which
nature had so eminently qualified him. Destined,
as he appeared, of becoming the founder of a
political school in England capable of raising
her in the opinion of other nations, it was his
ill fate to be] opposed by a minister incapable of
appreciating his merit, and unwilling to recommend
it to the approbation of his sovereign, though him-
self unfit to be premier, and indeed inadequate to fill
any considerable department of the state."
8
58 WAR AND POLICY
I believe it is not usual with ministers to recom-
mend, very pressingly, their opponents to royal
favour. 1 The King and nation judged for them-
selves. They had seen as much of Mr. Fox as
Mr. Pitt had seen : they had tried him, and
he was found unfit for his situation : they tried
him again, and he was more unfit. The same
tergiversation, the same profligacy, the same
unsteadiness, the same inclining and yielding,
which never would let him be upright, the same
incapacity of apportioning means to ends, and
the same inability to retain that popular favour
which hardly ever totally deserts the statesman
of easy temper and lax principles. Nothing but
the most open and utter contempt of all fair
dealing with them would make the people fall
off from a man after their own image, in favour
of one, unbending, contemptuous, and scornful,
and only accessible to be repulsive. No two
men ever so grossly mismanaged public affairs.
Whatever was the government of France since
the revolution, even under the most rash and
inexperienced of its rulers, and amidst difficulties
in which the most experienced of them would
have been perplexed, the government of France
had always the advantage of ours, always excelled
it in intelligence and in promptitude. When
1 In 1804, Pitt urged the claims of Fox, but George III. refused
to have anything to do either with him or Grenville. LORD ROSEBEHY'S
Pitt, 241.
THE FRENCH DIRECTORATE 59
the members of the directory proved themselves
accessible to bribery, 1 the richest nation in Europe
such then was England formed no such attempt
or hope. They had foiled Mr. Pitt ; he saw only
the men ; he was bold and sincere enough to
tell them again and again how he hated them,
and that such an enemy of corruption would not
gratify their cupidity. He might have obtained
all the ostensible objects of the war for less money
than he expended in any fortnight of it. They
could not, indeed, with safety have abandoned one
village of France, yet they could have evacuated
all Holland ; and their people, weary of war and
taxes, and cooling from their revolutionary frenzy,
would have applauded a peace (durable because
equal) founded on this basis. But they had thrown
him on the ground, and beaten him soundly, and
he kicked without an object to kick at. When he
rose again, he attacked with equal vehemence those
who looked on without sympathy, and employed
his Attorney-General to involve them in some
sufferings of their own. 2
1 " No sooner had Lord Malmesbury left Lille (Sept. 18, 1797), than
Mr. Pitt received a secret overture, on the part of Barras, offering
peace on his own terms, if only an enormous sum no less than
2,000,000 sterling could be provided for Barras and his friends."
STANHOPE'S Pitt, iii. 61. In his Letters to Lord Liverpool (p. 56),
Laudor says : ' ' There was indeed a time when the directory was
accessible to bribery, as was proved in the notorious case of the
American Commissioners." Marshall, Pinckney, and Gerry were
offered a bribe for their mediation.
1 The Traitorous Correspondence Bill was introduced by Sir John
Scott, Attorney-General, on March 15, 1793.
60 WAR AND POLICY
Hurried by passion, he seldom had an aim, and
always missed it. Obstinate and perverse, but more
changeable than is usual with the opinionative,
neither his modes of attack, nor his motives for it,
were fixed. His warfare was more like the rapid
struggles and scratches of some timorous animal
just caught than the deliberate and manly blows
that aim at the vitals of an enemy. He retracted
no insult, he renounced no error. The son of
a chivalrous father, whose personal and private
view of honour was serene and clear, whose sense
of political and official duties was, and was only in
a moderate degree, subordinate to his sense of the
religious ; this very son, whose preceptor was a
bishop, 1 this our defender against atheism, who had
enacted and enforced so many fasts, and supplica-
tions, and forms of prayer, went forth on a Sunday
morning, with a pistol in his hand, to meet an
importunate accountant 2 who had questioned him
hi the House. How happens it that inconsistency
is so frequently, so almost perpetually, the attendant
of eloquence ? Is fickleness but one remove from
facility ? or is the cause to be found in that self-
deception which comes from deceiving others,
and which, while every thing moves with it, is
unconscious that it moves ?
Mr. Pitt was eloquent, so was Mr. Fox : so were
1 The Rev. George Tomline, afterwards Pretyman, Bishop of Lincoln,
1757, was the younger Pitt's tutor at Cambridge.
* Pitt fought his duel with George Tierney on May 27, 1798.
GOVERNMENT BY ORATORY 61
Anytus and Melitus, 1 and all the demagogues
whose vociferations have preceded the downfall of
a state. In England it is for eloquence alone that
men are chosen to fill the offices of government.
If they can speak three hours together, it is thought,
with reason, that they can do great things. Never-
theless it has been the opinion of some that there
is a latent flaw and unsoundness in this reasoning,
and that its application ought not to be universal
or unreserved. They have suspected it hence has
happened that, with such resources as no nation
ever possessed, we have done so extremely little
against an enemy who, according to the minister
himself, had no resources at all. We have given
this enemy both pleas and power enough to regulate
every court in Europe, to drill every king, and to
tear the epaulet from every emperor. There was
a time when twenty thousand Englishmen might
have marched to Paris ; not in the way imagined by
such people as Lord Hawkesbury and Mr. Canning, 2
1 The accusers of Socrates.
2 Compare this with Burke : " Had we carried on the war on the side
of France which looks towards the Channel or the Atlantic, we should
have attacked our enemy on his weak and unarmed side." Second Letter
on a Regicide Peace, p. 98.
As for the plan of a rapid advance into the heart of France, urged in
1793, Lord Stanhope says : ' ' When Mr. Jenkinson [afterwards Lord
Hawkesbury] ventured in the House of Commons to declare his approval
of it, the idea was received with derision. Long afterwards . . . the
words ' Lord Hawkesbury's march to Paris ' were the burden of many
a jest or satirical song against him." Life of Pitt, ii. 204.
Fox, in his letter to the electors of Westminster, 1793, alluding to
Mr. Jenkinson's project, exclaims: "The conquest of France! O
calumniated crusaders, how rational and moderated were your projects !
62 WAR AND POLICY
along a pleasant paved road shaded with elms and
apple-trees, through Calais and Amiens, where the
people once were English, and are still vastly our
friends, but as allies to fifty thousand Royalists in
La Vende'e, led by a Condd But Valenciennes
was taken in the name of the emperor of Germany ;
there was such an emperor then, and the people
of France saw clearly that the sword which we
carried under the pretext of loyalty was drawn
solely for ambition. There was a time when the
same twenty thousand would have turned the
balance in favour of Austria ; but they were
scattered all over the world, as if Napoleon had
ordered them into such cantonments. Russia had
beaten the French. If we had relieved Dantzig 1
their left wing would not merely have been turned,
but cut off; it was without support. There was
also a time when the force I have mentioned would
have formed a nucleus for the armies of Prussia,
Sweden, Hesse, Hanover. Exasperated by the
recent cruelties of the enemy, they would no longer
have fought for one government or another : they
would have fought for themselves, and fought well.
Lastly, there was a time too if in such circum-
stances it is worth remembering when the wretched
O ! much-injured Louis XIV., upon what slight grounds have you been
accused of restless and inordinate ambition ! O ! tame and feeble
Cervantes, with what a timid pencil and faint colours have you painted
the portrait of a disordered imagination !
1 Dantzig surrendered to Bonaparte May 27, 1807.
A DEMAGOGUE'S BLUNDERS 63
natives of Egypt 1 might have been emancipated.
But the country could not be secured, long
together, by three or four thousand men ; Mr. Fox
must be weaker than a babe or drowsier than
a kitten to suppose it. The attempt to awe
Constantinople 2 was worse than Pittite, a city
where there are more stout fighting men, men of
lives and habits altogether military, than in any
other throughout the world. I have spoken already
of Buenos Ayres. So many instances of miserable
folly have never occurred within so short a period,
I will not say in England, I will not say in modern
Europe ; I will say under the most stupid, the
most slothful, the most brutalised of Roman, or
Byzantine, or Asiatic emperors. Xerxes and
Darius could afford a good many ; ours would
have exhausted them. Collect and place before
your eyes all the errors of these poor creatures, and
you cannot, I repeat it, bring together such a mass
within so small a compass. You may trace within
the short administration of one demagogue all that
1 In March , 1807, five thousand men under General Mackenzie Frazer
were sent to Alexandria, which capitulated ; but the further operations
failed.
8 In February, 1807, a force under Sir Thomas Duckworth was sent
to the Dardanelles to favour the views of Russia and to counteract
French ascendency at Constantinople. Writing on June 5, 1807,
Mr. F. Jackson said : ' ' The loss of our troops in Egypt has been very
great, and is attributed to the ill-advised plans of the late Cabinet, and
to the still worse-conducted execution of them by the generals. Never
have our arms been so disgraced as in that affair, and in the business
of the Dardanelles." Diaries, etc., of Sir George Jackson, ii. 123. But
Fox, who died on Sept. 13, 1806, could not be blamed.
64 WAR AND POLICY
corrupts the air and poisons the springs of freedom,
while, with illusive zeal to unrivet the fetter, he
hammered the chain of slavery red-hot. Hope
long deferred maketh the heart sick. 1 How many,
who relied on his promises, were made very able
critics of such sentences ! The abolition of the
trade in negroes we had influence enough in
Europe to have effected, and we did not. 2 The act
was ill digested ; the prohibitions evasory and
incomplete. Mr. Fox might have appealed to
Bonaparte, and his love of glory, to abolish it on
the continent. It would have cost him nothing
but a decree. He would have been proud of having
been consulted. Even a petition here would not
have been an act of baseness ; the less so, the
greater the petitioner. To sound him an expres-
sion, I am afraid, not applicable to our politicians
in reference to him was not the right method.
If we wished the thing done effectually, and not
merely the credit of promoting it, we should have
addressed his minister in somewhat of this language :
" War, then, between our nations must continue.
There are many concessions which we believed that
our power and our moderation might demand.
But if both countries, unhappily, are still subject to
1 Proverbs, xiii. 12.
2 On June 10, 1806, Fox moved a resolution for the abolition of
the slave trade. After forty years, he said, of political life, he could
retire with contentment if he carried his resolution. The Royal assent
to the Bill abolishing the trade was given on March 25, 1806.
PITT AND THE SLAVE TRADE 65
irritations and jealousies, which will cease only
under the infliction of greater sufferings, let
us atone to humanity in the best way we can,
making the readiest and least costly sacrifices.
The English are almost the only gainers by a most
nefarious and unnatural traffic ; others, however,
share in its patronage and its disgrace. We desire
its abolition. Let the Emperor say whether France
or England shall redeem her honour first ; which
shall first employ all her influence and power in
demanding and enforcing the abolition of the
African slave-trade through the world."
I think Napoleon would have claimed it as one
of the conceptions of his mighty genius. It is
among the few things which I would entrust to
his generosity, knowing that I could lose nothing,
and might gain much. When a writer in a state-
paper speaks of the wants or desires of humanity,
it is considered as merely a piece of cant to lull
his countrymen asleep, should his adversary be
very bloody-minded ; that is, if he applies them
to his own country, to the enemy's, or to any
hypothetical or imaginary one. Let him appeal
and plead in favour of some weak and abject
race, not subject to either of the belligerents,
not liable to become so, and what was common-
place in the last leaf, comes in this with all the
cogency, and more than all, of argument. It
raises a becoming shame and generous desire, by
9
66 WAR AND POLICY
the native graces and novel beauty of disinterested-
ness. Perhaps I have spoken too much on the
omissions of a negligent, disjointed ministry, and,
some will think, too vehemently against the
leader. It is true that almost every possible
case of mismanagement has been stated. The
facts exist. This is my answer. Those who
cannot see them, those who overlook them in
the public records, are not likely to discover what
we lost of prosperity by their inattention, or of
glory by their inactivity. We have equally to
regret that they failed in every thing abroad, and
did not fail in almost every thing at home. If any
man will come forward and prove even this to
be exaggerated, and surely nothing worse can be
uttered or imagined of a ministry statesmen
would be an absurd expression I will then
acknowledge myself a very violent and very base
calumniator, an implacable enemy of my native
land, and what pensioners and reversionists think
infinitely more discreditable a man without a
stake in it. If I could argue with indifference,
with coolness, or with patience, of people who
have thrown down their principles in their hurry
to reach the cabinet and who have brought such
ignominy on the country, to say nothing of
distress and danger, I should then indeed be a
character most truly despicable.
I survey Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt as others will
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE VIRTUE 67
survey them a century hence, and as, according to
my humble views, they appear to higher powers
and purer intelligences. I would estimate all men
by their wisdom and their virtue. In high stations
these indeed are the most assailed and shaken ;
but they also have the advantage of showing their
forms more distinctly, and striking their roots
more deep. Nearly all men have, one time or
other, been placed in as trying situations as either
of these ministers. The emergencies of private
life require as much circumspection and discern-
ment as those of public. Persons are placed all
around a prime minister ; some bring intelligence,
some forward despatches, many are ready to assist
him with their counsel, and participate in any
obloquy his determinations may incur. Precepts
and precedents lie everywhere round about him ;
if he errs in following them he is pardoned, because
he did follow them, and praised because he was
soundly constitutional ; if he rejects or never
reads them, the scruples of a king or the divisions
of a cabinet absolve him. Difficulties of a private
kind hamper men by their closeness and con-
tinuity. On the worst occasions they can hardly
ask advice, on the lighter they neglect it. Hence
it has happened that men of great attainments,
philosophers and statesmen too, have acted in
domestic affairs inconsistently with their wisdom,
their glory, and their happiness. Life appears, in
68 WAR AND POLICY
these instances, like a game at billiards. Those
who were surrounded by spectators and admirers,
at a larger table, and with a profusion of light
falling on it from above, strike, in a private and
less brilliant room, a lesser ball erroneously. Let
us remember, too for the recollection will be
useful when the allusion is forgotten that he who
silenced batteries and navies, and scattered them
to be the sport of all the elements, was baffled by
the fish nets of Boulogne. 1 When I come, as I
intend presently, to make a comparison, not
between the two English ministers, but between
one of them and Washington, I shall show that
difficulties may be, and have been overcome, far
more complicated and discouraging than either of
these encountered. The present men have com-
mitted fewer faults ; they act with more firmness,
and inspire more confidence. They also have their
errors. They ought never to have interfered in
the affairs of South America. There is a risk,
almost a certainty, of alienating from us not only
that country, but Spain. Both will be dissatisfied.
Urged by either party, we should have firmly and
peremptorily refused. Even that party itself
would place more confidence in us, and we should
have left a deep authentic impression of our dis-
interestedness and our integrity.
1 Referring either to Nelson's attack on the French flotilla at
Boulogne, August 15, 1801, or to Sir Sidney Smith's attack with
catamarans on Oct. 2, 1804.
CHAPTER III
THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
Chatham's eloquence His pension A minister in the witness-box
Pitt all account-book De mortuis The Sinking Fund Fox in
retirement As a man of letters Pascal National monuments
A Pantheon for Hyde Park Statues of great men Bacon and
Raleigh George Washington and William Pitt compared A con-
temptible Opposition George III. and the Army The American
Revolution A limited monarchy Forms of government A
Prime Minister in leading-strings Failure of coalitions The
Roman Triumvirate.
Page 3 of the Memoirs. ["Mr. Pitt, under the
controul of an extensive and liberal genius, like that
of Mr. Fox, might have been a useful minister of
finance ; but, in attempting to regulate the concerns
of the world, his vigour was creative of destruction,
and his imperious spirit, so unworthy a true
statesman, was prejudicial to liberty abroad and
dangerous to it at home. The financial dictator
of Downing Street was unfit to cope with the
consummate military and diplomatic characters that
had newly risen upon the Continent ; and it is
probable that even his father, Lord Chatham, a
man great through the weakness of France, would
have been foiled in such a contest ; certainly not
with so much disgrace, but, perhaps, with equal
injury to the country."]
" Lord Chatham, a man great through the
69
70 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
weakness of France." Not entirely so. He was
rather great per se. His eloquence was more like
the eloquence of Demosthenes 1 than Mr. Fox's
was : one was invariably high, the other never
rose. Both were wrong ; but it is better that
admiration should flag from its continuance than
that it never should be excited. Demosthenes,
in the general tenor of his oratory, was warm,
equable, and sincere ; in the higher parts there was
a solemnity, a sanctitude, an enthusiastic, vivifying,
all-pervading spirit, by virtue of which every petty
passion lay inanimate and extinct. In the ampli-
tude of a soul so equable and so pure, he saw
no enemies but the enemies of his country.
Wherever they arose, his fire was directed to one
point, and nothing stood before it. Better is it
that such men as Augustulus, or Commodus, or
Louis XV. should be called Csesar than that
genius should submit to the same outrages as
truth, and Fox be called a Demosthenes. If
Lord Chatham more resembled him as an orator,
the resemblance ended here. In Demosthenes
was the pride of an inflexible republican ; in
Lord Chatham was the " pride that licks the
dust." 2 He accepted a pension from the enemy
1 Horace Walpole said that Chatham, in the speech he delivered on
November 13, 1755, surpassed Cicero and Demosthenes. Sir James
Mackintosh, writing in The Monthly Repository, September, 1807,
declared that Fox was "the most Demosthenean speaker since
Demosthenes."
3 Pope's Prologue to Satires, 333.
LORD CHATHAM'S PENSION 71
he had reviled. One had been granted to his
sister by Lord Bute. 1 He wrote an angry letter
to her, and told her "he had hoped that the
names of Pitt and pension would never come
together." He received one himself, soon after,
from the same person ; and his own letter was
his sister's congratulation. The King had shewn
the same aversion to him as he uniformly shewed
to every man of genius : when the public accla-
mation forced him again into the council, he
approached the sovereign and courted his favour,
with a degree of reverential humility which it
would have been hardly less base to have felt
than to have feigned. Some courtiers, at a
distance, could not believe the evidence of their
senses. " Yes, yes, it is Pitt," said one behind ;
" I see his hook-nose between his knees." 2
The son was never guilty of a meanness such
1 When Mrs. Anne Pitt, sister of William Pitt the elder, received
a pension, he wrote to her that he grieved to see the name of Pitt in a
list of pensions. On October 6, 1761, the day after his resignation,
a pension of 3,000 a year was settled upon Pitt himself, for three
lives. His sister made a copy of his letter, and meant to send it to
him, but was restrained by friends.
Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray blamed Chatham for accepting
either peerage or pension. " What ! " said Walpole, cc to blast one's
character for the sake of a paltry annuity and a long-necked peerage !"
Chatham's biographer, F. Thackeray, writes : " How malignant or
obtuse must that mind be which cannot distinguish the case of Mr.
Pitt from that of the common herd of pensioners." Life of Chatham,
i. 593.
1 ' ' It is told of Chatham that when he met a bishop he bowed so low
that his nose could be seen between his knees. So appalling a suavity
of demeanour inspired probably even more terror than his indomitable
eye." LORD ROSEBKRY'S Pitt, p. 64.
72 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
as this. His neck was unbent when his word was
broken and his honour cast away ; even when he
came into a court of justice l and swore he had
forgotten what he had sworn he never would
forget. Lord Chatham was all romance ; Mr.
William was all account-book. The above is,
however, too plain a proof that neither his memory
nor his ledger were to be trusted.
Page 4. " [I have, however, no desire in stig-
matising one of these personages (Pitt and Fox)
to elevate the other !] Both rest in the grave." 2
This is, of all reasons, the most weak and
wretched, why people should not be censured for
the evil they have done. It might indeed have
some force and validity if the evil and example
ceased totally with their lives. But even then
not much. If they are living, a writer tells you
1 For Pitt's evidence at the trial of Home Tooke, in 1794, see State
Trials, xxv. 381. The Prime Minister had been summoned by the
defence to prove that the objects of the reform movement in which he
had taken a part were similar to those of the agitation with which
Home Tooke and Major John Cartwright were connected. In his
imaginary conversation between Pitt and Canning, Landor makes Pitt
say : ' e I deferred from session to session a reform in Parliament,
because, having sworn to promote it by all means in my power, I did
not wish to seem perjured to the people. In the affair of Maidstone
nobody could prove me so. I only swore I had forgotten what nobody
but myself could swear that I remembered." Works, iii. 196. Landor
seems to have mixed up the trial of Home Tooke with that of Arthur
O'Connor and others.
2 Trotter adds : " But I should deem it derogatory to Mr. Fox's
Memory if I paid any posthumous compliments to the character and
talents of a minister, of whom the best that can be said is that he failed
through ignorance, and ruined his country through mistake."
PROFLIGACY OF MR. FOX 73
he will not hurt the feelings of the living ; if
dead, it is ungenerous, he says, to attack the
character of those who are incapable of making
their defence. If any one is guilty of falsehood
against the living, let the laws chastise him ; if
against the dead, let infamy pursue him ; let his
memory be held in detestation.
Tiberius and Sejanus " rest in the grave " ; but
the historian has recorded their actions, and they
really seem considerably amiss. Poor Domitian
has not even a fly to bear him company, yet
some people will be so uncharitable as to whisper
things to his disadvantage. It might not indeed
have been quite expedient, nor altogether safe,
perhaps, to say such strong things in his presence ;
but then how vastly more liberal and manly I
Page 5. " The passions of the vulgar made
and kept Mr. Pitt minister." 1
No, no ; the vices, the profligacy, the perfidy
of Mr. Fox made Mr. Pitt minister. He was
at length more grave and decent. Peace
made the nation thrive, and her prosperity was
attributed to Mr. Pitt. The project of the sinking
fund 2 was laid before him ; he rejected it ; yet
1 Trotter adds : " But the vulgar themselves are daily receiving con-
vincing proofs how little value they have received for their money."
* Pitt took the main idea of the sinking fund, which he started in
1786, from Dr. R. Price, author of Treatise on Reversionary Annuities,
1771, and an Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt,
1772. When Pitt resolved, says Lecky, upon the reduction of the
10
74 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
the adoption of it afterwards is the only financial
merit which his party can attribute to him. If
it is glorious, it is a glory which requires not to
be inscribed upon his tomb. Leave it alone, and
it will have matter to act upon long enough.
Page 7. [" When I first had the happiness of
knowing Mr. Fox, he had retired, in a great
measure, from public life, and was inclining toward
the evening of his days. A serene and cloudless
magnanimity, respecting the pursuit of power,
raised him to an enviable felicity. His habits
were very domestic, and his taste for literature
peculiarly strong, as well as peculiarly elegant.
His love for a country life, with all its simple and
never-fatiguing charms, was great. His temper
disposed him to enjoy and never to repine. Had
his great powers been employed for the benefit of
mankind hi literary composition and researches
after knowledge instead of being exhausted in
useless debates . . . the world, and Europe in
particular, would have reaped advantages which his
country blindly rejected ; and that great mind,
which made little impression upon a disciplined
oligarchical senate, would more efficaciously have
operated upon the philosophers, the statesmen, and
the patriots of Europe."]
" Had his great powers been employed for the
benefit of mankind in composition," they would
national debt, he received from Dr. Price three separate plans, one of
which he adopted with scarcely any change, though without any public
recognition of the author. History, v. 324.
POET AND HISTORIAN 75
have left him a secondary character in history,
poetry, or criticism. His verses l have little ease,
little imagination, little spirit. In history he has
produced by long study what many young men
at the universities, with the materials before them,
would have produced in one term. Few com-
positions have more faults or greater. In criticism
he was the admirer of whatever was most regular
and orderly the reverse of his own character ;
just as the amiable Thomson, mindful of Scotland,
lavishes the enthusiasm of his poetry on the
odours of spring :
Ethereal mildness, come, 2
and the novelists of the Palais Royal are enamoured
of modesty and blushes.
Page 8. " [At a time when other men become
more devoted to the pursuits of ambition, or to
the mean and universal passion, avarice ; and when
their characters accordingly become rigid, and
unproductive of new sentiments, Mr. Fox had all
the sensibility and freshness of youth, with the
energetic glow of manhood in its prime. Knowledge
1 "Like all men of genius/' Sir James Mackintosh says of Fox,
" he delighted to take refuge in poetry from the vulgarity and irritation
of business. His own verses have claimed no low place among those
which the French call vers de societe." Monthly Repository, September,
1807. Perhaps all but his verses to Mrs. Crewe and those addressed
to Mrs. Fox " on his attaining the age of fifty," are forgotten. Sydney
Smith said : " We are no admirers of Mr. Fox's poetry. His vers de
soci&e appear to us flat and insipid. To write verses was the only
thing which Mr. Fox ever attempted to do without doing well."
Edinburgh Review, 1809.
1 "Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness, come." Seasons, i. 1.
76 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
of the world had not at all hardened or disgusted
him. He knew men, and pitied rather than con-
demned them.] It was singular to behold such a
character in England, whose national characteristic
is rather philosophic reasoning than the sensibility
of genius."
And surely there is more philosophic reasoning
in Mr. Fox than sensibility of genius ; in his
writings most certainly. But national character-
istics never reach the more elevated regions of
mind ; men of genius are not marked by the same
reddle as those on the common of the world.
Do we find in Pascal any thing of the lying,
gasconading, vapouring Frenchman ? On the
contrary, do we not find, in despite of the most
miserable language, all the sober and retired
graces of style, all the confident ease of manliness
and strength, with an honest but not abrupt
simplicity, which appeals to the reason, but is also
admitted to the heart? Let this man, if any, be
compared with Demosthenes. He was not less,
he hardly could be greater. The same sincerity,
the same anxiety, the same fervour, was in both,
for the only great objects of a high and aspiring
soul, of laudable, perhaps of pardonable, ambition.
One was for Athens ; the other was not indeed
for Paris or for France, but for what most truly
was his country, whose rewards he would lay
open to all men.
NATIONAL MONUMENTS 77
Page 17. " [. . . the most illustrious, but often
the most calumniated, of public men in the
eighteenth century (C. J. Fox).] No monument
yet marks a nation's gratitude towards him." 1
We have thrown away more money than enough
on monuments ; yet I would willingly see in
Hyde Park, just above the water, a building
like the Pantheon at Rome, with a statue, and
only the names, of all our most truly great men
from Alfred to Nelson : Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir
Philip, and Algernon Sydney, Shakespeare, Milton,
J. Hampden, W. Penn, Blake, Locke, Newton,
Marlborough, Washington, Franklin, Nelson.
These are our most illustrious characters, in poli-
tics, war, and literature ; nor can any modern
nation produce so many of equal greatness.
Bacon I have not mentioned. Him I would re-
serve for a station in Westminster Hall. He should
have an inscription. One side of the pedestal should
contain his sentence on Raleigh ; the other that
sentence which was afterwards passed on himself. 2
We lost Washington, but he was ours, and death
gives him back. No man ever encountered such
1 Trotter proceeds : ' ' And the all-prevailing ascendency of the
system which Lord Bute, Lord North, and Mr. William Pitt suc-
cessively defended and propagated, has stifled every parliamentary
expression of respect and veneration for the memory of Charles James
Fox, while a successful skirmish or a dubious battle unites all parties
in conferring honours and rewards ! "
2 It was Bacon, as High Chancellor of England, who on October 24,
1618, Raleigh having been brought before the Council, informed him
of its resolution to advise King James to order the sentence of 1603
78 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
difficulties in politics and war: no man ever
adapted one to the other with such skill. In
fortitude, justice, and equanimity, no man ever
excelled him ; no exemplar has been recommended
to our gratitude, love, and veneration, by the
most partial historian, or the most encomiastic
biographer, in which so many and so great
virtues, public and private, were united. His
name, his manners, his language, his sentiments,
his soul, were English ; and the wretches went
peaceably to the grave who traitorously separated
him from England !
Compare the disadvantages he had to encounter
in a war against this country with what Mr.
Pitt had to encounter against France. America
had few soldiers, and no treasury ; Mr. Pitt had
a large, well-disciplined army, and the richest
exchequer in the world at his disposal. In
America there was no union of council, and a
scattered population. In England, Mr. Pitt was
the leader of a House of Commons in which he
could command an absolute majority ; and the
people were all within his reach. I have not the
heart to pursue the parallel.
Page 17. " Nor do I think it is one moment
to be carried out. But the records of the sitting have been lost, and
the exact words used by Bacon are not discoverable. MARTIN HUME'S
Walter Raleigh. On May 3, 1622, Bacon was sentenced to a fine of
40,000 and imprisonment during the King's pleasure, and debarred
from sitting in parliament or coming within the verge of the court.
A DEGRADED OPPOSITION 79
to be admitted that so unfortunate a politician as
his parliamentary rival, could have been Mr. Fox's
coadjutor in office. Their principles were diametri-
cally opposite." l
Unfortunate he was, indeed ! But Mr. Fox was
equally so in every plan and project, and had the
additional mortification of being the dupe, twice
over, of this slippery and shallow man. The
secretary had modestly said before that Mr. Pitt
might have acted with Mr. Fox, although
subordinately. They changed principles as they
changed situations. There is always a thing in
England called an opposition, which it is requisite
that I should mention, for it has now become so
contemptible as scarcely to be an object in the
public eye. The principles of Mr. Fox, if the
expression may be allowed, and it be conceded that
he had any, were violently aristocratical when
he was in office, and no less democratical when he
was out. His opponent is called a " practical lover
of arbitrary power, who in his own person exercised
it too long for the glory of his sovereign, or the
happiness of his people.'
"2
1 Trotter proceeds : " The one (Pitt) was a practical lover of arbitrary
power, and in his own person exercised it too long for the glory of his
sovereign, or the happiness of his people : the other (Fox) was a sincere
friend to a limited monarchy, which is the only species of government
recognised by the British constitution, was a benevolent statesman
of the first order, and an undaunted advocate for liberty, whether civil
rights, or freedom of conscience were concerned."
1 See last note.
80 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
A very little of it is quite enough for the happi-
ness of a people, but the glory of our sovereign was
not tarnished by any exercise of arbitrary power.
He loved the bustle and dust of a review, 1 and
fancied a battle was quite as fine a thing. It was
glorious to see, worn out in his service, veteran
suits of laced regimentals, and their places supplied
with alacrity by others in all their freshness and
strength. These were his foibles ; they led to
unhappy results ; but he was a virtuous, kind, just
man. In reading and in memory (we pass by Pitt)
he was not inferior to Mr. Fox ; in judgment they
were too equal. He was uniformly moral, and if
not always dignified he knew that dignity was
more requisite in the second place than in the first.
Kings are commanding by their condescension and
their beneficence ; ministers, by keeping at an equal
distance from the people and from the King.
Experience and wisdom are far less conducive
to the permanency of their power than a temperate
courtesy and a sedate reserve. Those who excited
the American war were guilty of high treason;
in violating the liberty of the subject, and in
advising the sovereign to decline the redress of
grievances. Some of these are yet living; and
examples of justice after many years are only the
more important and the more awful. Justice,
1 "1 believe your King/' Landor makes Benjamin Franklin say,
" to be as honest and wise a man as those about him ; but, unhappily,
he can see no difference between a review and a battle." Works iii. 374.
VERY LIMITED MONARCHY 81
when a nation is flourishing, reposes, but never
sleeps. The King was not at any time urgent with
his parliament to make encroachments at home or
abroad. The fault was totally with the people :
they received, and returned as their representatives,
men who ought to have been sent in a body to the
hulks.
Page 17. " The other, Mr. Fox, was a sincere
friend to limited monarchy"
I will not quarrel with an old expression, from
respect to its very feebleness. I believe he wished
it, in general, to be very limited indeed. I know,
what is more important, that, by his unsteadiness
and duplicity, he has sanctioned the opinion in
many, of there being no such thing in existence as
political honesty ; and has made the question start,
in firmer minds than his own, whether all govern-
ments are not nearly alike when viewed closely ;
whether it is not almost a matter of indifference
which be abolished or which be established ;
whether, in short, whatever is best administered be
not best. 1 One could hardly imagine, that from so
turbulent a spirit 2 there should descend on other
men the political optimism of Pope, and the
political quietism of Goldsmith. It is true that
many things make a man far more miserable,
1 For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.
POPE, Essay on Man, iii. 303.
1 Bolingbroke.
11
82 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
directly and individually, than forms and species of
government can do : it is equally so, that nothing
makes him more base, and ultimately more
wretched, than those ideal ones which he pursues
from the craft and imposture of demagogues.
Under monarchies of long establishment, there is
sometimes an exalted and chimerical sense of
honour : if we observe it less frequently in popular
or mixt governments, it is because the people have
been grossly deceived by those who have exalted
and flattered them, and deceit is become, in their
opinion, a constituent part, an element of state, or
an attribute of power and genius. Confidence, in
the mean time, by degrees, grows cold in their
rulers and in each other. Every man now begins
to seize or to solicit a something from the public,
well knowing that his neighbour cannot openly
condemn in him what is committed by the
members and sanctioned by the head of his own
party. Corruption rises higher and higher, taxes
are imposed that its channels may be filled to
the very brim ; until at last those unfortunate
mortals, who considered every thing they saw as
an indication of prosperity and abundance, find
themselves circumvented by a flood in their own
grounds, which they neither can stem nor lower:
competence and quiet are their last wishes, and
renovation under an absolute monarchy their only
hope.
A CABINET OF DRY STICKS 83
Page 18. "Ministries formed of repugnant and
conflicting materials cannot be permanent or
efficient."
Yet Mr. Fox chose, twice, to be a member of
such a ministry. 1
Page 18. "[Every department ought to be
filled by men of whom the statesman, who under-
takes to conduct the affairs of a nation, has the
selection, and on whose principles, as well as
talents, he can rely.] The disorder which other-
wise takes place from the counteraction of the
inferior servants of government, is of the worst
kind, paralysing every grand measure of the head of
the ministry, and even controuling his intentions."
What a pretty head of a ministry must it be,
which can suffer itself to be counteracted by the
inferior servants of government ! but to be con-
trouled by them, to be controuled in his very
intentions ! no writer could ever conceive such a
notion, unless the character of some such minister
as Mr. Fox were before his eyes. Was Lord
Chatham controuled or counteracted by these
inferior servants ? He found indeed opposition in
the cabinet, as this bundle of dry sticks is called ;
and, like a passionate man, retired. 2 He should
have sent his opponents to the Tower, as privy to
1 In 1783 and 1806.
2 The elder Pitt and Temple resigned office on October 5, 1761, on
the rejection of Pitt's proposals that hostilities should be commenced
against Spain.
84 THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS
the machinations of the Spanish court, and refusing
to frustrate them ; contrary to their allegiance, and
to their oath as privy counsellors.
The Spanish war, and open hostilities from the
Spaniards, would have commenced before it would
be necessary to bring forward the trial ; the nation
would have applauded his vigilance, would have
appointed him sole arbiter of their fates and
fortunes, and would, even to this day, have
experienced the beneficial results of his promp-
titude and energy. The French, instead of a
people which we deprecate, as likely " to eat us up
quick, being so despitefully set against us," would
have lost all symptoms of so formidable an appetite,
would have been no people at all, would have fallen
again into their original diversity of nations.
Page 19. "[The great genius of Mr. Fox, to
have been efficient, should have reigned supreme in
the management of public affairs. Mr. Pitt, under
the wholesome restraints, and instructed by the
enlightened mind of that great man, might have
conducted a subordinate department with benefit
to his country ; but as to co-operation with him, on
any system of co-ordinate power, the plan must
have been detrimental to the public service, as long
as it was attempted, and certainly would have been
degrading to Mr. Fox.] The more I have con-
sidered, the more 1 am persuaded that his own
conception of retirement was the true rule of
conduct to follow."
FAULTS OF A COALITION 85
Certainly, when he had had, long before, the
practical proof how unpopular and how inefficient
were coalitions. In what country have they ever
succeeded ? In what country have they ever failed
to be the signal of its subjugation? The trium-
virate of Rome was formed in the days of its
utmost power and splendour, when the republic
was in possession of more and greater talents than
ever, when a spirit of public liberty on one side, and
a reverence for establishments on the other, were
the sentiments that animated the senate and the
people. Yet Rome fell under the coalition. What
then could be expected in England ? Not an
individual was in political existence in whom
posterity will see anything to imitate or admire.
The national spirit was gone ; even party was
indifferent and torpid. We appeared to be at the
conclusion of some great, solemn feast, when the
mighty host and illustrious company had departed ;
when a single lamp in the center showed the
magnitude of the hall and the remains of the
entertainment ; arid when a few of the favoured
vulgar had been admitted, who were assailing each
other with coarse jests and insolent recriminations,
and spoiling, and pocketing, and buffeting for the
fragments.
CHAPTER IV
IRELAND AND THE UNION
Fox and Ireland Character of the Irish Their women of letters
Pitt's Irish policy Political peerages Poland and Ireland A
point of difference Fox's peers Lord Howick Catholic emanci-
pation Religious disabilities.
Page 25. " [As my acquaintance commenced
with Mr. Fox toward the evening of his days, and
at the period when a rebellion in Ireland was
followed by what has been fallaciously styled a
Union, I had the opportunity of observing his
great humanity, and his freedom from prejudice,
in regard to that country. In this respect he ever
seemed to me to stand alone, among English poli-
ticians, many of whom are liberal enough in their
own way, but all of whom agree in a love of
dominion, and in a certain degree of contempt
respecting the Irish, which, one day or other, will,
I fear, generate events fatal to the repose of both
islands.] There is no nation in Europe, perhaps,
more contracted in their way of thinking, or less
fit to establish a conciliatory government, than the
English."
No two nations in Europe, I do believe, are so
utterly dissimilar as the English and Irish ; and,
what would be incredible to a foreigner, no two
86
TRUE IRISH GENTLEMEN 87
know so little of each other. Yet, whatever the
government may do, the English people admire
and love the Irish, although in general we see
bad specimens : idlers, gamesters, and fortune-
hunters, or persons who, in their own country,
have tried indifferent talents unsuccessfully. Men
of family there are usually very courteous, seldom
very well-informed, never very correct or con-
versant in matters of literature or taste. Contrary
to what happens everywhere else, the middle
rank is the worst. A want of polite literature
is supplied by crude extracts from Curran and
Grattan, by splinters of metaphor, and by sentences
half truism and half paradox. Among these,
proofs of gentility and good breeding lie in a
species of courage which is common to a cur ;
a readiness to attack, and an impatience to be
caught or corrected. But in few countries are
there truer gentlemen, if that character can exist
independent of high cultivation, and unadorned
by the fine arts. The ladies have thrown most
lustre upon Ireland. Miss Brooke, 1 Mrs. O'Neill,
Mrs. Tighe, Mrs. Hamilton, Miss Edgeworth,
have lived, I believe, mostly in that country.
Swift and Burke, and Sterne and Goldsmith, were
properly English ; for if we speak rationally and
worthily of mind, we are to trace by what
1 Charlotte Brooke, died 1793, published Reliques of Irish Poetry.
Mrs. Tighe (Mary Blackford) wrote Psyche and other works. Mrs.
Hamilton wrote Memoirs of Agrippina (1811).
88 IRELAND AND THE UNION
methods and whence it drew its lineaments, by
what associates or rivals it was excited, by what
events it was modified, by what encouragements
it was fostered. Men possessing it are to be
looked for in their works and their societies ; not
among parish-registers and vestry-rooms.
Page 25. " [Had the benevolent and enlarged
mind of Mr. Fox directed their councils, during
the twenty years preceding his death, this narrow
system would not have prevailed, but Ireland
might have been really united, by the firm bonds
of gratitude and interest, to Great Britain. The
state of things arising in Europe required the most
enlightened and improved policy in English states-
men. The coercive energy of the new military
government in France was alone to be counter-
poised, and met, on the part of these islands, by a
still more vigorous spirit, produced by the conscious
possession of civil rights, and a renovated constitu-
tion.] To enter the lists with the great military
chieftain of the French, without similarity of means
or situation, has proved a want of knowledge of
England's true strength," l etc.
Rome had not the same situation or means as
Carthage, yet she warred against Carthage, and
successfully. No knowledge of her true strength
was wanting. It is because our means and situation
are different from those of France, that we have
not suffered more from her, that we might have
1 The sentence ends : "rather than the foresight of wisdom."
SHALLOW POLITICIANS 89
suffered less, that we could have laid nearly all
the sufferings on her side. Military writers I
mean writers who were military men recommend
a diversity of weapons, such as the enemy is not
expert in, or prepared for. We were forced "to
enter the lists with the great chieftain " : the
moment we leave those lists we shall have
nothing to which we can return. Horrible as
the idea is, this is truly a bellum internecinum,
if not between England and France, between
England and Napoleon Bonaparte. I do not
deny that we might have been safe at peace with
him, but under our present system we could not.
A minister will find it as difficult to abandon as
to pursue. It must crumble to pieces of itself;
it cannot be repaired nor taken down. The super-
structure is extensive and cumbrous, the founda-
tion narrow and weak. Like other heavy and
disproportioned bodies, while it continues in
motion it keeps together ; the instant of its ces-
sation is that of its dissolution. Whether good
or evil is the probable result, it were more curious
than prudent to inquire. Weak reasoners and
shallow politicians, to whose bounded view com-
mercial distresses appear like national disabilities,
let them be aided in the attempt by all the natural
restlessness of men left naked after carousing,
will never make the people of England seek an
inglorious, ignominious security, in a second
12
90 IRELAND AND THE UNION
reliance on so perfidious an enemy. Changes of
government did not, amidst all the turbulence
of the French nation, promote or retard its
movements against the coalesced powers, and are
likely to have still less influence on us.
Page 26. "Mr. Pitt treated Ireland like a
conquered country." l
He did worse. He pensioned and ennobled the
vilest rascals of every province, of every county,
almost of every town and hamlet. Not content
with this indignity and insult, fellows in whose
family there never was a gentleman, a scholar,
or decent member of society, were sent from
England into their house of lords. How many
brave men, and Irishmen too, had fought her
battles and bled for her, without any distinction
bestowed on them even from the ribbon-shop,
while iniquitous lawyers and insolent tradespeople
received the highest honours of the state ! While
a Nelson was lingering in poverty, and soliciting
only those hardships and sufferings which were
to work out the salvation of his country, a blanket-
maker and the bastard of a scullion were ennobled.
The former took the true Irish title of Cloncurry,
the latter the Arcadian one of Riversdale. 2 We
1 Trotter proceeds : ' ' And chose to build upon the hollow submission
of slaves, rather than strengthen himself by the support of free men."
3 Robert Lawless, the father of the first Lord Cloncurry, began life
as an errand-boy in the shop of a Dublin woollen draper. His son
A ROTTEN ARISTOCRACY 91
must travel into the wastes of Poland to find so
rotten and rude an image of aristocracy. In
addressing a foreigner of distinction, I could not
help making this difference : in Poland every thing
was noble that was not a slave, in Ireland every
thing that was. 1 Is it then aristocratical pride
of which Mr. Pitt is to be accused ? What
democrat, however rancorous and malicious, could
more effectually debase nobility ? But these up-
starts who were ushered into the Irish house
of lords were very rich. Many people would
willingly be very rich, without a premium for
the trouble of being so. Here I may, and do
most gladly, commend the conduct of Mr. Fox.
He raised men of ancient or distinguished family
to the peerage ; a thing which is never invidious
even to those who possess not that advantage.
This alone proves how great the difference is, in
the public estimation, between those who have
scraped up money from all quarters, and those
whose consequence has a local habitation and a
name ; who are conspicuous in the country ; whose
families are seen somewhat separate from others,
Nicholas was created a baronet in 1776, and a peer in 1789. In 1799
he wrote to the Duke of Portland : " If I have obtained any honours
they have cost me their full value." Colonel William Hull, who took
the name of Tonson, was created Baron Riversdale in 1783. This
peerage is extinct.
1 The same remark is made in Landor's imaginary conversation
(never reprinted) between Lord Mountjoy (afterwards Earl of Blessing-
ton) and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. See Madden's Lady Blessington,
ii. 426.
92 IRELAND AND THE UNION
and remembered individually ; who set examples
of agricultural improvement ; who promote healthy
industry and honest independence, cleanliness and
comfort, competence and sobriety. A great leader
in the cause of parliamentary reform, until he
became one who might have promoted it,
abandoned so far the errors of democracy, that,
when he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, 1
and old captains of the navy waited on him, he
would not invite them or permit them to be
seated. This is a piece of impudence and hardness
of heart (ever inseparable !) to be credited only
by those who know the man. How different
from the urbanity, and right feeling, in social life,
of Mr. Fox !
Pages 26-7. "[1 can truly testify that in the
shocking times of 1798, and during the degrading
scene which crowned them, Mr. Fox yearned over
Irish misfortunes with a truly paternal heart. . . .
I distinctly recollect the horror excited in him, on
hearing of the burning of cottages and their furni-
ture by the military, and the pain he felt on reading
the accounts of the actions between the insurgents
and the army. How well I remember the valu-
able cautions he gave me, when the acuteness of
my feelings for a suffering country prompted hasty
and momentary expressions of anguish ! His
opinion, which is given in one of the letters
annexed to this volume, when the Union was
1 This must refer to Lord Howick, afterwards Earl Grey, First Lord
of the Admiralty in the Ministry of all the Talents.
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 93
agitated in Ireland, will be found solid and
important.] I do not take upon me to assert that
his opinion went so far as to imply the re-admission
of Catholics to the parliament of their country."
Yet his opinion went so far as to countenance
a revolt, if they found themselves strong enough,
on withholding from them their natural and just
rights. Is a man unfit for jurisprudence or tactics,
because he believes what those forefathers of ours
believed, who framed for us whatever is most
valuable in our constitution, and acquired for us
that glory and renown in war, and nourished and
disciplined us to that prowess, without which a
set of commissaries and contractors and shop-
keepers must have debated somewhere else whether
the descendants of these brave men should be
permitted to utter their sentiments in parliament ?
Are the debates in that house likely to be about
no other matters than religion ? and if Catholics
think erroneously on that subject, must they think
erroneously on all? But whether on this or any
other, what danger is there that they will constitute
a majority?
CHAPTER V
VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
Fox as a historian Compared with Sallust Fox's visit to France The
lessons of history Fox and Bonaparte Voltaire on Machiavelli
An incident at Calais Arthur O'Connor Sir Francis Burdett
In Flanders Empress Catharine of Russia The tree of Liberty
Rights of man.
\Pagc 29. " The peace, or rather the truce, of
Amiens, in 1802, very naturally excited in Mr. Fox
a desire to visit the Continent. His historical work
had advanced a good way, but, as he approached
the reign of James II., he felt a want of mate-
rials which he understood could alone be supplied
in Paris, and he determined to go there. That
work has since appeared, and the public have
formed their opinion upon it. I do not hesitate
to say that it would have been desirable that he
had gone further back, or chosen a larger period,
and one unconnected even by analogy with modern
politics. An involuntary association of ideas and
feelings . . . may have had an influence, unsus-
pected by the author, and have led to his dwelling,
as it has appeared to some, with prolixity upon
peculiar passages in the unhappy reigns of Charles
and James."]
Page 30. " The goodness of his heart and
the grandeur of his mind, the just medium of his
opinions between the crown and democracy, and
94
SALLUST AND MR. FOX 95
his warm love of true and rational liberty are,
however, indelibly recorded in a work which per-
haps came out too soon after his death to be justly
appreciated."
The histories of Sallust and Livy came out before
the death of their authors, and at a time when
party was more violent, leaders more powerful,
and changes more stupendous, than we have wit-
nessed in our country ; yet the productions of
these men were appreciated in their times as easily
and highly as in ours. If we except a pristine
vigour of style, a masterly and rapid delineation
of character, a display of eloquence, like the
annona 1 given to the Roman people, magnificent
but unostentatious ; and, instead of all this, bring
before us a man complaining of degeneracy,
luxury, intemperance, immodesty, and gaming,
and of corruption flowing into public life from
all these separate channels, and presently see him
rioting or reposing on every one successively, we
shall discover no obscure, or faint, or partial re-
semblance between Sallust and Mr. Fox. Sallust,
of all the Romans, is the one who impresses me
most with the idea of a great genius. Undoubtedly
his work was laboured, but we cannot discover
in it the separate strokes of labour. He is said
to have affected an antiquity of phrase, more
1 The corn and other provisions sold at a cheap rate to the poor in
the latter days of the Roman republic, and given freely under the
emperors.
96 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
probably of orthography ; but his language has
all that harmony which predominant sense strikes
out. I could as easily find it in the verses of
Racine as in the history of Mr. Fox. Sallust
was very impartial. It is owing to him that in
schools and colleges Cato is not merely the rival,
but the superior of Caesar. He appears to equal
him in eloquence, and to surpass him in dignity.
We may leave to Cato all of his integrity ; but
in literary, in political, in military resources, in
forbearance, in clemency, and I think also in the
justice of his cause, Sallust might fairly have
represented him as secondary to Caesar. Mr. Fox
falls infinitely short of that impartiality. That
Charles, who sold his country to the French king,
descended to the grave without first mounting
the scaffold, is an eternal reproach to the English
name ; but it is no reproach to Charles that he
ordered those who attempted it to execution. 1
Pages 30-31. " [I was wandering among the
beauties of North Wales, when a letter from
Mr. Fox reached me, stating his intention of
going to France, in furtherance of his historical
work, and adding that I could be of use in copy-
ing for him in Paris. . . . The friendly eye which
had penetrated these recesses and the hand which had
1 Of Charles II. Fox wrote : ( ' I doubt whether a single instance can
be produced of his having spared the life of any whom motives, either
of policy or revenge, prompted him to destroy." Reign of James II. ,
p. 62.
A REGENERATED FRANCE 97
beckoned me to leave these calm and rural haunts,
to behold a new order of things in the powerful
kingdom of France, were recognised by me as
heralds of friendship and beneficence ; but his
active benevolence manifested on this occasion
filled me with grateful surprise. Reader, such a
character was Mr. Fox !] To raise up the neglected,
and aid those whom scanty means might keep
pining at home, or languishing in obscurity, was
his bright characteristic."
What latent talents did he bring forward ? The
least he could do was to have taken care that those
who lay three in a bed l should have been tolerably
clean, but he took no care about that matter.
Page 36. " [As the packet passed through the
glittering waves with a brisk and easy motion,
my mind was suspended, as it were, between various
sensations and ideas. We had left the proud coast
of Albion to visit the regenerated kingdom of
France. The long-enjoyed power of the Bourbons
had vanished before the irresistible course of events.]
We were about to change our imaginations and
opinions for certain ideas ; we were to judge for
ourselves, and, disencumbering our minds of the
false impression unavoidably made on those distant
from the theatre of a great revolution, we were to
be enabled to form a just opinion of effects, and
to examine and analyse causes [in the political or
moral sphere of men, or, as I may now express it,
of Imperial France. 2 ] "
1 See footnote, p. 53.
2 Trotter is describing the journey of Mr. Fox and himself to France
in the summer of 1802.
13
98 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
Here are so many words that I cannot get into
the middle of them or see through them in any
way. What certain ideas did Mr. Fox or his
party give in exchange for their imaginations
and opinions ? These, it appears, were to be
exchanged for something, and I can easily think
any thing an equivalent. Did they not judge
for themselves before ? and for the people, too ?
But they were aware, it comes out, that they still
had to disencumber their minds of false impres-
sions. " To analyse causes " was beyond their
power ; but to " form a just opinion of effects "
was certainly much wanting to Mr. Fox, who had
reasoned wrong on them in every period of the
revolution.
Page 38. " [. . . Mr. Fox's feelings respecting
Bonaparte. Raised himself, as I think, upon a
greater eminence, he could not, as I did, look with
the same astonishment at the stupendous character
of that great man ; but he could not be devoid of a
desire, common to us all, of seeing and hearing one
of the most eminent persons of the age.] He, to
whom the histories of Greece and Rome were so
familiar, looked with a philosophic eye upon his
(Bonaparte's) exaltation."
It is a pity that men to whom these histories
are so familiar should read them for no other
purpose than to improve their knowledge of the
language, or to amuse them, rather than to
AUTHORS AND THE STATE 99
instruct them, in the difficulties of state. How
little advantage has been derived to Mr. Pitt and
Mr. Fox from the experience of past ages 1 Mr.
Pitt, 1 indeed, had as profound a contempt for
literature and literary men as ever was avowed
or felt by Attila and Totila ; but Mr. Fox was a
man of extensive and not superficial reading, and,
on many occasions, of serious and of deep reflec-
tions. The historians of Greece and Rome present
to us almost every possible contingency, a narrative
of almost every experiment, and a statement of
every result. It requires too large a portion of
human life for a person of active and official
employment to examine into and deliberate on
all : a man of sagacity, not even equalled by any
of these great writers, has detailed them all, most
clearly and completely. Mr. Fox was a lover, it
is said, of Italian literature 2 ; and surely no man
of letters could read with haste or indifference
the works of Machiavelli. His two comedies,
highly praised by Voltaire, 3 1 pass over as very
1 Speaking of William Pitt, Mr. Lecky says: "In the disposal of
his vast and varied patronage, no minister showed himself more
perfectly and uniformly indifferent to the interests of science and
literature." The same writer describes Pitt as " quite without Fox's
power of casting off the ambitions of politics, and finding in books a
sufficient aliment for his nature." History of England, v. 347-8.
3 " For God's sake," Fox wrote to FitzPatrick from Florence, on
September 22, 1767, " learn Italian as fast as you can, if it be only to
read Ariosto."
3 " Few have hesitated," says Hallam, " to place Machiavelli's Man-
dragola and C'litia above Ariosto's comedies." Literary History, i. 439.
Macaulay thought the Mandragola inferior only to the best of Moliere.
JOO VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
vile productions, and find little to commend in
the life of Castruccio Castracani. I never smiled
at the witty things attributed to him, and attri-
buted to others long before ; but surely The
Commentary on Livy and The Prince are the
two most valuable gifts a mortal ever bestowed
on his fellow-creatures. If you will surrender
your rights and liberties, look into these books,
and you will see the consequences. A prince, to
fulfil his destinies, must pursue this line of con-
duct. The cases and changes which may occur,
and influence the fate of nations, are, in my
opinion, quite as worthy of our study as those
which are propounded by Hoyle for the game of
whist. Ministers of a great nation should be
chosen neither drowsy from the gaming-houses
nor fresh from the university. The historian of
Florence was not only a speculative politician,
but he wrote also on the practice and stratagems
of war. He first, amongst the moderns, recom-
mended the general use of infantry, and pointed
out its superiority to cavalry. Most of his remarks
on these subjects are borrowed from the ancients :
the Chevalier de Folard, 1 in criticising him, should
Voltaire said : "La seule Mandragore de Machiavel vaut peut-etre
mieux que toutes les pieces d'Aristophane." (Euvres, 1785, xviii. 99.
Landor, in his Imaginary Conversations, makes Alfieri say : " The
great Machiavelli is, whatever M. de Voltaire may assert to the
contrary, a coarse comedian." Works, iv. 272.
1 Landor wrote, in his Letters to Lord Liverpool : " An attentive
perusal and a right understanding of two excellent books have enabled
BONAPARTE'S TUTORS 101
have remembered this, as also the use of the pike,
which he strenuously advises. The Chevalier
himself has recommended these after him, and
places a higher value on the skill, and arms, and
military machines of the Romans than on those
of modern war. Bonaparte has made himself
emperor by following their maxims. The right
use of a sensible book has produced the conquest
of Europe. We English seem to have abandoned
all stratagems and expedients : we try nothing
new but strings and tassels ; we recur to nothing
old but whiskers.
[Page 40. "An incident occurred at Calais,
which, as it excited much remark, and roused a
good deal of censure at the time, I shall advert to
more at length than would otherwise be necessary.
It happened that Mr. Arthur O'Connor 1 had
arrived at the inn at which we stopped. . . . He
waited on Mr. Fox, was received by him with that
a petty officer of artillery [Bonaparte] to confound all the wisdom and
baffle all the energies of the world. The Prince of Machiavelli, and
the translation of Polybius by Folard, are the cup and wand of this
Comus," p. 71. The Chevalier de Folard's Commentary on Polybius is
printed in the seventh volume of a translation of Polybius (Amsterdam,
1753), made by V. Thuillier, a kinsman, probably, of Laudor's father-
in-law. M. de Folard served with distinction in the French army, and
died in 1752. Gibbon says he treated the subject of ancient machines
with great knowledge and ingenuity (Decline and Fall, i. 162 n.).
1 Arthur O'Connor, Irish patriot, was tried at Maidstone, in May,
1798, on a charge of high treason, along with James O'Coighy and
others. Fox, Lord Moira, and Sheridan were among the witnesses
called for the defence. O'Connor was acquitted, but remanded to
custody on other charges. He was afterwards allowed to leave the
country, on disclosing his plans, and went to France, where he married
a daughter of Condorcet.
102 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
urbanity and openness which distinguished him,
and was invited to dinner by him, which invitation
he accepted of. I had never seen this gentleman
before. It is well known that, after a long con-
finement at Fort George, he, and some other Irish
gentlemen, agreed with the Irish Government to
expatriate themselves for life. Mr. O'Connor was
now on his way to Paris accordingly, when chance
brought him to Quillac's inn, at the same time
with Mr. Fox."]
Page 41. " [Perfectly unconnected with govern-
ment, and travelling as any other English gentle-
man of noble birth, Mr. Fox found no difficulty in
receiving this gentleman (whom he had known
before he was so deeply implicated in Irish politics)
with a friendly and consoling welcome.] Mr.
O'Connor dined with us [and I, for one, was much
pleased with his deportment and appearance,
though] I could not become, in a manner, a
convert to his arguments to prove that he and his
party had not attempted [or desired] to rouse the
physical strength of his country, to effect a change
in Ireland."
In what manner not become a convert to the
arguments ? What arguments were necessary ?
Did he deny the fact ? Who can hesitate to
believe that he did desire to raise the physical
and every other strength of the country to effect
a change in Ireland ? Can any honest man blame
him, if, when all other means had first been tried,
he tried the courage and constancy of the people
to effect a change ? Were not rights withholden
SIR FRANCIS BURDETT 103
from Irishmen, as precious to them as those which,
being withholden from the Americans, roused their
physical strength, the exertion of which was
applauded by Mr. Fox ? What defence then is
necessary to this gentleman, if he received a former
friend who suffered for principles like his own?
It required no dignity or benevolence to act as
he did ; to have acted otherwise would, to him
at least, have been extremely base, a species too
of baseness very uncongenial with his character.
It would have been a kind and a degree of un-
manliness to be found only under the frozen
temperature of such a soul as Pitt's.
Page 43. "[A recent speech of a celebrated
baronet has recalled to my mind what we heard
either at Calais, or some other French town,
relative to Sir Francis Burdett.] It had been
reported to us that Sir Francis, on landing at
Calais, had been designated, with a design to flatter
him, as the friend of Mr. Fox, and that he had
turned round and instantly corrected the expression,
by saying ' No, that he was Vami du peuple."
Sir Francis Burdett is not censurable for choosing
to rest his claim to respectability on his own basis.
Mr. Fox and Sir Francis might have been friends,
and yet Sir Francis might prefer some other
designation than merely the friend of Charles Fox.
Page 43. ["The baronet in a late speech has
said : ' he is not the friend of Caesar or of Pompey,
104 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
but the friend of the people.' I had the pleasure
of meeting him at St. Anne's Hill, before he had
attained any of his subsequent celebrity. I then
thought him pleasing, though tinged with vanity,
which, perhaps, in the society of Mr. Fox, was
more peculiarly conspicuous, because the powerful
lustre of his great, yet unassuming character
rendered the tinsel glare of any superficial pre-
tensions strikingly obvious. ... I own that when
I heard this ' disclaimer ' at Calais, I was not led
to entertain a more elevated idea of Sir Francis
Burdett's character than I had originally
conceived."]
Page 45. " [Was not Fox an honourable and
dignified friend, worthy of being assigned to Sir
Francis Burdett ?] Did it become him to turn and
disclaim the title, in order to assume the far less
solid glory of I ami du peuple ? "
So then at last the naked and unblushing truth
comes forth, that the partizans of Mr. Charles Fox
are strictly and exclusively his, and would rather
both be thought and be so, than defend the
liberties of their country. A great deal more is
said about Sir Francis Burdett, of his vanity, his
tinsel glare, etc. I have seen this gentleman, not
among mobs, nor at public dinners, but in the
society of his friends, and I observed no tinsel or
vanity ; yet these are sooner seen than any thing
else about a man. I have mentioned what I saw ;
I think it just, and have neither the leisure nor the
inclination to say, or to know, more of him.
RUSSIA AND THE TURKS 105
Page 51. "[On entering that part of modern
France, so well known by the appellation of the
Netherlands, the glorious scene of human pros-
perity, and of rural happiness and plenty which
opened before our delighted eyes, was a true feast
to the mind.] Flanders had long enjoyed a liberal
portion of rational liberty." l
It was necessary that she should, otherwise she
would sooner have swerved to the side of France.
But no policy is sufficient to countervail the grasp-
ing disposition of despotism. Perpetual attempts
had been made to strip little after little from her
immunities. 2 Joseph, like Catharine of Russia,
was a silly and restless meddler, eternally shifting
and transplanting. Catharine might, on several
occasions, have utterly destroyed the power of
Turkey. But at one time a mere intrigue occu-
pied her ; at another she was driving a part of
her subjects from their country and bringing
another into it, or was quelling a revolt which
such cabinet arrangements had excited, or her
armies were pursuing those who took refuge in
Tartary and China from her maternal solicitude.
Instead of these tricks and finesses, she should
1 Trotter proceeds : " Its independence, sanctioned and guaranteed
by so many imperial sovereigns, had, until the reign of the visionary
despot, Joseph II., given it all the just fruits of liberty, peace,
abundance, and security."
3 " The dismantling of fortresses, which took place through the
policy of Joseph II., had, some years later [after 1795], a considerable
effect in rendering the conquest of the Netherlands easy and rapid."
LECKY, History of England, v. 355.
14
106 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
have driven at once the brute force of her empire
against the most powerful of her enemies ; the
less would be engulfed by the shock, and she
might have picked up afterwards a thousand very
valuable things, which would have been shivered
in all directions by the general consternation.
[Pages 51, 52. "As we approached St. Omer's,
the difference between two very distinct races of
men became very perceptible ; and, after passing it,
the gradation from French to Flemish was quickly
lost in the latter. A larger bodily form, a manifest
deficiency in grace, less intellect, but more plain
sense, the dress inelegant and cumbrous marked
the Flemings. As yet I had seen but little of the
French ; but already their gracefulness, politeness,
and the general elegance of their forms, had pre-
possessed me in their favour."]
Page 52. "The general elegance of their forms."
No nation in Europe is generally so ugly as the
French, both in form and features. Such is the
involuntary exclamation of every man who passes
out of Kent into Picardy. Mr. Fox could see, and
could teach others to see, something more than
commonly pleasing in every thing like French.
[Pages 61-3. " On leaving Cassel this day,
I began Joseph Andrews. Mr. Fox was much
amused by our book ; and though we all subse-
quently agreed as to the vulgarity a little too
prevalent in Fielding's novels yet his faithful and
admirable paintings from human nature afforded us
great pleasure. . . . We rattled along in a very
A FADED TREE OF LIBERTY 107
pleasant manner, going through Billeul, an ugly
town, and some other country towns, and, with
the help of Joseph Andrews, found not a weary
moment. In most of these towns I observed the
tree of liberty planted and growing. This memorial
of the fury of late events recalled many unpleasant
ideas. ... In most places the tree of liberty,
though undisturbed, looked sickly, and, as I cast
a glance on its fading leaves, I could not but think
of the sublime apostrophe made to liberty, in her
last agonies, by one of the very brightest of France's
ornaments, in her revolutionary days Madame
Roland. Yet the excesses into which the French
were driven are not less entitled to pity than to
blame."]
Page 64. " The exasperation of the multitude
seldom exceeds the boundaries of law and order, till
they feel that their complaints are unavailing," etc.
This ought to have come into the author's mind
when he was writing of O'Connor, and of the
events in which he bore a part.
Page 64." [Yet the faded tree of liberty filled
me with sorrow. I sighed over the inevitable
result of the revolution in France, arising from the
preponderance of bad men and turbulent factions.]
The tree is faded, thought I, but the rights of
man will endure for ever."
So there will always exist in the human mind
the ideas of truth and equity, but we want to
see truth and equity in some other places. Their
being in the human mind and their not being
108 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
found elsewhere is the mischief. We desire to
see them moving about, gaining strength, doing
and communicating good. There is no nation in
Europe which has not surrendered a great portion
of its rights except the Spanish, and that nation
has lost much of the territory over which those
rights should have extended. For the recent
avowal of her principles she will soon, under
some pretext or other, be abandoned by our
government, which gains nothing by experience
but hatred of it, and brings nothing to liberty
but regret.
Page 64. " Dynasties may be erected, generals
become monarchs, the people be depressed, but
liberty is enthroned in the heart of man, is the
boon of his Creator, and the cloudless jewel of life."
Mighty fine and precious is this cloudless jewel,
if kings can pull it out of our bosoms, or cheat
us, like ring-droppers in the streets, with some-
thing base and worthless instead. Liberty, to
use a homelier phrase, is a thing which people
may be so long without as to lose all appetite
for it. This "throne of the human heart," on
which the secretary has personified and in-
augurated it, is often abdicated. Some prefer a
tangible pension to what they consider as an
imaginary being at the best ; others, who have
contemplated her more nearly, have been induced
by the conduct of such people as Mr. Fox to
THE PEACE TO COME 109
forego the trouble and peril of quarrelling about
her infidelities. It is better, or rather it is less
disgraceful, to resign a thing than to be tricked
out of it. This sentiment is natural and universal.
We are more willing to show the extent of our
strength than of our wisdom. We retain with
dissatisfaction what is left us by the unprincipled,
and, with all the ardor and promptitude of
desperation, transfer it to the powerful. In this
frame of mind the indulgence of an angry
humour is a sufficient reward for our sacrifice ;
after this we are obstinate in maintaining the
power we have set up, lest others should reproach
us with our rashness. The people of France are
ashamed that they dare not resist their oppressor,
and hate us from the bottom of their hearts
because they know that we despise them for it.
These are feelings which will remain in full force
so long as the cause of them is in existence, and,
if ever we make a peace with them, they will
employ themselves in playing only a short inter-
lude before the last act. Yet persons who had,
what they well merit, the infamy of calling them-
selves Foxites, are not ashamed to recommend
one. Is this only a folly, or is it a base and
sordid despair, which throws itself into the dust
lest it should be trampled on ; or is it, as 1 have
often suspected, a plea to be urged in future for
exemption from pillage and persecution ? Were
110 VISIT TO THE CONTINENT
I certain that Napoleon could invade this country,
and equally certain, as I should be, that my pro-
perty, no part of which is movable, would become
his prey, still I declare before God I would rather
endure the total loss of it than the ignominy of
such a peace as he declares shall be imposed on
England. There cannot be such miserable drivel-
lers as to believe that his actions would be less
atrocious than his threats. No power in the
universe could keep possession of this island.
Artificial heroes, patrons of hatters and tailors,
generals who are helped on their horses by their
rank, would be forced to retire from duties which
they cannot fulfil ; and, after the first gush and
conflict of the political elements, every thing would
rise or fall to its proper level. Men would go
for their value ; what is promissory would be
nugatory, every thing sterling would be looked for
everywhere, and held at a mighty price. Genius
is the creature of necessity : when we wanted no
better or braver men than a Pulteney or a
Whitelocke, 1 we had them not ; but when the
voice of God is heard in the whirlwind men
capable of governing will arise.
[Page 65. "As we approached Lisle, I shut
Joseph Andrews, and a new scene opened before
us."]
1 Generals Sir James Murray Pulteney, and Whitelocke. See above,
p. 20.
CHAPTER VI
GHENT AND ANTWERP
Charles V. and C. J. Fox A fatuous comparison Gustavus Adolphus
Beguines French annexation of the Netherlands Importance
of Antwerp Street architecture Fallen grandeur Opening of
the Scheld Ship-building Future prospects.
{Page 75. " We entered Ghent. It is a large
and magnificent town. The houses are lofty and
venerable, as well from the grandeur of their
appearance, as from their antiquity. . . . The
scenery was well adapted for that wild, yet capti-
vating species of romance writing which, from
Mrs. Radcliffe's pen, produced so much effect. In
Ghent, too, Charles the Fifth, that extraordinary
character, uniting so many extremes in itself, was
born and often resided."]
Page 78. " Charles in his monastery and Fox at
St. Anne's Hill were contrasts of the most striking
nature."
So were Charles and the Vicar of Wakefield,
or, if we must have a real and no imaginary
character, Home Tooke. A more instructive
parallel might be drawn between two sovereigns,
particularly if both had been successful in the
train of politics. For instance, Charles V. and
Gustavus Adolphus. Different from Charles,
in
112 GHENT AND ANTWERP
and infinitely greater, was Gustavus Adolphus.
Both were conquerors, both were ambitious, both
were religious, and equally enthusiastic in their
respective creeds. Gustavus died by the hand
of an assassin, the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg ; l
it was, however, in the field of battle. Charles's 2
end was pitiable, I had almost said contemptible.
Gustavus's was consistent with his life. No
hours of his existence were consumed in winding
up watches or in dropping beads. A series of
moral and religious duties formed the rosary
which never left his bosom.
Page 80. " We visited at Ghent a very interest-
ing establishment, the residence of the Beguines.
[. . . . I have seldom seen any thing more pleasing
than this select religious establishment. ... I
think that in Protestant countries there is a strong
and unjust prejudice against such societies. . . .
I was very much gratified at beholding so many
amiable and happy females, whose countenances
spoke tranquillity and benevolence, and whose little
mansions were the abodes of peace, comfort and
decency.]"
I hope Mr. Fox experienced here the same
1 Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe-Lauenberg, was ' ' supposed by some
to have killed Gustavus treacherously and dishonourably in the battle
of Liitzen [November 6, 1632] ; or rather to have conspired against his
life by giving some secret signal to the Imperialists during the heat
of action." REV. W. HAUTE, History of Gustavus Adolphus, 3rd ed.,
1807, ii. 305.
* The Emperor Charles V. died at the m onastery of Yuste on
September 21, 1558. Robertson's description of his life in retirement
has been shown to be inaccurate.
BENEVOLENT SENTIMENTS 113
sentiments as his friend ; they are very benevolent
and very just ; and I do believe he did ; for a
part of his heart, in despite of dissipation and
politics, was generous and sound. But, although
he countenanced not a few superfluities in state,
he was somewhat more strict with religion. The
Beguines 1 are among the Catholics what the
Moravian sisters are among the reformed. So
that the secretary is wrong when he fancies that
there is in protestant countries a strong and
unjust prejudice against such societies.
Page 84. " [Towards evening we came in view
of Antwerp. . . . We had passed through the
finest part of Flanders, in the time of harvest, and
had, of course, seen it to the greatest advantage. . . .
And all this fine country acquired by France : this
vast acquisition of strength to her Empire, conferred
on her by the blunders, and the blind fury of the
allied Powers.] No consequence of the fatal system
of threatening the very existence of France as a
nation, among many lamentable ones, has been
more injurious than that of the annexation of the
Netherlands to that power."
We might have been the arbiters of Europe,
we might have liberated, or encouraged the
liberation of, the Netherlands from Austria ; and
1 " ( By thy description, Trim/ said my uncle Toby, ' I dare say she
was a young Beguine, of which there are none found anywhere but in
the Spanish Netherlands except at Amsterdam : they differ from
nuns in this, that they can quit their cloister if they choose to marry." "
STERNE'S Truttram Shandy, chap. 264.
15
114 GHENT AND ANTWERP
France would gladly have guaranteed their in-
dependence. She dreaded us, and us only, and
there was a moment when her love of liberty
was generous and sincere. Of all the cities she
has conquered, Antwerp is the most important.
Rome, Milan, Turin, Alexandria itself, are villages
in the map of politics, if surveyed with Antwerp.
On our side of the Alps hardly any city is com-
parable to it in the magnificence of its streets.
Where London has one stately edifice, there are
ten in Antwerp. In London there are not ten
houses whose fronts are grand, or have indeed
any kind of pretension to architectural beauty.
In Antwerp there are some hundreds whose
appearance is imposing and superb.
\Page 87. " Antwerp was, however, as well
as Ghent, a striking exhibition of fallen grandeur.
The streets were silent, and grass grew in many
parts : the busy stir of man was wanting to
animate this immense collection of buildings ; no
roll of carriages manifested the opulence and luxury
of the inhabitants, the sound of the human voice
was little heard, and those animals attendant on
man were not seen."]
" The streets," we are informed, " were silent,
and grass grew in many parts." I have heard it
asserted that the value of houses has risen since in
a quadruple ratio, and that those bordering on the
quay sold at from seven to twelve times as much
as when Bonaparte came to the supreme power.
THE PORT ON THE SCHELD 115
Page 88. " [As the Scheld, however, was just
opened, there were some symptoms of reviving
commerce, and Antwerp has, most probably, ere
now, assumed a lively appearance ; although it will
require a long time to restore the population, and
give energy to the whole mass of this deserted,
but magnificent city. The municipal officers
waited on Mr. Fox, and we passed the day very
agreeably in seeing every thing worthy of attention
at Antwerp. . . . The Cathedral is very fine.
We saw three good collections of pictures, and the
academy of paintings. The French carried away
Rubens's best pictures from hence, but two very
fine ones have been returned. We did not see
the citadel, which we understood was in a good
state.] The idea of building ships and restoring
the French marine at Antwerp, though in its
infancy when we rested there, was however strong
and prevalent."
When we consider that no place in Europe, not
excepting Constantinople, is situated so favourably
for communication with all the country in every
direction round it, if we take also into account
the number of forests, the level surface along
which the timber may be conveyed to the rivers
and the canals, the great population, the moderate
price of labour, and the facility of provisioning a
great force for a longer time than perhaps any-
where else in the universe ; we may then compute
the advantages which a vigorous and intelligent
sovereign will derive from its possession.
CHAPTER VII
DUTCH NETHERLANDS
Breda The Stadtholder England and the Continent Nelson at
Naples Prosperity of Holland Commerce and industry Evil
of factories Fisheries Amsterdam Republican Governments
Greek and Roman Flight of the Stadtholder Murder of the
de Witts Fox's humanity and indecision.
{Page 96. " We entered Dutch Brabant on
leaving the French territory. The roads became
heavy and sandy, and the country quite uninterest-
ing. We now had recourse to Tom Jones, and
1 read a great deal of that excellent work aloud
on our way to Breda. Mr. Fox enjoyed it very
much."
Page 98. "Breda is remarkable as the residence
of the English exiled monarch, Charles II. I viewed
it with no respect on that account."
Page 99. " The deserted gardens of the Prince
of Orange (ci-devant Stadtholder) gave me another
lesson on the fallacy and unsteadiness of human
grandeur.] The Stadtholder, in residing in England,
had abandoned his high station, which a truly great
man would have preserved, or fallen gloriously
resisting the incursion of the French."
I have nothing to say about the Stadtholder, 1
1 William IV., Prince of Orange, the hereditary Stadtholder, fled
from Holland in January, 1795, on the advance of the French army
under Pichegru, who entered Amsterdam in triumph on January 20.
116
FRANCE AND THE DUTCH 117
whom no one ever expected to find " a truly
great man ; " but truly great men have occasion-
ally left a country where irresistible force from
external enemies, or the torrent of public opinion,
came against them. Both were united against
this poor wretched creature. Either would have
mastered him. The Dutch opened the gates of
all their towns to France, because our government
and the King of Prussia stood in array against
freedom. We have always made nations our
enemies, to conciliate the insects of cabinets,
which we have seen invariably, one after another,
kicked and trampled into the dust. An example
is now unfolding. The Sicilians almost adored
us, but we countenanced and subsidised their
oppressors ; and for the service of two or three
persons, no less weak than faithless, we shall soon
encounter all the vengeance of a spirited and re-
monstrating people, not afraid, but unwilling to
strike, who have been driven by nakedness and
want to resume their natural rights.
Brontesque Steropesque, et nudus membra Pyracmon, 1
will do something very disagreeable, and perhaps
rude, to majesties and marquises and eccellentissimi.
The days of hanging, on board of English ships,
men who relied on royal promises and naval
1 Virgil, JSneid, viii. 425.
118 DUTCH NETHERLANDS
honour, are all over. 1 Woe betide those who
intercept or impede the just vengeance of an
injured and outraged people. Sicily might be
worth more to us than any of our foreign
possessions, for with it we might possess the
Sicilians. The politician does not measure coun-
tries merely by degrees of latitude and longitude ;
sugar and coffee and bales of merchandise are
not his only goods. He leaves such imperfect
estimates to such bare book-keepers as Mr. W.
Pitt. "Concordia res parvae crescunt, discordia
magnse dilabuntur," 2 is an axiom he applies not
merely to the natives of his own country, but
to their agreement in friendly and equal inter-
course with allies. To have a fellow-feeling in
their interests is essentially necessary, and to
provide that they do not rot in cold obstruction 3
from an arrogant and stupid king.
Pages 100-101. "[The appearance of Holland,
that creation of liberty, industry, and commerce,
though a flat country, and quite destitute of the
picturesque, is, however, most pleasing to any
person of reflection and benevolence. ... 1 cannot
1 Referring, no doubt, to the execution, by Nelson's order, of Prince
Francesco Caraccioli, in 1799, though he was hanged on board the Sicilian
frigate La Minerva. Landor writes elsewhere : ' ' What did Nelson ? He
tarnished the brightest sword in Europe, and devoted to the most
insatiable of the Furies the purest blood ! A Caroline and a Ferdinand,
the most opprobrious of the human race and among the lowest in
intellect, were permitted to riot in the slaughter of a Caraccioli."
Works, vi. 60.
1 Sallust, Jugurtha, 10.
3 Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, iii. 1.
quite accede to the poet's description of Holland. 1
. . . Commerce, when carried to excess, like most
other pursuits of man, becomes pernicious, and
productive of ill consequences ; particular instances,
too, of avaricious and unfeeling characters engaged
in it may lead to an unfavourable opinion of com-
merce itself ; but] if any one were disposed to deny
its amazingly beneficial effects commerce he has
but to look at Holland to be convinced that he is
wrong."
Indeed, indeed, he ought to take a little more
trouble, and to look in other places ; at least, if
a man is equally zealous to be convinced that he
is wrong, as he usually is to be convinced that
he is right. Commerce, in some stages of society,
and to a certain extent, is useful and beneficial.
Fishing, before ardent spirits were common, was
an occupation hardly less laudable than agricul-
ture, or less important to the strength and
resources of a state. It invigorates the body,
hardens the mind against despondency and danger,
and employs great numbers in healthy occupa-
tions. In Holland, marshes were excavated for
dockyards, canals were dug for track-schuyts,
woods were cleared for timber, room was made
for an accession of population, and food was
provided in proportion to its increase. Sailors
were now become hardy and enterprising ; they
1 Trotter here quotes Goldsmith's well-known lines in The Traveller,
1. 299, etc.
120 DUTCH NETHERLANDS
embarked for distant voyages, they encountered
difficulties, they contended and overcame them.
Rivalry grew up, and foreign powers were anxious
to participate in their success. Energy was called
forth, and what was worth winning was worth
enjoying. New means of defence and of attack
were resorted to, opposition kept pace with them,
and an industrious soon became a warlike, and
a warlike a powerful, people. But the commerce
which employs many thousands of the young, 1 in
crowded rooms, extremely low, among the vapour
of lamps, without fresh air and locomotion, and
without any separation of the sexes, does mischief,
the extent of which it would be painful and dis-
gusting to detail. In a general and political
view, its ill effects are palpable. It places many
under the immediate controul of one, and assails
the purity of election. In short, the commerce
of manufactories will appear, on the whole, more
prejudicial to virtue, to happiness, to health, to
independence, than serviceable to the support of
any well-regulated state. 2 We must not then be
1 "The House of Commons/' Landor wrote, in 1829, " has lately
passed an Act, by which it is provided that children under nine years
of age shall not be obliged to work longer than twelve hours in the day.
Do not the wretches deserve to be stoned to death, who thus authorise
the infliction of such hard labour on creatures so incapable of enduring
it?" Works, in. 282.
* " Manufactures tend to deteriorate the species, but begin by
humanizing it. Happy those countries which have occasion for little
more than may supply the home consumption." LANDOR, Works, iii.
117, where the first word is misprinted "manufacturers."
PERNICIOUS INDUSTRIES 121
lavish and indiscriminate in the praises we bestow
on commerce, since the species of it I have pointed
out is noxious whenever it is extensive, and is
more likely to be general than any. Every nation
will be now obliged to employ its own hands,
and one will employ them more extensively and
perniciously than others, and will attempt to start
before its neighbours, in a course which leads
neither to its strength nor happiness. All nations
possessing a sea-coast should extend their fisheries
to the utmost. The fisherman has one perpetual
harvest-time 1 ; he employs no cattle subject to
disease and inactivity, his fences are destroyed
by no trespasses, and, if his hopes are disap-
pointed, they are however not the hopes of the
year. He has another field whenever he chooses
to work it, and his profits are not anticipated
by the tillage. If we take a general and political
view of it, as we did of that species which arises
from manufactories, we shall perceive that the
nearer men are brought to meet invasion, and
the greater number of them, and the more dan-
gerous and enterprising their pursuits, a country
will be the stronger and the safer.
1 " A few years ago," Oliver Goldsmith wrote in 1759, " the herring
fisheries employed all Grub Street ; it was the topic of every coffee-
house, and the burden of every ballad. We were to drag up oceans of
gold from the bottom of the sea ; we were to supply all Europe with
herrings upon our own terms. At present we hear no more of this.
We have fished up very little gold that I can learn." Works, Globe
eel., p. 398.
16
122 DUTCH NETHERLANDS
{Page 106. "Amsterdam is a noble and populous
city, and pre-eminent, I believe, above all others, for
the general diffusion of employment, and the total
absence of misery and want."]
Page 107. " [ I could not have imagined a more
perfect scene of human occupation and comfort ;
the equality of station, and the competency enjoyed
by all, afforded that true idea of social perfection
which theorists have written and talked so much
of, but which few countries have realised in modern
times. The distinctions of an aristocratic noblesse
and a miserable populace, did not offend the eye.]
The youth who studies, and the man who thinks,
possess defective notions regarding states, and forms
of government, until they travel. The republics of
Greece and Rome are well known in history, but
their glories and defects are no more to be discerned
by the eye of the vigilant observer." *
If the republics of Greece and Rome are well
known in history, how happens it that even the
vigilant observer can discern neither their " glories
nor defects ? " What then is it we know of
them ? I have often fancied that I could discern
some glories in the early times of Rome. Livy,
and Polybius, and Plutarch, have recorded such
things as make me acknowledge
Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma. 2
A little book, such as 1 could carry in my
1 Possibly through an oversight, Landor transposes the last two
sentences in this extract, which is here given as in the original.
2 Virgil, Georgics, ii. 534.
WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS 123
coat sleeve, Fenestella, 1 will give me a short
account of the magistratures, etc., if I want one.
More great actions of individuals are recorded by
even what remains of Livy than by all the English
historians put together, and their institutions are
as clearly set before us, and as fully, as those of
England are in Blackstone's Commentaries. A
greater number of profound remarks was made
on the governments of Greece and Rome after
they existed than during their existence. Aristotle
has given a summary view of many, which were
established in countries he never visited. Not
only the changes and corruption which had de-
formed the Roman commonwealth before his time,
but also the manners and customs of Germany,
are described by Tacitus, the truth of whose
description is corroborated by subsequent experi-
ence. Yet he never lived or travelled in that
country. How many wise and admirable remarks
are to be found in the works of Plutarch, and
Polybius ! I have mentioned these illustrious
men before, yet I cannot refrain from repeating
their names, and from expressing my regret that
their works are not more studied in schools and
colleges. If others have excelled them in style,
1 A work entitled De Magistratibus Sacerdotiisque Romanorum, was
attributed to Lucius Fenestella, a Latin historian who died A.D. 21. It
is now believed to have been the production of Dominic Floccus, a
Florentine of the fifteenth century. Editions in 16mo were printed
at Geneva in 1599, and Cologne in 1607.
124 DUTCH NETHERLANDS
none afford such varied and such extensive infor-
mation, or such an admirable detail of the means
by which the greatest men became great. Mr.
Fox, I suspect, might have derived more advan-
tage from them than from his introduction to the
first consul, or his researches in the Scots college,
though the latter were proper for his undertaking.
Page 121. " [Mr. Fox was very much pleased
with the Hague, and with this wood, 1 which
received admiration from us all. . . . We drove to
Scheveling, on the sea shore. . . . Here the
Stadtholder embarked when he fled. I believe
Holland suffered nothing from his abdication, but
when I stood on the shore] I could not refrain
from despising the man who flies when his country
is in danger ; unless it be that he has governed it
ill, and fears the just resentment of his countrymen,
in which case I should have been glad to have
assisted him into his boat."
Unless! Is he not quite as despicable in flying
with all the consciousness of having governed ill ?
There is nothing in which I differ more widely
from the secretary than in the sentiment that
follows. Instead of helping him into the boat, I
should think if my duty to detain him, were he
flying from the just resentment of his countrymen,
as I would a housebreaker or pickpocket in the
same circumstances, if the country that afforded
me hospitality demanded it at my hands. In
1 The Haagsche Bosch.
A DETESTABLE CRIME 125
doing this, he must first have violated the funda-
mental laws of the land, and must afterwards
have left the remainder without an executive
power. The Stadtholder had, in fact, brought an
armed force of foreigners against Holland. The
crime is capital. He was virtually outlawed ; and
it was the duty of every Dutchman to arrest him
and bring him to justice.
Pages 122-3. " [We saw one picture, however,
at the Hague which, as it must fill any person
with horror who views it, must derogate a good
deal from my praises of Dutch moderation and
calmness. I allude to the massacre of the De
Witts. The death of these excellent men and
true patriots is but too faithfully depicted in a
small picture at the Maison de JBois. 1 It excited
great disgust in Mr. Fox, and with great reason.
. . . Among a thousand instances, this is one
which deserves notice, of] Mr. Fox's admirable force
of mind, equally reprobating the direful rage of
the populace, as the vindictive cruelty of a
tyrant." 2
Though the direful rage of a populace never
committed any one action so lamentable and
detestable as the murder of the De Witts, yet
the vindictive cruelty of a tyrant is still more
1 The Huisteu Bosch, a royal villa built in 1647 for Princess Amalie,
widow of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange.
1 " It was quite distressing to him," Trotter adds, " to speak upon
the catastrophe of the De Witts. His countenance was full of horror
at sight of the memorable picture.'
126 DUTCH NETHERLANDS
abominable, because more lasting and more sys-
tematic. So, if Mr. Fox reprobated them equally,
he was injudicious and unwise. Let us rather say
of him that he abhorred them both. Surely that
is no very extraordinary mind, where such a
natural and universal sentiment is adduced as an
instance of its admirable force. Mr. Fox was a
very humane man ; yet by his negligence and
indecision such actions were committed and
ordered at Buenos Ayres, as produced the death
of many brave men, infinite calamity, and indelible
disgrace. Just enough of men for a sacrifice were
sent also to Alexandria and to Constantinople.
If all these had been united in aid of the Russians,
many thousands of their army would not have met
an untimely end, nor the war have experienced
an unsuccessful one.
Page 124. " [Mr. Fox's disposition taught him
to govern at home with parental mildness, and
always to conciliate and encourage, rather than
terrify ;] his genius led him to choose the grandest
measures in foreign politics, and to make war short
by making it decided."
Then his destiny crossed his genius ; for nothing
is more contrary to the actual events of his
administration.
CHAPTER VIII
COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Readings in Virgil Orpheus in the Georgics A false note The
nightingale Homer and Lucretius The moral of a poem
Paradise Lost Episodes in the JEneid Lucan's Pharsalia Virgil's
pathos Fox's favourite passages Virgil as a politician Grenville
and the French Ambassador Edmund Burke Tom Jones and The
Arabian Nights Criticism of contemporaries Dr. Johnson and
Miss Seward Fox on Ariosto The shield of Achilles Tasso
Ovid Cervantes and the romance writers Spenser and Dante
Alfieri Metastasio Greek tragedians.
{Page 89. " If my readers can pardon the intro-
duction of trifles, and my classical ones imagine
the delight I felt at reading passages of the JEneid
of Virgil with Mr. Fox, they will excuse my
mention of another little course of reading on this
short tour, on account of the valued name of him,
unhappily for the world, no more. I had begun
the ^Eneid at St. Anne's Hill previous to our
setting out, and had advanced a good way in it
before we set off. I continued my reading as
opportunity allowed, and Mr. Fox never received
greater pleasure than when I ventured to point out
passages which pleased me. Of Virgil's ^Eneid he
was a true admirer ; and the tincture of melancholy
which he thought ran through his work, was by no
means displeasing to him."
Page 125. " There was nothing lively at the
Hague. . . . The want of political objects, I was
127
128 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
able very agreeably to supply, by continuing my
reading of the ^Eneid. In this Mr. Fox joined
with undiminished pleasure, and here we read the
10th book."
Page 129. " The conclusion of the 10th book,
the death of Lausus, and the resistance and fall of
Mezentius, Mr. Fox did not fail very much to
admire."]
Page 130. " [In making the death of a tyrant
so very unhappy, 1 ] Virgil has shown himself an
enemy to oppression and worthy the name of
Roman."
Delightful is it to escape from the cabinet into
the fields of literature. Neither our errors there,
nor the enemies we meet, are at all prejudicial
to the public good. It would have been propitious
to the happiness, and to the fame of Mr. Fox,
if he had cultivated them more assiduously, and
never left them. Every man, I believe, is an
enemy to oppression in some cases ; and Virgil
was, at all events, " worthy the name of Roman "
in poetry. Never was verse more harmonious,
sentiments more equi-distant from flatness
and hyperbole, or touches of nature more true ;
still, contrary to what Scaliger has advanced, the
passages which he has translated from Homer are
inferior not only to Homer's, but to every thing
1 JEneid, x. 833 et seq.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 129
of his own. Even those celebrated lines in the
Georgics :
Qualis populea, etc. 1
will bear no comparison with the original in the
Odyssea? The story of Orpheus is admirably
told, but the passage has many and gross faults
The feelings are always right ; the accompani-
ments not always. I shall follow the example of
Mr. Fox and his friend in making some remarks
on this subject ; not echoing old exclamations of
rapture, but pointing out what is bad, occasionally,
and throwing light on what is obscure,
Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere Manes. 3
Commentators and translators have imagined
the Manes to have been implacable and unmerciful
to the fault of Orpheus. On the contrary, they
were appeased by honey and flour, and would
most willingly, as Virgil means to say, have
remitted the forfeit of the unhappy husband, if it
had rested with them ; but it was in other hands.
At one time he tells us that Proserpine laid down
1 Qualis populea maerens Philomela sub umbra
Amissos quaeritur fetus, quos durus arator
Observans nido implumes detraxit : at ilia
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet.
VIRGIL, Georgics, iv. 511.
* Homer, Odyssey, xix. 518.
3 Virgil, Georgics, iv. 489.
17
130 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
the conditions, 1 but just after he attributes them
to Pluto. 2
Septem ilium totos perhibent ex ordine menses, etc. 3
It is surely no extraordinary thing to lament
the loss of a wife for seven whole months ; but
the poet adds, " rupe sub aeria." I wish he had
not also added
Mulcentem tigres, et agentem carmine quercus.
There is nothing of poetry in it, and it shocks
probability to no purpose. In Thrace there never
were tigers. The coldness of the climate, which
was formerly much more intense, would not
permit their existence. It would be a bad defence
to assert that by tigers he means wild beasts in
general. If he intended this, he would have
written
Mulcentemque feras, et agentem carmine quercus.
The hyperbole which follows is the admiration
of all critics, who follow up admiration from
tradition, but it is so violent and absurd, that Virgil
must have produced it much earlier in life than
the other parts of his Georgics:
Turn quoque marmorea caput a cervice revolsum
Gurgite cum medio portans CEagrius Hebrus
1 Namque hanc dederat Proserpina legem. Ib. 487.
1 Immitis rupta tyranni foedera. Ib. 492.
3 Septem ilium totos perhibent ex ordine menses
Rupe sub aeria deserti ad Strymonis undam
Flevisse, et gelidis haec evolvisse sub antris,
Mulcentem tigres, et agentem carmine quercus. Ib. 507
THE PLAINT OF PHILOMEL 131
Volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua,
Ah raiseram Eurydicen, anima fugiente vocabat ;
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae. 1
This, it must be remembered, is a description
given to Aristseus by Proteus ; had it proceeded
from the poet in his own character, the excess
would have been more pardonable.
Qualis populea, etc. 2
The poplar is not the most likely tree for a
nightingale to build her nest in, and indeed it is
probable that no instance of it ever occurred. She
is always in "shadiest covert hid," 3 and her nest
near the ground. The beauty of the passage
depends in great measure on our construing it to
signify that the nest itself was in the poplar, though
the first verse does not express it. But when
we come to the words ramoque sedens, then we
perceive at once the necessity of this interpretation.
So Philomel beneath some poplar's shade
Bemoans her captive brood ; the cruel hind
Saw them unfledged, and took them ; but all night
Grieves she ! and, sitting on the bough, runs o'er
Her wretched tale, and fills the woods with woe. 4
1 Ib. 523. Landor makes Home Tooke say : ' ' The Homeric simile
of the nightingale, and the silly tale of a head speaking when it was
cut off and rolling down a river, and speaking so loud, too, as to make
an echo on the banks, is puerile." Works, iv. 235.
* See note 2 page 129.
3 Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 39.
4 These five lines are from a translation of Georgics, iv. 464-515,
which Landor wrote in 1794, when he was an undergraduate at Oxford.
He was then nineteen, and he was rusticated the same year. Forster
132 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Sitting on the bough from which her young
were taken. Dryden, Warton, Sotheby, and
others in foreign languages, have translated the
passage without its principal beauty. It is singular
that Virgil, so attentive an observer of nature,
should place the nest of a nightingale in a poplar,
where it never builds, and should represent that
bird as bemoaning the loss of its young aloud
Late loca questibus implet
when it ceases to sing, almost entirely, after its
young are hatched.
I am convinced that nearly all of what Virgil
has imitated from Homer were the exercises of
his youth ; and that those critics who would
institute a comparison between the two great
poets, act unfairly and unwisely by adducing these
as points of it. The best translation that has
ever been made from Homer is not among the
many in Virgil, but was immediately before the
eyes of Virgil in Lucretius. It is the description
of the habitations of the gods :
found a copy of the translation, in manuscript, with the date. It was
not included in the volume of poetry which Landor published in 1795,
but was printed in The Examiner, October 16, 1841, with a note in
which Landor says : ' ' This has always been called the masterpiece
of Virgil, and chosen as the ground of competition by translators.
Wordsworth's, which is the last, is among the worst ; Drydeu's (who
always compensates with spirit for fidelity) the best ; mine, written at
college, has small merit." The " Descent of Orpheus/' as Landor calls
the piece, was also printed in The People's Journal, January, 1847 ; in
Landor' s Dry Sticks, 1858, with a long note in which passages from the
Commentary reappear ; and, without the note, in Works, 1876, viii.
290. See also Forster's Landor, i. 38.
VIRGIL'S DEBT TO HOMER 133
Quae neque concutiunt venti neque nubila coeli
Pervolitant neque nix acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat, semperque innubilis aether
Obtegit, et large diffuse lumine videt. 1
Dr. Jortin has highly praised these verses,
forgetting that the original is in the Odyssea?
and is certainly the most admirable specimen of
Homer's versification. Lucretius follows him
closely, and it is only in the very termination
that he is left behind. Aev/o) S'e7riSe'Spoju,ej> cuyX^ is
inimitable. It is a very silly and stupid business
to talk of the moral in a poem, unless it be a
fable. 2 A good epic, or a good tragedy, or a good
comedy, will inculcate many morals ; but if any
poem should rest on one only, it would soon
become tedious and insufferable.
1 Lucretius, iii. 18. The lines are not quite accurately quoted. See
also Landor's Works, iv. 95.
2 Ov\vpn6v8', odi (fracrl 0fS>v ?8os d<r(f)a\(s aid
ffj.fj.fvai' OVT artpouri Tivdcr(TfTai ovre TTOT 5fj.8pca
Several ovre ^iwi* eV^r/Xi/arai, dXXa /idX' aWpr)
TreVrarat aW^eXoy, XeuKij 8* fnt8(dpofj,ev aiy\rj'
HOMER, Odyssey, vi. 42.
In the Imaginary Conversations Landor makes Xerxes say : " The
same singer who celebrated the valour of Achilles hath described in
another poem the residence of these gods ; where they lead quiet lives
above the winds and tempests ; where frost never binds the pure
illimitable expanse ; where snow never whirls around ; where lightning
never quivers ; but temperate warmth and clearest light are evermore
around them." Works, ii. 54. Dr. Jortin, quoting the verses from
Lucretius, wrote : " If any one thinks that Lucretius ought not to be
placed so near to Virgil, let him try whether he can find better lines in
Virgil than these." Tracts, Philological and Critical, by the late Rev.
John Jortin, D.D., Archdeacon of London, 1790, ii. 457.
1 Much of this and the next two paragraphs was afterwards incor-
porated in the Imaginary Conversation between Southey and Laudor.
Works, iv. 434.
134 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Homer does not represent the anger of Achilles
as fatal or disastrous to that hero ; this would be
poetical justice ; but he shows the evil effects of
tyranny in alienating a great and elevated soul
from the common cause of his friends and country.
In the Odyssea he shows that every thing yields
to constancy and perseverance, but he does not
propose to show it, and there are other morals not
less obvious. Why should the whole machinery
of the largest poem be brought out to establish a
truth, which a single verse would inculcate more
plainly and more memorably? In epic and
dramatic poetry, it is action and not moral that
is most regarded. The feelings and exploits of
the principal hero should excite the principal
interest. The two greatest of human works are
here defective. 1 Agamemnon is leader of the
Greeks in the expedition against Troy, to avenge
the cause of his brother Menelaus. Yet not only
Achilles, but Hector and Sarpedon, and Paris
himself, engage our affections much more than
Agamemnon. In the Paradise Lost no principal
character seems to have been intended. There is
neither truth nor wit, however, in saying that
Satan is hero of the piece. It is Adam who acts
and suffers the most, and on whom the result and
consequences have most influence ; this constitutes
him the main character, although Eve is the more
" I mean the Iliad and Paradise Lost." LANDOR, Works, iv. 434.
INCOMPARABLE HOMER 135
interesting, Satan the more energetic, and on
whom perhaps the greater force of poetry is dis-
played. The Creator and His angels are all
secondary characters.
Must we not confess that every great poem
hitherto has been defective in plan, and even that
each has been more so than its predecessor ? Such
stupendous genius, so much fancy, and so much
vigour of intellect, never were united as in
Paradise Lost; yet it is neither so correct nor so
varied as the Iliad, nor, however important the
moral, so interesting or so attractive. The very
moral itself is the reason why it wearies even those
critics who insist on the necessity of it, and its
importance is the reason why it is so perpetually
urged and inculcated. It is founded on an event
believed by nearly all nations, certainly by all who
read the poem ; it lays down a principle which
concerns every man's welfare, and a fact which
every man's experience confirms : that infinite
misery may arise from apparently small offences.
But will any one say that, in a poetical view, our
certainty of moral truth, in this position, is an
equivalent for the general uncertainty which is the
leading character, the hero of the piece?
In proportions, in characters, in interest, in
action, Homer is incomparable ! It appears as if
no epic poet knew or thought any thing about
proportion. Nothing can be more gibbous than
136 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
the JEneid ; it is, without exception, the most dis-
proportioned poem in existence. 1 In others we
are liable to be impatient of the episodes ; here
we are impatient of nearly all the rest. But the
exquisite versification, the tenderness of sentiment,
and the little descriptive scenes, produce through-
out an unreluctant delay. There is somewhat of
mild attachment to the poet in the midst of our
aversion for his hero : and we love him the more
the oftener we say we never can forgive him.
Had Virgil lived to finish the ^Eneid, still its
radical fault could not have been corrected. The
episodes are the best and principal part. This is
so great an absurdity as to appear a contradiction.
No proportions are observed ; the hero's narrative
is more important, and even more poetical, than
the poet's ; yet the effect is not dramatic. There is
more variety in Homer, and more order. Achilles
is an imperfect but attractive character. Such are
most proper for poetry. It abhors whatever is
measured, or uses such things merely for its
vehicles. Cato was consistent, and Lucan was
not without some powers, yet the Pharsalia is an
intolerable burden. I say nothing of Addison's
tragedy. His genius would not support him even
in a farce. He failed in whatever bore an affinity
to poetry.
1 " The jEneid, I venture to affirm, is the most misshapen of epics,
an epic of episodes : for these constitute the greater and better part."
LANDOR, Works, iv. 105.
ELEMENTS OF THE SUBLIME 137
Inequality of character is necessary to the sub-
lime : in no period will that of Washington be
so dramatic as that of M. Antony. Take away
the inequalities of the Alps, and where is their
sublimity? 1 Steadiness and uniformity are those
qualities by which a man comes nearer to the
image of his Creator, but we desire to see repre-
sented to us men who partake in our imperfections
and infirmities. The greater they are in other
respects, the more pleased are we ; because, while
we find that we resemble them in the little, we
flatter ourselves that we may resemble them in
the great. ^Eneas was a Roman of Virgil's own
age. He was little better than Augustus. No
people was ever so far removed from all our ideas
of what is romantic as the Roman. Strange
circumstances, and foreign climates, nurturing and
forcing a peculiarity of growth, have sometimes,
but not often, taken off a little from the squareness
of their character. In M. Antony the scene and
circumstances were romantic. Sudden and violent
vicissitudes of fortune, and the predominancy of
those passions to which in some degree every one
is subject, and the excesses of which almost every
one pardons, are the very things which a poet, if
he cannot find, will feign. Sertorius, too, is con-
templated in a country not less abounding in fable
1 " Level the Alps one with another, and where is their sublimity ? "
LANDOH, Works, iv. 91.
18
138 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
and romance than the garden of the Hesperides.
Pelayo, Ruy Diaz, Cortes, have inspired genuine
poetry ' ; and it will require but little time to
remove whatever is common to others from
Palafox, the hero of Zaragoza. Even now he
appears far above them, and is surrounded, if I
may use the expression, by a luminous atmosphere
of his own. The bigots of faction have asked
indeed what he contended for, and whether it were
not for arbitrary power. He who conferred by
his own authority the distinctions he thought
proper, for services which he himself could best
appreciate, was somewhat more than a partizan of
a family. He could not but know that the poorest
and most indigent defender of Zaragoza was more
worthy of power and honour than a Charles or a
Ferdinand. 2 But after all, wide is the difference
between voluntary obedience to a legitimate and
hereditary king, and cowardly submission to a
vulgar and impudent intruder. Sentiments may
not be founded on reason, and yet may be both
amiable and grand ; founded on honour they
must be, to be either. A want of this disgusts
us in ^Eneas ; and those who praise Virgil for
his judgment, praise him for that very quality in
which he is more conspicuously than in any other
the inferior of Homer.
1 By Robert Southey.
* Charles IV. of Spain abdicated in March, 1806, in favour of his son,
Ferdinand VII.
PATHOS OF VIRGIL 139
[Page 89. " At Antwerp we finished the eighth
book of the ^Eneid. Of all the passages relating
to Evander and his son, Mr. Fox was very fond."
Page 91. "The tenderness of Mr. Fox's heart
manifested itself by his always dwelling, in poetry,
upon domestic and affecting traits of character,
when happily pourtrayed by the author."
Page 92. " This classical taste and fondness for
the tender parts of the ^Eneid endured to the
closing moments of Mr. Fox's life."]
Mr. Fox with great reason admired those pas-
sages most which are most pathetic. In this
and in the harmony of his verse, Virgil is, and
will for ever be, unrivalled. To blame him or
any other poet for his political opinions is absurd,
unless those opinions take an undue share in his
compositions. Then they are subject to the same
censure as any thing else would be, doing the
same. An honourable mind will pay nearly an
equal tribute of admiration and applause to Sir
Philip Sidney and to Algernon. My heart is as
much with the one as with the other; my reason
not. It appears to me, however, that the senti-
ments of Virgil were greatly more in favour of
Julius and Augustus than of the old government,
and I blame neither his heart nor his understand-
ing. Pompey, and such venal men as the senate,
were utterly unfit to govern. It is childish to
blame an usurper ; those only are to be blamed
140 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
who render it desirable or tolerable that any should
exist. Cromwell and William III. were requisite
to England, and France without a Bonaparte
would have been desolate and undone. Usurpers
retard the extinction of nations by the very
animosities they excite ; demagogues and political
adventurers tend to hasten it, by the indifference
they produce in consequence of their declamatory
falsehoods and unstable conduct. The republic
of Rome, with a Pompey or a Crassus at the
head, would have been soon dismembered. Julius
and his fortunate successor knew where to select
such officers, both in war and peace, as give
stability to power and constancy to fortune. It
is grievous to recollect how many good and
patriotic men suffered, and hardly less so to
consider how many servile and corrupt escaped.
{Page 150. " At Brussels, having finished the
jEneid, our readings in Latin ceased."
Pages 155-7. " Here we heard of Monsieur
Chauvelin, who was said to live a retired life in
Burgundy. The remembrance of this gentleman,
in 1802, 1 brought with it many important con-
siderations. Had Lord Grenville possessed the
conciliating manners and enlarged views of Mr.
1 Trotter means the remembrance, in 1802, of what took place
between the Marquis de Chauvelin and Lord Grenville in 1793. On
January 24, 1793, three days after the execution of Louis XVI.,
Grenville, Pitt's Foreign Secretary, notified to Chauvelin that his
functions as ambassador, suspended for some time past, were now
terminated, and that he must leave the country within eight days.
LORD GRENVILLE'S MANNERS 141
Fox ; had the minister for foreign affairs in
England, or the then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who was minister for all affairs, been capable of
rationally weighing the events of futurity with
intuitive judgment, and of viewing, with the
benignant eyes of a true statesman, the effer-
vescence and agitations of a long-oppressed nation ;
nay, had the ministers of the day, in 1793, pos-
sessed the hearts of Englishmen of the old school,
they would have venerated the struggle for liberty,
made by a sister nation, which had been long
ridiculed and despised for its subservience to a
grand monarque, and they would respectfully have
said, every nation is free at all times to choose her
own government. . . . Had such been Lord Gren-
ville's language, on the momentous day when he
ignominiously dismissed M. Chauvelin, what seas
of blood would have been spared to France and all
Europe ! "]
Page 156. " Had Lord Grenville possessed
the conciliating manners and enlarged views of
Mr. Fox," etc.
The sole views of Lord Grenville and his family
have been to amass large fortunes. No means,
public or private, have been neglected by them.
Hence it is that these new people overtop all,
or nearly all, the ancient nobility of the kingdom.
Having said thus much, I shall not be accused of
flattery if I deliver it as my opinion that he is
a much wiser man than Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox.
However proud and arrogant, he is not reluctant
142 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
to change a wrong notion for a right one. He
is more calm than Mr. Pitt, more consistent
than Mr. Fox. He has no unworthy favourites,
in public life or private. His eloquence is never
captivating, but always manly. He neither drags
along the bottom the involved toils of Fox, nor
allures with the false lights of Pitt. The propriety
of his conduct towards the ambassador of France,
and the policy of entering into a war with the
republic, have been more than enough discussed.
Burke, the only member of Parliament whose
views were extensive, and whose reading was
all turned to practical account, was more violent
than even Lord Grenville for a declaration of
hostilities. His unrivalled eloquence was fatal to
our glory ; it silenced our renown for justice and
for wisdom, undermined our internal prosperity,
and invaded our domestic peace. He was equally
clear and magnificent in the development and
display of his grand principles, but he hurried
through passages which he never had explored,
and the phantom he was pursuing struck the
lamp out of his hand.
[Page 160. "We left Brussels on the 17th of
August, and found the day extremely hot ; we
recurred again to Tom Jones, and forgot the little
inconveniences of the journey. We were now
drawing to the end of our tour, and had been
much indebted to the genius of Fielding for
amusement and instruction."]
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 143
Page 161. "[Tom Jones is also, with all his
indiscretions on his head, far preferable to those
much more dangerous personages in modern novels,
whose voluptuous authors seem to conceive that
libertine immorality, clothed in eloquent language,
are sure to gain approbation and support. Mr. Fox
was fond of novels, but not of the latter class.
Their verbiage, and want of fidelity to nature, were
sure to disgust him. I have read to him, at times,
a great many, but none of this description.] In
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments he delighted
much." 1
I have always had a strong and irresistible
curiosity to discover what opinions were enter-
tained on the first appearance of works which
afterwards acquired the greatest celebrity, and
have generally found that this celebrity has been
of gradual and slow growth. In the correspon-
dence of Swift and Pope, The Arabian Nights
are mentioned with contempt. 2 Gray speaks in
like manner of Rousseau's Heloise? These works
1 "And who would not?" Trotter asks. Landor certainly did.
Writing to Lady Blessington on January 13, 1835, he said : " The
Arabian Nights have lost none of their charms for me. All the learned
and wiseacres in England cried out against this wonderful work, upon
its first appearance ; Gray among the rest. Yet I doubt whether any
man, except Shakespeare, has afforded so much delight, if we open our
hearts to receive it. The author of The Arabian Nights was the greatest
benefactor the East ever had, not excepting Mahomet." MADDEN'S
Lady Blessington, ii. 380.
1 " And now, sir," Bishop Atterbury wrote to Pope, in 1720, " for
your Arabian tales. Ill as I have been almost ever since they came
to hand, I have read as much of them as I ever shall read while I live.
Indeed, they do not please my taste."
8 Writing to Dr. Wharton, in 1761, Gray said : " The Nouvelle
Heloise cruelly disappointed me."
144 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
are perhaps read with more universal delight than
any others, ancient or modern. Gray himself, and
Cowper, the two most popular of our poets, have
received abundance both of invective and advice
from persons whose alacrity of zeal and weight
of judgment are alike forgotten. It is amusing
to look into reviews of literature, where a series
can be found, and to see the remarks made at
the moment, on Hume, and Robertson, and
Goldsmith. They are treated as somewhat less
than equals by the lowest order of literary men,
and if any thing should be spoken well of, the
commendation is followed by hints and sugges-
tions ; instead of deference and homage, they
show encouragement, complacency, and favour.
Johnson seems to have fared better with these
people in his lifetime. Since his decease, those
whose age and poetry were equally in the sere,
the yellow leaf, have treated him less respectfully ;
1 mean a coterie in his native city, indulging that
sickly and nauseating petulance, which finds in
its ill humour a refreshment, if not a satisfaction,
and fancies in itself, if not all its pristine vigour,
yet a liveliness and spirit, when it is supported
by patients of the same disease. Dr. Darwin, 1
a man of talents and a poet, is said to have
countenanced this worse than folly. He was often
1 Dr. Erasmus Darwin, physician and poet (1731-1802), author of
The Botanic Garden, etc., and grandfather of Charles Darwin
A CREDULOUS BLUE-STOCKING 145
a great latitudinarian in absurdity, but he never
went so far, although very good-humoured and
jocose, as when he told the too credulous Miss
Seward 1 that she had "invented an epic elegy"
In fact, no writer was ever less original or more
fantastic. Her verses are bloated with expletives,
and crowded with idle and incongruous images ;
and there is no other difference between her
poetry and her prose than that her prose has
somewhat more of stiffness and transposition to
punish it for its escape from rhyme ; there is
about as much, indeed, as between the stocks and
the pillory. Johnson, with a graciousness unusual
to him, 2 and certainly with much violence to his
nature, did actually conceal from her every harsher
feature of his proud and provoked contempt.
Such characters as his are to be treated with
respect and deference ; they can seldom gain any
thing else ; and surely a kind feeling is the least
costly offering we can make. Every man of
1 Anna Seward (1747-1809), a noted blue-stocking, wrote " Memoirs
of Dr. Darwin," in which she claimed to have written the first fifty
lines of his Botanic Garden. Landor's dislike of this lady is referred
to in Forster's biography, i. 111. According to Landor, the feud began
when his remark that he preferred a pretty woman to a literary one
came to her ears, and it grew acute when she declared that nobody
but the author of Gebir could have written the review of that poem in
The Critical Review.
2 " Madam," said Dr. Johnson, when Miss Seward mentioned to
him The Columbiade, an epic poem by Mme. du Boccage, " there is not
anything equal to your description of the sea round the North Pole,
in your ode on the death of Captain Cook." BOSWELL'S Johnson, Globe
ed., p. 653.
19
146 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
genius hears them mentioned with the same
interest and anxiety as if they were his kindred.
Reviewers and magazine-men, the linkboys and
scavengers of literature, treat them like inferiors
and dependents ; and indeed no inconsiderable
portion of their worldly welfare is affected by the
representations of these men. Of late years, if
any one had paid any attention to such people,
one would imagine that Dr. Johnson was hardly
on a level with Dr. Drake, and that Aristotle
only kept a box for Mr. Fellowes. 1
This reverend gentleman having settled religion
to his mind, but unhappily
Castalia interdictus aqua, interdictus et igni
Pierio
driven out from among the poets, is retaliating
on them as their judge. He writes, or did write,
for I know not whether the work survives his
hand, in The Critical Review 2 ; strange successor
to the gentle, but high-minded Southey !
[Page 179. " On the score of religion I perceived
1 Dr. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), literary essayist and physician,
published in 1805 Essays illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian ;
and, in 1810, The Gleaner : a series of periodical essays. His work on
Shakespeare and his Times appeared in 1817 (Dictionary of National
Biography). Dr. Robert Fellowes (1771-1847), edited The Critical
Review from 1804 to 1811. He was an intimate friend of Dr. Parr,
and one of the promoters of the London University.
2 "The little man who followed you [Southey] in The Critical Review,
poor Robin Fellowes, whose pretensions widen every smile his im-
becility has created." LANDOB, Imaginary Conversations (1824), i. 40.
The passage is slightly altered in Works, 1876, iv. 22.
MR. FOX'S RELIGION 147
that he (Fox) did not merely tolerate, for that
word ill applied to his disposition on sacred matters,
but was truly benignant. . . . There never escaped
from his lips one disrespectful word regarding
religion ; never one doubtful smile was seen on
his countenance in a place of worship, or the
slightest derogation from a solemn and respectful
regard for all around him." *]
I have nothing to say on any man's religion ;
and indeed where a man is malignant in his words
or actions, his creed is unimportant to others, and
unavailing to himself. But I grieve whenever a
kind heart loses any portion of its comforts, and
Dr. Parr, 2 I am certain, felt the deepest sorrow
that Mr. Fox wanted any which Christianity could
give. Whether in the established church the last
consolations of religion are quite so impressive
and efficacious ; whether they always are adminis-
tered with the same earnestness and tenderness, as
1 This is no doubt the passage in Trotter's book that suggested the
following paragraph, which, however, appears to have been misplaced.
* " I have often remarked," Dr. Parr wrote, "that upon religious
subjects he did not talk irreverently, and generally appeared unwilling
to talk at all before strangers or friends. . . . Yet, from conversations
which have incidentally passed between him and myself, I am induced
to think that, according to the views he had taken of Christianity, he
did not find any decisive evidence for several doctrines which many
of the wisest among the sons of men have believed with the utmost
sincerity and defended with the most powerful aids of criticism, history,
and philosophy. But he occasionally professed, and from his known
veracity we may be sure that he inwardly felt, the highest approbation
of its pure and benevolent precepts." Characters of C. J. Fox, i. 220.
Trotter, describing the scene at Fox's death-bed, says : " Mr. Bouverie,
a young clergyman then in the house, was brought in. Prayers were
read. Mr. Fox was quiet and resigned, but evidently disliked
speaking." Memoirs, p. 463.
148 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
the parent church administers them, is a question
which I should deem it irreverend to discuss.
Certainly, he is happiest in his death, whose
fortitude is most confiding and most peaceful ;
whose composure rests not merely on the suppres-
sion of doubts and fears ; whose pillow is raised
up, whose bosom is lightened, whose mortality
is loosened from him, by an assemblage of all
consolatory hopes, indescribable, indistinguishable,
indefinite, yet surer than ever were the senses.
Page 170. "[I must not omit to mention
another book I read a little on the road, and at
Brussels. I allude to the Orlando Furioso of
Ariosto. Of this work Mr. Fox was excessively
fond ; and as I agreed with him in this partiality,
the reading some stanzas, and conversing on the
beauties of this delightful book, was another source
of gratification not to be unnoticed in giving a
sketch of our short tour.] Mr. Fox held Ariosto
very high, thinking him equal in some respects to
Virgil, and even his greatest of favourites, Homer."
Mr. Fox, in another place, 1 mentions Homer
and Ariosto for " their wonderful facility and the
apparent absence of all study in their expression,
which," he says, "is almost peculiar to them."
How that can be apparent which is absent I leave
to the second-sighted, but I must remark that in
1 In a letter to Trotter quoted on p. 143 of the Memoirs, Mr. Fox
said: "Homer and Ariosto have always been my favourites : there is
something so delightful in their wonderful facility, and the apparent
absence of all study in their expression, which is almost peculiar to
them."
HOMER AND SHAKESPEARE 149
poetry there are two kinds of facility, and opposite
in their nature ; one arises from vigour, the other
from negligence. In Homer and Shakespeare we
shall invariably find the best parts remarkable for
a facility of expression. As the purest and noblest
of the metals is also the most plastic, in like
manner whatever is in poetry the noblest and the
purest takes a "form and pressure" the most
easily and perfectly.
Ariosto and Ovid are negligent ; both are
amiable, both are ingenious, both are good poets,
but neither of them can aspire to the highest
rank, or to any comparison with Homer. It
appears rather strange that Mr. Fox should not
have perceived this easiness in Ovid, and in
Hesiod. The latter is a very indifferent poet, but
he enjoys no inconsiderable reputation. His verse
is the most fluent of all, yet his sentences are
seldom harmonious. We read that he contended
with Homer, and gained the prize. If they
contended, this is not unlikely to have happened ;
for the second best has always more favourers
than the best.
To write a description of a shield 1 is an idle
labour, in which the imitators, and perhaps the
1 Writing to Trotter from St. Anne's Hill, Mr. Fox said : " In
Hesiod . . . there is much that is tiresome. Perhaps the work which
is most generally considered as not his, I mean the 'A&nls, is the one
that has most poetry in it. It is very good, and to say that it is
inferior to Homer's and Virgil's shields, is not saying much against it."
Memoir*, p. 495
150 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
predecessors of Homer, tried their skill. That of
Achilles, in the Iliad, 1 being so admired, is a proof
how much more conspicuous, and indeed attrac-
tive to the generality, are the blemishes and
excrescences of a poem, than its action and
symmetry. Poetry was more generally attended
to in the age of Homer than in ours, and many
would be anxious to know, exactly and minutely,
what armour a goddess had bestowed on her son,
since by that very armour he had reflected on their
country the highest splendour of her military
glory ; so that a description of it, although no
ornament to the Iliad, might be considered as
hardly a redundancy or a fault. Pope and others
borrowed their admiration of it, without possessing
or knowing where were deposited the title-deeds
on which it was founded. But it is better to be
blinded a good deal by veneration than ever so
little by jealousy.
But in the passage I have quoted there is surely
a piece of pleasantry. Mr. Charles Fox, member
of parliament for Westminster, and for several
weeks, I believe I might venture to say months,
one of the king's ministers, was pleased to enter-
tain a high opinion of Ariosto, countenanced him
as a person of real facetiousness, and admitted him
occasionally into an equal share of favour with his
greatest of favourites, Homer !
1 IKad, xviii. 474.
ARIOSTO AND TASSO 151
Ariosto is almost as far below Homer as he is
above Spenser. 1 He may be ranked among the
first writers of romance. His versification is very
easy, but also very negligent. He bears no re-
semblance whatsoever to Virgil or to Homer, and
comes nearer to Ovid than to any other of the
ancients. But, although the language of Ovid is
sometimes too familiar, it hardly ever is prosaic.
There is always a something, however little it may
be, which gives it the character of poetry. In
Ariosto there are at least a thousand verses which
have nothing to distinguish them from prose,
except the corresponding rhyme ; perhaps if I said
three thousand I should not exceed the truth.
The description of the palace of Atlantes 2 is a
wonderful type of the French revolution. Could
this possibly have escaped Mr. Fox ?
There is in Italian poetry another passage so very
curious and remarkable, so exact and complete a
prophecy of the same event, that I cannot help in-
serting it, however much I would avoid quotations :
La Francia, adorna or da natura e d'arte
Squallida allor vedrassi in manto negro ;
Ne d'empio oltraggio inviolata parte,
Ne loco del furor rimaso integro :
1 Mr. Fox had written to Trotter: "I am quite pleased at your
liking Ariosto so much ; though indeed I foresaw you would, from the
great delight you expressed at Spenser, who is certainly inferior to
him, though very excellent too. Tasso I think below both of them."
Memoirs, 496.
1 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iv.
152 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Vedova la Corona ; afflitte e sparte
Le sue fortune; e '1 Regno oppresso ed egro
E di Stirpe real percosso e tronco
II piu bel ramo ; e fulminate 11 tronco.
Gierus., lib. 20. 1
There is a splendid confusion in Ariosto, which
makes his imagination seem richer and more
extensive than it is. It certainly is not more
vigorous nor more various than Boccaccio's, to
whom he is inferior both in the humorous and
the pathetic. I cannot but think him somewhat,
though little inferior to Ovid. The latter has not
only more of the true epic, but an equal share of
that which Ariosto most excelled in variety of
subject and exuberance of fancy. His epistles
abound in touches of nature, equally pure, dis-
criminating, and true, and what they have been
most condemned for, but which is among their
highest merits, that sophistry of argument which
follows inventive love, excusing its errors and
exasperating its grief. In these, however, there are
two verses which ought rather to have come into
the mind of Ariosto than of Ovid :
Sic ubi fata vocant udis abjectus in herbis
Ad vada Maeandri concinit albus olor. 2
1 The reference should be to Tasso's Gerusalemme Conqulstata, xx.
2 Ovid, Heroics, vii. 1. " As if the Fates/' Landor writes in another
place, " were busied in 'calling white swans !' Ovid never composed
any such trash." Works, viii. 412. In a note, not reprinted, in the
first edition of the Imaginary Conversations, he remarks that many
modern critics believe the two lines to be spurious, and that some
manuscripts are without them (Imag. Conv., 1829, iv. 264)
VIRGIL'S MELANCHOLY 153
The epistle of Dido to ^Eneas, which was
perhaps a school exercise, and is certainly the
worst poem attributed to Ovid, begins with this
simily ; l a most contemptible one indeed. Even
such prose as
Lungo sara che d'Alda di Sansogna
Narri, o della contessa di Celano,
O di Bianca Maria di Catalogna,
O della figlia del re Siciliano,
O della bella Lippa di Bologna, 2 etc.
is rather more tolerable. This is utterly unneces-
sary, but the other is violently misplaced. Poetry
has lost by similies more than it has gained.
Where we find one apposite, we find several that
tend rather to divert our attention from the object
they mean to illustrate : if they are bad, they must
fall short of it ; if good, they may go beyond it.
No two poets who have written on the exploits
of heroes, are so totally and universally different as
Virgil and Ariosto. If there is a general air of
melancholy pervading the poetry of Virgil, there
is, on the contrary, a levity and playfulness of
expression even in the most solemn and pathetic
passages of Ariosto :
Sospirando piangea, tal che un ruscello
Parean le guancie, e '1 petto un Mongibello. 3
1 Landor's spelling. See the Letter to an Author, appended to the
first edition of Pericles and Aspasia, ii. 333 : " Is it not odious to use
latin words anywhere for English : simile for simily ? " etc.
2 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xiii. 73.
J Orlando Furioso, i. 40.
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154 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Well might Cervantes ridicule the romance-
writers. But Ariosto does not always rise with
us into this terrific loftiness without leading us
back again, and setting us down nearer home.
For instance :
II liberal, magnanimo, sublime
Gran cardinal de la chiesa di Roma. 1
I hardly know any book so pleasant to read
in, or so tiresome to read through, as Orlando
Furioso of course, I except The Faery Queene.
I will never believe that any man has overcome
twelve or fifteen thousand lines of allegory, with-
out long intervals of respite and repose. I was
seventeen years in doing it, and I never did
any thing which I would not rather do again.
In the gloomy deserts of Dante, some scenes
are stupendous both from their grandeur and
their solitude, and lose nothing of their distinct-
ness by their elevation ; in Ariosto, if there are
a few misshapen ornaments, yet every thing around
them is smiling in sunshine and fertility. No man
ever lays his poem down without a determina-
tion to resume it, but he lays it down often
and negligently. Let him once be under the
guidance of Dante, and
Revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hie labor, hoc opus est 2
1 Orlando Furioso, iii. 56. Written of Cardinal Ippolito di Este.
See Landor, Works, iv. 118.
2 Virgil, JEneid, vi. 128. Wrongly quoted.
IN PRAISE OF ALFIERI 155
He is determined not to desist ; he may find
another passage as striking as the last ; he goes
on and reads through.
It is remarkable and surprising that Mr. Fox,
in speaking of Italian literature, never conversed
about Alfieri. He was incomparably the greatest
poet in Europe at the time of this journey, and
there are not in the whole compass of Italian
literature such exquisite specimens of poetical
language and vigorous versification. He approaches
more nearly to the manner of the ancients than
any modern ; never swollen like Tasso, nor prosaic
like Ariosto, nor puny like Metastasio. If the
fame of such a man cannot be expected to attain
its full growth in his own age, neither can we
find without astonishment that his productions
were overlooked. He was a cordial hater of the
French ; he despised their morals, manners, govern-
ment, and literature ; he detested Voltaire, whom
indeed he might have considered as an epitomy
of that people ; versatile, lively, vain, lying, shame-
less, unfeeling, unprincipled, and ambitious. A
hatred of them on these grounds, or any other,
might perhaps have not been countenanced by
the liberal spirit of Mr. Fox.
[Page 171. " I now regret that I did not take
the Iliad or Odyssey with me. These works Mr.
Fox preferred to all others of the ancient classics ;
and, were a choice to have been made, would have
156 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
yielded all to have preserved them. His letters
show his strong admiration of Homer ; and my
readers will perceive in them, that he esteemed
Euripides very highly, and perhaps preferred him
to all dramatic writers ; yet Homer was the great
poet, with him, who included every beauty, and
had the fewest defects in his work, of any ancient
or modern genius."]
We are informed that he preferred Homer to
the other classics. It would be better if we could
discover in his taste something that was peculiar
and discriminating ; but not a single remark of that
kind is recorded. That he estimated Euripides
very highly is another piece of information. If,
as is added, he preferred him to all dramatic
writers, he deserves more pity than even that
tragedian of pity ever excited. Euripides seems
to have written solely for the purpose of incul-
cating some moral and political axioms. 1 Almost
every character introduces them, and in almost
every place. There is a regular barter of verse
for verse ; no credit is given, but the exchange
paid down instantly for the commodity. These
dogmas in general are miserably flat, common and
unimportant, totally different from the striking
sentences employed not sparingly by Pindar, which
always come recommended by some simple and
appropriate ornament, like images on days of
1 Much of this paragraph was afterwards incorporated in the
Imaginary Conversation between the Abbe Delille and Walter Landor.
LANDOB'S Works, iv. 122.
GREEK TRAGIC WRITERS 157
festival in the temples. Virgil has interspersed
them in his works, perhaps with equal felicity,
and it is among the principal excellences of Ovid.
The dialogue of Euripides is in general dull and
heavy, the construction of his fable infirm and
inartificial, and if in the chorus he assumes
another form, and becomes the poet, he is grossly
at a loss to make it serve the interests of the piece.
Aristophanes, who ridicules him in his comedies,
treats him disdainfully as the competitor of
Sophocles, and speaks probably the sense of the
Athenians in the time of their finest taste for
literature. He was not considered by them as the
rival of Sophocles ; but sensible men in all ages
will admire him, and the more so because they
will fancy they discover in him more wisdom
than others have discovered ; for while many
things in his tragedies are direct and almost pro-
verbial, many are allusive and vague, occurring
in various states of mind and temperatures of
feeling. But there is little theatrical or dramatic
in his works, and his characters are more anxious
to show their understanding than their sufferings.
Euripides came farther down into common life
than Sophocles, and he farther than JEschylus ;
one would have expected the reverse. In Hecuba,
Talthybius calls Polyxena a calf 1 ; her mother
1 XfKTOl T 'A.^alS>V (KKptTOl VfllwitU
ocrftov ays naBt^ovrts \fpoiv
o- EURIP., Hecuba, 515.
158 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
had called her so before, and in Alcestis, the best
of his works, Hercules is drunk. 1
It would, however, be unjust to deny that some-
times, for a page together, he is both animated
and pathetic, but it would be equally or more
so to strip the laurels from the recent tomb of
Alfieri, 2 to assert that he elevates the mind, or
softens the heart less frequently, that he has
displayed fewer or fainter powers of invention,
rendered less service to his language, or conferred
less glory on his country.
1 ore(/>ei fie Kpara fj.vpcrivrjs K\dois
(ifiova-' liXaKT&v. EuBip., Alcestis, 752.
1 The monument to Alfieri; by Canova, erected at the expense of the
Countess of Albany, is in the church of Santa Croce, Florence. Landor
said of it : ' ' His monument is unworthy of Canova's hand. It exhibits
a small portrait of the poet in basso relievo. Little is said of him, much
of the Countess." Letters of Landor (1897), p. 44. Landor once met
Alfieri, in a London bookshop, and spoke to him enthusiastically about
the French revolution. " Sir," said Alfieri, ' ' you are a very young
man. You are yet to learn that nothing good ever came out of France,
or ever will." FOBSTEB'S Landor, ii. 68.
CHAPTER IX
MR. FOX IN PARIS
Hotel de Richelieu English nobility abroad French marquises
English county gentry Bonaparte and La Fayette Moreau and
Joubert Pitt and France The drain of gold Meeting with Lord
Holland The Theatre franfais Racine Pictures at the Louvre
Poussin Fine arts in England National gallery needed English
landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner, and the Barkers
Climate and pictures Rubens Versailles Louis XIV. Fox no
musician Metastasio and Pindar Meeting with Kosciusco The
Tuilleries.
{Page 184. " It was not, however, without
painful imaginations, that one approached the city
of Paris. The recollection of the multitude of
lives immolated upon the shrine of sanguinary
ambition was almost appalling."
Page 188. "Entering one of the Fauxbourgs,
we passed through the triumphal arch erected, I
think, for Louis the 14th, and shortly found our-
selves at the Hotel de Richelieu, which had been
engaged for Mr. Fox."]
Pages 190-191. "[Two or three of Mr. Fox's
friends came to see him on the evening of his
arrival : and in seeing this great man happy, and
among his dear English friends and companions,
the mournful impressions I had received upon
entering the Hotel de Richelieu, wore away. . . .
Amidst all the ease of polished society, the in-
159
160 MR. FOX IN PARIS
dependence of the Englishmen was perceptible on
all sides. . . .] There is a noble air of liberty
amongst the nobility and higher classes of English-
men, which added to their other accomplishments,
makes them appear the most respectable of their
class in Europe."
The nobility of other countries is divided into
two parts. For instance, the grandees of Spain
are not merely the peers of Condes, etc. A certain
landed property is requisite, which is unalienable,
and must consist of many thousands a year. There
were in Paris before the revolution several
marquises who had not an income of two hundred
a year each ; some lived as common gamblers and
sharpers, and exercised their talents in this country
afterwards. All those gentlemen of England J
who have inherited from their ancestors for three
or four centuries large estates would be classed
among the nobility hi the other kingdoms of
Europe, and many of their families had once the
rank of baron in their own. When Mr. Pitt was
innovating, in his regular government as he called
it, more than Marius presumed to do when he
had trampled on the necks of the Romans, the
1 In the Imaginary Conversations Landor makes Alfieri say : " The
greater part of the English nobility has neither power nor title. Even
those who are noble by right of possession, the hereditary lords of
manors with large estates attached to them, claim no titles at home or
abroad. Hence in all foreign countries the English gentleman is placed
below his rank, which naturally and necessarily is far higher than that
of your slipshod counts and lottery-office marquises." Works, iv. 267.
OUR LANDED ARISTOCRACY 161
few country-gentlemen remaining might have
formed themselves into a separate class, and
constituted a nobility more respectable and more
powerful than his. Lords of two or three manors,
heirs of three or four thousand a year for three
or four generations, might have established to
themselves that rank in the country which their
families once possessed. They lost it by not being
called to parliament at the beck of an arbitrary
king, who conferred new possessions and privileges
on such as were more subservient to his will.
When republicanism was making such alarming
strides as he represented, why did not the anti-
phlogistic philosophers who sat shivering on their
seats in the house of commons, take out of his
hands those instruments of which he knew not
the use and application ; why did not the country
gentlemen of England erect a barrier of property
on a broad basis, against the flood-tide which he
foretold would ruin their estates, and re-establish
old usages in opposition to new opinions ?
Page 193. " [The various points of attraction
in Paris irresistibly drew the mind in different
directions. The new government, just rendered
permanent and hereditary in Bonaparte, was pre-
senting itself to the public eye. Under it, the
stern republican and angry royalist were ranging
themselves, unable to struggle against an order of
things, emerging from that chaos of conflicting
interests, which until now had agitated the interior
21
162 MR. FOX IN PARIS
of France. The imposing character of Bonaparte,
a warrior and a statesman of no common note, had
acquired an ascendancy which he was admirably
qualified to maintain.] You endeavoured, said he,
to M. La Fayette, 1 on his thanking him for his
liberation from the dungeons of Germany, to
establish the solecism of a monarch at the head of
a republic."
Bonaparte was in the habit of saying to those
about him things which were fyutvavra crwerotcrt. 2 A
monarch, as we call a king, had existed in the
republic of Poland.
Page 195. " It was privately stated, that when
Bonaparte returned from Egypt, and the change
of government was in agitation, he] (Bonaparte),
Moreau, and Joubert, had been thought of as fit
heads for the republic." 3
Joubert lost his life in the midst of his popularity.
1 Lafayette fled from France during the Reign of Terror, and was
arrested and imprisoned by the Prussians. In 1795 the King of Prussia
handed him over to the Austrians, by whom he was kept in confinement
at Olmiitz. His case was the subject of a debate in the House of
Commons in .1796, but Fitzpatrick's proposal that England should
demand his release was defeated. He was liberated in August, 1797,
at the instance of Bonaparte.
2 Pindar, Olymp. ii. 152. The same words were inscribed on the title-
page of Odes by Mr. Gray, printed at Strawberry Hill, 1757.
3 Trotter proceeds : " That the latter [Joubert] had been nominated
by the party who conceived that a military character was requisite at
the head of the nation ; and that after he lost his life in battle, Moreau
and Bonaparte alone were those to whom the armies subsequently
looked up ; but the former was induced, by the latter's persuasion, to
yield his pretensions to him. Without vouching for this, 1 cannot
assent to the opinion that Bonaparte could have had any competitor of
a formidable nature, either upon being chosen first consul, or upon his
attaining the consulate for life."
WHAT PITT ACCOMPLISHED 163
Moreau was thought amiable, but was always
called sans caractere. No man ever was so well
formed to govern France as Bonaparte. He had
associated in person with the vilest, the most
unprincipled, and the most turbulent. He was
chosen to fill his office as thief-takers are chosen
for theirs : from knowing the haunts and habits
of the abandoned and desperate.
{Page 198. " I found myself in Paris, the seat
of so many Bourbons, once almost adored, now
blotted from the calendar of Sovereigns, and a
new throne quietly erecting at the Tuileries ; a
new dynasty securely placing its feet upon the
steps."]
[Page 199. " Such were my thoughts, I felt
almost giddy at the view ; the destiny of millions
was arranging before my eyes ; it was quite impos-
sible for a number of Englishmen to meet, and to
forbear saying, how astonishing !] What a business
has been accomplished by William Pitt! [What
a friend has he been to the fortunes of Bonaparte !]"
Yes, yes ! without this incomparable financier,
France would not have found gold enough in all
her territories to make a crown of. This heaven-
born minister showered it down on her like Jupiter
into the lap of Danae.
Page 200. 1 "The phenomenon of abundance of
1 Trotter says (p. 199) : " Another striking 1 result, also, of the
Coalition War awaited us in Paris. Here all was gold and silver. In
London, a few guineas were with great difficulty procured from a
banker, as a matter of favour ; in Paris, the banker gave you your
164 MR. FOX IN PARIS
gold and silver in France, and of nothing to be
seen but paper in England how should I have
rejoiced that Mr. Pitt, accompanied by some
vociferating members of parliament, or interested
merchants, had been led to a Parisian banker's
desk, and interrogated on this difference."
Why ! they would have sworn it was either the
last night's plunder by some jacobin, or, if any
of Pitt's saints were among them, that it was
some illusion of the devil. Tell them a truth, and
they hate you ; prove it, and they never forgive
you.
[Page 201. "As Mr. Fox found himself happily
reunited to Lord Holland and his family, after a
considerable separation, we dined with them, and
in the evening went to the Theatre franpais.
Upon entering a French theatre for the first time,
an Englishman finds a good deal to reconcile him-
self to. The want of a powerful light throughout
the house, intended to give greater effect to the
stage, offends his taste at first, but he will finally
approve, if he be not determined to prefer all the
customs of England."
Page 202. "The piece we saw was Andromaque,
in which Mademoiselle Duchenois, as Hermione,
obtained and deserved great applause. The
French declamation is at first rather painful to an
English ear, and I think a less measured style,
choice silver or gold, and both were plentiful : England having nothing
but paper, and France nothing but gold and silver ; a fact which spoke
very intelligible language. How much should I have rejoiced/' etc.,
as in Lander's quotation.
VISITS TO THE THEATRE 165
and studied tone, would much improve it. The
unpleasantness wore quickly off, however."
Page 203. "Mr. Fox enjoyed the French
theatre very much ; and as Racine was his favourite
dramatic author, we went very shortly again to
see Phedra performed at the same theatre."
Page 204. " On this occasion he (Mr. Fox) was
very soon recognised by the audience in the pit.
Every eye was fixed upon him, and every tongue
resounded Fox ! Fox ! The whole audience stood
up, and the applause was universal."]
Page 202. Here are some remarks on the
French theatre very creditable to the taste of the
author. The manner of lighting it is founded, not
on parsimony, as some Englishmen think, but on
sound knowledge of effect. Every actor is equal
to his part ; none seems to solicit applause, every
one to deserve it. Human ingenuity could not
contrive any thing so painful to the ear as a
continuation of Alexandrines, a regular and rapid
alternation from high to low, a pause at every sixth
syllable ; and French tragedy labours under this
evil spirit, which no genius can exorcise, yet the
actors in some degree seduce us from our
sufferings.
Whoever takes the trouble of marking all idle
or extravagant epithets in Racine, will be sur-
prised at the number. A very large proportion
of rhymes in the language are adjectives and
166 MR. FOX IN PARIS
participles, which also in general form the cesura.
This is among the principal reasons why it is less
poetical than any other we know of, unless it be
the Chinese ; and if we consider that some of the
poets, as we find in Manage, collected the rhymes
first and filled them up afterwards, and that it was
the custom of Racine to begin with the second
verse throughout, we cannot wonder that nothing
grand, simple, or unlaboured is to be found in
their graver poetry. I believe I read La Fontaine
with as much pleasure as any Frenchman does,
but his merits are quite distinct from his verse.
Racine is a dexterous planner of dramas, but all
his characters are French ladies and gentlemen,
and all possess dispassionate judgment in the most
arduous affairs. The celebrated line
Je crains Dieu, etc.,
is taken almost verbally from Godeau. 1 The one
preceding it is useless, and shows, as innumerable
other instances do, his custom of making the first
for the second. He has profited very much by
the neglected poets of his country, and wants
energy because he wants originality.
1 Soumis avec respect a sa volonte saiute
Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai pas d'autre crainte."
RACINE, Athalie, Act I. Sc. 1.
Landor repeats this criticism in his Imaginary Conversation with the
Abbe Delille (Works, iv. 120). Joseph Warton, in his essay on Pope
(3rd edition, p. 91), quotes the account given by Menage, in his
Observations sur les poesies de Malherbe, of another theft from Antoine
Godeau, Bishop of Vence, the culprit in this case being Corneille.
THE FRUITS OF CONQUEST 167
Page 207. " [No one could be in Paris and not
feel a powerful desire to view those productions of
art and genius, the accumulated fruits of successful
war. Shortly after our arrival, therefore, we
hastened to the museum of pictures at the
Louvre.] Mr. Fox smiled as he entered the
museum of the Louvre, and seemed plainly to say,
' Here are the fruits of conquest.' '
My own feelings, I confess, were extremely
different. I went, with impatient haste, to behold
these wonders of their age and of all ages succeed-
ing, but no sooner had I ascended a few steps
leading to them, than I leaned back involuntarily
against the ballusters, and my mind was over-
shadowed, and almost overpowered, by these
reflections : Has then the stupidity of men who
could not in the whole of their existence have
given birth to any thing equal to the smallest of
the works above, been the cause of their removal
from the country of those who produced them ?
Kings, whose fatuity would have befitted them
better to drive a herd of swine than to direct the
energies of a nation ! Well, well ! I will lose for
a moment the memory of their works in con-
templating those of greater men !
If I envy a man any thing it is his smiles ; but
those of Mr. Fox I neither could envy nor share.
The long gallery of the Louvre should be
divided into five or six, and the light admitted
into each from above. It would then contain a
168 MR. FOX IN PARIS
third part more of pictures, and every one would
be seen to greater advantage. At present it is
like looking through a sheet of paper rolled up
into a cylinder. The French artists do not derive
all the advantages they might from the Italian.
They either copy statues, or imitate those who
have. Poussin is more studied than Raphael, and
although they know well that the perfection of
their art consists in the delight which arises from
beauty and combinations of forms, and from
sweetness and propriety of colours, yet we find
no attempt to acquire any thing from Correggio.
To the scandal and infamy of our government,
we have no national gallery, when a million or
two would have purchased some of the finest
specimens of all the ancient masters, both in
painting and in statuary, before they were irre-
vocably fixt in Paris, but after it was known that
they would otherwise be sent thither ; we have not
even a receptacle for the select works of our own
most eminent masters. With all these discourage-
ments, we have now living a greater variety of
good painters than the French have. Claude
Lorraine, N. Poussin, Le Brun, Vernet, and per-
haps as many more, have never been equalled
here ; but those who attribute our failure to our
climate talk most ignorantly. It is in landscape,
where climate would have most influence, that the
greatest number of the English school excel.
SCHOOLS OF PAINTING 169
Wilson and Gainsborough were succeeded by
Loutherbourg and Turner, and the Barkers. 1 Of
these, Thomas Barker, however little patronised,
and still young, has produced more good pictures
than any native of England. Climate alone has
little effect on the fine arts. The most vivid and
powerful of colourists lived and studied among
damps and fogs. The Venetian school was formed
in a showery country, and the colours of Rubens
were " unborrowed of the sun." 2 The visible face
of nature is not that on which painters fix their
eyes incessantly ; memory, reflection, imagination,
give a play and a variety to its features ; genius
and judgment have the power of contemplating it,
abroad or at home, in whatever aspect they wish.
Page 215. " [Two days after our arrival in
Paris, we went to see the Palace of Versailles. . . .
This cumbrous pile seemed little to suit Mr. Fox's
taste. . . . The pride of despotism had erected a
mansion for its display of pomp : a galled and
oppressed people had paid, with the fruit of their
labour, for its erection.] Here their haughty kings
rioted Versailles and forgetting the miseries of
their subjects, added to them by their selfish ex-
travagance, and bestowed on profligate courtiers
1 "The Woodman," by Thomas Barker, of Bath (1769-1847), was
engraved by Bartolozzi. The brother, Benjamin Barker, died in 1838.
Thomas Jones Barker, son of Thomas Barker, was born in 1815 and
died in 1882.
3 " With orient hues unborrow'd of the sun."
GRAY, Progress of Poesy, iii. 3.
22
170 MR. FOX IN PARIS
what would have made merit happy, and caused
genius to expand and bloom."
Louis XIV., that great patron of literature, is
celebrated for giving pensions to men of genius.
I once took the trouble to cast up the amount
of several, bestowed on the ornaments of his
reign, and found that, collectively, they rather fell
short of what Cambaceres was said to give as
wages to his cook.
Page 228. "[Mr. Fox enjoyed the French
spectacle greatly, and I think he did not differ
much from me, when I preferred it to the English
stage. In one respect, however, he felt less
pleasure at the public amusements than others did,
as] music gave him no great satisfaction. [He did
not appear to relish it much, and he himself has
assured me, and his mind was free from all disguise,
that he derived no pleasure from it. Still this must
be taken in a qualified sense, even from himself.]
He who could so strongly taste the charms of
poetry, could not be destitute of a musical ear." l
This does not follow. No people are so ignorant
of poetry as musicians. Hardly one was ever
1 " Mr. Fox had a kind of singular taste for music ; in this alone he
was totally without judgment. Old tunes were such as alone pleased
him. He said that no opera was equal to Inkle and Yarico. Some one
happening to mention The Beggar's Opera, he said, ' Certainly, 1 will
except that. The Beggar's Opera is the wittiest drama on the stage :
the wit is simple, intelligible, and appeals alike to every one.' "
Circumstantial Details, etc., p. 41. Bishop Tomline quotes Windham's
remark that Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Dr. Johnson, the four greatest men
he had known, had no ear for music. See Lord Rosebery's article in
The Monthly Review, August, 1903.
MUSICIANS AND DANCERS 171
found who could write it even indifferently, and
extremely few who could value properly even
the merits of versification. This appears strange ;
but it is more so, and equally true, that although
dancing requires a good ear, as many think, few
dancers are good musicians ; their ear is good for
nothing more than to note the proper time, the
averts and 0eans l of the feet. The Italians are the
most musical people in Europe, and the worst
dancers ; the French are the best dancers and
worst musicians.
Page 229. "No one felt more than Mr. Fox
the powers of Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Euripides,
Ariosto, or Metastasio."
Alas ! these are levelling days indeed ! Meta-
stasio in the company of Pindar and of Homer !
the powers of Metastasio ! of the Abbate Meta-
stasio ! Aye verily, why not ? was he not poeta
Cesareo ? Mr. Fox did seriously think him a
great poet, and knew not that Alfieri was a
greater, or one at all ! Of Pindar he knew
little ; he tells us himself that he had read only
a part of his works. 2 There is a grandeur of
soul in Pindar which never leaves him, even in
1 Thesis is the ictus or beat of the foot, arsis the uplifting. The
meanings are sometimes confused.
3 " Pindar," Mr. Fox wrote to Trotter, " is too often obscure, and
sometimes more spun out and wordy than suits my taste ; but there are
passages in him quite divine. I have not read above half his works. "
Memoirs, p. 495.
172 MR. FOX IN PARIS
domestic scenes. 1 His genius does not rest on
points or peaks of sublimity, but pervades all
things with a vigorous and easy motion, such
as poets attribute to the messenger of the gods.
He is still more remarkable for his exquisite
taste than for his sublimity. He never says
more than what is proper, nor otherwise than
what is best ; and he appears no less the superior
of all other mortals in the perfection of wisdom
than of poetry.
[Page 229. " Eight or nine days after our arrival,
the door of one of the apartments of the Hotel de
Richelieu was thrown open, and a gentleman of
small stature, and with nothing prepossessing
in his appearance, was shown in. ... It was
Kosciusko ! "]
Page 231. " Mr. Fox's reception of him
(Kosciusko) was warm and friendly."
He and Palafox are the only two men in the
universe I would rise from my chair to look at. 2
Page 232. " [Kosciusko was in apparent good
health, though, I believe, his wounds will never
allow him to be perfectly well.] The interview
was not very long, but how different was it from
the meeting of potentates, prepared to deceive one
1 A portion of this paragraph is repeated in the Imaginary Conversa-
tion between Landor and the Abbe Delille. Works, iv. 97.
J ' ' Among all men elevated in station who have made a noise in the
world (admirable old expression) I never saw any in whose presence I
felt inferiority excepting Kosciusko." LANDOR, Works, iv. 428.
VILLAINS AND PATRIOTS 173
another, or planning the disturbance of happy and
independent nations. Not like Joseph and the
remorseless Catharine." 1
Infamous prostitute and despicable villain !
What reaction of the mind drives us back upon
you, from the sublimest and purest spectacle of
human virtue !
Page 233. [" I saw Kosciusko depart with a
strong sentiment of profound admiration and
sorrow.] He (Kosciusko) was an obscure indi-
vidual in France, little noticed, and cast back
among the class of ordinary men ; not regarded
by a new government rising upon the ruins of
every thing republican, and felt himself alone
among the brilliant crowd of opulent and
thoughtless strangers."
Yet Mr. Fox was honoured in that country.
Were his principles, then, different from Kosciusko's,
and more congenial to the French ? They were.
Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res. 2
[Page 239. " I was glad to go to the palace of
the Tuileries with Mr. and Mrs. Fox, Mr. West,
and Mr. Opie. In front are still to be seen the
marks of cannon-ball : the memorable night of the
1 " Summer, 1780, Joseph made his famous first visit to the Czarina
(May-August, 1780) not yet for some years his thrice-famous second
visit, thrice-famous Cleopatra voyage with her down the Danube."
CARLYLE'S Frederick the Great. In 1780 the Emperor Joseph II. met
Catharine at Mohileff and went with her to St. Petersburg. The
second meeting took place in 1787.
3 Horace, Epist. i. 17. 23.
174 MR. FOX IN PARIS
9th and 10th of August, 1792, was thus vividly
recalled to the memory."]
Page 240. " Could one enter this palace with-
out shuddering ? and could one avoid acknowledging
that after such and greater and continued horrors,
the French with some reason have naturally
acquiesced under a government which, though
falling short of their early and fond expectations,
affords them security against [internal commotions,
and protects their properties and lives against] the
caprice of an ignorant populace ? "
No people is so incapable of governing itself
as the French, and no government is so proper
for it as a despotic and military one. A nation
more restless and rapacious than any horde in
Tartary, can be controuled only by a Genghis
Khan. Such is their animal temper at this day,
and such was it in the time of Annibal, as
described by Livy. Their emperor has acted
towards them with perfect wisdom, and will
leave to some future Machiavelli, if Europe
should ever see again so consummate a politi-
cian, a name which may be added to Agathocles
and Cassar Borgia. 1 He has amused himself with
a display of every character from Masaniello 2 up
1 " Agathocles, the Sicilian, came not merely from a private station,
but from the very dregs of the people, to be king of Syracuse."
MACHIAVELLI, The Prince, chap. viii. " Cesare Borgia . . . obtained
a princedom through the favourable fortunes of his father, and with
these lost it." Ib. chap. vii.
2 Tommaso Anniello, leader of the Neapolitan revolt in July, 1647.
BONAPARTE'S VAGARIES 175
to Charlemagne, but in all his pranks and vagaries
he has kept one foot upon Frenchmen. This is
a sight which those who think worth seeing might
have seen for nothing, had they been wise.
Page 240. " Security against internal com-
motions and protection of property and lives
against the caprice of an ignorant populace,
are sometimes given by despotism, and some-
times not. It was, however, no matter of choice
with the French : they were dragooned into it,
and applauded what they dared not resist. One
of the reasons why a new despotism is often
strong is this : many brave men are overpowered
by more brave men. They are ashamed of
acknowledging or showing that they were so,
and unite with those whose force they can well
estimate. Hence they acquire their share of
honours and distinctions ; and after they have
made others yield, it is forgotten that they
themselves have yielded.
CHAPTER X
COURT OF BONAPARTE
Fox at the First Consul's levee Englishmen detained in France
Lord Whitworth English ambassadors Lord Douglas at St.
Petersburg Lord Morpeth and the Queen of Prussia English
in Spain Blake's military operations France and Switzerland
Fox presented to Bonaparte Helen Maria Williams Sir Stephen
Fox General Moreau Monuments franfais Madame Cabarrus
Conversation with Bonaparte Virgil again Favourite epithets.
[Page 242. "Mr. Fox had now been twelve
days in Paris, and we had not seen Bonaparte,
except slightly and imperfectly at the theatre.
My own wish to behold the first Consul had not
been increased since my arrival. The observation
of military guards everywhere, the information
that the number of barracks in and about Paris
were very great, that 20,000 troops were within a
short summons ; and, above all, a knowledge that
the system of espionage was carried to an incredible
height, making suspicion of the slightest indispo-
sition to government sufficient cause for individuals
to be hurried away at night (many of them never
to be heard of again), had not contributed, by
any means, to exalt my opinion of the new
government."]
Page 243. "At this time I even doubted
whether an Englishman, a true lover of liberty,
ought to sanction the new order of things."
176
AT BONAPARTE'S LEVEE 177
That is to say, at a time, as the author tells us
in the very sentence before, when suspicion of the
slightest indisposition to government was sufficient
cause for individuals to be hurried away at night,
many of them to be never heard of again.
But Mr. Fox's determination to go to the levee
threw a " new light " upon the secretary's mind.
[Page 243. " Mr. Fox's determination to go to
the approaching levee threw a new light upon my
mind, and I was brought to consider the case
dispassionately. Was an English gentleman or
nobleman, travelling for instruction or pleasure,
to be the reformer and censor of Europe ? at
Petersburg to reprimand Alexander, or shun his
' court ? at Constantinople to insult the Grand
Signior, and rudely reject the society of his
ministers ? No ! I said to myself . . . the
enlightened stranger will, in all countries, respect
the existing government, conform to its usages and
ceremonies, and frequent its court as the focus of
all the rank, talent and character of the country."]
Any Englishman who could sanction by his
presence such atrocious despotism, is unworthy of
breathing the air of his free ancestors, and deserves
universal and eternal execration. He should be
banished, not only from the society of his country-
men, but from the sight of his fellow-creatures.
Never did I feel more cordial pleasure, never did
I acknowledge with more gratitude and transport
the interposition of divine justice, than when 1
23
178 COURT OF BONAPARTE
heard of such wretches being detained in France,
after the people of England had received the
grossest insult in the person of their ambassador. 1
Bonaparte, said I, has often been vindictive and
sanguinary ; let him now be both, let him punish
those whom the laws of England, and whom the
feelings of Englishmen, can never reach. Wide is
the difference between a respect for the usages of
a foreign country or a foreign court, and a volun-
tary homage paid to a ferocious barbarian who
holds all usages in contempt. An ambassador
goes to him by the order and for the interests of
his country ; private persons should look at him
from a distance, as at a tiger or serpent, such as
his native land does not produce. It was requisite,
was it, to frequent his court " as the focus of all
the rank, talent and character of the country " ?
An involuntary smile will rise at these expressions,
of which the folly and impudence are become a
byword in every lane and alley, and are the signal
for boys to hoot at whenever they meet a Foxite.
The rank and character, and best manners, were
not excluded from the Tuileries, but disdained
to enter. Many men of illustrious rank and
unostentatious honour were seen daily in the
1 The famous interview between Bonaparte and Lord Whitworth
took place on March 13, 1803. The First Consul raised his arm as if
he meant to strike the ambassador, who afterwards declared that, had
the blow fallen, he would have run Bonaparte through the body with
his sword. Lord Whitworth was the uncle of the Hon. Rose Whit-
worth Aylmer, the subject of Landor's elegy.
AN INDOLENT AMBASSADOR 179
gardens of the Luxembourg, whose countenance
said, / would be grateful, but gratitude is a crime
under the new government; the hand of Bonaparte,
when Mr. Fox ceases to kiss it, may consign us to
the dungeon which is to be the boundary of our
existence.
Page 244. "[Mr. Merry, 1 the British ambas-
sador, was a good-natured and friendly man, but
unequal to trying and delicate emergencies. . . .]
I had subsequent reason, in Mr. Fox's ministry, to
observe that Mr. Pitt's long ministry had been
ill supplied with men of talent in foreign courts ! "
There is no nation in Europe, great or secondary,
which employs such improper persons in embassies.
Mr. Fox sent a nobleman 2 into Russia who is said
to have treated almost every one, native and
foreign, with contempt. Ignorant, indolent, and
dissipated, the merchants presented to him, in
very glowing language, a long account of their
grievances. They expected he would consider it,
look over treaties and stipulations, arid present it
in diplomatic terms to the emperor. Whether he
read it or not is uncertain, and it is difficult to
say on which supposition we could found his best
1 Mr. Anthony Merry was the Minister Plenipotentiary in Paris at
the time of Fox's visit.
* The Marquis of Douglas, afterwards Duke of Hamilton. See
Diaries, etc., of Sir George Jackson, March 29, 1807 : "The Emperor,
it seems, had taken great offence at Lord Douglas having delivered to
the Russian Minister, as an official note from himself, the translation
of a memorial he had received from the merchants at St. Petersburg,
which contained expressions not very flattering to the Russians " (ii. 90).
180 COURT OF BONAPARTE
defence, but he immediately delivered it, or sent
it to the people in power there. The emperor
was enraged at such language ; and a body of
men whom he had always protected, and whose
grievances, when he knew them, he would redress,
lost his favour and countenance for ever.
If one ambassador had the negligence or temerity
to deliver an instrument into the hands of an
emperor, rough and red-hot, another 1 was more
conciliating and more circumspect. When the
most lovely queen in the universe was overturned
in her carriage, on a road where the enemy was
pursuing her, while the cannon was heard louder
and louder at every discharge, he wished to know
whether he could lend her any assistance, and rode
on. He never saw the members of government,
never asked one question of those who came
forward to give him information, listened to
nothing, accepted no hospitality, rejected all ser-
vices, dismissed with impatience and rudeness
those who offered any, and brought back no other
intelligence than that Napoleon had gained a sort
of victory, that the roads were very sandy and
1 Viscount Morpeth, afterwards sixth Earl of Carlisle (died 1848),
was sent on a mission to Prussia in October, 1806. Sir George
Jackson wrote that, after the battle of Jena (October 14), " Morpeth
and his party had to run for it." " Lord Morpeth," Lady Errol wrote,
" is a fine person to scud, like a child, frighten'd and run away, and
burnt his papers, and yet can't tell anything but what he heard from a
few mad, cowardly runaways like himself." See Miss Festing's Frere
and his Friends, p. 138.
DIPLOMATIC INEPTNESS 181
heavy, that persons of condition could not ride
along them expeditiously or comfortably ; and, by
way of after-thought and reminiscence, that he
passed the Queen of Prussia, thrown out of her
carriage, dead or alive he could not say positively,
and that the duke of Brunswick too had met with
an accident. It is proper to choose ambassadors
from men of good breeding. If they are too
inquisitive they may hear unpleasant things, and
the money they disburse for secret services may
be distributed among people of no rank and
character. I know not whether it was an ambas-
sador or a general who weighed a whisker against
a religion, and a turban against an empire ; but
he certainly showed a most laudable zeal for the
uniformity and efficacy of the service.
What information and intuition were requisite
for an ambassador in Spain or Sicily ! Yet we
still continue to pursue our former follies ; and a
knowledge of the people, and even of the language,
is considered as a matter of indifference well
enough, but a superfluity. Agents of every rank
and description were sent into Spain. Young
men were highly flattered by a cordial reception
from the members of government, who in their
turn were flattered just as highly by receiving
any thing in the form of a minister from a foreign
court. The res dura et regni novitas, 1 were never
1 Virgil, JRntid, i. 568.
182 COURT OF BONAPARTE
once considered on either side. It was pleasanter
to experience marks of attention and respect from
persons of rank and power, than to collect the
most useful pieces of information, which lay more
widely scattered, and were to be given by coarser
hands. I found a disposition in the higher orders
to rely too much on the English. Magazines
were stored up at Coruna, and other places, of
arms, ammunition, clothing, while the army of
Blake was incapable of moving from Aguilar,
after the battle of Medina del Rio Seco, 1 for
want of these very necessaries. Our communica-
tions should have been direct with the armies on
the coast, between our naval officers and their
military. Every movement should have been con-
certed and combined. Great part of our fleet,
lying idle before Brest, should occasionally have
acted as far as Bilbao. Bayonne, San Sebastian,
Passage, should have been blockaded ; Santona, 2
which was totally unfortified, without a gun,
1 The Spaniards, under Cuesta and Blake, were defeated by Marshal
Blessieres at Medina del Rio Seco on July 14, 1808. This opened the
way to Madrid, where Joseph Bonaparte arrived on July 20. Southey
says: "Blake was thought to have given proofs of great military talents
both in the action and in the retreat." Peninsular War, i. 395. A
month or two later Landor, with a troop of volunteer cavalry raised by
himself, attached himself to the Galician army. He was engaged in
some petty skirmishes near Aguilar, and was given the honorary rank
of colonel.
* On July 5, 1810, Captain F. W. Aylmer, afterwards sixth Baron
Aylmer, of his Majesty's ship Narcissus, landed at Santona with a force
of British sailors and marines and some Spanish troops, and destroyed
the French batteries. Captain Aylmer was a brother of the Hon. Rose
Aylmer, and years afterwards made Lander's acquaintance at Bath.
THE PENINSULAR WAR 183
without a soldier, should have been occupied.
The French will make it a fortress more im-
portant than Gibraltar ; for it possesses all the
same advantages, with a haven very extensive
and perfectly secure, and the hills along the
coast, even the spot that must be fortified, are
covered with oaks of large growth nearly to the
summit. The town cannot be bombarded, nor
the supplies of food or water cut off. By these
operations, which were neglected because they
were easy, and because bad statesmen never
attempt any thing but what they cannot do,
the armies then pouring into Spain would have
been detained or checked, and our alliance would
have produced the best effects of co-operation.
If these things appeared at first too easy, they
were soon after considered in quite another point
of view. Petty fishing towns were objects un-
worthy of those commanding geniuses who preside
over the destiny of nations; but a great military
road is connected with these petty fishing towns ;
some hundred thousands of cannon-balls were
accumulated in Passage and San Sebastian ; several
pieces of heavy artillery were deposited there, and
forty or fifty ships filled with biscuit and flour ;
these were defended by two hundred and fifty
conscripts. To attack so many ships, so many
vast heaps of cannon-balls, and so many pieces
of heavy artillery, as were actually lying on the
184 COURT OF BONAPARTE
ground, and wanted nothing but carriages and
artillerymen, is not one of those daring actions
for which an English minister would choose to
be responsible. In the panorama which he ex-
hibits to the Honourable House., the petty fishing
town is turned suddenly into an impregnable
fortress. English politicians thought such things
impracticable, chimerical, contemptible ; Spanish
generals thought otherwise ; but an enemy with
a superiority of resources lay between. They
were soon persuaded, by those who could have
no interest in flattering and deceiving them, to
trust solely in their own valour and firmness ;
that the assistance of the English would ever be
ineffectual, though it might, in the beginning, be
sincere. Nothing was more useful and important
than to inculcate this truth in the right place ;
it was inculcated, and will bring forth its fruits
in due season.
[Page 254. " Shortly after our arrival in Paris,
distressing accounts (distressing to lovers of liberty)
were daily brought from Switzerland.] That coun-
try (Switzerland) was now suffering the horrors of
military oppression."
Yet Mr. Fox was paying court to that co-apostate
who occasioned and commanded these horrors.
[Page 256. " The aristocratical governments
(of Switzerland) had long disgusted and alienated
the people ; and the country, not feeling the same
MR. FOX AT THE PALACE 185
stimulus which warmed them against Austria in
1300, fell an easy prey to French ambition.
Accordingly,] the senate of Berne in 1802 sanc-
tioned all the measures of Bonaparte, joined with
his government against the people," etc. 1
Enemies of reform, in all countries, will do the
same thing. They always have done it, and they
always will. Those who at this moment would
hear such a sentiment with abhorrence, and who
really think themselves incapable of such an action,
would certainly commit it. They would attribute
the fault to the people, to its violence, to its
contempt of their wisdom, and to that universal
disorder which never listens to any ; but, believe
me, they would commit it.
[Pages 258, 259." On the day of the great
levee . . . Lord Holland, Lord Robert Spencer,
Lord St. John, Mr. Adair, and myself accompanied
Mr. Fox. . . . Mr. Merry, the English ambassador,
appeared on the part of the British government, to
sanction and recognize the rank and government of
the first Consul 1 " 2 ]
Page 260. "[What a subject he (Mr. Merry)
had for a letter, in the style of Barillon, for the
perusal of Mr. Pitt, or his friend, Mr. Addington,
1 "And at length/' Trotter proceeds, "conspired with France in
stifling the last struggling sigh for liberty."
2 " On November 15 (1802), Gillray published a caricature entitled,
' Introduction of Citizen Volpone and his Suite at Paris,' in which Fox
and his wife, Lord and Lady Holland, and Grey, are stooping low to
the new ruler of France." WRIGHT, Caricature History of the Georges,
p. 588.
24
186 COURT OF BONAPARTE
then acting as Pitt's deputy, or locum tenens in the
government ! Mr. Merry, then acting under Lord
Hawkesbury, the Quixotic marcher to Paris, which
same lord was now receiving a magnificent present
of a service of china of unrivalled beauty and
excellence, from this same new government and
Bonaparte.] It would have been an instructive
lesson to Mr. Pitt himself, could he invisibly,
with Minerva by his side, have contemplated the
scene."
He ! with Minerva by his side ! The goddess
would have appeared :
Ardentes oculos intorquens lumine glauco,
Et graviter frendens. 1
But, as for giving him an instructive lesson !
the goddess of wisdom had not the attribute of
Omnipotence.
[Page 287. "At this time an invitation was sent
to Mr. Fox, from Miss Helen Maria Williams. 2
She requested the pleasure of his company to an
evening party, and, to express how much this
honour would gratify her, wrote that it would be
' a white day ' thus distinguished. Some of Mr.
Fox's friends wished him to decline this invitation
altogether, from apprehension of giving a handle
to ill-nature and calumny. He, however, always
1 Virgil, Georgics, iv. 451. Wrongly quoted.
1 Author of Letters containing a Sketch of the Politics of France (1795)
and other works. She lived many years in France, and was described
by Samuel Rogers as a very fascinating person, but not handsome.
"1 have frequently dined with her," Rogers said, "at Paris, when
Kosciusko and other celebrated persons were of the party."
AN ANCESTOR OF MR. FOX 187
the same, disdaining the fear of suspicion, and
unwilling ungraciously to refuse an invitation
earnestly pressed, did not agree with them, and
went for a short time."]
Page 288. " He was aware that he might be
misrepresented for going to Miss Williams's con-
versazione, but he was too benignant to slight with
contempt and scorn the request of an accomplished
female, whose vanity, as well as a natural admira-
tion of so great a man, were deeply concerned that
he should grant it."
Can any thing be so absurd and ridiculous as
to talk in this manner of Mr. Fox ? In what
respect was he the superior of Miss Williams ?
His family was base and despicable. Stephen Fox, 1
in the memory of persons but lately deceased, was
a gentleman's valet, and was brought into the
house of commons for administering a medicine
which never enters the lips, and for saying, God
bless you, Sir, on receiving it back in his face.
His master said rightly, " Stephen, you ought to
be at court, or in the house"
1 Sir Stephen Fox, the grandfather of Charles James Fox. " This
gentleman," Evelyn wrote in his Diary (September 6, 1680), ' ' came
first a poor boy from the quire of Salisbury, then was taken notice of
by Bishop Duppa, and afterwards waited on my Lord Percy, brother to
Algernon, Earl of Northumberland, who procur'd for him an inferior
place amongst the clerks of the Kitchen and Greene Cloth side, where
he was found so humble, diligent, industrious, and prudent in his
behaviour, that his Majesty, being in exile, and Mr. Fox waiting, both
the King and Lords about him frequently employ'd him about their
affairs." Lander's story will not be found either in Sir George
Trevelyan's Early History of Charles James Fox or in The Memoirs
of the Life of Sir S. Fox, Kt. (1717, reprinted 1811).
188 COURT OF BONAPARTE
The political views of Miss Williams have been
clear and undeviating, so as not to admit Mr.
Fox's to a comparison ; her imagination is more
vivid, her reading more extensive, her writings
more animated and more correct than his. I
never saw her, and have little esteem for her,
but I will do her justice.
[Page 290. "We continued busily employed
every morning in transcribing and reading at the
office of the Archives ; and as we were never inter-
rupted or disturbed, I was surprised one day by the
door opening. A stranger of an interesting and
graceful figure came gently in, advanced rapidly,
and in embracing Mr. Fox, showed a countenance
full of joy, while tears rolled down his cheeks.
Mr. Fox testified equal emotion. It was M. de la
Fayette, the virtuous and unshaken friend of
liberty ! . . . Fayette, at a very early age, had
visited London ; he had there become acquainted
with Mr. Fox, and they had not met again till
now."
Page 291. " M. Fayette, born under a despotic
regime, saw nothing in his own country to employ
a young and enthusiastic mind. North America
attracted his attention. . . . She was in the infancy
of her strength, when Fayette, animated with the
glorious cause, left all the luxuries and indulgences
which rank and fortune could procure him, crossed
the Atlantic, and offered himself to the Americans,
as a champion and a friend. He built, at his own
expense, a frigate, to aid the cause ; and, by his
military and civil exertions, contributed not a
MADAME RECAMIER 189
little to the emancipation of the United States
of America ! "]
Page 292. " Whilst Fayette thus promoted the
cause of liberty in America, his noble friend in the
British house of commons laboured with equal
zeal to inspire an obstinate and unenlightened
ministry," etc. 1
And immediately after formed a coalition with
it and entered into all its views ! Yes, with men
who separated from England all that retained the
principles of a Sydney and a Hampden.
[Page 297. "As Mr. Fox proceeded in his
researches among the Archives, an occasional day
intervened, as he advanced in his progress, which
was given to invitations, or visits of an interesting
nature. A dejetiner, given by Madame Recamier,
at Clichy, at this time, collected almost every
distinguished person at Paris : we went there. . . .
So much has been said of the beauty of the
charming hostess, that it would be superfluous
to say more, than that every one was captivated
by it. But her simple and unaffected manners,
a genuine mildness and goodness of disposition,
obvious in all she said and did, with as little vanity
as is possible to conceive, in a young woman so
extravagantly admired, were still more interesting.
She received her visitors with singular ease and
frankness. The house at Clichy was a pretty one,
1 " With respect," Trotter proceeds, " for the rights of humanity,
and mercy for the tortured Americans : loudly and repeatedly he
raised his voice in their favour, and if he did not convince the ministry,
he at length convinced the nation."
190 COURT OF BONAPARTE
and the gardens extended to the river ; in the
latter (sic), the company walked about till all
were assembled."]
Page 298. " [There] for the first time we saw
General Moreau. The general is negligent in his
dress."
And in every thing he says or does. He was
always fond of saying a petulant thing about the
chief Consul, and was pleased with those who could
say it better : a certain proof, if not of his enmity,
at least of his ill-will and disaffection. It can
hardly be said that it was rancour, for there was
not strength enough in him to turn sour, but
there was a peevish disappointment, a perverse
and languid vexation. He is respected and
esteemed in his family and among his officers,
but his wisdom was more conspicuous before he
was crossed by fortune. It was of a nature to
profit by that of others ; which is perhaps, in
political and military affairs, the best wisdom of
all. In this temper he followed, and was guided
by, the genius of Pichegru, a silent and stern
man, who pointed out from a distance the way
to victory.
Page 305. " The monuments franpaisj disposed
in a manner the happiest that can be conceived."
1 ' ' The Musee des Monuments Nationaux/ Miss Berry wrote in her
journal, in March, 1802, " occupies the whole emplacement of the
Convent des Petits Augustins. Here they have brought together all
A FASCINATING HOSTESS 191
Monuments lose their interest when they have
been removed from the places where they were
first erected. That of Heloise and Abelard, in
the center of a quadrangle, with some dozen
others, and a little stick of weeping willow bent
over it, did more than lose all its effect. Paris
is not the Paraclete.
Page 313. " [Previous to our leaving Paris for
La Grange, 1 ] Madame Cabarrus, ci-devant Tallien,
gave an elegant and sumptuous dinner to Mr. Fox."
Here are no such remarks as were made about
Miss Williams ; nothing is said of Mr. Fox's
great condescension, no admiration is raised about
his dignity and sweetness. Miss Williams was
distinguished for many and great attainments,
Madame Cabarrus for none. O'Connor was of
the party.
Page 313. " [Every thing which taste, genius,
or art could contrive, conspired to make this the
most perfect sort of entertainment I had witnessed.
Madame Cabarrus was a most lovely woman, some-
thing upon a large scale, and of the most fascinating
manners. She was rather in disgrace at court,
where decorum and morals were beginning to be
the figures of the kings, from St. Denis and every other place ; all the
tombs and monuments of their great men and women ; in short, all
the spoil of the churches and convents from almost every part of the
country." Journals, ii. 152.
1 The residence of the Marquis de Lafayette, to whom Mr. Fox was
about to pay a visit.
192 COURT OF BONAPARTE
severely attended to ; Madame was supposed, when
separated from her husband, to have been indiscreet,
and did not appear there.
" Most of Mr. Fox's friends were at this dinner ;
but the surprise, and, indeed, displeasure of some
English characters of political consequence, was
great at finding that Mr. Arthur O'Connor was one
of the guests. This had been done inadvertently
by Madame Cabarrus, and was certainly not con-
sidered.] Mr. (now Lord) Erskine was extremely
uneasy lest evil report should misrepresent this
matter in England." 1
Consciousness of integrity is enough for honest
men ; the shades of opinion fly over them, and
leave no mortifying chill on their bosoms. I am
sorry to hear this of Lord Erskine, whose mind
has also been much agitated by the Revelations
poor man !
{Pages 315 316. "On the 1st Vendemiare
(September 23d) another levee was held, at which
Mr. Fox was present. ... It was usual to invite
those present at a former one to dinner on the
subsequent one. Mr. Fox on this occasion, there-
fore, dined with the first Consul. I recollect well
his return in the evening to the Hotel de
Richelieu ; he said Bonaparte talked a great deal,
and I inferred at the time, that he who engrossed
1 " Mr. Fox," Trotter adds, ' ' ever magnanimous, treated it as an
unavoidable, though unlucky circumstance. He spoke to Mr. O'Connor
as usual, and lost none of the enjoyment of the evening from an event,
which being trivial, must be forgotten when malignity was fatigued
with recounting it." Memoirs, p. 314.
DINNER AT THE PALACE 193
the conversation with Mr. Fox, debarred himself
of much instruction, and did not feel his value
sufficiently. Mr. Fox, however, was pleased, or I
may say amused. After dinner, which was a short
one, the first Consul retired, with a select number,
to Madame Bonaparte's apartments in the
Tuileries, where the rest of the evening was
spent. Mr. Fox appeared to consider Bonaparte
as a young man who was a good deal intoxicated
with his success and surprizing elevation, and did
not doubt of his sincerity as to the maintenance of
peace."]
Page 317. "[Bonaparte spoke a good deal
about the possibility of doing away all difference
between the inhabitants of the two worlds of
blending the black and the white, and having
universal peace !] Mr. Fox [related a considerable
part of the evening's conversation, with which he
was certainly much diverted, but he] had imbibed
no improved impressions of the first Consul's genius
from what passed."
It is pleasing and flattering to self-love to
discover something extraordinary in such charac-
ters. When we first look at them, when we first
hear them speak, they strike ; but the second
sentence generally destroys the effect of the first,
the second interview invariably. The first Consul
talked of blending the Black and the White. It
is an operation in which I should have no objection
to hear that he was personally employed ; but,
carrying it on with the vigour and to the extent
25
194 COURT OF BONAPARTE
of his other operations, he would leave us as little
of physical beauty in the world as he has left of
moral. In another century or two, men would
flock to the Tuileries to see the frightful faces
of Antinous, Meleager, Apollo, and Venus, with
their strait legs, sharp noses, and wavy hair.
Page 342. " [The last day of my stay in Paris
being one on which a levee was held, I went with
Mr. Fox and some of his friends. . . .] Bonaparte's
former question [of] Etes-vous catholique ? [to me,
when informed that I was an Irish gentleman] was
not repeated."
There was no dignity or politeness, or good
sense, or propriety in this question. Louis XIV.
would never have asked it ; for, although a bigot,
he was a gentleman.
[Page 348. " The government was too recently
established, when I was in France, to decide what
effect it had upon the people."]
Page 349. " [The taxes were very high, but
they were equally imposed in 1802 ] there were
no reversions or sinecures."
Nor are there yet ; no wonder we do not con-
sider it as quite a regular government. Ours is
the one to teach philosophy. Our passions have
been well exercised, and are grown perfectly cool,
and we do not go to our lesson in a state of
repletion. We have learned, or ought to have
VIRGILIAN EPITHETS 195
learned, patience ; we have been taught several
very good new prayers, and are put into a frame
of mind to be very sincerely penitent. But I am
sorry to find that there are still some restless spirits
in the lower forms, who say that if it must
continue so with us to the end of the chapter
they care not how much margin there is.
Page 349. "[There was evidently now not
only a commencement of a new government, but
of a new sera of things : the radical change had
been so great, that it might be said, as of a new
order of things rising up
Jura magistratusque legunt, sanctumque senatum.
Hie portus alii effodiunt :] hie alta theatris
Fundamenta locant alii, immanesque columnas
Rupibus excidunt, scenis decora alta futuris." 1
The author is very fond of long extracts from
Virgil, which I read willingly through wherever
I find them, and as Mr. Fox did not make any
remark on this passage, I will hazard one.
The words in italics point my aim. There is no
epithet of which Virgil is so fond ; it is the only
one he has used redundantly. 2 I do not, however,
think that he would have admitted it in this
situation ; it holds a similar one just above ; the
word was probably apta. Decorations adapted to,
1 Virgil,, JRneid, i. 426.
1 Compare Lander's Works, v. 87 : " In reading the Gerusalemme
Liberata, I remarked, that among the epithets, the poet is fondest of
grande : I had remarked that Virgil is fondest of altui."
196 COURT OF BONAPARTE
and worthy of, the magnificent scenes to be repre-
sented on that public theatre.
I could, perhaps, if I looked into my little
edition, find some other places marked, where
alterations might be suggested. We are not to
fancy that absolute perfection is to be found in
the writers of antiquity. In general they are
greatly more correct than ours, but they also, and
even the greatest of them, have their blemishes.
The lines I am about to transcribe are exquisite:
Quin etiam hyberno moliris sidere classem,
Et mediis properas Aquilonibus ire per altum ;
Crudelis ! quid si non arva aliena, domosque
Ignotas peteres, et Troja antiqua maneret,
Troja per undosum peteretur classibus aequor? 1
If hybernum were substituted for undosum, how
incomparably more beautiful would the sentence
be for this energetic repetition ! Adjectives in
osus express abundance and intensity to such a
degree that some learned men are of opinion they
take it from odi, the most potent and universal
of feelings. If so, famosus, jocosus, fabulosus,
nemorosus, must have been a later brood, which
has increased prodigiously in modern Italy, and
nearly to the same amount in England, France,
and Spain. Undosum, however, with all its force,
would be far from an equivalent for hybernum,
1 Virgil, JEneid, iv. 309. Much of the next and following para-
graphs was repeated by Laiidor in Works, iv. 123, 124.
DIDO'S APPEAL TO AENEAS 197
even if hybernum derived no fresh importance
from its apposition.
The passion of Dido is always true to nature.
Other women have called their lovers cruel ; she
calls ^Eneas so, not for betraying and deserting
her, but for departing and hazarding his life, dear
to her, at the instant he was depriving her of hers,
by encountering the tempests of a wintery sea.
"Even if it were not to foreign lands and
unknown habitations that you were hastening ;
even if Troy were in existence, and you were
destined thither, would you choose a season like
this ? Would you navigate a sea of which you are
ignorant, under the stars of winter ? "
CHAPTER XI
MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
Death of William Pitt The Coalition of 1806 The King's dislike
of Fox Lady Moira's forecast Grenvilleites Monarch and
Empire Hateful phrases The Irish Roman Catholics Lord
Grey and George III. Irish politicians A corrupt and venal
Parliament Eulogy of Sir John Newport Fox and Grattan.
[Pages 357-9. " In the commencement of the
year 1806, after the demise of Mr. Pitt, there
existed a pretty strong sentiment in the nation,
but a great deal more powerful one among certain
parties, that a combination of rank, talent, and
popularity, was imperiously required to support
the State. . . .
" I am much inclined to think that Mr. Fox had
determined to devote himself to history, previous
to Mr. Pitt's death ; nor do I think that event
would have altered his intentions, unless the voice
of the people, reaching the throne, had concurred in
seeing placed at the head of the ministry a friend
to the just equilibrium between regal authority and
popular rights, a man of commanding genius and
extensive knowledge. Assailed, however, by per-
suasion, and willing to sacrifice his own opinions for
the good of his country, his judgment and feelings
gave way, and he consented to take a part in the
ministry, in conjunction with Lord Grenville.
" He could not be ignorant that such a ministry
198
was unstable. The basis was without foundation.
Even the superstructure was Pittite, to which
Mr. Fox lent the sanction and grace of his illus-
trious name. It is not improbable that the court,
unobstructed by Lord Grenville and his friends,
might have determined on placing Mr. Fox at the
helm of affairs. Certain it is, that his admission to
the sole management of the government, or his
rejection, would have benefited the cause of the
people."]
Page 358. "The voice of the people reaching
the throne, had concurred in seeing" etc. My
business is not with expressions, but with facts.
The people cared nothing about the matter. They
expected nothing better, and feared nothing worse.
No event ever caused less interest than the new
coalition.
Page 358. "Assailed, however, by persuasion,
and willing to sacrifice his own opinions for the
good of his country, his judgment and feeling gave
way, and he consented to take a part in the ministry
in conjunction with Lord Grenville." 1
It would be impossible to state a stronger fact
in any language, to prove how utterly unfit was
such a sacrificing mind for the management of this
country at such a crisis.
It is precisely of that order which never can
1 William Pitt died January 23, 1806. The Ministry of all the
Talents, with Lord Grenville as First Lord of the Treasury, and
Mr. Fox as Foreign Secretary, took office in February.
200 MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
govern well or be well governed ; for if its
judgment and feeling give way, so slippery and
elastic is it, that nothing can rest on it uprightly
and stably. What must those feelings be, which
the good of the country requires should be sacri-
ficed ? What must be that judgment which contrary
judgments can warp ?
Page 358. "Even the superstructure was Pittite,
to which Mr. Fox lent the sanction and grace of his
illustrious name " More shame for him, then. What
he had opposed in doing ten years together, he
sanctioned and signed when done! Honest men of
all parties ! is this right, is it wise ? Is it not weak,
wicked, infamous ; does it not undermine all trust
and confidence ; does it not indispose us from aiding
in any good, lest, after all our zeal and labour,
the object should be abandoned ? Speak plainly ;
come forward without turn or subterfuge ; lay
your hands on your hearts, if they are English,
and answer this one question.
Page 359. " It is not improbable that the court,
unobstructed by Lord Grenville and his friends,
might have determined on placing Mr. Fox at the
helm of affairs."
The court ? Who ? What advisers of the King ?
George III. never liked him, and those about the
royal person would not propose the minister who
might displace them. They never thought him
THE COUNTESS OF MOIRA 201
more likely to be serviceable than his opponents,
and would not have recommended him if they had.
Page 360. " [Early in February, 1806, the new
ministry, with Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville at their
head, were called to his Majesty's councils ; and as
he wished to place me near himself, he required
me to join him the day after he had received
his Majesty's commands. I left Ireland with no
sanguine hopes that a ministry thus constituted
could render much service to these countries, and
particularly to Ireland.] Lady Moira, 1 whose name
and character is deserving of equal admiration
and respect, distinctly pointed out to me the
impossibility of the ministry existing long."
This woman had more wisdom than all the
politicians and ministers of both parties. No
person in either kingdom was more distinguished
for sound sense, and, what will always arise from
it, right principles. If Mr. Fox foresaw what
she did, with the same clearness, he must either
have been very foolish or very base to undertake
any part in the business.
1 Lady Moira, mother of the future Governor-General of India
(afterwards Marquis of Hastings). Before her marriage she was
Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of whom Steele said that "to behold her
is an immediate check to loose behaviour, and to love her is a liberal
education." Taller, No. 44. " I saw Lady Moira," Trotter writes,
" after Mr. Fox's death ; she received me with great kindness, but
great emotion, she took me by the hand, as I addressed her. ' We
have lost everything,' said she, the tears rolling in torrents down her
venerable cheeks ; ' that great man was a guide for them all ; he was
their great support, and now there is nothing cheering in the prospect.
For me, I have nearly run my course, I shall remain but a little
longer, but others will suffer ; the loss of Fox is irreparable.' "
Memoirs, p. 364.
26
202 MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
I am happy to read on. Here is a just and
eloquent narrative of facts, relative to this illus-
trious woman. The generosity of her heart, her
remoteness from Fox, and her proximity to the
despicably poor creatures who managed the affairs
of Ireland, made her think more highly of him
than her experience had warranted.
Page 368. " [In Fox his Majesty at length saw
the great shield of the country, and by calling him
into the cabinet, on the demise of Mr. Pitt, gave
a proof that he had been held in thraldom by the
overbearing minister, who it may be truly said,
could bear no rival near the throne. There was
much greatness of mind in the venerable monarch
who thus rose above the long system of delusion
practised against him, and he proved himself
thereby both the lover of his people, and also
the ultimate approver of Mr. Fox's political career.
With such an adviser, he now perceived America
would have been unalienated, Great Britain un-
burthened, and France of just dimensions and
moderate power. Afflicted as the father of his
people now unhappily is, bowed down with years
and infirmity, it is a consolation to his family, and
satisfaction to those who sincerely venerate him,
that, with his faculties unclouded, and his health
unimpaired,] he chose Charles James Fox as his
minister, instead of continuing the system of
Mr. Pitt."
I should have said, Mr. Fox was appointed
minister, and the system of Mr. Pitt continued ;
and I should have been supported by what follows.
FINE SOUNDING PHRASES 203
[Page 369. " Had Lord Grenville and his
friends been thrown aside, much more would have
been effected, but] party was too strong for the
monarch." l
I hate that word. British monarch and British
empire are fine-sounding words, but I delight
sermone pedestri. I like king and kingdom much
better, and have no objection to the phrase of
Queen Elizabeth, commonwealth, when it does not
remind me of speculating agitators and shuffling
demagogues. Whoever is desirous to see more
on this subject may consult Lord Molesworth's
preface to the Franco-Gallia?
Page 376. " [Mr. Fox's loss was peculiarly felt
in the cabinet, on the affair of] the Catholic bill 3
forced on the King by Lord Grey, then Lord
Howick [and Lord Grenville]."
When I consider that the King is the true
representative of the English people, that all
1 " And the genius of Fox," Trotter gloomily adds, " was thus
cramped, thwarted, and counteracted."
1 Franco-Gallia : or an account of the ancient free State of France
and most other parts of Europe before the loss of their liberties.
" Written originally in Latin by the famous civilian Francis Hotoman,
in the year 1674, and translated into English by the author of The
Account of Denmark " (London, 1711). The translator was Robert, first
Viscount Molesworth (1656-1725). A second edition, with a new
preface by the translator, appeared in 1721. In this Lord Molesworth
said : " Queen Elizabeth, and many other of our best Princes, were not
scrupulous of calling our Government a Commonwealth, even in their
solemn speeches to Parliament."
The introduction of the Roman Catholic Army and Navy Service
Bill led, in March, 1807, to the dismissal of the Ministry.
204 MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
other representation has been, at various times,
a fallacy and phantom, and the real presence has
been vested and concentered in his august person,
I am shocked at the idea of any thing forced on
him, and the more so by a person who received
at his hands the most permanent and distinguishing
marks of royal favour. I will not trust myself
with the belief of such an outrage on the
sovereign, such a scandalous and infamous breach
of gratitude and loyalty. It would have been
high treason ; and although the ministers might
not have impeached him, as they wanted only
his place, yet the people, who pity the infirmities
of their king, and remember all his good-humour
and affability, would have been clamorous for the
punishment of so atrocious a culprit. It would
be impossible for any king, after this, to admit
such a person to his councils, even if he had useful
talents and graceful manners. The secretary of
Mr. Fox had perhaps more justice on his side,
when he represented this assistant as the one
with whose forwardness, precipitancy, and folly, the
minister had most reason to be offended. It would
be difficult for him, in these circumstances, to
observe that temperance in phrase which the
delinquent had not observed in practice. Suppose
two writers, the one of present, the other of past
events ; suppose them to possess the same intelli-
gence, and to employ the same style, on the
HISTORY AND MEMOIRS 205
misconduct of any minister, or the bad tendency
of any transaction ; still that perhaps would be
considered as arrogant or malicious in the con-
temporary, which would be received as deliberate
and strict justice from the subsequent historian.
Thus a writer not more powerful than a Roscoe,
with sentences puffed out and highly coloured,
like a poor child's cheek in cold weather, would
be listened to as a narrator of old occurrences
more attentively, for instance, than a St. Simon,
with all his simplicity and force, if he had published
his memoirs in his life. This is a reason why,
in speaking of those around us, we should avoid
the appearance of exaggeration. Vigorous minds
will, without effort, throw the obtrusive and pre-
sumptuous into the dust, but it is an unnecessary
effort to kick them up again ; such people as
Lord Grey should be permitted to go on, whether
they chuse to be crawling or rampant, into their
obscurity ; it is an idle and unworthy action to
intercept the peering glimpses of their ephemeral
glory. When they commit vile actions, speak
them out : that is a duty ; but nothing is gained
by expatiating on generalities, or by representing
them as more impudent and outrageous than
they are.
Pages 383-5. " [Impressed with a lively sense
of the value of Ireland, I stated to Mr. Fox the
necessity of immediate and effectual steps to relieve
206 MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
her. ... I do not think that Mr. Fox's mind was
at all at ease upon the subject of Ireland. . . . He
did not affect to say that much could be done, . . .
and when I afterwards renewed the subject, I found
in him the same feelings.] It was evident that
Mr. Grattan and Mr. Ponsonby, and their friends,
had made no conditions for her (Ireland). I
ever considered this as a fatal dereliction of her
interests."
The secretary and friend of Mr. Fox is always
sincere and open, and he hesitates not to expose
the baseness of his Whig countrymen. Irishmen
in general, if any facts are adduced against their
corrupt and venal parliament, now happily extinct,
or against those remnants of it which Pitt's
explosion has blown across the channel, speak of
the utter ignorance or deplorable misinformation
of the English. One would imagine they were
natives of Japan, in such secrecy do they believe
all the events of their country to be involved.
But their country is more interesting to us than
they themselves are aware. We read more of
their best informed writers than they do, more
attentively and more dispassionately. They fancy
the contrary, because we read other things too,
and it is a consolation to fatuity that general read-
ing must be necessarily superficial. No mistake
is greater. In the regions of literature lights
are thrown from a prodigious distance, and spring
reciprocally from all directions. A little reflection
AN ILLUSTRIOUS IRISHMAN 207
will teach the lower order of gentlemen that
points of law, politics, and taste, can be discussed
in a better way than by duel ; an ordeal which
we will reserve, if they please, as an infallible
proof only in affairs of honour and chastity.
There is no occasion to extend its jurisdiction
any further.
After lamenting the frail patriotism of his
countrymen, in which the supersaturation of
colouring should have excited a suspicion of
rottenness, the secretary's mind might have re-
posed with decent pride on the virtues of one
illustrious character. There is a man in whose
whole political life, and, I have heard also, in
whose private, no opponent has been able, how-
ever invidious and acute, to detect an unwise,
or dishonourable, or disingenuous action. Would
to God I could leave any doubt or uncertainty
of the person to whom I allude, and that the
description were as applicable to any other as
to Sir John Newport. 1
This is the man who is destined, if any is, to
appease the discontents of Ireland ; and to soften
the fanaticism of a church, which, in the paroxysm
of its intemperance, has assailed the peaceable
1 Sir John Newport, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in the
Ministry of all the Talents a staunch Whig, a genuine Irishman,
and a steady supporter of Catholic emancipation. He died February 18,
1843. ' ' Few men have rendered more service to Ireland. ... In
adverse times he was an enlightened reformer, a true, a zealous, and a
judicious friend of the country." Examiner, March 1, 1840.
208 MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS
tenets of another, and staggered in every direction
from its own.
Page 386. "[I am sure, too, that, had Mr.
Grattan and his friends expressly declared that
they must know what terms of relief would be
granted to Ireland, before they could support the
new ministry, Mr. Fox would have found himself
strengthened by the demand, and that if no other
man in the cabinet had listened to their proposals,
he would. The Catholics, helpless as they were,
having none of their body in the English parlia-
ment, acted a wise as well as generous part in
relying silently upon Mr. Fox ; but Mr. Grattan,
having become an English member for Ireland,
ought to have insisted upon positive measures of
redress for her. ... I am certain Mr. Fox would
not have been displeased at this conduct.] He was
not a man to shudder at a division in the cabinet."
He might have cast the rind very easily, when
an air of popularity was beginning to play about
him. By a simple and straitforward movement,
preserving all his own calmness and politeness
towards the King, he might have deprecated the
Catholic cause, but strengthened it so enormously
as to terrify the court into concessions. His
coyness would make the Catholics the more
pressing, particularly as they knew his inclina-
tions towards them ; it would at the same time
be a sign, however fallacious, of deference to the
King's opinion and scruples, of firmness in resisting
MR. FOX'S ONLY ERROR 209
the importunity of his own wishes, and of judgment
in foreseeing the moment when it would be most
expedient to accede. If a minister is to gratify
two parties, he cannot do it without a little
duplicity. The only error of Mr. Fox was, that
he thought duplicity quite enough ; but on the
other side of the statesman must be dexterity.
The admission of one or two more principles of
right would have done the business. He ought
not to have permitted any thing great and
important to be done without him or after him.
27
CHAPTER XII
LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
Gatherings at St. Anne's Hill Fox venerated Chaucer Spenser's
Faery Queene Dryden's majestic verse Burns, Chatterton,
Cowper Fox attacked by Canning An extraordinary boy
Canning's duel with Castlereagh Lord Holland and Sir R.
Adair Moliere and Klopstock How it strikes the contemporary
" Public characters " A modest biography The Oxford
tutor Fox's illness Retirement to Chiswick The Prince Regent
Last days of C. J. Fox Capture of Buenos Ayres.
[Pages 389-95. " In the spring of the year 1806,
Mr. Fox was always happy to get to St. Anne's
Hill for a few days, and withdraw from the harassing
occupations of a ministry, which it required all his
vigour, and all the weight of his name to uphold.
. . . He seemed more than ever to delight in the
country. A small party, consisting of General
Fitzpatrick, and Lord Albemarle and family, found
their time pass lightly away ; Mr. Fox, with a few
chosen friends, was also truly happy and cheerful.
. . . Lord Albemarle was sincerely beloved by
Mr. Fox ; Lady Albemarle, whose sincerity and
naivete were very pleasing, and who was the lovely
mother of some fine children, there with her, also
contributed to make St. Anne's Hill still more agree-
able. . . . While at St. Anne's Hill, the despatches
were brought to Mr. Fox, and forwarded from
thence to his Majesty.
210
A MINISTER'S DIVERSIONS 211
" It might be supposed by some, that the cares of
his new situation abstracted him from all thoughts
of his Greek ; but I am going to give a proof of the
lively concern he continued to take in every thing
relating to the poets. Early one morning, I had
Euripides in my hand, and was reading Alcestis.
. . . ' How do you like it ? ' said Mr. Fox, entering,
and well pleased to think a little about Euripides,
instead of the perplexing state of the continent, and
the complicated difficulties at home. . . .
" Mr. Fox's memory showed itself to be peculiarly
powerful in regard to the poets. He had not read
Alcestis, and consequently, the admired passage, for
a long series of years, and yet he anticipated the
very spot where he expected me to stop, with as
much precision as if he had been looking over my
shoulder. I have seen him, too, in speaking of
Spenser's Faery Queene and Tasso, turn to the
works of the Italian poet, and point out, here and
there, lines and images, similar to parts of Spenser's
work, with as much rapidity as if they had been
marked out for him. Among the ancient English
poets he entertained a sincere veneration for
Chaucer, a poet, in tenderness and natural
description, resembling Euripides."]
" He entertained a sincere veneration for
Chaucer." He entertained a sincere veneration for
so many, that we have reason to suppose he had
little discrimination. His secretary has not produced
or commemorated one specimen of acute or elegant
criticism, one striking or new remark. Chaucer
is indeed an admirable poet ; until the time of
212 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
Shakespeare none equalled him ; and perhaps none
after, until ours. 1 The truth of his delineations,
his humour, his simplicity, his tenderness, how
different from the distorted images and gorgeous
languor of Spenser! The language, too, of Chaucer
was the language of his day, the language of those
Englishmen who conquered France ; that of Spenser
is a strange uncouth compound of words, chopt
off in some places and screwed out in others.
His poem reminds me of a rich painted window,
broken in pieces, where, amidst a thousand petty
images, worked most laboriously and overlaid with
colour, not one is well-proportioned or entire,
where the whole is disfigured and deranged and
darkened by the lead that holds them together.
This, however, is not the principal fault, though
surely a great one : the worst of all is the dis-
gusting and filthy images on which he rests so
frequently, and which he represents with such
minuteness. He never attempts the terrific but
he slips back again into nastiness. Envy chewing
a toad* is described with all the coarseness and
laboriousness of the worst Dutch painter. In
1 Compare this with Lander's verses to Robert Browning :
"Browning ! since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse," etc. Works, viii. 152.
3 " And next to him malicious Envy rode
Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
Between his cankered teeth a venemous tode."
Faery Queene, I. iv. 30.
POETS AND THEIR CRITICS 213
satirical poets, such as Juvenal and Swift, we are
somewhat less shocked at indelicacy, because in
these there is no incongruity, however little a
way such scenes and images may conduce towards
virtue ; but in allegory we are led to improvement
through delight.
Uncouth forms in disarray,
Words which time has thrown away,
would be considered as blemishes in another,
writing at a time when our language, if it had
not acquired all its ease and polish, was in the
highest state of its maturity and strength ; but
Spenser has been treated with peculiar lenity
and favour, because no poet has been found so
convenient by the critics to set up against their
contemporaries. The days of chivalry seemed to
be closing at this period, and their last lustre
was reflected on his gorgeous allegory. Those
who were opposed to Pope and Dryden, such
as Blackmore and Addison, and Shadwell and
Halifax, and Buckingham and Roscommon, are
quoted as poets, only to show the instability of
a premature and inordinate reputation.
But I am much mistaken if the time is far distant
when the sound sense and vigour of Dryden, and
his majestic versification, will again come into play,
in despite of the impediments and encumbrances
brought together from the refuse of his genius,
214 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
not more by the bad taste than by the greediness
of publishers. That he cannot be read universally
is a grievous fault, particularly as it arises from
his gross immodesty and coarse allusions. Enough
has been said on this subject. Ample justice has
been awarded him in the greatest effort of the
great Johnson ; such is the Life of Dryden. He
too, like Spenser, complained of neglect, and
much more justly. In Dryden there is a degree
of anger that his claims were overlooked and his
rights withholden ; in Spenser there is a lowness
of spirits and a peevish whine that he could not
have every thing he wanted. Weaker minds are
lulled with his melancholy, stronger are offended
at his unmanly and unreasonable discontent. It
would be ridiculous to compare him with Burns,
or Chatterton, or Cowper, yet in the attention
he experienced, and in the largesses he received
from the powerful, how infinitely more fortunate !
The present reign has produced a greater number
of good poets than any in modern times ; but
the ears of our kings are still German, and the
Muses have never revelled under the Georgian
star. This, however disgraceful to our royal family,
is the reason perhaps why poetry of late has not
been degraded and dishonoured by flattery to
princes and ministers, and why we have hardly
one instance in our days of great talents united
with great baseness. Some of our most admired
SPENSER'S FAERY QUEENE 215
and excellent poems are, like the Faery Queene,
without much order and arrangement, a deficiency
which few, either of readers or of critics, are
capable of observing. But the construction and
proportions of a poem require not only much
care, but, what would be less apparent to the
ordinary reader, much genius and much imagina-
tion. Fitness and order and convenience, are
terms very applicable to the epic, and if not
often employed, it is because they are not found
often. The Faery Queene is rambling and dis-
continuous, full of every impropriety, and utterly
deficient in a just conception both of passion
and of character. In Chaucer, on the contrary,
we recognise the strong homely strokes, the broad
and negligent facility, of a great master. Within
his time and Shakespeare's, there was nothing
comparable, nor, I think, between Shakespeare
and Burns, a poet who much resembles him
in a knowledge of nature and manners ; who, in
addition to this, is the most excellent of pastoral
poets, not excepting Theocritus ; and who in satire,
if that indeed can add any thing to qualities so
much greater, is not inferior to Pope, or Horace,
or Aristophanes.
Page 397. " In a certain debate, Mr. Canning
attacked him with a greater degree of animosity
than I thought becoming."
No acrimony is becoming, but some is natural.
216 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
It is natural for people to speak ill of those
who, they are conscious, must think ill of them.
Mr. Fox was the patron of young Canning, and
treated him with much kindness. But if Mr. Fox
was very good to him, Mr. Pitt had the more
sugar-plums to give. He was a very extraordinary
boy, and is a very extraordinary boy still. He
has not grown an inch in intellect ; he has, how-
ever, given one sure and unequivocal proof of his
abilities, in making Lord Castlereagh popular for
several days as long a time as Lord Castlereagh
was ever thought of. Those who have read the
subject of their quarrel, and the letters that passed
between them, will find that one prevaricates, and
that both are answerable to the country for the
loss of five thousand men, and for the worst of
all our badly planned attacks. 1 Canning is among
those sour productions, which acquire an early
tinge of maturity, and drop off. It is idleness or
unwariness in those who pick them up and taste
them, and folly or shame in those who do not
spit them out.
I remember an odd paraphrase of the verses
which were written by Caesar on Terence. 2 They
are a little changed for the purpose :
1 The duel between Canning and Lord Castlereagb was fought on
September 21, 1809.
3 Quoted by Suetonius, Opera, ii. 1318, Delphin ed. "Landor,"
Emerson writes, " invited me to breakfast. . . . He entertained
us at once with reciting half a dozen hexameter lines of Julius
Caesar's! from Donatus, he said." English Traits, p. 4.
PETULANT GEORGE CANNING 217
Tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate minister,
Poneris, et merito, insulsi sermonis amator;
Acribus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret vis
Publica, ut aequato virtus polleret honore,
Unum hoc maceror, et doleo tibi deesse, Canini !
And thou art popt among the great,
Forsooth ! a minister of state !
A Windham, were invective wit ;
Would clamour make one, half a Pitt.
Satire we have, and rage, and rant :
Strength, spirit, these are all we want.
A mob and massacre or two
In Ireland, or at home would do,
And we shall see the very man in
The peevish petulant George Canning.
Page 402. "[While Mr. Fox thus appeared
contented and moderate, constant and affectionate
to old friends, and attached to his books and the
country, just as when he filled a private station,
he also evinced a noble disinterestedness about his
family and connections ; he sought neither place
nor pension for them on coming into office ; he
secured no reversions or sinecures for himself or
them ; and not a view or thought of his mind
tended to his own or family's aggrandizement. A
beloved and most deserving nephew, highly gifted
in point of talent, liberal and of congenial mind to
himself,] Lord Holland was without situation."
Yet I believe for I know nothing of him
personally no man except Adair, 1 is more fitted
1 Sir Robert Adair was afterwards Ambassador at Constantinople
and Vienna. He was tbe friend both of Fox and Landor, and the
Bobra-Dara-Adul-Phoola of Canning's satire in the Anti-Jacobin.
28
218 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
for a foreign court. Good-natured, frank, generous,
and possessing a knowledge of modern languages
and courtly customs, he would be equally con-
ciliating and observant. Besides, any court would
be somewhat pleased that Mr. Fox had given it
a species of preference in sending his nephew to it.
There are some contingencies in which the heart
is accessible, even in courts ; this is one of them.
He should have sent Lord Holland to the
Tuileries. .
[Pages 412-14. " In the beginning of June I
received a message from her (Mrs. Fox), requesting
me to come to him. ... I found him reclining
upon a couch, uneasy and languid. It seemed to
me so sudden an attack that I was surprised and
shocked. . . . Henceforth his illness rapidly in-
creased. . . . The garden of the house at Stable
Yard, since the Duke of York's, was daily crowded
with anxious enquirers. The foreign ambassadors,
or ministers, or private friends of Mr. Fox, walked
there, eager to know his state of health."]
Page 419. "[He now saw very few persons.
At one singular interview I was at this time
present.] Mr. Sheridan wished to see Mr. Fox
[to which the latter reluctantly consented, request-
ing Lord Grey to remain in the room.] The
meeting was short and unsatisfactory. Mr. Fox,
with more coldness than I ever saw him assume to
any one, spoke but a few words."
Mr. Fox in private life was a most sincere and
amiable man. If he suppressed in society a part
A COMEDIAN IN THE CABINET 219
of his indignant feelings, as a man so well-bred
would do, he never affected a tone of cordiality
towards those whom he reprobated or despised.
We often find indeed in close apposition the names
of Fox and Sheridan. 1 The conversation of the
day comes after us into the closet, and a little of
the newspaper sometimes finds its way into books.
By writing in these newspapers, or by contracting
a friendship with the editors, names appear in
strange conjunctions, and celebrity is sustained for
many years. Mr. Sheridan has written some
pleasant and popular comedies, and the critics of
the house of commons may call him the rival of
Moliere. Though I cannot quite assent to their
opinion, or believe that a comic writer ever existed
who could have been the rival of Moliere (for if
Menander was only the equivalent of two
Terences, 2 he certainly was not the man), yet I
think the French Institute erred most egregiously
in giving a preference over him to the turgid and
vociferous Klopstock. However it be, such people
are not to be at the head, or near the head, of
those who govern England. Still somewhat, and
not little, is due to Mr. Sheridan as a member of
the House. He has been more consistent than
1 " Though they acted for many years together, there never seems
to have been a very cordial or intimate friendship between Fox and
Sheridan." EARL RUSSELL'S Life of Fox, ii. 142.
1 An allusion to Julius Caesar's phrase, dimidiate Menander (see
p. 217), which, however, had reference to Terence's custom of knocking
two of Menander's plays into one.
220 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
Mr. Fox, whom, if he differed from him on some
few occasions, he cannot be said to have deserted.
He is really the most public of all public men,
and makes a very conspicuous figure in the book
which exhibits them to the world.
We live in an age when persons are willing to
exempt posterity from all anxiety and doubts
concerning them, and to guard their contempor-
aries from any injustice or inattention towards
them. It is reported, and indeed seems evident,
that the greater part of the personages who figure
in the book entitled Public Characters, have
written their own lives and transactions. " The
writer of this article " seems always to know the
most private affairs of these momentous public
men. It is seldom that any anecdote can be
added to such very important and satisfactory
details, but I am enabled to add several, if several
are requisite, to what illustrate one of these
worthies who, unhappily for literature, at least
for his own, is recently defunct. The gentleman
was so extremely modest in the account he gave
of himself, that he has omitted all those fine
strokes of ingenuity for which he once was
celebrated, and is stiU remembered, at the uni-
versity. When the excellent and beloved Benwell 1
1 Landor refers, in The Letters of a Conservative (1836), to " the
gentle and saintly Benwell, my private tutor at Oxford." He speaks
of him with the same warmth of affection in a note to the Imaginary
Conversation. Works, iv. 400.
A REMINISCENCE OF OXFORD 221
(titles which rarely come together) was about to
leave Trinity college in Oxford, of which he was
a tutor, the Rev. ,* one of these " Public
Characters " came into his rooms, and presented
the usual felicitations on his approaching marriage.
" Perhaps," added he, " since we must lose you,
and your pupils must be under some other tutor,
you will have the kindness to recommend them
to my care."
"It is my intention," said the honest and calm
Benwell, " to recommend one part of them to
Dr. Flamank, and the other to you." Disappointed
and vexed at this reply, he still had the admirable
presence of mind to conceal his feelings, and to
confess the fairness of the proposal. " My dear
friend," continued he, " your kindness will lay me
under eternal obligations. I hardly know how I
can ask you to increase them, but as I must write
letters of thanks to the parents of those young
men who are about to become my pupils, and as
you know my poetical pursuits and innumerable
avocations, will you favour me with their names,
1 It is clear from what Southey said (see Introduction) that Landor
was referring to the Rev. Henry Kett (1761-1825), fellow and tutor of
Trinity College, Oxford. There is a sketch of this gentleman in Public
Characters for 1805, where it is said : " Perhaps Mr. Kett has conferred
more honour on the University than any other individual now resident
there ; his name is familiar to every scholar, and very few learned men
of any nation visit Oxford without obtaining an introduction to him."
Landor ridiculed him both in prose and verse. One epigram is quoted
in Crabb Robinson's Diary, ii. 482 ; and others in Heroic Idyls, pp.
177, 204. But he was not "recently defunct" in 1812.
222 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
that I may lose no time ? " Benwell did so.
Mr. immediately wrote to the parents of all
the others, to solicit the patronage of them, " as
the college was about to lose the talents of his
dear and intimate friend Mr. Benwell."
He thus endeavoured to obtain all the pupils ;
one half by Mr. Benwell's recommendation, the
other by his own dexterity ; and that he never
mentioned this piece of address, is a certain proof
that he deserved all the favour and patronage he
solicited. But it was not of a nature to be long
concealed : it was a jewel of such magnitude and
clearness that, on its first discovery, it threw a
light on a profusion of others in the same vein,
and encouraged both enemies and friends to pursue
the examination. I heard the anecdote from a
fellow of his college, who also gave several more,
equally plain and circumstantial, and which do
equal credit to Mr. 's abilities and virtues. The
doctor referred me to so many witnesses, for so
many and such surprising proofs of talent, that I
could not cease from admiring, more and more, a
character so indefatigable, so resolute, and so
candid, and discoveries of such intricacy laid open
unreservedly to the world.
Page 423. [" The Duke of Devonshire offered
him (Mr. Fox) the use of Chiswick House as a
resting-place, from whence, if he gained strength
enough, he might proceed to St. Anne's. . . . Two
DESERTED BY COLLEAGUES 223
or three days before he was removed to Chis-
wick House, Mr. Fox sent for me, and with
marked hesitation and anxiety, as if he much
wished it, and yet was unwilling to ask it, informed
me of his plan of going to Chiswick House, re-
questing me to form one of the family there. . . .
About the end of July Mrs. Fox and he went
there, and on the following day I joined them."]
Pages 436-7. [" As his disorder had become
entirely confirmed, and little or no hope existed
of his recovery, the cabinet ceased to look to him
for advice ; and, before his great mind was
harassed by the second inroad made by the dis-
order,] they, the other ministers, seemed to hold
his retreat to Chiswick as a virtual resignation of
office. Lord Grenville never came there ; Lord
Grey, I think, rarely.'"
We knew his abilities and principles before ; we
now know his feelings.
Page 438. " Had I seen them catching from his
lips those admonitions which those who are leaving
the world give with peculiar effect, I should have
augured better of the coming time."
The person to whom he alludes in particular, not
only has no wisdom, but has no receptacle to catch
it. He and his colleague might at least have had
the common politeness, the mere decency, to
inquire if Mr. Fox's health permitted him to give
his advice. They acted not as if he were deprived
of health, but of understanding. Even in that
224 LAST DAYS AND DEATH OF FOX
case, unless he had resigned his office, it was their
duty, and it could have done them no disservice, to
ask of him what was his opinion. A trait of such
gross brutality is disgraceful to the very name of
England. The prince regent will read of it with
horror ; judging from those noblemen who have
been most about his person, he will find it difficult
to believe that any one of that rank should have
been so indifferent to decent manners, so insensible
to common humanity. He may listen to some
excuses for the deserter of his party, none will he
endure for the deserter of his friend. He will
never employ such wretches. We shall owe to the
exposure of their hearts what the exposure of their
intellect solicited in vain.
It is delightful to turn from these hard-featured,
dry, afjivr)va Kapyva, 1 towards the benevolent
author of the Memoirs. His feelings, at times,
give him all the air and character of genius. A
pure and energetic warmth elevates his imagination
when he describes his friend gazing on the berries
of the mountain-ash, from the window at Chiswick.
The description is not unworthy of Rousseau.
[Page 450. " A few days before the termination
of his mortal career, he said to me at night, ' Holland
thinks me worse than I am ' ; and, in fact, the
appearances were singularly delusive, not a week
before he expired. In the day he arose, and walked
Kaprjva. HOMER, Odyssey, xi. 29.
FAREWELL TO NATURE 225
a little, and his looks were not ghastly or alarming
by any means. Often did he latterly walk to his
window to gaze on the berries of the mountain-ash,
which hung clustering on a young tree at Chiswick
House : every morning, he returned to look at it ;
he would praise it, as the morning breeze rustling
shook the berries and leaves. . . . His last look on
that mountain-ash was his farewell to nature."]
Page 467. " [Mr. Fox expired between five and
six in the afternoon of the 13th of September.] The
Tower guns were firing for the capture of Buenos
Ayres l as he was breathing his last."
A capture not less deplorable, and hardly less
disgraceful, than our subsequent defeat.
1 General Beresford entered the city of Buenos Ayres on June 27,
1806. Despatches announcing the capture of the city reached England
early in September. On September 20, The Annual Register says, the
treasure captured from the Spanish settlement was brought to town in
eight waggons, on each of which was a Jack Tar holding a flag
inscribed with the word <e Treasure." The waggons were escorted by
the Loyal Britons, commanded by Colonel A. Davison, the rear being
brought up by the Clapham Volunteers.
29
CHAPTER XIII
SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX
The Peace of Amiens Homer's Iliad Poets of the sea Virgil and
Metastasio Advice to a law student Blackstone's Commentaries
Robertson's style Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments Goldsmith
Dr. Johnson Scholarship in France Bonaparte and men of
learning Ignorance of Greek Euripides Shakespeare's Caliban
Supernatural in poetry Allegory Plato Collins and Shen-
stone Thomson's Castle of Indolence.
[C. J. Fox to J. B. Trottw
ST. ANNE'S HILL, Oct. 19, 1801.
"... You will, of course, have been rejoiced at
the peace, 1 as we all are. ... I think this place
has looked more beautiful than ever this year, both
in spring and summer, and so it does now
in autumn. I have been very idle about my
History ', but I will make up for it by and bye ;
though I believe I must go to Paris, to look at
some papers there, before I can finish the first
volume. ..."
" I think in the last half of the Iliad you will
admire the 16th, 20th, 22nd, and 24th books
particularly.] I believe the general opinion is that
Homer did write near the sea-shore." Memoirs,
p. 497.
1 The preliminaries of peace between England and France were
signed in London, by Lord Hawkesbury and M. Otto, on Oct. 1, 1801.
The definitive treaty was signed at Amiens in March, 1802.
226
SOME POETS AND A LAWYER 227
Virgil, too, is fond of describing scenes of the sea
and sea-shore ; but Metastasio is the poet for seas.
He has turned more than a dozen of them into his
airs. We have hardly a metaphor or a simily
without a sea.
[C. J. Fox to J. B. Trotter
HOTEL RICHELIEU, PARIS, Oct. 28, 1802.
" . . . I suppose you will now go in earnest to
law. I do not know much of the matter, but
I suspect that a regular attendance (and with
attention) to the courts, is still more important
than any reading whatever ; ] you of course read
Blackstone over and over again ; and if so," etc.
Memoirs, p. 512.
After of course there is no room for if so ; but
to proceed.
"Pray tell me whether you agree with me
in thinking his style * of English the very best
among our modern writers, always easy and in-
telligible, far more correct than Hume, and less
studied and made up than Robertson." 2
This last writer is very finical in style, but there
always is clearness in the narrative, and good sense
1 Speaking in the House of Commons on March 3, 1806, Fox said
of Blackstone : " His purity of style I particularly admire. He is
distinguished as much for simplicity and strength as any writer in the
English language."
* Pressed by Boswell for his opinion of Robertson's History of Scotland,
Dr. Johnson said : (< Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his
book." On another occasion he said: "Sir, if Robertson's style be
faulty, he owes it to me : that is, having too many words, and those big
ones."
228 SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX
in the observations. He never is great. Through-
out all the extensive regions he has traversed, the
footstep of genius is nowhere to be traced. The
Scotch authors are not contented with English ;
they want something better. No work is so
totally made up of what are called rounded
sentences as Adam Smith's Theory of Moral
Sentiments. If his wisdom could not withstand
such meretricious allurements, how could we ex-
pect more firmness and resistance in Robertson ?
Of all modern historians, Davila * has most genius,
usually so called ; a dangerously high quality in
their department.
I love Goldsmith. The poet never transgresses
into the province of the historian. There is
nothing profound or important in him ; but his
language is gracefully familiar, every thing about
him is sufficiently correct and well-placed, his
style is polished enough, and he invites us by an
ingenuous and frank simplicity. Johnson in his
Lives of the Poets, Goldsmith, Blackstone, and
Sir Joshua Reynolds, are the best of our later
prose-writers. Harris, 2 Warton, 3 etc., etc., disgust
1 In the Imaginary Conversations Marvel compares Davila with Bacon,
saying that they were the only men of high genius among the moderns
who had attempted historical composition. LANDOR, Works, v. 47.
Davila's Istoria della Guerre Civile was translated into English, in the
seventeenth century, by W. Aylesbury and C. Cotterell.
* James Harris (1709-1780) author of Hermes.
3 Joseph Warton, see below, p. 232, is probably referred to, not his
young brother, Thomas, Poet Laureate in 1785.
THE DECAY OF SCHOLARSHIP 229
by their frippery and affectation even those whom
their reading could have instructed.
[From the same letter
"It is a pity you did not see, while you were
here, Villerson, the great Grecian, if it were only
for the purpose of knowing how fast it is possible
for the human voice to go without indistinctness.
1 believe he could recite the whole Iliad in four
hours."]
Page 512. In Mr. Fox's letter from Paris,
Villoison 1 is called Villerson. He is one of the
few remaining scholars now resident in France.
Those who know little of him, and do not think it
important to know much, will find him mentioned
in Wyttenbach's life of Ruhnken. 2 Scholarship is
so extremely low in his country that, out of near
seventy bishops, I was informed, only three were
supposed to be capable of construing the Greek
1 Jean Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison (1750-1806), Greek
scholar and member of the French Institute. He edited the Pastoraf
of Longus with "a superfluity of erudition/' and a tenth-century MS.
of Homer, which he found in the Library of St. Mark's, Venice.
Bonaparte created for him a professorship of ancient and modern
Greek in the College of France, but he died soon afterwards. Compare
Landor, Works, iv. 40 : " Latterly we have seen only Villoison and
Larcher fairly escape from the barbarous ignorance around them."
* Wyttenbachii, Vita Ruhnkenii, Lugd. Bat., 1799. Mark Pattison,
in his Life of Casaubon, referred to Wyttenbach, Ruhnkeu, and Bentley
as rare examples, in the eighteenth century, of consummate learning ;
but Ruhnken's name may be better known from Person's verses :
"I went to Strasburg, where I got drunk,
With that most learned professor Brunk ;
I went to Wortz and got more drunken
With that more learned professor Ruhnkeu."
230 SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX
testament. Yet Bonaparte had taken all measures
to collect men of some learning. Under the old
government no knowledge of Greek was thought
necessary ; but the chief Consul, though contented
with those who enjoyed the reputation of general
good conduct, would gladly have promoted men of
literature to the vacant sees. At the time I am
speaking of, 1 I believe there were near seventy. It
was the October before the renewal of hostilities
when I heard the fact mentioned, by a person from
whom I received some assistance, and many civilities,
in the national library ; that there were only three
who had received such instruction as every boy of
liberal education, in our country, has acquired at
the age of fourteen, appeared strange to me, and
the exact number has been impressed more indelibly
on my memory. 2
[C. J. Fox to J. B. Trotter
ST. ANNE'S HILL, Friday.
"... I am very glad you prefer Euripides to
Sophocles, because it is my taste ; though I am not
sure that it is not thought a heresy. . . . Though
1 October, 1802. Landor was then staying in Paris.
* <c When Calvinism was making a progress in France, the Catholic
bishops were learned men ; indeed, so learned that Joseph Scaliger,
himself a Calvinist, acknowledged, in the latter part of his life, their
immense superiority over the rising sect. At present there is only one
bishop in France capable of reading a chapter in the Greek testament,
which every schoolboy in England, for whatever profession he is
designed, must do at eleven years of age." LANDOB, Imaginary
Conversation?, 1824, i. 221.
the two plays J of Euripides which you have read,
are undoubtedly among his best, I will venture to
assure you that there are four others you will like
full as well : Medea., Phcenissce, HeracKdce, and
Akestis\ with the last of which, if I know any
thing of your taste, you will be enchanted. . . .
Orestes and Andromache are, in my judgment, the
worst. 1 have not mentioned Rhesus and Cyclops*
because the former is not thought to be really
Euripides's, and the latter is entirely comic, or
rather a very coarse farce ; excellent, however, in
its way, and the conception of the character not
unlike that of Shakespeare's Caliban. Memoirs,
p. 516.]
" The character of the Cyclops in Euripides is
not unlike that of Caliban in Shakespeare." I
could not help making the same remark, in some
observations on the properties and signs of inven-
tion. The character of the Cyclops is broad and
general, that of Caliban is peculiar and unique ; it
is admirably conceived and equally well-sustained
throughout. What I most applaud in it are the
feelings with which Shakespeare has endowed the
creature. Another poet would have represented
him as spiteful and malicious, and perhaps without
any reason for his being so, but Shakespeare has
made the infringement of his idleness the origin
of his malice. He has also made him grateful ;
but then his gratitude is the return for an
1 Hippolytus Crowned and Iphigenia in A ulis.
232 SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX
indulgence of his evil appetites. Those who by
nature are grateful, are also by nature vindictive ;
one of these properties is the sense of kindness,
the other of unkindness. But religion, and
habit, and comfort, require that the one should
be cherished, and that the other should be
supprest. 1
The mere conception of such a monster as
Caliban, without these opposite qualities, without
the sudden impressions which bring them vividly
out, and the circumstances in which they are
displayed would not be, to considerate minds, so
stupendous as it appeared to Joseph Warton,
who little knew that nil admirari is as requisite
to wisdom as to happiness.
No new fiction of a supernatural being exists
in poetry. Hurd 2 traced the genealogical descent
of the faeries, etc., etc., and fancied he made a fine
discovery. The sylphs have only another name.
Dragons, and wizards, and witches, and giants,
are powerful agents ; but they generally prove
the imbecility of the writer who has any thing
to do with them. Dreams, perhaps, first produced
such images, superstition presented them with
attributes, and the poet brought all into action.
1 Portions of this and the following paragraph were afterwards
incorporated in the Imaginary Conversation between Landor and the
Abbe' Delille. See Works, iv. 130.
2 Richard Hurd, Bishop of Worcester (died 1808), in his Letters on
Chivalry and Romance,
ALLEGORICAL WRITERS 233
A few writers have indulged in allegory who
have not been deficient in genius ; for instance,
it is in allegory, and there alone, that Addison
has any ; delicacy of humour, in which he also is
eminent, can hardly lay claim to such a quality.
Plato, in addition to almost every other talent,
possessed one for allegory, but he would not have
founded a poem on it, nor have permitted it to
superabound in one. It manifests a want of higher
invention, and those poets who have indulged in
it have shown but little taste or fancy in any
thing else, have seldom reached the sublime, and
more seldom the pathetic. Collins l comes nearest
of all to an exception, but though he excels the
other allegorical poets in delicacy and proportions,
he appears to greatest advantage when he has
escaped from the trammels of this perverted
taste. The stanza of Spenser is truly delightful,
and there seems to be something creative in
its harmony. Shenstone, 2 a poor poet in other
things, becomes an admirable one in The School-
mistress. The languor of Thomson is graceful
in The Castle of Indolence, and his redundancy
is kept within some bounds by the stanza.
It is better to leave off where reflection may
rest than where passion may be excited, and it
1 Landor thought Collins's Hassan excellent, but " surpassed by
Burns and Scott." Works, viii. 378.
1 "Shenstone, when he forgot his Strephons and Corydons, and
followed Spenser, became a poet." LANDOR, Works, iv. 187.
30
234 SOME LETTERS FROM C. J. FOX
is soothing to take the last view of politics from
amongst the works of imagination :
Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre
Errare, atque viam palenteis quaerere vitae. 1
An escape, in this manner, from the mazes of
politics and the discord of party, leaves such
sensations on the heart as are experienced by
the disinterested and sober man after some public
meeting, when he has quitted the crowded and
noisy room, the crooked and narrow streets, the
hisses and huzzas of the rabble, poor and rich,
and enters his own grounds again, and meets,
his own family at the gate.
1 Lucretius, De Rerum Nat., ii. 9.
CHAPTER XIV
POSTSCRIPT
The Right Hon. George Rose Defaulting members of Parliament
Portuguese Royal family Flight to Brazil South America Irish
Attorney-General Legal cruelty Italian vivisectionists Spallau-
zani and Fontana Jeffreys and Scroggs The Laws of England.
I
IT might be expected that I should say something
of Mr. Rose's book. 1 I leave him, however, where
I found him, and where Mr. Fox too, I am certain,
would have left him. The King has been graciously
pleased to distinguish him by the title of right
honourable ; I should probably have distinguished
him by one very different, and certainly much
more lasting. But it would have been an un-
worthy and most idle business ; for it is only on
soft and miry ground that such creatures can leave
any impression. Their impetuous attack is not
courage, but stupidity, and their dissonant clamour
is not for our security, but for their own voracious
and insatiable appetite. Perhaps it might be cruel
1 Observations on the Historical Work of C. J, Fox, by the Rt. Hou.
George Rose, 1809. Rose, who was Treasurer of the Navy in the Duke
of Portland's administration, and held the same office under Perceval,
was appointed to the Privy Council in January, 1802.
235
236 POSTSCRIPT
to break the neck they stretch out so angrily and
so awkwardly, yet it would be a piece of good
husbandry to pluck them well, and to turn them
up again on their common.
If to attack the opinions or the conduct of
Mr. Fox requires the help of distortion, of mis-
quotation, of falsehood, I leave it to those
right honourables whom Mr. Pitt raised up from
obscurity, and cherished for their obliquity and
baseness, and placed on benches where a little
more dirtiness would be indifferent and imper-
ceptible. I never thought Mr. Fox a very power-
ful man, unless a readiness and aptitude in debate
can constitute it ; but no man whatever is powerful
enough to make me a liar. If I am less than
another, by nature or by misfortune, be it so ; but
never let me afford to the vicious an advantage
he could not have taken. He who wishes to avoid
a blow may stoop, but he who strikes must not ;
and no living soul ever yet rose up from a false-
hood with the same activity and strength which
he enjoyed before. Mr. Rose may be considered,
at least by his party, as a perfectly honest man,
and I have no inclination to meddle with his
integrity, but I must observe that it is quite as
easy to make a mistake in the complex accounts
of revenue, as in the simple and progressive figures
which denote the regular pages of every common
book. If any thing is put down, or erased, or
HONOUR OF PARLIAMENT 237
added wrong in the one case, it may also in the
other, by the same person ; and we have seen
several instances, lately, where members of the
honourable house have actually fallen into this
error. Some, after their misfortune, have proposed
to retire into Wales, some into Portugal, some
into America ; others are not yet willing to remove
their stake from the country, and continue in the
full enjoyment of their places and their authority. 1
I hope I shall always be blessed with sufficient
loyalty to acknowledge the power of precedent;
and when I consider the actions of the charitable
corporation, in the reign of George II., 2 and the
countenance which was shown to the greater part
of the defaulters by their honourable friends, I
think it an unjust, and perhaps an unlawful act,
to bear hardly upon those who have vacated their
seats by the persecution of fortune, whether they
go to enjoy the Christmas convivialities of Wales,
or their affairs call them into the United States,
or their health requires the temperature of Lisbon ;
and I applaud the firmness and consistency, and
right feeling, of the present parliament, in not
1 Joseph Hunt, M.P., late Treasurer of the Board of Ordnance, was
expelled from the House in 1810, in consequence of the disclosures
made in the twelfth report of the Commissioners of Military Inquiry.
He had already left, on plea of ill health, for Lisbon.
2 Infamous malversation was detected in the Charitable Corporation,
formed for the relief of the industrious poor by small loans at legal
interest. The Corporation, in some cases, took 10 per cent., and
advanced large sums on goods obtained on credit by fraudulent specu-
lators. STANHOPE'S History of England, ii. 150.
238 POSTSCRIPT
rejecting any member from its bosom for the
denunciations either of the people or the laws.
If, after all, it appears to any that I have written
elsewhere with acrimony, let him consider whether
it proceeded not naturally from the subject ;
whether the juices were not produced by the
soil, rather than by the hook and harrow. It is
only a starved or pusillanimous genius that is
driven to a defence ; enough is it for me that there
never was a bad man whom I have not treated as
a bad man, nor a good whom I have not treated
as a good. Were such the sentiment and de-
meanour of all who aspire to any rank in literature,
and possess any in society, more effectual benefit
would result to the cause of virtue, than from all
the laws and institutions of mankind. The sources
of evil lie in the higher regions of the moral world,
and the stream descends wider and fouler to the
last. If a person who committed any kind of base
action was not received and countenanced by
people of his own rank and condition, he would
not easily find his way further. He would be like
a misshapen rock whose support had given way, and
which had been precipitated to the bottom of a
mountain, where, having lost by its fall whatever was
romantic in its form, or colour, or elevation, a strong
earthern fence stopped its progress, and where the
husbandman thanked God that it had not desolated
his house, or swept away the fruits of his industry.
SOUTH AMERICAN PATRIOTS 239
II
By the part we are now taking in foreign
politics, it is much to be apprehended that the
queen of Portugal, 1 whom heaven has deprived
of her intellects, and the prince of Brazil, to
whom they certainly have not been transferred,,
may, by the rashness and insolence of their
ministers, and by that insensibility to shame and
honour, from which fugitives and outcasts never
quite recover, be delivered into the hands of the
patriots. Many in South America would forget
the causes of their indignation, on seeing the old
woman and her infante, first presenting grimaces
to the drummer boys, and afterwards a suit of
embroidery to the executioner and his mistress.
This is horrible to me, who believe that the
infliction of stripes on women is the most certain
and execrable criterion of barbarism, and who,
however much I admire the Roman institutions,
think those punishments superfluous and cruel
which preceded their capital punishments ; who
even think that these punishments should be
very rare indeed, and inflicted only on powerful
offenders, such as have subverted or endangered
the constitutions it was their duty and office to
protect. It is horrible to those who have never
suffered by their neighbour's ambition, or by their
1 On November 29, 1807, the Portuguese royal family, under the
protection of Sir Sidney Smith, had left Lisbon for Brazil.
240 POSTSCRIPT
ruler's fatuity ; but those who have seen foreigners
invade their territory, and militate against their
independence, will not perhaps call a people
excessively vindictive in exposing the person and
sacrificing the life of one or two principal culprits,
such as infamously stood aloof from danger, and
scattered every where around them death and
desolation. Perhaps the people of Buenos Ayres
may mistake this most faithful majesty and this
most apostolic prince for some such agitators and
disturbers of the public peace, and, judging the
crime, not the rank (a truly revolutionary error),
leave a memorable lesson, to all such persons,
how they interfere with the concerns of a great
and gallant people, determined to assert its inde-
pendence, and able to defend its rights.
Ill
I have lately read, in a history of Irish affairs,
written since Dr. Curry published his Review of
the Civil Wars in Ireland, 1 which work presents
also an admirable synopsis of legal transactions
there, an account of an attorney general, 2 who
brought gentlemen of the first respectability to
1 An Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland, etc.,
by J. Curry, M.D., new edition, 1810.
* Southey's letters (see Introduction) make it clear that Landor was
referring to William Saurin, appointed Irish Attorney-General in 1807.
Landor, however, unwilling to risk a charge of libel, is not very explicit
either as to his authorities or to his allegations. His attack on Saurin
may have been suggested by the trial of Dr. Edward Sheridan, prosecuted
in 1811 under the provisions of the Convention Act of 1793.
TYRANNY OF THE LAW 241
trial, when, according to his own confession, he
believed them to be perfectly innocent of all the
charges, and wanted only to prove the validity
of an unconstitutional and most tyrannical law.
Surely this is going rather further than Jeffreys,
or Scroggs, or Finch, or Page, whom we have
always considered as the most iniquitous men on
record ; for they at least pretended that their
victims were guilty, and had offended against a
known, a positive, an established law. The amaze-
ment and horror he perceived on the countenances
of his audience, sent him staggering into perjury.
He denied his own acknowledgment, although
several shorthand writers had taken down every
word. Happily for us, there is no danger of any
such man appearing, in that or this country, in
the present times.
This lawyer must surely be a more impudent
man than ever appeared at the bar before, in any
capacity whatsoever, and, in understanding, must
be far below
That blockhead Betsworth,
Though half a crown overpaid his sweat's worth, 1
1 "In a satire printed in 1773, ridiculing the Dissenters for pretend-
ing to the title of 'Brother Protestants and Christians/ the Dean
[Swift], among other ludicrous illustrations of their presumption,
introduced the simile :
' Thus at the bar the booby B ,
Though half a crown o'erpays his sweat's worth,
Who knows in law nor text nor margent,
Calls Singleton his brother sergeant.' "
Bettesworth, M.P. and serjeant-at-law, was notorious for his florid
elocution. See Swift's Works, ed. Sir Walter Scott, i. 418.
31
242 POSTSCRIPT
who has received his viaticum long ago from the
memorable dean of St. Patrick's.
On another occasion he said, "he would not
answer to any accusation which charged him
with abuse of authority, because the public had
sufficient pledges in his conscience and oath, and
in his rank and situation."
Silly booby ! as if rank and situation were
pledges against abuse of authority ; when, on the
contrary, without rank and situation there can
be no authority at all ; when, indeed, it is this
authority itself which constitutes the rank and
situation. These three, clearly enough, are one.
Take away the authority, and the situation is past
discovery; take away the rank, and the person
who loses it loses also the authority. Pledges
ought to be weighty and valid in proportion to
the quantity and activity of authority which may
possibly bear against us ; but they cannot be given
from out of this quantity, etc. To say that the
authority, which alone can commit the abuse
complained of, is in itself a pledge against itself,
would be a grosser piece of stupidity than the
most benighted blunderer could stumble on " in
bog and fen ! " It requires a very profound
ignorance of human intellect, and a very pro-
found contempt of what is lovely and august
in moral sentiment, to cover the most hideous
iniquity with nothing but the most flimsy false-
ATROCIOUS PROSECUTION 243
hoods. We do not weigh exactly, and by the
scruple, how much may be reposed on the con-
science and oath of a person who brings to trial,
and bids the jury to condemn, those whom he
declared he believed not guilty, at the very time
he was arraigning them ; but if we place his oath
and conscience in the lump, against the oath and
conscience of any pilloried perjurer in the three
kingdoms, we shall find the latter character the
less infamous and detestable ; for it is certain that
no one of this description has, by any false oath,
by any malevolence, by any hope of profit or
promotion, laid such a dark and combustible
train for the consternation and explosion of his
fellow citizens. He was confident of their in-
nocence, and accused them only for experiment 1
Spallanzani 1 has been thought cruel, and justly
too, for putting bats to excruciating pain, in order
to try whether they could escape his nets and
narrow threads without their eyes ; and so has
been Fontana, 2 who inflicted on some thousand
animals the venom of the viper, to remark on
which, and in what quantities, and under what
irritation, it was deadly ; but this atrocious wretch
involves his own fellow creatures, fellow citizens,
school-fellows, next-door neighbours, in the toils
of law, which he bids their inveterate enemies
1 Lazarus Spallanzani (1729-1799), Italian naturalist.
1 Felix Fontaua (1730-1805), Italian naturalist and philosopher.
244 POSTSCRIPT
pull tight, in order to try whether the materials
are strong, and whether those whom he encloses
will survive. After such actions as these, his
pledges of oath and conscience, with all their
tawdriness of ostentation, are such vile and worth-
less things as no pawnbroker in the suburbs would
give a token for ; and as to his claim of confidence
from situation and rank, let us only look back, to
save trouble, on those lawyers of past ages whose
example I have cited. They possessed the same
situation, the same principles, with infinitely more
acuteness and discretion. They joked over their
bottle, they enjoyed their witticisms ; yet were
they nefarious and blood-thirsty villains ; they
had a law for every occasion but justice, and had
a speech for every day but the day of retribution.
It is because men like these possess rank and
situation, that we demand some pledge for our
security. A pickpocket could not throw me into
prison for thirty years, or make me pay thirty
pounds, before he would listen to my defence, or
even force me to a defence in court, unless a
jury had found a true bill against me ; yet I
might have grievously offended this said pick-
pocket, both by resisting him in the exercise of
his occupation, and by calling him what he would
rather be than be called. Against a pickpocket we
have, or ought to have, something of a security ;
how much rather then against men infinitely
THE JUDGMENT TO COME 245
more dexterous in their fraudulence, infinitely more
violent in the detection of it, who encounter no
danger in committing their atrocities, no difficulty
in defending them, but in whom, on the contrary,
every act of violence is loyal zeal, and every uncon-
stitutional maxim is legal perspicacity. Miserable
men ! Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the
affairs of our country are conducted with such
wisdom that there is not the remotest danger of
any change unfavourable to you ; that our strength
is imperishable, that our resources are inexhaustible ;
that there are no beings more wise, more energetic
than you ; that the tide of genius must always
be confined in narrow straits, and run under, and
run counter to, the tide of fortune ; yet the flatter-
ing unction which you are laying to your souls
will not render them invulnerable long. Ye must
all, in a few years at the furthest, lose your " rank
and situation " ; but your " consciences " will not
be taken from you, nor will the resignation, though
very, very voluntary, be accepted. The fear of
God, so salutary when it mingles with every
thought and action, and is inhaled with every
breath from the cradle to the grave, is dreadful
when it rushes on a mortal all at once, and closes
the dying hour.
THE END
INDEX
ABELARD and Heloise, in Pope,
49 ; monument of, 191.
Achilles, Homer's, 134, 136 ; the
shield of, 149.
Adair, Sir Robert, xxi, 217.
Addison, Joseph, xi, 213 ; his
tragedy of Cato, 136 ; failure as
a poet, 136 ; his allegories, 233.
jEneas, Virgil's, 137.
.iEschylus, compared with Euri-
pides and Sophocles, 157.
Agamemnon, Homer's, 134.
Agathocles, 174.
Aguilar, in Spain, 182.
Alexandria, 114, 126 ; General
Mackenzie Frazer's Expedition
to, 63 n.
Alexandrine metre in French,
165.
Alfieri, 155, 171 ; superior to
Euripides, 158.
Alfred the Great, 77-
Allegory, 233.
America, North, 7, 10 ; war with,
xii, xvi, 8, 80.
America, South, 10, 239 ; English
designs in, 19 n., 62,68.
Amiens, Peace of, 94, 226 n.
Amsterdam, 122.
Antinous, 194.
Antiphlogistic philosophers, 161.
Antonius, Marcus, 60, 137.
Antwerp, 113-5.
Arabian Nights, The, 143.
Ariosto, C. J. Fox on, 148 ;
compared with Alfieri, 165 ;
with Boccaccio, 152 ; with
Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Spen-
ser, 148, 149, 151, 152 ; Orlando
Furioso, 148, 151-4 ; fore
shadows the French Revolution,
151 ; pathetic passages in,
153.
Aristides ' ' the Just," 49.
Aristophanes, 157 ; Burns com-
pared with, 215.
Aristotle, 123, 146.
Atlantes, Palace of, in Ariosto,
151.
Atterbury, Bishop Francis, on The
Arabian Nights, 143 n.
Austria, 39, 62.
Aylmer, Admiral Frederick, sixth
Baron, 182 n.
Aylmer, the Hon. Rose, I78n.,
182 n.
BACON, Lord, 77.
Balance of Power in Europe, 37,
39.
Barillon, Henri de, French Am-
bassador, 54.
Barker, Thomas, painter, 169.
Barras, Paul Fra^ois, 56, 59 n.
Beguines, at Ghent, 112-3.
Benwell, Rev. William, 220-2.
Beresford, General William (after-
wards Viscount), at Buenos
Ayres, 18n.,225.
Berne, Senate of and Bonaparte,
185.
Bettesworth, Sergeant, 241 n.
Bill of Rights, 40.
Blackmore, Sir Richard, physician
and poet, 213.
Blackstone, Sir William, 47 n.,
227-8 ; his Commentaries, 123.
Blake, Admiral Robert, 77.
247
248
INDEX
Blake, Joachim, Spanish general,
xxi, 182.
Boccaccio, compared with Ariosto,
152.
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John,
Viscount, 81 n.
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 7, 9, 27,
29, 36, 62, 162 ; C. J. Fox and,
56, 98, 177, 178, 192-4; his
predominant passions, 25 ; and
the slave trade, 64 ; the war
with, 89 ; and the invasion of
England, 110 ; requisite to
France, 140 ; fitness to govern,
163 ; and Lord Whitworth, 178 ;
men of learning under, 230.
Borgia, Caesar, 174.
Bourbons, The, 11, 97.
Brazil, Dom John, Prince of,
239.
Breda, 116.
Brest, British Fleet off, 182.
Brissot, Jean P., 56.
Brooke, Charlotte, 87.
Browning, Robert, Lander's verses
on, 212 n.
Brunswick, Charles John Ferdi-
nand, Duke of, 181.
Brutus, 44, 50.
Buckingham, Second Duke of,
author of The Rehearsal, 213.
Buenos Ayres, Expedition to, 18 n.,
19 n., 63, 126, 240 ; Canning on,
19 n. ; capture and loss of, 225.
Burdett, Sir Francis, 103-4.
Burke, Edmund, 61 n. ; an English-
man, 87 ; on the French Revo-
lution, 142.
Burns, Robert, 48, 214; com-
pared with Shakespeare, 215.
Bute, John, third Earl of, 71,
77 n
CABARRUS, Madame, ci-devant
Tallien, 191.
aesar, C. Julius, 24, 44, 50, 96 ;
' and the senate, 46 ; his verses
on Terence, 217, 219 n.
Caliban, Shakespeare's, 231.
Cambaceres, Jean Jacques Regis
de (Duke of Parma), 27, 170.
Canning, George, xix, 19 n., 36 n.,
61 ; on sinecures, 32 ; his duel
with Castlereagh, 36 n., 216;
Lander's verses on, 36., 217 ;
his attack on C. J. Fox, 215 ;
an extraordinary boy, 216.
Capital punishment, 34.
Carlisle, Sixth Earl of, 180 n.
Carthage and Rome, 88.
Castlereagh, Robert, Lord (after-
wards second Marquis of
Londonderry), on sinecures,
32 ; duel with Canning, 36 n. ,
216.
Castruccio Castracani, Machia-
, velli's Life of, 100.
Catharine, Empress of Russia,
105, 173.
Cato, 44, 50, 96 ; in Lucau's
Pharsalia, 136.
Catullus, quoted, 55.
Cervantes and the romance writers,
154.
Charitable Corporation, The, 237.
Charlemagne, 175.
Charles II. of England, 96, 116.
Charles V., Emperor, 111-2.
Charles IV. of Spain, 138.
Chatham, General Lord, xv, 21,
22 n, 30, 36 n.
Chatham, Lord, xiii, 83 ; his view
of honour, 60 ; his greatness,
69, 70 ; his pension, 71 ; at
court, 71 ; " all romance," 72.
Chatterton, Thomas, 48, 214.
Chaucer, 215 ; venerated by C. J.
Fox, 211 ; an admirable poet,
212 ; his language, 212.
Chauvelin, Marquis de, 140 n.
Chili, Republic of, 10 n.
Chinese Empire, 9 ; poetry, 166.
Chiswick, C. J. Fox at, 223-4.
Cicero, Letters of, 50.
Claude Lorraine, 168.
Climate and painting, 169.
Cloncurry, Nicholas Lawless, first
Baron, 90.
Coalition ministries of 1783 and
1806, 83, 85 ; in Rome, 85.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, on
Dryden, 48 n.
Collins, William, 233.
Commodus, Roman Emperor, 22.
Condes of Spain, 160.
Constantinople, 63, 115, 126.
Correggio, neglected in France,
168.
Cortes, Hernando, 138.
Coruna, 182 ; Landor at, xxi.
INDEX
249
Count Julian, a Tragedy, by W. S.
Landor, x, xxi.
Courier, newspaper, xxi, 53 n.
Cowper, William, 48, 214.
Crassus, Marcus, 140.
Crewe, Earl of, his copy of the
Commentary, viii, xxv.
Crewe, Mrs. (afterwards Lady),
56 n. ; Fox's verses to, 75 n,
Critical Review, The, 18 n., 146.
Criticism, errors of contemporary,
143-4.
Croker, John Wilson, xv.
Cromwell, Oliver, 28, 140.
Cumseans, Simplicity of the, 29.
Cumberland, Richard, 51.
Curran, J. P., 87.
Curry, Dr. J., Civil Wars in Ire-
land, 240.
Cyclops of Euripides, compared
with Shakespeare's Caliban,
231.
DANAE, Myth of, 163.
Dante, 154.
Dantzig, Capture of (1807), 62.
Dardanelles, Sir T. Duckworth's
expedition to, 63 n.
Darius, 63.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 144-5.
Davila, Henrico Caterino, his
genius as a writer, 228.
Demosthenes, 45, 76 ; Fox and
Chatham compared with, 70.
Devonshire, Fifth Duke of, 222.
Diaz, Ruy, 138.
Dido, Virgil's, her passion true
to nature, 197-
Domitian, Roman Emperor, 73.
Douglas, Marquis of, afterwards
tenth Duke of Hamilton, 179 n.
Drake, Dr. Nathan, 146.
Dry Sticks, by W. S. Landor, 36 n.
Dryden, John, 47, 213; C. J.
Fox on, 48 ; Coleridge on, 48 n. ;
translation of Virgil, 132 ;
Johnson's Life of, 214.
Duckworth, Sir Thomas, 63 n.
Dukes, tempore George III., 46.
Dutch, The, 117 ; industry of, 119.
EDGEWORTH, Miss, 87.
Edinburgh Review, xx, 24 n., 75 n.
Egypt, English in, 63, 126.
Eldon, Lord, (Sir John Scott) 69 n.
Elizabeth, Queen, and the
Commonwealth, 203.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, meeting
with Landor, 216 .
Erasmus, Letters of, xix.
Erskine, Thomas (afterwards
Lord), 192.
Euripides, admired by Fox, 156,
211, 230; compared with
Sophocles and JEschylus, 157.
Examiner, newspaper, 132 n.,
207 n.; Landor's letter to, vii,
xxiii.
FACTORY labour, 120.
Fairies in literature, 232.
Fellowes, Dr. Robert, x, xv, 18 n.,
146.
Fenestella, Lucius, 123.
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, xvii, 138.
Ferrol, Pulteuey's expedition to
(1800), 20.
Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews,
106, 110; Tom Jones, 116, 142,
143.
Finch, Baron, Chief Justice, 241.
Fisheries, 119, 121.
Fitzpatrick, General Richard, 99 n.,
162 n., 210.
Flamank, Dr., 221.
Flanders, 105 ; people of, 106.
Folard, Chevalier de, 100.
Fontana, Felix, 243.
Forster, John, Walter Savage
Landor, a biography, ix n., 7 n.
132 .
Fox, Charles James, Landor on,
xxii ; a mutable statesman, 15,
79 ; and Hanover, 16, 54 ; in
the Privy Council, 16 ; and
South America, 17, 52 ; his
prophetic spirit, 1 8 ; speeches
quoted, 39 n., 61, 64 n. ; a
gambler, 45, 46, 66 ; his History
of James II., 46, 51, 52, 75,
94, 96 ; private letters, 50, 148,
149, 151, 156 ; his French pro-
clivities, 55, 56 ; a well-read
man, 65, 99 ; knowledge of
Italian literature, 55, 99, 155 ;
moral character, 56, 57, 73 ;
letter to the Westminster
electors, 61 . ; in private life,
74, 97, 126, 218, 219 ; ideas
of limited monarchy, 81 ; in
32
250
INDEX
coalition ministries, 83, 85 ; and
Ireland, 86, 88, 92, 205, 206,
208 ; and the peerage, 91 ;
compared with Sallust, 95 ; on
the Continent, 95 et seq. ; at
St. Anne's Hill, 104, 111, 127,
210 ; his favourite passages in
Virgil, 127, 128, 139 ; on reli-
gion, 147 ; liking for Ariosto,
148, 150, 171 ; opinions on
Homer and Virgil, 156, 171 ;
meeting with Kosciusko, 172,
173 ; at Bonaparte's levee, 177,
192 ; conversation with Bona-
parte, 193 ; Lord Grenrille
and Fox, 199 ; admiration of
Chaucer, 211 ; attacked by
Canning, 215 ; Sheridan and
Fox, 218; death, 225; corre-
spondence with Trotter, 226-
231
Fox, Sir Stephen, 187.
Foxites, xix, 54, 109, 178.
France war with, 6, 40, 62, 89 ;
conquests of, 26 ; government
of, 58 ; the Netherlands and,
114. See "French."
Franco-Gallia, by F. Hoffman,
203 n.
Franklin, Benjamin, 77, 80 n,
Frazer, General Mackenzie, 63 n.
French, The, 28, 106 ; their hatred
of England, 109; the best
dancers and worst musicians,
171 ; unfit for self-government,
174.
French Directory, 59.
French marquises, 160.
French painters, 168.
French Revolution, The, 30, 46 ;
consequences of, 7 ; William
Pitt and, 38 ; foreshadowed by
Ariosto and Tasso, 161.
French theatre, 164-5.
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas, 169.
Gay, John, The Beggar's Opera,
170 n.
Gebir, by W. S. Landor, xxi, 18n.,
31 n.
George II., 16 n., 237.
George III. and the Dukes, 46 ;
character of, 80 ; dislike of Fox,
200.
Ghent, C. J. Fox at, 111.
Gibbon, Edward, on the Chevalier
de Folard, 101 n.
Gifford, William, xiii, xiv.
Gillray, James, caricature of Fox,
185 n.
Gladstone, W. E., 30 n.
Godeau, Antoine, Bishop of Vence,
Racine borrowed from, 166.
Goldsmith, Oliver, a political
quietist, 81 ; an Englishman,
87 J on fisheries, 121 n. ; and
contemporary criticism, 144 ;
praise of, 228.
Grattan, Henry, 87, 206, 208.
Gray, Thomas, 71 ', quoted, 1 69 n. ;
his contempt for Rousseau, 143.
Greece, Republics of, 122.
Greek, ignorance of in France,
229
Grenville, William, Lord (1759-
1834), his sinecure, 16, 17.,
53 ; and the French Ambassador,
140, 141 ; and C. J. Fox, 198-
201 ; and George III., 203.
Grey, Sir Charles, first Earl
(1729-1807), in the West Indies,
39 n.
Grey, Charles (Lord Howick),
second Earl (1764-1845), xxii,
92 n., 203, 205,223.
Gustavus Adolphus, 112.
HALIFAX, Charles Montague, first
Earl of (1661-1715), 213.
Hallam, Henry, on Macbiavelli,
99 n.
Hamilton, Mrs., 87.
Hampden, John, 44, 77, 189.
Hanover, 62 ; Chatham and Fox
on, 16, 54.
Harris, James, author of Hermes,
228.
Hastings, Warren, xi, xiii.
Hawkesbury, Lord, afterwards
second Earl of Liverpool (1770-
1828), 61, 226 n.
"Heaven-born Minister," The,
30 n., 163.
Hector, Homer's, 134.
H6loise and Abelard, in Pope,
49 ; monument of, 191.
Heroic Idyls, by W. S. Landor,
231 n.
Hesiod, an indifferent poet, 149.
Hoche, General Lazare, 20 n.
INDEX
251
Holland, 116-26.
Holland, Henry Vassal Fox, third
Baron, 164, 217, 224 ; his
Further Memoirs of the Whig
Party, 17., 21 n., 23.; his
preface to C. J. Fox's History,
46, 52, 55.
Homer, imitated by Virgil, 128
et seq. ; hy Lucretius, 132 ;
characters in the Odyssey, 134,
136 ; the Iliad, 135 ; incom-
parable, 135 ; superior to Virgil,
138 ; his contention with Hesiod,
149 ; C. J. Fox on, 156, 171 ;
sea pieces in, 226.
Horace, quoted, 173 n. ; Burns
compared with, 215.
Hotoman, F., author of Franco-
Gallia, 203 n.
Houghton, Lord, on Landor's
Commentary, viii, xx ; quoted,
24 n.
Howick, Lord. See "Grey."
Hoyle, Edmund, (1672-1769), on
Whist, 100.
Hume, David, his style, 47 . ;
contemporary critics on, 144.
Hunt, Joseph, M.P., 237 n.
Hunt, Leigh, 30 n.
Kurd, Bishop Richard, on Fairies,
232.
Hutchinson, John (1616-1664),
44.
Hyde Park, A Pantheon for, 77.
Imaginary Conversations, by W. S.
Landor, xiii, xxii, 91, 133,
156, 166, 172, 196, 232.
Ireland, 42, 240 ; and the Union,
86 et seq. ; C. J. Fox and, 86,
88, 92, 205, 206, 208 ; William
Pitt's treatment of, 90 ; com-
pared with Poland, 91.
Irish, the, English sympathies
with, 87 ; their mistakes, 206.
Irish peers of Pitt's creation, 90.
Irish writers, 87, 206.
Italian literature, 55, 99, 155 ;
painters, 169.
JAMES II., of England, 54.
Jeffreys, Judge, 241.
Jenkinson, Robert Banks. See
" Hawkesbury."
Jervis, Sir John, 39 n.
Johnson, Dr., and his critics,
144 ; Anna Seward and, 145 ;
on Robertson's History of Scot-
land, 227 n. ; his Lives of the
Poets, 228 ; of Dryden, 214.
Jortin, Dr. John, 133.
Joseph II., Emperor, 105, 173.
Joubert, Joseph, French general,
162.
Juvenal, 213.
KKTT, Rev. Henry, xv, 221 n.
Klopstock, preferred to Moliere,
219.
Kosciusko, 172-3.
LAFAYETTE, Marquis de, his im-
prisonment in Austria, 162 ;
meetings with C. J. Fox, 188,
191 n.
La Fontaine, Jean de, 166.
Landed gentry in England, 160.
Landor, Walter Savage, Quarterly
Review on, vii, xiv ; letters to
Southey, x et seq. ; letter to
Mr. John Murray, xviii ; at
Llanthony, xxi ; in Spain, xxi,
182 ; marriage, xxii ; Letters to
Lord Liverpool, xxiv, 38 n. , 59 n. ,
lOOn. ; verses on Walcheren,
21 n. ; Letters, Private and Public,
31 n., 158 n. ; Apology for Satire,
34 n. ; Verses on Canning, 36 n.,
217 ; translation from Virgil's
Georgics, 131 n.
Lauenburg, Francis Albert, Duke
of Saxe, 112.
Le Brun, Charles, 168.
Lecky, W. E. H., England in the
Eighteenth Century, quoted, 5 n. ,
74 n., 99 n., 105 n.
Letters of a Conservative, by W. S.
Laudor, 220 n.
Livy, 95, 123 ; on the Gauls,
174 ; Machiavelli's commentary
on, 100.
Locke, John, 8, 77.
London, Architecture of, 114.
Louis XIV. of France, 54; a
patron of literature, 170 ; more
a gentleman than Bonaparte,
194.
Louis XV. of France, 70.
Loutherbourgh, Philip James,
169.
252
INDEX
Louvre, C. J. Fox at the, 167.
Lucan, Pharsalia, 136.
Lucretius, imitation of Homer,
132, 133 ; quoted, 234.
Ludlow, Edmund, 44.
MACAULAY, Lord, on Machiavelli,
99 n.
Machiavelli, 99, 100 ; quoted
37, 38.
Mackintosh Sir James, 33 n. , 70 n. ,
75 n
Madison, James, President, xii,
xiv, xv, xvi, 5n., 8n.
Malmeshury, First Earl of, 59 n.
Marius, Caius, 160.
Marlborough, Duke of, 77.
Masaniello, 174.
Medina del Rio Seco, Battle of,
182.
Melville, Lord, 34 n.
Menage, Giles, 166.
Menander, 219.
Merry, Anthony, 179, 185-6.
Metastasio, 171 ; compared with
Alfieri, 155 ; the poet of the
sea, 227.
Mezentius, Virgil's, 128.
Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 47 n.
Milnes, R. Monckton. See
"Houghton, Lord."
Milton, John, 8, 44, 77 ', Paradise
Lost, 131 n., 134-5
Moira, Countess of, 201.
Molesworth, Robert, first Viscount
and the Franco-Gallia, 203.
Moliere, unrivalled as a comic
writer, 219.
Monarch, Landor's hatred of the
word, 203.
Montesquieu, 29i
Monuments franfaise, 190.
Moreau, Jean Victor, French
general, 162, 190.
Morpeth, Viscount (afterwards
sixth Earl of Carlisle), 180 n.
Murray, Mr. John, x, et seq. ',
Memoirs of, xiv, n. ', letter to
Southey, xvii ; Landor's letter
to, xviii.
NATIONAL Gallery, wanted in Eng-
land, 168.
Nelson, Lord, 77 ; neglect of, 90 ;
at Naples, 118 .
Nero, 6.
Netherlands, The, 39 ; J. C. Fox's
visit to, 111 et seq.
Newport, Sir John, 207.
Newton, Isaac, 77.
Nichols, Admiral, 35.
Nobility, in England and other
countries, 160.
North, Lord, second Earl of
Guildford, 38n., 77.
O'CONNOR, Arthur, 72., 101,
107, 191, 192.
O'Neill, Mrs., 87-
Opposition, The, 79.
Orpheus, in Virgil, 129 et seq.
Otway, Thomas, 48.
Ovid, compared with Ariosto, 149,
151 ; his epistles, 152 ; quoted,
152.
PAGE, Sir Francis, ' ' the hanging
judge," 241.
Painters, French, Italian, and
English, 168-9.
Palafox y Melzi, Jose de, "hero
of Zaragoza," 138, 172.
Paraguay, 10 n.
Paris, in Homer, 134.
Parr, Dr. Samuel, xviii, xxi ;
and C. J. Fox, 147.
Pascal, Blaise, 76.
Peerage, C. J. Fox and the, 91 ;
William Pitt and the, 45.
Pelayo, 138.
Pellew, Sir E., 20 n.
Penn, William, 77.
Pentameron, The,by W. S. Landor,
44 n.
Perceval, Spencer, 36., 41.
Pericles and Aspasia, by W. S.
Landor, xxiii, 153
Peterborough, Charles Mordauut,
Earl of, xi, xiii.
Pharsalia, Caesar and Pompey at,
24 ; Lucau's, 136.
Pichegru, Charles, French general,
190.
Pindar, compared with Euripides,
156; his genius, 171, 172;
quoted, 162 n.
Pitt, William, the younger, 5, 6 n. t
23 n., 29, 62, 56, 58, 66, 160,
202, 236; the "heaven-born
minister," 30, 163 ; at the out-
INDEX
253
break of the French Revolution,
37, 38 ; and the peerage, 45 ;
and the French Directory, 59 ;
his eloquence, 60 ; duel with
Tierney, 60 ; at Home Tooke's
trial, 72 ; all account book, 72 ;
and the Sinking Fund, 73 ; in
the war with France, 78 ; a
lover of arbitrary power, 79 ;
his Irish policy, 90 ; contempt
for literature, 99 ; " incompar-
able financier," 163 ; and the
currency, 164 ; Canning and,
216.
Plato, his talent for allegory, 233.
Plutarch, 122-3.
Poet, qualities of a great, 48.
Poets, tempore George III., 214.
Poland, xvii, 162 ; compared with
Ireland, 91.
Polybius, 122-3.
Pompey, 139, 140 ; at Pharsalia,
24.
Ponsonby, George (1755-1817),
206.
Pope, Alexander, xi, 46 n., 213,
215 ; Rape of the Lock, 49 ;
Eloisa to Abelard, 49 ; on
Homer's shield of Achilles,
150 ; his political optimism,
81.
Popham, Sir Hope, 18 .
Person, Richard, verses by, 229 n.
Portugal, Queen Maria of, 239,
240.
Poussiu, Nicholas, 168.
Pretyman, Rev. G., Bishop of
Lincoln, 60, 170 n.
Price, Dr. R. and the Sinking
Fund, 73 n.
Prince Regent, 41, 224 ; Trotter's
dedication to, viii.
Prussia, King Frederick William
III. of, 117.
Prussia, Queen Louisa of, and
the English Ambassador, 181.
Public Characters, 220.
Pulteney, Sir James Murray,
50, 110 ; expedition to Ferrol,
20 n. ; Secretary at War, 21 n.
Quarterly Review, on Landor, vii ;
on the Commentary, ix ; on
President Madison, xiv n.
Quiberon, Expedition to, 20.
RACINE, 96 ; epithets in, 165 ; his
characters and method of com-
position, 166 ; lines borrowed
from Godeau, 166.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 77.
Raphael, 168.
Recamier, Madame, 189.
Reviewers of books, 146.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 228.
Rhyme, in French poetry, 165.
Riversdale, Lord, xv, 90.
Robertson, William, Scotch his-
torian, and contemporary criti-
cism, 144 ; his style, 22
Robespierre, 9, 29, 66.
Rogers, Samuel, 56 n. ; on Helen
Maria Williams, 186 n.
Roland, Madame, 107.
Roman Catholics, 42, 203 ; Fox
and, 93, 208.
Romans, conquests of, 26 ; an un-
romantic people, 137.
Rome, Carthage and, 88 ; re-
public of, 122, 123, 140.
Roscoe, William (1758-1831), 65,
205.
Roscommou, Wentworth Dillon,
Earl of, 213.
Rose, George (1774-1818), xiv ;
his book, 235.
Rosebery, Lord, Pitt, by, quoted,
20 n, , 58 n. , 71 n. ; in The Monthly
Review, 170 n.
Rousseau, 224 ; and Thomas Gray,
143 ; La NouveUe Hetoise, 143 n.
Rubens, 115, 169.
Ruhnken, David, 229.
Russia, English Ambassador in,
179.
SAINT-SIMON, Due de, Memoirs,
205.
Sallust, 95, 96 ; quoted, 118. '
San Sebastian, 182.
Santona, 182.
Sarpedon in Homer, 134.
Saurin, William, Irish Attorney-
General, xii, 240 n.
Scaliger, Joseph, 128, 230 n.
Scrogges, Sir William, Lord Chief
Justice, 241,
Sejanus, 73.
Sertorius, 137.
Seward, Anna, Dr. Johnson and,
145.
254
INDEX
Shadwell, Thomas, 213.
Shakespeare, 77, 215 ; his Caliban,
231 ; his facility, 149.
Shenstone, William, Schoolmis-
tress, 233.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 45 n.,
101 ., 219 ; called the rival of
Moliere, 219 ; and Fox, 218,
219.
Sicily, English in, 117, 118.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 77, 139.
Similies in poetry, 153.
Sinking Fund, Pitt and the, 73.
Slave trade, Fox and the, 64.
Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral
Sentiments, 228.
Smith, Admiral Sir Sidney, 68 n.,
239 n.
Smith, Rev. Sydney, Peter Plym-
leys Letters quoted, 36 n. ; on
C. J. Fox's verses, 75 n.
Sophocles, compared with Euri-
pides and jSEschylus, 157-
Sotheby, William, translation of
Virgil, 132.
Southey, Robert, his copy of the
Commentary, viii, xx ; corre-
spondence with Laudor, ix et seq.,
on the state of the nation, 31 n. ;
and The Critical Review, 146.
Spain, 68, 108 ; Landor in, xxi,
182 ; war with, 84 ; a land of
romance, 138 ; nobility of,
160 ; English agents in, 181.
pallanzani, Lazarus, 243.
Spenser, Edmund, inferior to
Ariosto, 151 ; his language, 212 ;
his complaint of neglect, 214 ;
The Faery Queene, 154, 212, 213,
215.
Spenserian stanza, The, 233.
tadtholder of Holland, 116, 117,
124, 125.
Stanhope, Earl, History of England,
quoted, 8n., 237 n. ; Life of
William Pitt, 16 n., 46 n., 61 n.
St. Anne's Hill, Fox at, 104, 111,
127, 210.
erne, Lawrence, an English-
man, 87 ; Tristram Shandy
quoted, 113?*.
Supernatural in poetry, 232.
Swift, Jonathan, xi, 213 ; an
Englishman, 87 ; quoted, 241.
Switzerland, Bonaparte and, 184.
Sydney, Algernon, 44, 77, 139,
189.
TACITUS, Germania, 123.
Talleyrand, xiii, 27.
Tallien, Jean Lambert, 56 ;
Madame, 191.
Tasso, quoted, 151 ; compared with
Alfieri, 155.
Taxation in England, 6, 28.
Terence, Julius Caesar's verses on,
216, 219 n.
Thackeray, F., Life of Chatham,
71 n.
Theatre, in France, 164, 165.
Theocritus, 215.
Thomson, James, The Seasons, 75 ;
Castle of Indolence, 233.
" Three in a bed," 53.
Thuillier, Julia (Mrs. Landor),
xxii.
Thuillier, Vincent, 101 n.
Thurlow, Lord Chancellor, 8 n.
Tiberius, Emperor/73.
Tierney, George, duel with Pitt,
60.
Tighe, Mrs., 87.
Tomliue, Rev. G. See " Prety-
man."
Tonson, Jacob, bookseller, 48 n.
Tooke, Home, 111 ; trial of, 72 n.
Triumvirate, The Roman, 85.
Trotter, John Bernard, author of
Memoirs of C. J. Fox, viii et seq.
Turks, Virtues of the, 24.
Turner, J. M. W., painter, 169.
Tyrolese, The, 10.
UNITED STATES. See " America."
VALENCIENNES, Siege of, 39.
Venetian painters, 169.
Vernet, Horace, 168.
Versailles, 169.
Villoison, Jean Baptiste, C. J.
Fox on, 229.
Virgil, readings in, 127-32, 195 ;
imitations of Homer, 128, 132 ;
Lander's translation from, 131 ;
defects in the JEneid, 136 ; his
tineas, 137 ; his want of judg-
ment, 138 ; pathos, 139 ; con-
trasted with Ariosto, 151 ; moral
and political axioms, 157 ; his
Dido, 197 ; seascapes in, 227.
INDEX
255
Voltaire, praise of Machiavelli,
99 ; hated by Alfieri, 155.
WALCHEREN Expedition, 21 n., 22.
Walker, Dr. de Noe, xviii.
Walpole, Horace, quoted, 16 n. ,
70 n., 71 n.
War, Weapons in, 101.
Warton, Joseph, 228, 232; on
Pope, 49 ; Translation of Virgil,
132.
Washington, George, 68, 77, 137 ;
and the War of Independence,
77, 78.
Wellington, the Duke of, xi, xiii.
West Indies, 39.
Westminster Hall, A statue for,
77.
Whitelocke, General John, 18 n. ,
50, 110 ; court-martial on, 20 n.
Whitworth, Charles, Earl, 178 n.
William III., 28, 140.
Williams, Helen Maria, 186-8, 191.
Wilson, Richard, painter, 169.
Windham, William (1750-1810),
17 n., 20 n., 217.
Witt, John and Cornelius de, 125.
Wyttenbach, Daniel, his Vita
Ruhnkerii, 229.
XERXES, 63.
YORK, Frederick Augustus, Duke
of, 39 n.
ZARAGOZA, the hero of, 138.
Printed by Haull, Watton <t Vinty, Id., London and Aylttbvry.
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