> ' > >.', ' > ) >- > > >> > ) I >3$ . ' > y }i > > J) )O ' ' > > V > > ^> > > - >* > > > >;;> > ' > > ' :> :> > > >> > > > > 5 V , >^>> > > >> > > S? > > > ^ ) > > ^ >.^ 1 -^ ' > ;> >) ? >> ' J >> > > :fe 5 >& *iev . )* jm ^\ > > > i - > > > > s > > > , > > > > > -> 5 / > > >' , 7 ^ > ,> >>> ' > > o J> <>,; ^> > B^lk kfcl^ ^f *."-^ - ^ r ' ~r r /^: MSSa^E* ^/** J a*/*- ^im^ / /^ / ^ MEMOIRS CELEBKATED ETONIANS: INCLUDING HENRY FIELDING. THE EARL OF CHATHAM. HORNE TOOKE. HORACE WALPOLE. GEORGE GRENVILLE. THOMAS GRAY. GEORGE SELWYN. LORD NORTH. EARL OF BUTE. EARL TEMPLE. ETC. ETC. ETC. BY J. HENEAGE JESSE, ADTHOR OF " MEMOIUS OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE IIL," " THE COURT OF THK STUARTS," BTC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, in rtunarg to |cr iftlajcstg. 1875. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. CONTENTS. PAGE NICHOLAS HABDINGE ....... 1 THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD WESTON .... 6 THE HON. THOMAS TOWNSHEND ..... 9 THOMAS MOBELL, D.D., F.S.A 13 WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. ...... 18 THE REV. THOMAS BBOUGHTON . . . . .26 THE REV. JOHN CHAPMAN, D.D., Archdeacon of Sudbury . 30 DB. JOHN SUMNEB, Head Master of Eton, and Provost of King's College 33 HENBY Fox, LOBD HOLLAND ...... 34 GILBEBT WEST ........ 57 HENBY FIELDING ........ 62 RlCHABD MOUNTENEY ....... 89 RALPH THICKNESSE . . . . . . .92 WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM . . . .96 SIB CHABLES HANBUBT WILLIAMS, K.B. . . . .164 GEOBGE LOBD LYTTELTON ...... 176 THE REVEBEND SNEYD DAVIES, D.D. .... 194 DB. WILLIAM COOKB, Head Master of Eton, Provost of King's College, and Dean of Ely . . . .199 YOL. I. b vi CONTENTS. PAGE THOMAS AUGUSTINE ABNE . . . . . .203 EIOHABD EARL TEMPLE, K.G. ..... 210 THE EIGHT HON. GEORGE GRENVILLE . . . .230 FREDERICK CORNWALLIS, Archbishop of Canterbury . . 245 JOHN EARL OF BUTE, K.G 252 THE KEY. WILLIAM COLE ...... 286 DR. CHARLES LYTTELTON, Bishop of Carlisle . . . 296 DR. JEREMIAH MILLES, Dean of Exeter, F.E.S. . . 299 CHARLES PRATT, EARL CAMDEN ..... 302 JACOB BRYANT ........ 320 THE EEVEREND THOMAS ASHTON, D.D. .... 332 EICHARD WEST 337 GEORGE MONTAGU, EARL OF HALIFAX, K.G. . . . 344 THOMAS GRAY 352 MEMOIRS OF CELEBEATED ETONIANS. NICHOLAS HARDINGE. THIS eminent scholar and accomplished antiquary, poet, and lawyer, was the son of the Rev. Gabriel Hardinge, Yicar of Kingston in Surrey, patris bene merentis, as he is designated by his son. The subject of this memoir was born in 1700. Educated on the foundation at Eton, he was transferred thence to King's College, Cambridge, in 1718-19 ; took his degree as B.A. in 1722, and as M.A. in 1726. " At Eton and Cambridge," writes Nichols, "he had the fame of the most eminent scholar of his time ; and had very singular powers in Latin verse, perhaps inferior to none since the Augustan age." l His friends, indeed, are said to have given the preference to his Latin verses even over those of Dr. George, 1 Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. v. p. 339. VOL. I. B NICHOLAS HAKDINGE. the celebrated Provost of King's College. 1 Accord- ing to his accomplished son, Judge Hardinge, " Yultu erat severo, et a venustate ornni remoto, sed liberali et aperto, moribus cum integerrimis turn humanissimis, et mira inter suos caritate ornatis." 2 Prejudiced, it may be mentioned, as was the great critic, Richard Bentley, against some of the King's College men of his time, he made an exception in favour of Nicholas Hardinge. The King's men, he said, were all puppies, except Hardinge ; and " Hardinge," he added, " is a King's man." 3 On quitting Cambridge, Mr. Hardinge devoted himself to the study of the law, and having in due time been called to the Bar, was appointed Attorney- General to William Duke of Cumberland, of Culloden celebrity. In 1731, he was constituted Chief Clerk of the House of Commons, the duties of which office, owing to his assiduity, tact, and know- ledge of precedents, he is said to have discharged with singular advantage to the public service. Horace Walpole, for instance, incidentally speaks of him in this capacity as having the history of England at the ends of his Parliamentary fingers." 4 He was still, it may be mentioned, holding this appointment when, during the fierce Parliamentary 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. v. p. 339, note. 2 ' De Yita Nicolai Hardinge Fragmentum,' prefixed to his ' Poems,' p. vi. 3 N. Hardinge's ' Poems,' p. 236. 4 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. ii. p. 429; ed. 1857. NICHOLAS HAEDINGE. debates which preceded the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole from power, that great minister, in applying to himself the well-known line in the Epistles of Horace " Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa " incorrectly made use of the word nulli instead of nulla. The faulty grammar naturally offended the classical ear- of the then leader of the Opposition, the celebrated William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, who had been a Westminster, as Walpole had been an Eton, scholar ; and accordingly, in replying to Walpole's speech, he plainly told him that his logic was as bad as his Latin. The Prime Minister, how- ever, not only warmly insisted on the correctness of his Latinity, but, with his customary disregard for Parliamentary formalities, offered to lay Pulteney a bet of a guinea, which the other accepted, that the word was nulli. Nicholas Hardinge was much too eminent a scholar, and much too near at hand, not to be sent for to decide the wager ; and accordingly, his decision being adverse to Sir Robert, the Minister drew a guinea from his pocket, which he tossed over to the Opposition benches, where it was caught by Pulteney, who appears to have thoroughly enjoyed his triumph. Holding up the coin to the view of the House, " This," he said, " is the only money I have received from the Treasury for many years, and it shall be the last." Among Pulteney's effects at his death was found this identical guinea, wrapped B 2 NICHOLAS HARDINGE. up in a piece of paper, on which were inscribed the playful circumstances under which it had come into his possession. 1 In February, 1747, Mr. Hardinge resigned his appointment as Chief Clerk of the House of Commons, on being elected member for Eye, and in 1752 was nominated joint Secretary of the Treasury. He continued to represent the borough of Eye in Parlia- ment till 1754. Of Mr. Hardinge's English poetical compositions, the two which were held in the highest esteem by his contemporaries appear to have been his ' Dialogue in the Senate House at Cambridge,' written in 1750, and the ' Denhill-Iliad,' or ' Denhilliad,' originating in the trifling circumstance of the hounds running through Lady Grey's garden at Denhill, in East Kent. They are severally to be found in a collection of his * Poems Latin, Greek, and English,' edited by his son, Judge Hardinge. 2 His Latin poems are doubtless far superior to his English. Of these, the best known is probably his Sapphic Ode, addressed to Sir Robert Walpole the year after the fall of the latter from power ; Archdeacon Coxe having given it notoriety by transcribing it at length in his life of Sir Robert. 3 Mr. Hardinge would seem to have been highly 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. v. p. 341. 2 See also Nichols's ' Life of Bowyer,' p. 129, note. 3 Vol. iii. p. 600. NICHOLAS HAEDINGE. favoured in his married life. In December, 1738, he married Jane, second daughter of Sir John Pratt, of Wilderness, Kent, and sister of the great lawyer, Lord Camden ; a lady who combined with great strength of mind, and a deep sense of her religious duties, a singularly cheerful disposition and the liveliest conversational talents. After having borne him nine sons and three daughters, this "angel- mother," as her son the Judge designates her, expired on the 17th of May, 1807, having survived her hus- band forty-nine years. Mr. Hardinge's own death took place on the 9th of April, 1758. His remains were interred in the vault of his family at Kingston. Prefixed to Mr. Hardinge's 'Poems,' as well as in Nichols's * Illustrations of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century,' will be found a portrait of him, engraved from the. original picture by Ramsay. It should be mentioned that the late esteemed soldier and statesman, Henry Viscount Hardinge, was the grandson of the scholar. THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD WESTON. APPARENTLY no less beloved for his virtues by the wise and good than he was admired by them for his literary abilities, it cannot but be regretted that so little should be known of this accomplished Etonian. The son of Dr. Stephen Weston, Bishop of Exeter, he was born at Eton in the year 1701 ; was admitted to King's College in 1719, a year after the admission of his friend, Nicholas Hardinge ; took his degree as B.A. in 1723, and as M.A. in 1727. Adopting the State as his profession, Mr. Weston was at an early age appointed secretary to Charles second Yiscount Townshend, when Secretary of State, and in that capacity was in attendance on George II. during his visit to Hanover in 1729. He subse- quently served for some years as Under-Secretary of State, under the Secretaryship of William first Earl of Harrington, and on the appointment of that noble- man to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, was employed under him in that kingdom, of which he became a Privy Councillor. THE BIGHT HON. EDWAED WES20N. As a man of letters and learning, the merit of Mr. Weston's literary productions would scarcely seem to bear out the considerable literary reputation which he enjoyed in his lifetime. The only printed works of which he would appear to have been the author are a pamphlet on the Jew Bill, published in 1755; 'The Country Gentleman's Advice to his Son on his comiug of Age;' 'A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, on the Earthquake at Lisbon ;' and, lastly, * Family Dis- courses,' republished after his death by his son, the Rev. Charles Weston, Rector of Therfield, in Hert- fordshire, with an affectionate record of his father's virtues. 1 Bishop Warburton, it may be observed, in referring to him in one of his letters as one of his literary antagonists, speaks but slightingly of him as " by inclination a Methodist, connected with Sherlock." " I am afraid," adds the bishop, " he will be a sharer in that silent contempt with which I treat my answerers." 2 The object of Mr. Weston's affections, to whom he was afterwards married, was Miss Penelope Patrick, granddaughter of the learned and pious Dr. Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely, and niece of Mrs. Sherlock, wife of Dr. Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London. Respecting this young lady, it is re- lated that her lover, at least on one, if not on more 1 Watt's ' Bibliotheca Britannica,' art. Weston. Nichols's 'Lite- rary Anecdotes/ vol. ix. p. 494. 2 Letter to Hurd f Feb. 17th, 1759. 8 THE BIGHT HON. EDWARD WESTON. than one, occasion of her having been a " toast " of the evening, drank her health in as many glasses of wine as there were letters in the word Penelopea ; this apparently being the name conferred upon her by his classical friends. The circumstance is intro- duced by Nicholas Hardinge into one of the happiest of his Latin odes : " Ipse Westonus calices, relictis Imperi rebus, petet, ebriusque Ter bibet ternis facilem culullis Penelopeam" 1 Mr. Weston's second wife was Miss Anne Foun- taine, who was also a niece of Mrs. Sherlock. It may be mentioned that the long inscription on the tomb of Bishop Sherlock in Fulham Churchyard has been supposed to be the composition of Mr. Weston. Conjecture points to December, 1775, as the pro- bable date of Mr. Weston's decease. At all events, at the close of 1776 he was no longer living. 1 N. Hardinge's ' Poems,' p. 58, and note. THE HON. THOMAS TOWNSHEND. THOMAS, second son of Charles second Viscount Townshend, and father of Thomas first Viscount Sydney, was born on the 2nd of June, 1701, and, after having quitted Eton, was educated at King's College, Cambridge. " To name this gentleman," writes Judge Hardinge of his father's friend, " is to add that he was the most amiable and respectable gentleman of his age ; that a more highly cultivated understanding, more engaging manners, a higher sense of honour, and of public, as well as private virtue, or a more benevolent heart, never blessed the world." 1 To this panegyric it may be further added, that of the accomplished knot of scholars who were Mr. Townshend's contemporaries at Eton and King's College, he was acknowledged not to be the least elegant. The intimate friend of Nicholas Hardinge, it was to Mr. Townshend that the latter addressed the clever Latin ode from which we have quoted in the preceding memoir. 2 Inviting his friend, 1 N. Hardinge's ' Poems,' p. 56, note. 2 ' Ad Amicum ;' ibid. p. 57. 10 THE EON. THOMAS TOWNSHEND. soon after his marriage, to visit him at his chambers in the Temple, the ode commences : " Si placens uxor sinit, et Quadrillam Sperms, hybernos iterare ludos Parce, nee mecum pudeat morantem Frangere noctem. Est mihi splendens focus," &c. On quitting Cambridge, Mr. Townshend, like his schoolfellow Weston, chose the service of the State as his profession ; at the same time, however, enter- ing himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn. His first employment was in the office of his father, then Secretary of State, whom he accompanied in his journeys to Hanover when in attendance on George I., and afterwards on George II. His ability for business, not less than his literary attain- ments, would seem to have been at a very early age appreciated by his contemporaries. At the age of twenty-one he was returned to Parliament as member for Winchelsea, and in the general election which followed was elected, conjointly with the Hon. Edward Finch, a member for the University of Cambridge, in which seat of learning, in conjunction with his colleague, he instituted prizes for the Senior and Middle Bachelors. He was at the same time elected member for Hastings, but preferring to sit for the scene of his education and early friend- ships, he continued to represent the University during as many as six successive Parliaments ; retiring from its representation only when the THE HON. THOMAS TOWNSHEND. 11 advance of years warned him of the wisdom of well- timed retreat. Intimate with, and appreciated by, Sir Robert Walpole, by Henry Pelham, and by other leading statesmen of his day, Mr. Townshend, it is said, but for his diffidence and the amiable sensibility of his nature, might have been selected to fill high office in the State. As it was, the only appointment which he seems to have held, besides his employment in his father's (Lord Townshend's) office, was that of a Teller- ship of the Exchequer, to which post he succeeded in the year 1727. In 1739, indeed, he had accepted the situation of Chief Secretary to William Duke of Devonshire, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, when the death of a beloved and amiable wife not only so completely prostrated him as to compel him to forego the appointment, but incapacitated him for business during several subsequent years. This lady, it should be mentioned, was Mary, daughter of Colonel John Selwyn, of Matson, in Gloucestershire, and sister of the celebrated wit, George Selwyn. Not less amiable a person, whose loss, some years afterwards, Mr. Townshend had also to deplore, was his third and gallant son, Henry, a lieutenant-colonel in the first regiment of Foot Guards, who, apparently not less beloved by the army than he had formerly been beloved as a schoolboy at Eton, was killed, in 1762, at the battle of Wilhelmstadt, in Germany. Nevertheless, Mr. Townshend's old age was hap- 12 THE HON. THOMAS TOWNSHEND. pily a contented and .cheerful one. " His society, of which he formed the delight and happiness, was," we are told, " composed in general of his particular friends and his family. In their company he enjoyed and exhibited his great and amiable talents till within a very few weeks of his death, which happened just upon the close of his seventy-ninth year, in 1780." l 1 Sir E. Brydges's ' Peerage of England,' vol. vi. pp. 319-21. 13 THOMAS MORELL, D.D., F.S.A. THIS learned writer and lexicographer was born at Eton on the 18th of March, 1703, and at the age of twelve was entered on the foundation of its famous school. His acquaintance, William Cole, the anti- quary, though his junior at Eton by some years, well remembered the time when Morell's mother and sister kept a " dame's," or boarding-house within the precincts of the college. 1 On the 3rd of August, 1722, he was elected to King's College; in 1726 he took his degree as B.A. ; in 1730 as M.A., and in 1743 became D.D. The first church employment which he enjoyed is said to have been as curate of Kew, on which duty he entered on Lady Day, 173 1. 2 He was also for some time curate of Twicken- ham, at a period when Pope was residing there, and when " Twickenham, where frolic Wharton revelled," had become the most classic village in England. At 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ix. p. 789. a The ' Biographia Dramatica,' however (art. Morell), mentions his having previously been curate of Kelvedon, in Essex. 14 THOMAS MORELL, D.D., F.8.A. length, in 1737, on the presentation of King's College, Cambridge, he was instituted to the rectory of Buckland, the only church living which he ever enjoyed. In 1738, Dr. Morell married Anne, daughter of Henry Barker, Esq., of Chiswick; an event princi- pally of importance as having been the occasion' of introducing him to the great painter Hogarth, by whom he was subsequently consulted in regard to his ' Analysis of Beauty,' and whom he assisted in its composition. Another illustrious person to whom he afforded literary assistance in his art was Handel, for whose oratorios he adapted the words. Mason, in a letter to Walpole, incidentally, and somewhat contemptuously, speaks of him as " Handel's poet, Dr. Morell." 1 Dr. Morell, besides having been one of the earliest writers in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' and the author of several occasional sermons, poems, &c., republished, in 1748, King's edition of four of the tragedies of Euripides, 2 vols. 8vo, the same being followed by an edition of the 'Prometheus Vinctus ' of JEschylus, 4to ; a ' Lexicon of G-reek Prosody,' 4to ; an * Abridgment of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary;' a translation of the 'Epistles of Seneca,' with notes, 2 vols. 4to, and a modernised edition of Chaucer's ' Canterbury Tales,' in which he assisted. He also left notes on Locke's ' Essay 1 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. v. p. 420. THOMAS MOBELL, D.D., F.S.A. 15 on the Human Understanding,' which had been prepared, it is said, at the instance of Queen Caroline, consort of George II. "As long," writes Nichols, " as learning is cultivated amongst us, the value of his labours will be known, and the public neglect of him while he lived will be lamented." Unhappily, the long life of this eminent scholar was chequered by the depressing consequences of improvidence and debt. Not that he seems to have been the slave of any particular extravagance or vice, but that his want of knowledge of the world, and constant devotion to study, sadly interfered with his proper management of his worldly affairs ; while his cheerful, convivial disposition, his taste for the drama, and passion for music and for musical society, though certainly not necessarily involving laxity of morals or conduct, were calculated to prejudice him as a clergyman in the good opinion of those persons in whose hands the dispensation of ecclesiastical preferment was vested. From whatever causes, however, Dr. Morell may have been exposed to the importunities of the dun and to the intrusions of the bailiff, the picture which the story of his life presents of neglected talent battling with penury, is none the less painful to contemplate. Sad and humiliating, indeed, is the reflection that, towards the decline of his laborious existence, the only patron from whose influence he had to hope for advancement 16 THOMAS MOEELL, D.D., F.S.A. in his sacred profession was a fashionable dancing- master and violinist. " There mark what ills the scholar's life assail Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail." Dr. Johnson. This person was the once celebrated Desnoyers, an especial favourite of the then heir to the throne, Frederick Prince of Wales. The hopes, however, thus raised by Desnoyers' friendship were destined to be frustrated ; first of a)l by the death of Prince Frederick, who died in March, 1751, and, not long afterwards, by the death of Desnoyers himself. The Prince, it may be casually mentioned, expired in Desnoyers" arms ; nor may it be impertinent further to point out that the Court dancing-master and the scholar have been severally immortalized by the pencil of Hogarth, the former as dancing in a grand ballet (Fig. 20, Plate 1, in the 'Analysis of Beauty '), and the scholar as a cynic philosopher. The latter likeness is said to be admirable. The now veteran scholar had, in his more hopeful days, repudiated the notion of publishing his works by subscription ; but necessity, as he subsequently discovered, has but little choice. To Boswell, for instance, David Garrick writes on September the 14th, 1773 : " Shall I recommend to you a play of ^Eschylus, (the ' Prometheus '), published and translated by poor old Morel 1, who is a good scholar, and an ac- quaintance of mine ? It will be but half a guinea, and your name shall be put in the list I am making for THOMAS MORELL, D.D., F.S.A. 17 him. You will be in very good company." 1 At all events, the old man would seem to have borne his dis- tresses with equanimity. " Old as I am," he writes, in preparing his ' Seneca's Epistles ' for publication, " I never knew an injury that was not easily forgiven, nor a distress but what was tolerable, and, as the world goes, rather required a contemptuous smile than a tear." At length, though not apparently till he was in his seventy-third year, Fortune cast a gleam or two of sunshine across the scholar's path. In 1775, he was appointed chaplain to the garrison at Ports- mouth ; the Society of Antiquaries about the same time creating a new office for him as one of it secretaries. 2 His death took place on the 19th of February, 1784, when he had nearly completed the eighty-first year of his age. His body was interred at Chiswick ; thus giving additional interest to ground which already contained the remains of Hogarth. 1 Croker's 'Boswell's Life of Johnson/ p. 386; ed. 1848. 2 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ix. p. 789. VOL. I. 18 WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. THE character of this distinguished scholar, physician, and humorist, is sketched in a few words by Judge Hardinge in his Latin fragment of the life of his father : " Battius, faber fortunaa suae, vir egregise for- titudinis et perseverantise, medicus perspicax, doctus et sapiens, in scientiis liberalibus diligens et eruditus, integritatis castissimas, fideique in amicitiis per- spectae. 1 William Battie, the son of parents who seem to have been of good birth, though of small fortune, was born at Medbury, in Devonshire, in 1704. He was educated on the foundation at Eton, where he is said to have manifested much industry and desire for advancement. His father, the Eev. Edward Battie, had formerly been an assistant master at Eton, but died Eector of Medbury, on the 6th of September, 1714, leaving his child only ten years old. After his death, his widow, loth to be separated from her promising son, fixed her residence at Eton, where, in due time, we not only find her 1 N. Hardinge's ' Poems,' p. vii. WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. 19 rendering herself conspicuous by declaring war against Mrs. Morell, the mother of her son's equally clever form-fellow, but having the hardihood to beard to his face the formidable Head Master and eminent polemical divine, Dr. Snape. Believing that, owing to the latter having '"delayed a remove" for a few days till the recovery of young Morell from an illness, he had deprived her son of the chance of passing over his schoolfellow's head, she boldly taxed the Doctor, if not with injustice, at least with favouritism. In the mean time, the two young men, following the example set them by their mothers, had contracted a feud of their own. It should be mentioned that the late Head Master, Dr. Bland, had recently introduced amongst the scholars a system of argumentative controversy, which, with whatever advantages to learning it may have been fraught, was obviously not without a tendency to engender jealousy, if not quarrels, between the rival disputants. In the instance of Battie and Morell, not only was this the case, but it appears that one day, although they were both old enough to have reached the sixth form, they came to blows. After a fair set-to, writes Morell, " I knocked his head against the chapel, and this put an end to the affair for the present."- So indignant, it may be remarked, was Mrs. Battie at the turn affairs had taken, that, two or three days afterwards, happening to encounter young Morell as he was going into chapel, she c 2 20 WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. gave him, to use his own words, a " swingeing slap in the face." 1 In 1722, young Battie was transferred to King's College, where Morell had preceded him, and whither he was either accompanied or followed by his devoted mother. Doubtless, when, three or four years afterwards, her son carried off the Craven Scholarship from half a dozen accomplished com- petitors, it was no slight satisfaction to her that the son of her old foe, Mrs. Morell, was among the discomfited candidates. The proceeds of this scholar- ship, combined with those of his fellowship at King's, not only afforded Battie the means of living comfort- ably at the University, but were indirectly the occa- sion of his acquiring an influence which, in after years, enabled him to found at Cambridge a scholar- ship of his own, still well known as the "Battie Scholarship." In 1726, he took his degree as B.A., and in 1730 as M.A. In 1729, he increased his reputation for scholarship by publishing at Cambridge his edition of the Orations of Isocrates, the only one perhaps of his literary productions by which he is at present remembered. The profession which Dr. Battie, had he followed his own predilections, would have adopted, was the law. His pecuniary means, however, not being bufficient to enable him to reside in one of the Inns of Court, he turned his attention to medicine, and in 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. iv. p. 600. WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. 21 due time set up as a medical practitioner at Cambridge. Here, if we may judge from the early period at which Horace Walpole mentions his having attended "Dr. Battie's anatomical lectures," 1 it may be as- sumed, we think, that his credit for surgical know- ledge had fairly kept pace with his reputation for classical erudition. But, whatever may have been Dr. Battie's pro- fessional success among his friends at Cambridge, we find him, on a favourable opportunity offering itself at Uxbridge for the services of a physician, shifting his residence to that place. Here, shortly after his arrival, his importance was probably not a little enhanced in the eyes of his country neighbours by the venerable Provost of Eton, Dr. Godolphiii, on a good-natured pretext of desiring to consult him pro- fessionally, sending his coach and four horses to carry him to the Provost's lodge. The Provost's only complaint, however, appears to have been the weight of ninety summers, and, accordingly, when the new practitioner took up a pen to write him a prescription, the old man at once interrupted his purpose. " You need not trouble yourself to write," he said ; " I only sent for you to give you credit in the neighbourhood." 2 In 1738 or 1739, Dr. Battie married a young lady to whom he had been for some time attached, a daughter of Barnhain Goode, 1 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. Ixii. ; ed. 1857. 2 Nichols's 'LifeofBowyer/ p. 231*. 22 WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. Under Master of Eton School, immortalized by Pope as " Lo! sneering Goode, half malice and half whim ; A friend in glee, ridiculously grim." 1 At Uxbridge, Dr. Battie contrived by bard work and economy to save the sum of 500, a proof of frugality so gratifying to two old bachelor cousins of his, rich retired London citizens of the name of Coleman, that they not only received him into the favour which they seem to have hitherto been slow in extending to him, but eventually bequeathed to him the considerable sum of 30,000?. From Uxbridge, Dr. Battie's next removal was to London, where in due time we find him established as superintendent of a private lunatic asylum near Islington, besides being appointed physician to St. Luke's Hospital, which latter position he continued to fill till his resignation of it in 1764. In relating, however, the story of his advancing fortunes, we must not ignore certain entertaining eccentricities which marked his character ; such, for instance, as his devoting himself at one time to the study of classical or theological literature, or to the prepara- tion of- a Lumleian Lecture, to be delivered before the College of Physicians, and immediately afterwards imitating the buffooneries of a penny showman. Yet these violations of dignity seem in no degree to 1 ' The Dunciad,' book iii. Goode, it seems, had provoked Pope's ire by writing a satire on him, entitled ' The Mock WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. 23 have interfered with his steady rise to high reputa- tion and affluence ; not even though the happiest examples of his tomfoolery would appear to have aimed at no higher excellence than to render whimsical imitations of Punch. " By successfully mimicking this character," writes Nichols in 1782, " Dr. Battie is said to have once saved a young patient's life. He was sent for to a gentleman now alive, but then only fourteen or fifteen, who was in extreme misery from a swelling in his throat. When the doctor understood what the complaint was, he opened the curtains, turned his wig, and acted Punch with so much humour and success, that the lad, thrown almost into convulsions from laughing, was so agitated as to occasion the tumour to break, and a complete cure was the instantaneous consequence." 1 Curiously enough, the doctor's successful imitation of this famous puppet would seem on another occasion to have proved almost as effectual in preserving his own life. He had purchased, it should be mentioned, a small estate, called Court Garden, near Marlowe, on the Thames ; he not only took a warm interest in, but risked between one and two thousand pounds, in a speculation for causing the barges to be drawn up the river by horses instead of by men. This scheme, whatever may have been its merits or de- merits, rendered him, it seems, so unpopular with the bargemen, that, having one day waylaid the 1 Nichols's ' Life of Bowyer/ p. *232. 24 WILLIAM BATT1E, M.D. doctor, they were about to throw him over Marlowe Bridge, when he so enchanted them by suddenly striking up his merry imitation of Punch, that they took their hands off him and let him depart ; " So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes." From this time, however, whenever he happened to be at Marlowe, the doctor is said to have carried pistols. Another of the eccentricities in which he indulged during his sojournings in the country, was his dressing like, and aiming to be taken for, one of his own day-labourers ; but still, as we have just pointed out, his most notable vagary was evidently his mimicry of Punch a vagary thus alluded to in a contemporary satirical attack on him entitled 4 The Battiad :' " See him, with aspect grave and gentle tread, By slow degrees approach the sickly bed ; Then at his club behold him altered soon ; The solemn doctor turns a low buffoon : For he who lately, in a learned freak, Poached every lexicon and published Greek, Still madly emulous of vulgar praise, From Punch's forehead wrings the dirty bays." In 1776, Dr. Battie, who, with all his eccentricities, figures as a person of true rectitude and benevolence, was seized with a paralytic stroke, of which, on the 13th of June in that year, he died, in apparently his seventy-third year. Horace Walpole, in a letter to Lady Ossory, incidentally mentions that he had died worth lOOjOOO/. 1 On the night on which he 1 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. vi. p. 366. WILLIAM BATTIE, M.D. 25 expired, he addressed a few solemn words to a youth who had been intrusted with the charge of attending by his bedside. " Young man," he said, " you have heard, no doubt, how great are the terrors of death This night will probably afford you some experience ; but may you learn, and may you profit by the example, that a conscientious endeavour to perform his duty through life will ever close a Christian's eyes with comfort and tranquillity !" Shortly after- wards he gently breathed his last. By his own direction, he was buried at Kingston in Surrey, as near as possible to his wife, without any monument or memorial to mark his resting-place. 1 1 Nichols's ' Life of Bowyer/ pp. 233-4. THE REV. THOMAS BROUGHTON. THOMAS BROUGHTON, an author of no mean reputation in his day, was born in London on the 5th of July, 1704, in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, of which parish his father was minister. Of his youth we know at least so much, that he was entered at an early age on the foundation at Eton ; that he pre- maturely distinguished himself by his abilities and love of study ; and that before he was eighteen he had composed two tragedies, which, however, re- mained in an unfinished state at the time of his decease. Having been superannuated from Eton from the want of a vacancy for him at King's College, he entered himself, about the year 1722, at Caius College, Cambridge, where, besides going through thfc usual academical course of instruction, he devoted himself to the study of modern languages. In 1727, having previously taken the degree of B.A., he was admitted to deacon's orders, and the following year was ordained priest and took the degree of M.A. THE REV. THOMAS BEOUGHTON. 27 His first exercise of his duties in his new calling was as curate of Offley, in Hertfordshire. Mr. Broughton's earliest patron was the celebrated Minister, John fourth Duke of Bedford, whose chaplain he became, and by whom, in 1739, he was instituted to the rectory of Stibbingtou, in the county of Huntingdon. His next preferment, for which he was selected a short time afterwards, was to the leadership to the Temple, an appointment which, from its requiring him to make London his constant residence, was the means of his forming the acquaint- ance and gaining the esteem of most of the men of high intellect of his day. Among these was Handel, to whom a passion for ancient music, common to both, seems to have introduced him, and for many of whose musical compositions, like his schoolfellow Morell, he supplied the words. As Reader to the Temple he also acquired the friendship of Dr. Sherlock, Bishop of London, by whom his talents and sterling virtues were so entirely appreciated that, in 1744, he presented him with the valuable vicarage of Bedminster. near Bristol, together with the annexed chapels of St. Mary Redcliff, St. Thomas, and Abbot's Leigh. By the bishop also he was subsequently collated to the prebend of Bedminster and Redcliif in the cathedral of Salisbury. The first-named of these preferments rendered necessary a change of abode from London to Bristol ; and accordingly it was thus that at Bristol Mr. 28 THE EEV. THOMAS BEOUGHTON. Broughton passed the next and closing thirty years of his existence. During this period, his private life, distinguished by many virtues, presents, as might be expected, but a mere uniform, though far from uninstructive, picture of a liberal, mild, cheerful, and zealous Christian, devoting himself to the interests and happiness of his wife and children, and deriving further enjoyment from the society of his books. His wife, by whom he was the father of seven children, six of whom survived him, was the daughter of a Mr. Thomas Harris, of Bristol.. Mr. Broughton was the author of numerous publi- cations, lay as well as religious, which may be found enumerated in the ' Biographia Britannica,' 1 as well as in Watt's 'Bibliotheca Britannica.' 2 Of these, the Lives (marked T.), which were written by him for the ' Biographia Britannica,' are probably those alone which are consulted in our time. He left behind him, however, at his death some fugitive poetical pieces, which are said to have possessed no inconsiderable merit, and was also the author of a musical drama, called ' Hercules,' which was set to music by Handel, and performed at the Haymarket Theatre about the year 1745. 3 It may be mentioned that it was during the time that Mr. Broughton was vicar of St. Mary Red- 1 Vol. ii. p. ix., preface ; Kippis. 2 Art. Broughton. 3 ' Biog. Dramatica/ art. Hercules. THE EEV. THOMAS BROUGHTON. 29 cliff, that Chatterton the poet produced his famous literary forgeries, which he pretended to have dis- covered in an ancient chest in St. Mary's Church. Mr. Broughton died on the 21st of December, 1774, in his seventy-first year, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Eedcliff. 30 THE REV. JOHN CHAPMAN, D.D., ARCHDEACON OF SUDBURY. IN chronicling the several erudite scholars who were fellow- denizens of " Long Chamber " during the first half-decade of the eighteenth century, we must not omit to mention the once eminent controversialist divine, John Chapman. Son of the Eev. William Chapman, Rector of Strathfieldsaye, in Hampshire, he was born at that place in 1704, the same year in which his schoolfellows Battie and Broughton also first saw the light. In 1723, he was transferred to King's College, whither he was followed the same year by two other gifted schoolfellows, John Ewer, afterwards successively Bishop of Llandaff and Bangor, and by John Sumner, afterwards twenty- seventh Provost of King's. 1 In 1727, he took his degree as B.A., and in 1731 as M.A. Subsequently, as a tutor of King's, he seems to have met with dis- tinguished success ; at least, if we may judge from the fact of the great Lord Camden, Horace Walpole, 1 ' Eegistrum Regale.' THE REV. JOHN CHAPMAN, D.D. 31 Jacob Bryant, Sir William Draper, and the eminent physician, scholar, and critic, Sir George Baker, having been among his pupils. When, some years afterwards, he became a candidate for the provostship of King's College, it seems to have afforded no in- different evidence of his popularity and merits, that it was only after a severe contest that he was defeated, notwithstanding his rival competitor was no other than the famous scholar, Dr. George. 1 The powerful friend to whom Mr. Chapman was mainly, if not entirely, indebted for his promotion in the Church was Dr. Potter, Archbishop of Canter- bury, by whom he was not only appointed to be his domestic chaplain, but was presented to the rectories of Mersham in Kent, and of Alderton with the chapel of Smeeth. In 1741, he was insti- tuted Archdeacon of Sudbury, about which time also the University of Oxford, in acknowledgment of his literary labours in the cause of religion, conferred on him a diploma of D.D. Another Church preferment which he held, though only for a short time, was that of Precentor of Lincoln, to which, as executor to Archbishop Potter, he had considered he was entitled to present himself. A decision, however, of the House of Lords, after a hearing which lasted three days, deprived him of the preferment. 2 The literary work by which Dr. Chapman seems to have been best known to his contemporaries was 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes/ vol. ix. p. 581. 2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 193. 32 THE REV. JOHN CHAPMAN, D.D. his * Eusebius,' published in two volumes octavo, in which he attacked the deistical principles of Morgan and Tindal. In addition to this, and to other publications enumerated in Watt's ' Bibliotheca Bri- tannica,' he wrote against Anthony Collins on the Prophecies of Daniel, and against Dr. Conyers Middleton in defence of Dr. Waterland ; besides entering into a controversy with Dr. Sykes on the subject of the celebrated eclipse recorded by Phlegon. Notwithstanding, however, Dr. Chapman's acknow- ledged talents and learning, the circulation of his works would seem to have been less extensive than either their merits deserved or than their author perhaps had anticipated. " I remember," writes his old pupil, Horace Walpole, "a story of poor Dr. Chapman, one of Dr. Middleton's antagonists, but I have so entirely forgotten his works that I shall tell it very tamely. He went to his bookseller, and asked how his last work had sold. 'Very indifferently indeed, sir.' * Ah ! why, how many copies are gone off?' ' Only five, sir !' 'Alack ! and how many of my" Eusebius" (I think it was) have you left ?' ' Two hundred, sir!' 'Indeed! well, but my book on (I don't know what), how many have you of them ?' ' Oh ! the whole impression, sir !' ' Good now ! good now ! that is much. Well ! Mr. , I cannot help it ; I do my duty, and satisfy my conscience." Dr. Chapman died at Mersham on the 14th of October, 1784, in the eightieth year of his age. 33 DR. JOHN SUMNER, HEAD MASTER OF ETON, AND PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE. ABLY and zealously as Dr. Sumner may very possibly have discharged the arduous duties of Head Master of Eton School, we miss in the story of his career those incidents of interest and those talents of a high order which would otherwise have insured him a more prominent place in our gallery of Eton worthies. He was born at Windsor about the year 1704. In 1723, he was elected from the foundation at Eton, to King's College, Cambridge, and, having obtained his fellowship at that College, returned to Eton as an assistant master. In 1734, he became Lower Master, and in January, 1745, on the resigna- tion of Dr. William Cooke, was elected to succeed him in the Head Mastership, which he filled till 1754. In the mean time, in 1750, he had been appointed a Canon of Windsor ; the same year he was presented by Lord Edgecombe to the Rectory of Berwick-in- Elrnet, Yorkshire, and, in 1753, to the living of Castle- ford, in the same county. On the 18th of October, 1756, he was elected Provost of King's College, and in 1772, about the age of sixty-eight, he died. 1 1 Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. viii. p. 211. VOL. I. I> 34 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. WHEN, on the memorable 30th of January, 1649, Charles I. stepped through the broken wall of his own beautiful banqueting-room at Whitehall upon the fatal scaffold, there is said to have been in attendance upon him, besides two of his Gentlemen of the Bed- chamber, Harrington and Herbert, a young Page in Waiting, whose name, as Sir Stephen Fox, subse- quently became a familiar and an honoured one during the reigns of four successive monarchs. Three years after the tragical fate of his royal master, we find the young man attaching himself to the almost ruinous fortunes of his exiled sovereign, Charles II., at whose small Court in the Low Countries he faithfully and ably filled the unremune- rative post of Cofferer of the household. He returned with Charles to England at his restoration ; and, after having there filled with great credit a succes- sion of honourable and lucrative public employments, married in 1703, at the mature age of seventy-six, a second wife, by whom he became the father of two HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 35 sons, Stephen, subsequently created Earl of Ilchester, and Henry, afterwards Lord Holland, the subject of the present memoir. Henry Fox, the future political rival of the illustrious Chatham, was born in 1705, and had probably already become an Eton scholar when, at the age of eleven, he lost his venerable father, who died on the 28th of October, 1716, in his eighty- ninth year. His nature was quick and ardent, and accordingly, when thus left unfettered by paternal advice or control, our surprise is the less at finding that the first two or three years which he passed after his removal from Eton, were given up by him to the pursuit of dissipation and wild frolic ; most of that time having been passed by him on the Continent, and most of his patrimony during that period having been squandered at the gaming-table. Happily, however, libertine as he was, the desire of knowledge, a taste for the classical writings of antiquity, and a love of the fine arts, went far to preserve him from entire demoralization. Moreover, such was the versatility of his genius, that the pursuit of politics, to which it inclined him, came no less easy to him than the pursuit of pleasure ; and accordingly, it was not surprising that he should have turned his attention betimes to the House of Commons, as alike offering him a rare opportunity of gratifying an ambition of no ordinary intensity, and of repairing his embarrassed fortunes. Happily, too, D 2 36 HENET FOX, LOED HOLLAND. for his political prospects, the admiration and affection which he ever expressed for Sir Robert Walpole were reciprocated by that great Minister. Thus, then, matters stood with him when, in March, 1735, he was returned to Parliament as member for Hendon, in Wiltshire, two vears after which he was indebted to * Sir Robert for the appointment of Surveyor-General of the Board of Works. On the 25th of June, 1741, he took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Windsor, for which borough he continued to sit during successive Parliaments till, twenty-two years afterwards, he was raised to the House of Lords. In the " Broad-bottomed Administration," formed by the Pelhams in 1743, Mr. Fox was appointed a Lord of the Treasury. In 1746, he was appointed Secretary at War, and sworn of the Privy Council, and in 1755 was nominated Secretary of State, which office, however, he held no longer than till the following year, when he was compelled to resign it into the hands of his great rival, William Pitt, the future Earl of Chatham. Lastly, in 1757, Mr. Fox was appointed Paymaster of the Forces, which lucrative post he continued to enjoy till the commencement of the reign of George III. The credit and importance which Mr. Fox had early and deservedly achieved for himself by means of his eminent abilities, he afterwards im- proved by running away with and marrying Lady Georgiana Carolina Lennox, eldest daughter of HENRY FOX, LOED HOLLAND. 87 Charles second Duke of Richmond, great grand- daughter of Charles II., and sister of the memorably lovely Lady Sarah Lennox. The ceremony was solemnized at the private residence of Mr. Fox's intimate friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams; another of his friends, Charles third Duke of Marl- borough, giving away the bride. This, it maybe men- tioned, was the same young duke whom, to the infinite annoyance of his imperious old grandmother, the famous Duchess Sarah, Mr. Fox succeeded in winning over to the Court. " That's the fox" she said of her grandson's tempter, " who stole my goose." In the mean time, the sensation created at the Court of George II. by the marriage of Mr. Fox with Lady Caroline Lennox was not the less lively that it had been a clandestine affair. According to Horace Walpole, " not only was all the blood royal up in arms," but he adds that had the runaway bride been the King's august daughter, the Princess Caroline, the clamour could not have been greater. To Sir Horace Mann, Walpole also writes, May 29th, 1744 : " Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox ; asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father was a footman ; her great-grandfather a king : hinc illce lachrymce J" 1 Eventually, however, having discovered the means of reconciling himself to his powerful brother-in-law, Charles Duke of Richmond, Mr. Fox would seem to have succeeded in reaping 1 Walpole's 'Letters,' vol. i. p. 303; ed. 1857. 38 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. all the advantages which he had probably anticipated from the marriage. In private life it would apparently have been difficult to discover a more delightful companion than Mr. Fox. His wit was playful and sparkling ; his conversational powers considerable ; his temper agreeable even to sweetness. Thus appreciated, then, by the gay and the cultivated, his society, on his marriage to Lady Caroline, was naturally much missed by his former companions, and by no one seemingly more than by his old Eton schoolfellow, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who thus pleasingly recalls the happy batchelor evenings he had been accustomed to pass in the society of his friend : " Such are the nights that I have seen of yore ; Such are the nights that I shall see no more ; When Wilmington and Fox, with flow of soul, With sense and wit, drove round the cheerful bowl. Our hearts were opened, and our converse free ; But now they both are lost quite lost to me. One to a mistress gives up all his life, And one from me flies wisely to his wife." 1 Another distinguished person, in whose verse are recorded the better qualities of Mr. Fox, was his friend, the accomplished John Lord Hervey, the "Sporus" and "Lord Fanny" of Pope's satire, a nobleman many years Mr. Fox's senior in age. A circumstance, it may be mentioned, which was not a little creditable to the heart of the former, had strengthened their original intimacy. When, in 1 Sir C. Hanbury Williams's ' Works/ vol. ii. p. 60. HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 89 1729, the wretched health of Lord Hervey compelled him to try the effect of the air of Italy, it appears that Mr. Fox, then a young man only twenty-four years old, cheerfully renounced for a time the calls of ambition and the allurements of pleasure for the purpose of accompanying and comforting his sick friend. It was in testimony, then, of this true act of humanity and affection that, on the arrival of Lord Hervey at Florence, he addressed to his young com- panion the following graceful lines, written in imita- tion of the sixth ode of the second book of Horace " Septimi Grades aditure mecum," &c. : " Thy steady love, with unexampled truth, Forsook each gay companion of thy youth Whate'er the prosperous or the great employs, Business and interest, and love's softer joys The weary steps of misery to attend, To share distress, and make a wretch thy friend. If o'er the mountains' snowy tops we stray, Where Carthage first explored the venturous way ; Or through the tainted air of Eome's parched plains, Where want resides, and superstition reigns ; Cheerful and unrepining still you bear The dangerous rigour of the varying year ; And, kindly anxious for thy friend alone, Lament his sufferings, and forget thy own." 1 The following year we find Mr. Fox acting as second to Lord Hervey in his well-known duel with William Pulteney in the Green Park. Both the principals, it may be mentioned, were slightly wounded. 1 Lady M. Wortley Montagu's ' Letters/ Lord Wharncliffe's edition, vol. iii. p. 382. 40 HENEY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. The main interest in the political career of Mr. Fox is centred, we need scarcely say, in his long and brilliant competitorship for power with William Pitt, afterwards " the great " Lord Chatham. " Both these rival statesmen," writes Archdeacon Coxe, "were younger brothers nearly of the same age ; both were educated at Eton ; both were distinguished for classical knowledge ; both commenced their Par- liamentary career at the same period, and both raised themselves to eminence by their superior talents." As an orator, Mr. Fox's speeches were remarkable rather for close reasoning, for sound argument, for quickness in reply and keenness of repartee, than for that brilliant and overpowering flow of diction, metaphor, and invective, which dis- tinguished the orations of his rival, Pitt. " Fox," writes Horace Walpole, " always spoke to the ques- tion, Pitt to the passions ; Fox to carry the question, Pitt to raise himself; Fox pointed out, Pitt lashed the errors of his antagonists ; Pitt's talents were likely to make him soonest, Fox's to keep him Prime Minister longest." Thus, not unequally matched, for many years these two remarkable men continued to divide the suffrages of the nation ; for years they seemed to run a neck-and-neck competitorship for the Premiership. Pitt, however, was no sooner afforded an opportunity of displaying his great abilities as a War administrator, than the balance turned in his favour. When, in 1756, George II., HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 41 yielding to the universal outcry of the people of Great Britain, recalled Mr. Pitt to power as Secretary of State and virtually as first Minister, it was a crisis when the military honour of this country had been reduced almost to the lowest state of degradation During the war which was then being waged with France, defeat had been followed by defeat, and disaster by disaster. Scarcely, however, had Pitt taken the helm, before the tide of national ignominy rolled back. As if with the wand of a magician, he stirred up the spirit of a gallant people ; in every part of the globe success attended the British arms ; the fleets which had recently threatened England were swept from the seas ; before the close of the war no fewer than thirty-six sail of the line had been either captured or destroyed ; France and Spain had been humiliated, and Canada and half of Hindostan had been added to the territorial possessions of Great Britain. But the war, and with it the power and popularity of Pitt, could not last for ever. On the 25th of October, 1760, died George II., and with the advent of a new reign there naturally ensued a modifica- tion of dominant political principles and interests. George III., bent on bringing to a termination a war which, however glorious, he regarded as a ruinous, sanguinary, and no longer a necessary one, seized, without a moment's hesitation, the first oppor- tunity of ridding himself of Pitt's services, and of 4.2 HENET FOX, LORD HOLLAND. replacing him, as his chief adviser, by the celebrated John Earl of Bute, whose convictions that the exigencies of the country demanded his return to a peace policy were not less deeply rooted than those of the young King himself. Moreover, the putting aii end to the war would be virtually tantamount to putting an end, for a time, to the long despotism of the great Whig party, a further consideration with the King and his new Minister which each had equally warmly at heart. Unfortunately, however, the war was generally popular in the country ; peace was only to be obtained by the acquisition of a majority in Parliament, and obviously a majority in Parliament was to be obtained only by such measures of in- timidation and bribery as no right-minded Minister would venture to employ. But, in the opinion of the Court, necessity knew no law ; and accordingly it was resolved, by means however unconstitutional and however costly, to procure the desired majority. The first and great difficulty lay in the acquisition of an agent sufficiently fearless, unscrupulous, and versed in the arts of Parliamentary corruption, to conduct to a successful issue the irregular service required of him by his employers. These qualifica- tions, in the opinion of Bute, were to be met with in Henry Fox, at this time Paymaster-G-eneral, and to Fox accordingly it was resolved that the necessary overtures should be made. "We must call in bad men," said the young King to George Grenville, " to HENHY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 43 govern bad men." 1 Properly speaking, it was to G-renville, as leader of the House of Commons, that the arraignment of the war, the advocacy of peace, and the management of refractory members of Par- liament should have been committed. To ensure success, however, needed the combined qualities of tact, a good temper, eloquence, and a complete understanding with his colleagues, none of which requirements Grenville was likely to bring very prominently into play. Moreover, though, like more than one other statesman of his age, he had apparently no great objection to benefit by the corrupt practices of others, he shrank from the risk of forfeiting his reputation for spotlessness by directly resorting to those expedients himself. Fox, on the other hand, was singularly daring, insinuating, and unscrupulous ; a cynical condemner of the opinion of the world, and a disbeliever in the existence of political virtue on the part of others; and accord- ingly, by a man so constituted, the offer, when made to him, was but naturally accepted with but little hesitation. Of late, in fact, the love of power had yielded in Fox's mind to a love of money, and con- sequently, instead of returning to his former post of Secretary of State, it was stipulated by him that, as the price of his undertaking the leadership of the House of Commons a charge, by-the-by, which Grenville, with no very good grace, resigned into 1 ' Grenville Papers,' vol. i. p. 452. 44 HENRY FOX, LOED HOLLAND. his hands he should be allowed to retain his far more lucrative employment of Paymaster of the Forces. " I was with difficulty," writes Fox to the Duke of Bedford, on the 13th of October, 1762, "excused from being Secretary of State. The rest was insisted upon, or rather asked in such terms, and in such a manner, that, in short, I was brought to feel it a point of honour to obey." l Fox had many motives for listening with com- placency to the overtures of Bute. Not only were his political prospects in danger at this time from the aversion in which he was held by the King's mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales, but he had also to contend against the dislike of the young King himself a dislike apparently induced partly by the irregularities of his past life, and partly perhaps, to use the words applied to him by his contemporary, Lord Chesterfield, by his having " no fixed principles of religion or morality," and by his unwariness in " ridiculing and exposing them." To be thus, then, invited by the Court to join its councils to be thus enabled to lay his sovereign under an obligation in his hour of need must have afforded no slight satis- faction to the hitherto almost proscribed Minister. " His Majesty," he writes to the Duke of Bedford, " was in great concern lest a good peace, in a good House of Commons, should be lost;" and he adds, " / was that person who could do it."" 2 Fox, moreover, 1 ' Bedford Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 134. 2 Ibid. HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 45 had long been impatient for a peerage ; and accord- ingly, as the contingent reward for the exceptional work which he was expected to perform, it was stipu- lated by him that, at the close of his labours, he should receive a coronet. He had, in fact, everything to gain by a victory, and little to lose by defeat. If successful, he would have the option of either con- tinuing the foremost person in the House of Commons, or else of exchanging the bustle and excitement of St. Stephen's for the easy dignity of the House of Lords. At all events, in either case he would still remain in the enjoyment of his comfortable post of Paymaster-General, a place sufficiently remunerative in time of peace, and likely to be still more so in the event of a prolongation of the war. In the mean time, under the auspices of the Duke of Bedford, in his ambassadorial capacity at Paris, the preliminaries of a treaty of peace had been signed between France and England, and were now awaiting the sanction of Parliament. It was during this interval, then, that Fox put forth all his resources of argument, insinuation, threats, and promises, for the purpose of securing the required Parliamentary majority. Inflamed by the powerful motives of self-interest, ambition, and revenge, he entered upon his unworthy mission with all that earnestness and energy which was to be ex- pected from his reckless and unscrupulous character. His agents were at work in all quarters. No expe- 46 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. dient was left untried, and no influential individual overlooked. Some were bribed, and others frightened into submission. The Earl of Orford was tempted with the Eangership of St. James's and Hyde Parks. Messengers were stationed at the different seaport towns to waylay the Marquis of Granby on his return from the Continent, and to tempt him with the choice of either the Ordnance or the command of the Army. Marshal Conway was got rid of by being selected to conduct the army to England ; and, lastly, in order to silence the tongue of the King's brother, the Duke of York, whose boyish abuse of Bute and the Scotch appears to have given great offence to the King, his royal highness was despatched on an idle expedition to Italy. 1 Moreover, one persecution followed another persecution. The Duke of Devonshire " the Prince of the Whigs," as he was styled by the Princess Dowager was not only summarily dismissed from his post of Lord Chamberlain, but the King was induced to send for the Privy Council book, and with his own hand to strike the Duke's name off the list of Privy Councillors. The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquis of Buckingham, were severally deprived of the Lord-Lieutenancies of their respective counties. Still more shameful was the principle of oppres- sion which Fox carried into the second, and some- times into the third and fourth, grades of the State. 1 Walpole's Reign of George III.,' vol. i. pp. 208-9, 235. HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 47 A Mr. Schultz, who for seven years had been a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, was dismissed merely because he was without a seat in Parliament ; and a worthy and gallant officer, Admiral Forbes, was removed from the Board of Admiralty, to enable Fox to make room for one of his own friends. 1 Far indeed from being satisfied with cashiering Lord- Lieutenants of counties, and removing Tellers of the Exchequer and Lords of the Admiralty, Fox and his myrmidons extended their searching scrutinies and their inhumanity even to the humblest depart- ments of the State. Hitherto Fox had been regarded by his friends as a kind-hearted, and admitted even by his enemies to be a good-natured, man. He was certainly a warm friend, a devoted husband, and, as a parent, was indulgent even to weakness. But now his entire nature seemed to have undergone a change. His conduct, in fact, amounted in many cases not only to persecution, but to positive cruelty. It was only necessary to discover that a clerk in a Government office owed his situation to being related to an Opposition member of Parliament, or that a Whig Opposition Peer had obtained a messenger's place for his wife's footman, or an Exciseman's situation for the son of his gamekeeper, and these unfortunate underlings were frequently sent about their business, in order to supply places for those who were ready to support the Peace. 1 Walpole's 'Keign of George III./ vol. i. p. 231. 48 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. A poor man in Sussex, who had distinguished himself by his gallantry in a desperate affray with smugglers, was deprived of his pension for no better reason than that it had been procured for him by the Duke of Grafton, while a no less unworthy affront was put upon the house of Cavendish. A lady of that name, the widow of Admiral Philip Cavendish, instead of having been placed on the Pension-list at the time of her husband's decease, had been ap- pointed housekeeper of one of the public offices. Probably her place was wanted for another, but, at all events, Fox's emissaries chose to presume that her late husband had been related to the Duke of Devonshire, and accordingly orders were given for her instant dismissal. 1 The amount of distress which was thus entailed on private families it would be difficult to exaggerate. "Fox," said the Duke of Cumberland, " has deceived me grossly ; for I thought him good-natured, but in all these trans- actions he has shown the bitterest revenge and inhumanity." 2 But, atrocious as was this system of persecution, the venality which accompanied it was almost worse. Fox had no sooner accepted the terms of the Court, than he also plunged into a course of wholesale bribery and corruption, with a tithe of which even that old arch-jobber, the Duke of Newcastle, would 1 Walpole's 'Reign of George III.,' vol. i. pp. 233-5. Macaulay's ' Essays,' vol. iii. p. 567 ; 10th ed. 2 Walpole's ' Reign of George III./ vol. i. p. 241. HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 49 have hesitated to bespatter his late Administration. Places were recklessly multiplied in the royal household, and pensions no less profligately con- ferred. " Leaving the grandees to their ill- humour," writes Walpole, " Fox directly attacked the separate members of the House of Commons, and with so little decorum on the part of either buyer or seller, that a shop was publicly opened at the Pay Office, whither the members flocked and received the wages of their venality in Bank-bills, even to so low a sum as 200." It was subsequently admitted by Martin, Secretary to the Treasury, that no less a sum than 25,000/. had been issued from the public ex- chequer in one morning for the basest purposes of corruption. But Fox had promised the courtiers a triumph, and he did not disappoint them. As the day ap- pointed for the meeting of Parliament drew near, the mingled feelings of interest and curiosity, which had for some time prevailed throughout the country, increased almost to intensity. With the mass of the population of London, the war had been almost universally popular ; and accordingly, when, on the 25th of November, 1762, Parliament assembled, the King, on his way to Westminster, was so far coupled in the minds of his subjects with the peace policy of his Ministers, as to be received by the large assem- bled multitude with an ominous silence. Bute on the same occasion was not only hissed and pelted, VOL. i. E 50 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. but on his return had the windows of his sedan-chair broken, and, indeed, narrowly escaped with his life. 1 Fortunately for him, affairs within the walls of Parliament went on more smoothly than without. Pitt was ill too ill to appear in his place and op- pose a measure which, it is almost needless to say, he entirely deprecated ; and thus the victory of the Ministers was complete. Fox of course claimed the peerage which had been guaranteed him, and ac- cordingly, on the 16th of April following, he was created Baron Holland, of Foxley, in Wiltshire. Even now, however, his satisfaction was incomplete. Four years afterwards, for instance, we find him with almost childish eagerness preferring his claims to an earldom. " He sent for me," writes Walpole in 1767, "and meekly pretending that it was to gratify his wife, of all women the most indifferent to grandeur, he supplicated me in the most flattering terms to obtain him an earldom from the Duke of Grafton." "I did earnestly labour at it," adds Walpole, " and really the Duke of Grafton did too, as he promised me he would ; but the King could not be persuaded to grant it." : About the same time, also, it may be mentioned, we find Lord Holland writing to another friend, George Selwyn, urging him to use his influence with his friend the Duke of Grafton, then Prime Minister, for the same purpose. 1 ' Bedford Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 160. 2 Walpole's ' Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. pp. 94, 95. HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 51 In the mean time, not only had Lord Holland's once powerful political influence thus lamentably declined, but it would seem by his letters that for some time past he had become a soured and discontented man. Speaking of himself to George Selwyn, as " uni- versally despised," he adds, " I am humbled, and shall endeavour to conform to my fate." l It was the conviction of Lord Holland's contem- poraries, as is well known, that, during the period he held the office of Paymaster-General, he had been a wholesale tamperer with the public purse. That he availed himself to the very fullest extent of the advantages and perquisites of his office cannot, we think, admit of a doubt. Whether, however, he was guilty of the sweeping peculations with which he has been charged whether, in the nervous language of his accusers, the Corporation of the City of London, he was really a " public defaulter of unaccounted millions," may be reasonably doubted. Horace Walpole principally on the score, it would appear, of a copy of verses written by Lord Holland, entitled ' To a Lady with an Artificial Rose,' printed in the ' Annual Register ' for 1779 has included his lordship in his * Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors.' Park, also, who has reprinted this trifle in his edition of Walpole's work, 2 has exaggerated its importance by styling it a " little brilliant ;" an epithet, however, which scarcely seems to be borne 1 ' Selwyn Correspondence,' vol. ii. p. 209. 2 Vol. iv. p. 357. E 2 52 HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. out by its merits. As regards, however, the medio- crity which we have thus imputed to it, if, as Walpole has satisfied himself was the case, it was not till towards the end of Lord Holland's life that he " attempted poetry," l his poetical efforts should not be too severely criticised. Certainly, the only two other specimens of his muse, of the existence of which we are cognizant, were not composed till after he had passed the age of sixty. 2 Of these, the following, addressed by Lord Holland to his lovely sister-in-law, Lady Sarah Lennox, appears to be the most pleasing. " Indeed," he writes, in enclosing a copy of it to G-eorge Selwyn, " I do not expect compliments, but I am not ashamed of it ; for consider it is wrote by a sick old woman near her grand climacteric." 3 " IMITATION OF AN ODE IN HOEACE. " ' Lydia, die per omnes,' &c. 4 " Sally, Sally, don't deny, But, for Heav'n's sake, tell me why You have flirted so, to spoil That once lively youth, Carlisle ? 5 He used to mount while it was dark ; Now he lies in bed till noon ; And you not meeting in the Park, Thinks that he got up too soon. 1 Walpole's ' Catalogue of Koyal and Noble Authors,' vol. iv. p. 356. 2 They will severally be found in the 'Selwyn Correspondence,' vol. ii. pp. 154, 162. s Ibid., p. 154. * Lib. i. Ode viii. 6 Frederick fifth Earl of Carlisle, the poet and politician, born in 1748, whose once familiar 'Verses on his Schoolfellows at Eton' contain pleasing tributes to the merits of William second Earl Fitz- HENRY FOX, LOED HOLLAND. 53 H. " Manly exercise and sport, Hunting and the tennis-court, And riding-school, no more divert ; Newmarket does, for there you flirt ! But why does he no longer dream Of yellow Tyber, and its shore ; On his friend Charles's 1 favourite scheme, On waking, think no more ? m. " Why does he dislike an inn ? Hate post-chaises, and begin To think 'twill be enough to know His way from Almack's to Soho ? Achilles thus kept out of sight For a long time ; but this dear boy (If, Sally, you and I guess right,) Will never get to Troy." Lady Sarah, it should be mentioned, was at this time the wife of Sir Charles Bunbury. In the decline of life we find Lord Holland no less chary of the health with which he had formerly so recklessly trifled, than he had become economical of the residue of that wealth which he had once so lavishly squandered. Principally, then, in the hope of repair- ing his shattered nerves and constitution, he erected at Kingsgate, on the dreariest and bleakest part of the coast of Kent, a fantastic marine villa, to which the disappointed statesman frequently retired. It william ; Henry third Duke of Buccleuch ; Charles James Fox ; James first Duke of Leinster; Henry Thomas second Earl of Hchester; Anthony Morris Storer, and others. 1 Charles James Fox, Lord Holland's second son, and Lord Carlisle's intimate friend. 54 HENBY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. was this mansion and these circumstances which elicited from Gray, the poet, those memorably severe and clever verses, of which, inasmuch as they are omitted in more than one standard edition of his works, we venture to transcribe the opening stanzas : " Old, and abandoned by each venal friend, Here Holland formed the pious resolution To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A ruined character and constitution. " On this congenial spot he fixed his choice ; Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand ; Here sea-gulls scream and cormorants rejoice, And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land. " Here reign the blustering north and blighting east ; No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing ; Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast ; And he invokes new horrors still to bring. " Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise ; Turrets and arches nodding to their fall ; Unpeopled monast'ries delude our eyes, And mimic desolation covers all," &c. Another contemporary poet, Churchill, in his ' Epistle to William Hogarth,' has dealt no less severely with Lord Holland's character : " Lift against Virtue Power's oppressive rod ; Betray thy country, and deny thy God ; And, in one general comprehensive line To group, which volumes scarcely could define, Whate'er of sin and dullness can be said, Join to a Fox's heart a Dashwood's head." 1 1 Afterwards created Baron Le Despencer, a dissolute man of pleasure and an incompetent Minister. Not only was it said of him, when HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. 55 In the * Selwyn Correspondence,' which, by-the-by, contains many pleasing and characteristic letters written by Lord Holland, the last notice which occurs of him is in a melancholy letter, without date, addressed by Lord Macartney from Bath to George Selwyn, " His (Lord Holland's) mind," writes the former, " is weak and languid, like his pulse, but at times appears to recover itself, and to be quiet and strong. His speech and memory are impaired, but I think his apprehension is perfect. Poor Lady Holland is a good deal changed ; she is grown thinj and looks ill. Her whole nervous system seems strongly affected ; the least trifle alarms her, and in the midst of the most cheerful discourse she often bursts out into an involuntary effusion of tears." 1 For Selwyn, Lord Holland appears to have ever entertained the sincerest affection. " I have looked upon you," he writes to him in 1767, " to be like no other man in the world." 2 When Lord Holland was attacked by his last illness, Selwyn, whose morbid taste for witnessing criminal executions is well known, called at Holland House to inquire after the condition of his friend. On his card being brought Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1762, that he was " a man to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable secret," but he himself observed, when offered the appointment, that people would point at him in the streets and cry, " There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever appeared." Walpole's 'Keign of George II.,' vol. i. p. 250. l ' Selwyn Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 49. 8 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 154. 56 HENEY FOX, LORD HOLLAND. to the dying statesman, it revived in him a melancholy spark of the pleasantry of former days. " If Mr. Selwyn calls again," he said, " show him up ; if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him ; and if I am dead he would like to see me." Lord Holland died at Holland House, Kensington, on the 1st of July, 1774, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. Only twenty-three days afterwards, Lady Holland followed her husband to the grave. Their children consisted of Stephen Fox, who succeeded his father as second Baron Holland, and who survived him only six months; of Henry, who died young; of Charles James, the celebrated statesman ; and of Henry Edward, a general in the army, colonel of the 10th regiment of foot, and Governor of Portsmouth, who died in 1811. 57 GILBERT WEST. THE subject of the present memoir affords an interesting and instructive example of a man of eminent talents, of many virtues, and the son of pious parents, becoming entangled in the maze of infidelity in his youth, yet, in his maturer years, recalling the beautiful precepts which, kneeling at a mother's knee, he had imbibed in happy childhood, and thus, by dint of earnest investigation and the Divine blessing, re-converted to be a devout and steadfast believer. " To the early care of a most excellent woman, his mother," as he wrote to Dr. Doddridge on the 14th of March, 1748, "he owed that bent and bias to religion which, with the co- operating grace of God, had at length brought him back to those paths of peace from which he might otherwise have been in danger of deviating for ever." Gilbert West of the story of whose life Dr. John- son lamented his inability to discover but little, and to which little we regret being unable to add much 58 GILBERT WEST. more was born in the year 1706. His father was the Eev. Dr. Richard West, Prebendary of Durham, well known among the scholars of his day as the editor of Pindar, the same poet of whose odes his son Gilbert afterwards rendered himself so eminent as the translator. He was, it may be mentioned, of the same family as West the painter. The poet's excellent mother was a lady of high family connec- tions, having been sister to Richard Viscount Cobham, the friend of Pope, and aunt of Richard first Earl Temple, and of his brother George Grenville, the future Prime Minister. The first Marquis of Bucking- ham was her great-nephew. With a view to his taking holy orders, Gilbert West was in the first instance sent by his friends to Eton, and afterwards entered at Christ Church, Oxford ; but having, in the mean time, conceived a preference for the military over the clerical pro- fession, he obtained, through the influence of his uncle, Lord Cobham, a follower of the great Marl- borough, a commission in a regiment of horse. To a person, however, of West's refined tastes and literary pursuits, the army, considering the class of persons by which it was then officered, could scarcely have afforded a very congenial occupation, and ac- cordingly, laying down his commission, about the time of his coming of age he succeeded in obtaining employment in the office of Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, on which noblemen, as in the case GILBERT WEST. 59 of his schoolfellows Weston and Townshend, he was in attendance when he accompanied George II. to his German dominions. It was about this time that, in the month of May, 1729, the poet was nominated to the situation of Clerk Extraordinary of the Privy Council ; a post, however, from which he not only received no present salary, but for which a paid vacancy was so long in occurring, that it was not till after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century that he derived any solid advantage from the boon. Nevertheless he had, in the mean while, deemed himself justified in incurring the expense and responsibilities of marriage ; settling himself at the same time, to quote the words of Dr. Johnson, " in a very pleasant house at Wickharn, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety." Wickham, in consequence of his fixing his residence there, became classic ground. Here, for instance, we find his former illustrious schoolfellow Lord Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, delighting to enjoy, in exchange for the noise and smoke of London and the tumult of the House of Commons, the simple meal and choice conversation of his friend. When Johnson wrote his ' Lives of the Poets,' a walk which had been laid out by Pitt at Wickham was still known as Mr. Pitt's walk. Another distinguished Eton contemporary and friend, who occasionally joined West and Pitt at Wickham, was George Lord Lyttelton, once a disbeliever in revealed religion 60 GILBEET WEST. like West himself, but who at Wickham became inspired by those Christian truths of which he after- wards proved himself so able a champion. In his Kentish retreat, West, when not invaded by friends, appears to have devoted his time to the exercise of learning and piety. " Perhaps," writes Dr. Johnson, " it may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the public liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon, and then prayers." 1 As late as, and indeed long after, this time, the poet's income, notwithstanding the efforts of his friends to obtain for him an adequately remunerative appointment, had been comparatively small. The post, indeed, of preceptor to the heir-presumptive, afterwards G-eorge III., is said to have been offered to him, but, owing to the restricted powers of control over the Prince's education with which it was pro- posed to fetter him, was believed to have been refused. At length, however, in 1752, not only did the long-expected and lucrative vacancy in the Privy Council Office take place, but he was also, through the interest of Mr. Pitt, appointed to the Treasurer- ship of Chelsea Hospital. But Fortune had with- held her smiles till it was too late for him long to enjoy her favours. The affliction which he suffered by the death of his only son, in 1755, not only 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets ;' Life of West. GILBERT WEST. 61 rendered him indifferent to life, but was the occasion of an attack of paralysis, which, on the 26th of March, 1756, "brought to the grave," to use the further words of Dr. Johnson, " one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrors." 1 Gilbert West, as a poet, occupies no very pro- minent niche in the Temple of Fame. Pope, indeed, paid him the compliment of bequeathing him 200/. after the death of Martha Blount, 2 but the bequest was no doubt a tribute to his virtues rather than to his poetical talents. His best-known literary production is his translation of Pindar, which appeared in 1749, and of which Johnson speaks in flattering, though not unmiugled terms of praise. He wrote also an original, though spiritless, poem ' On the Institution of the Order of the Garter,' and some * Imitations of Spenser,' which are not without merit. His only published prose work appears to have been his once popular * Observations on the Resurrection,' which was first printed in 1747, and of which the University of Oxford thought sufficiently well to compliment him, in 1748, with the degree of Doctor of Common Law. 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets ;' Nichols's ' Life of Bowyer/ p. 209. 2 ' Grenvillo Correspondence,' vol. i. p. 27. 62 HENRY FIELDING. NEVER, perhaps, has there existed a sadder example of a man of illustrious talents, and at the same time of an illustrious descent, being reduced by his own indiscretions to so grievous a condition of indigence and privation as fell to the lot of the once gay and gallant Henry Fielding, the greatest novelist of his age and country. Not only was he closely related by blood to the ducal families of Pierrepoint and Yilliers, but, as great-grandson to the third Earl of Denbigh, he was also descended from the Imperial House of Hapsburg, a circumstance which elicited from the historian Gibbon as eloquent a compliment as probably one great literary man ever paid to another. " Our immortal Fielding," he writes, " was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburg, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Dukes of Alsace. Far different have been the fortunes of the English and G-erman divisions of the family of Hapsburg. The former, the knights and HENBY FIELDING. 63 sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage. The latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the Old, and invaded the treasures of the New World. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England ; but the romance of * Tom Jones ' that exquisite picture of human manners will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial eagle of Austria." 1 Henry Fielding "the prose Homer of human nature," as Byron styles him 2 was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, on the 22nd of April, 1707. His father was Lieutenant- General Edmund Fielding, a follower of the Duke of Marlborough in his great wars ; his mother being Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, Knight, one of the Judges of the Court of King's Bench. By this lady, General Fielding was the father of two sons, of whom the future novelist was the eldest, and of four daughters, Catherine, Ursula, Sarah, and Beatrix, who severally died unmarried. Of these ladies, Sarah, who died at Bath on the 10th of April, 1768, obtained some reputation in her day as the authoress of * David Simple, of the Cry,' " a dramatic fable," and of other publications. Like her celebrated brother, however, she seems to have been constrained to have recourse to her pen to make up for the narrowness of her 1 Gibbon's ' Miscellaneous Works.' 2 Byron's 'Works/ vol. v. p. 55; ed. 1833. 64 HENRY FIELDING. means. " Sally Fielding," writes her relative, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to the Countess of Bute, in June, 1754, " has mended her style in her last volume of * David Simple,' which conveys a useful moral, though she does not seem to have intended it ; I mean, it shows the ill consequences of not providing against casual losses, which happen to almost everybody. Mrs. Orgueil's character is well drawn, and fre- quently to be met with. ' The Art of Tormenting,' ' The Female Quixote,' and ' Sir C. Goodville,' are all sale work. I suppose they proceed from her pen, and I heartily pity her, constrained by her circum- stances to seek her bread by a method, I do not doubt, she despises." l Unfortunately for the worldly prospects of Henry Fielding and his sisters, their father, on the death of their mother, married a second wife, Eleanor Blanchfield, the widow of a Mr. Rafa, who bore him six sons. Of these, the only one who seems to have risen to be of any note was the well-known Sir John Fielding, who, though blind from his youth, played so useful and active a part in his double capacity of a magistrate at Bow Street and as a philanthropist. Henry Fielding imbibed the first rudiments of learning from a clergyman of the name of Oliver, who resided as a private tutor in his father's house, and for whom he evidently entertained neither 1 Lady M. W. Montagu's 'Letters,' edited by Lord Wharncliffe, vol. iii. p. 93. HENRY FIELDING. 65 regard nor respect. From the tuition of Oliver he* was removed, in due time, to Eton, where, by his good-nature and engaging manners, he not only acquired the boyish friendships of Fox, Lyttelton, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and other school- fellows of future eminence, but became distinguished by that love for, and intimate knowledge of, the Latin and Greek authors, which afterwards did him such good service in his celebrated works of fiction. Indeed, even in the most reckless and dissipated hours of his subsequent career, gratitude to Eton, and the love of knowledge, seem to have been still ever near to his heart. Thus, for instance, in his invocation to genius and learning in ' Tom Jones,' he exclaims, " And thou, learning ! for, without thy assistance, nothing pure, nothing correct, can genius produce do thou guide my pen ! Thee, in thy favourite fields, where the limpid gently-rolling Thames washes thy Etonian banks, I have wor- shipped. To thee, at thy birchen altar, with true Spartan devotion, I have sacrificed." 1 " Proceed, great days ! till Learning fly the shore ; Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more ; Till Thames sees Eton's sons for ever play, Till Westminster's whole year be holiday." Pope ; ' The Dunciad.' Being intended for the Bar as his profession, Fielding, about the age of eighteen, was removed by 1 Introduction to the Thirteenth Book. VOL. I. F 66 HENRY FIELDING. his father from Eton to the University of Leydeu, where for two years he remained studying and, it is said, diligently studying civil law. At the end, however, of this period commenced that series of necessities and distresses which, exclusive of one bright interval of elysian happiness, continued to chequer his existence till he sank into the grave. His father, embarrassed by the constant demands on his purse, contingent on the support of a second and large family, could ill afford to continue the allow- ance by means of which his eldest son had been hitherto enabled to prosecute his studies at Ley den, and accordingly, after having been irregularly paid in the first instance, and afterwards withdrawn altogether, its discontinuance left the young student with no other option than to return to his native country. And thus, at the age of twenty, a youth of strong passions, of brilliant genius and of proud connections, found himself an idler in the streets of London, exposed to the most dangerous tempta- tions, without a Mentor to advise him, and without a guinea in his pocket. His father, indeed, nomi- nally made him an allowance of two hundred a year, but, to use the son's own words, "anybody might pay it who would." Nevertheless, whatever grounds of complaint he may have had against his father, it was highly to his credit that no word of filial disrespect or reproach was ever known to escape his lips. At all events, it was apparently by HENRY FIELDING. 67 no fault of his own that, to use his own father's words, he saw no prospect before him, but either that of "turning hackney writer or hackney coachman." Naturally he chose the former alternative, and thus, at the age of twenty, commenced his struggle for exist- ence by resorting to one of its most precarious means of support, that of writing for the Stage. Fielding's first play, l Love in Several Masques,' a comedy, was first acted at Drury Lane in 1728, while its author was still only twenty-one years old. Not only was it received with considerable applause, but happily the same encouragement attended the performance of his second comedy, * The Temple Beau ;' and accordingly, from this time till the year 1743 he continued, with various success, to be a prolific writer of comedies, farces, and other dramatic entertainments. In the single year 1733, he wrote no fewer than six dramatic pieces. The last of his plays which was brought on the stage during his lifetime was * The Wedding Day,' which was first acted at Drury Lane in 1743. It was performed only six nights, and brought the author only fifty pounds. The best of his comedies is perhaps * The Miser.' It seems to have been the conviction of Fielding's gifted relative, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, that had his necessities allowed him leisure to correct his dramatic writings, they might have approached the excellencies of Congreve, " If meat," is her opinion, " could have been got without money, or money F 2 68 HENBT FIELDING. without scribbling," he would have thrown into the fire many of the productions which his wants com- pelled him to throw into the world. But it was in writing, not dramas, but romance, that the bent of Fielding's genius evidently lay. If ever a philosopher really triumphed over mis- fortune and want, it was Henry Fielding. Enviable, however, as was this superiority to fortune, one dis- advantage at least attended it, that, when his present distresses were at an end, they failed to leave any effective warning on his mind. It was the observa- tion of his friends, that though disappointments might occasionally ruffle, they were powerless to depress for any length of time a mind ever flowing with wit, mirth, and good-humour. 1 According to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 2 " His happy constitution even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne ; and I am persuaded," she adds, "he has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret." Thus, wedded to a life of pleasure and excitement, and idolized by the gay and thoughtless of both sexes, Fielding had reached the climax of his career of dissipation and debt, when Providence beneficially 1 Murphy's 'Essay on the Life and Genius of Fielding;' Fielding's * Works,' vol. i. p. 11. 2 ' Letters,' ut supra, vol. iii. p. 120. HENRY FIELDING. 69 held out to him an opportunity of escaping from his present irregularities, and amending his past errors. He was not as yet so steeped in libertinism, but that the virtuous love of a chaste unselfish woman had its full fascination for his better nature ; and accordingly, at the age of twenty-six, he fell in love with, and married, a beautiful and most amiable young lady, a Miss Charlotte Craddock, of Salisbury, the Celia of his verse : " Ask you then, Celia, if there be The thing I love ? My charmer, thee ; Thee more than light, than life adore, Thee, dearest, sweetest creature, more Than wildest rapture can express, Than I can tell or thou canst guess." 1 It was with the picture of this charming person that Fielding, when he subsequently sketched his character of Amelia, delighted the world ; a picture, by-the- way, which, notwithstanding the glowing colours in which it is painted, is said to have done no more than justice either to the personal loveliness or amiable mental qualities of the original. For the sake of his wife, whom he ardently loved, Fielding now not only earnestly resolved on amend- ing his past life, but, with this object, removed from the temptations of London to the retirement of the country. He had recently come into possession, by inheritance from his mother, of a small estate at 1 Fielding's ' Miscellaneous Poems/ 1743. 70 HENEY FIELDING. East Stour, in Dorsetshire, producing about 2007. a year, on which provision, augmented by the welcome sum of 1500/. which he received with his wife, and by such further income as he might expect to realize by his talents, it was now in his power to live, if not in splendour, at least in comfort. Of East Stour, where he took up his abode, it seems sufficient to record the fact that a remarkable locust-tree long continued to indicate the spot where the great novelist passed the happiest days of his life ; but unfortunately, neither of the tree, nor of the house in which he resided, does any vestige now exist. 1 But, if these were days of rare happiness, they also proved to be days of renewed and reckless imprudence, pregnant with future and bitter unhappiness. He enjoyed, indeed, for a time, that elysium which he him- self has so glowingly painted " the pleasures which the morning air gives to one in perfect health; the flow of spirits which springs up from exercise ; the delights which parents feel from the prattle and innocent follies of their children ; the joy with which the tender smile of a wife inspires a husband ; and, lastly, the cheerful, solid comfort, which a fond couple enjoy in each other's conversation." 2 But these priceless blessings had scarcely been tasted before they passed away to return no more. Improvidence, in fact, whether his days were passed in town or 1 Lawrence's ' Life of Fielding,' p. 73, note. 2 ' Amelia,' book iii. chap. xii. HENRY FIELDING. 71 country, was Fielding's second nature. Vying in display and expense with his far wealthier country neighbours, the cost of his profuse hospitality, of his hounds, and of his excessive and wasteful establish- ment of servants, soon swallowed up his wife's small fortune as well as his own. His costly equipage and showy yellow liveries were long remembered in Dorsetshire ; the result being that, within three years from the time of his marriage, he again found himself, at the age of twenty-nine, an outcast in the streets of London ; having in the mean time entailed upon himself the additional charge and responsibility of a wife and a young and increasing family. The noble and the wealthy, indeed such as the Dukes of Bedford, Eichmond, Eoxburgh, and Argyle, and especially his old Eton schoolfellows, Lord Lyttelton and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams were generous in their assistance to him, but such assistance could not last for ever ; and thus the condition of Fielding and of his gentle and unmurmuring wife grew worse and worse. According to the reminiscences of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and of her daughter, Lady Bute " Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunging-houses and hiding-places where he was occasionally to be found." As far as Fielding was individually concerned, he confronted manfully, as usual, the many troubles which he had inflicted 72 HENRY FIELDING. upon himself; but meanwhile, not only were care and anxiety preying upon the more delicate mind of his blameless wife, but were fatally undermining her constitution. 1 In the mean time Fielding, though he may occa- sionally have sacrificed an hour or two to con- viviality, would seem, in his altered and embittered circumstances, to have resumed his literary labours with an energy and determination which would have done credit to the most devoted husband and father. His pen, which was rarely out of his hand, was perpetually inditing, either a comedy, a ballet-farce, a pamphlet, or an essay. Moreover, he not only entered himself a student of the Middle Temple, but, resuming the course of study which he had been compelled to break off at Leyden, he applied himself with so much earnestness and zeal to the study of the law, that frequently he was known to tear himself away from the congenial pleasures of a tavern, in order to pass hours of the night in poring over the most abstruse legal authorities. 2 Neither, after he had been called to the Bar viz., on the 20th of June, 1740, when he was three and thirty was his diligence less laudable. He not only punctually and assiduously attended the courts of law in London as well as on the Western Circuit, but left behind him at his death in evidence of his industry, two 1 Lady M. W. Montagu's 'Letters,' ut supra, vol. i. p. 83; Intro- ductory Anecdotes. 2 Murphy, ut supra, p. 51. HENRY FIELDING. 73 unpublished folio volumes on crown law ; parts of which are said to have displayed uncommon excel- lence. 1 According to his friends, indeed, had the blessing of health been continued to him, he would not only have achieved success at the Bar, but might have secured for himself what Gibbon styles " the first of earthly blessings, independence." 2 Unfor- tunately, however, the career of dissipation which he had formerly led had by this time made sad inroads on his constitution. Frequent and painful attacks of the gout effectually prevented his following up those close attendances in courts of law and in chambers which are of course essentially necessary to secure pecuniary success at the Bar, and accordingly, to his bitter disappointment, he found himself again com- pelled to rely on the precarious trade of literature for the means of supporting his delicate wife and four children. In 1741, Fielding lost his surviving parent, General Fielding, who died in the month of June in that year, at the age of sixty-five. The fortunes, however, of the son appear to have been in no degree bettered by the death of the father. It was about two years after this event that Fielding was prostrated by the one crushing calamity of his life. His beautiful, self-sacrificing, unrepining wife she who had been so long the sharer and tender assuager of his sorrows and wants ; she whose ' Murphy, ut supra, p. 52. 2 ' Miscellaneous Works.' 74 HENRY FIELDING. eye had ever grown " brighter as he drew near home" sank prematurely into the grave. Her state of health, though it had raised at the time no alarm in his sanguine mind, had for some months been precarious, when she was seized with a fever, of which she expired in his arms. The blow fell upon him like a thunder-stroke. He, who had hitherto struggled so manfully and so bravely against all other misfortunes, was prostrated to the very dust. His friends even trembled for his reason. Unhappily, too, it would have been difficult to find a person less qualified to take charge of a young family than Fielding, and of this fact no one perhaps was more fully aware than Fielding himself. He took, then, a step which, though it provoked the sneers of the worldly and the unfriendly, was, under the circum- stances, perhaps the wisest which he could have taken. Heavy and sincere as was his affliction, he married again. The person, undoubtedly, on whom his choice fell, was of humble birth ; but, on the other hand, as Fielding's apology, if any be required, it should be borne in mind that that choice fell on one who had watched with him the last struggles, and had mingled her tears with his, over the coffin of his late wife ; that she had been the confidential servant and friend of that idolized wife, her inseparable com- panion during Fielding's long and dreary absences in law-courts or spunging-houses, and a second and tender mother to his children. That Fielding, then, HENRY FIELDING. 75 should have been induced to give his hand at the altar to this tried and faithful dependent, and to indue her with the material guardianship of these mother- less children, was assuredly not only not an un- natural, but by many persons may perhaps be regarded as a commendable, act. According to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1 who probably knew lier personally and well "The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping along with her, nor solace, when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful house- keeper and nurse." The maiden name of Fielding's second wife was Mary Macdaniel. After having survived him forty- eight years, she died at Canterbury in 1802, at a very advanced age. By the first edition of Smollett's 'Peregrine Pickle,' 2 it would seem that Lord Lyttelton, to gratify his old schoolfellow, gave her away to him at the altar. In 1748, Fielding, through the interest of the same steadfast friend, Lord Lyttelton, was nominated to 1 ' Letters,' ut suj>ro, yol. i. p. 83. 2 Ed. 1757; p. 123. 76 HENRY FIELDING. be one of the paid magistrates for Middlesex and Westminster " Trading justices," as they were then termed an office, be it observed, which at that time was held in very low estimation, and which had been very]unworthily filled by many of Fielding's predeces- sors. Instead, however, of following their examples, by enriching himself with exactions from the guilty and the necessitous, Fielding not only, by his conscien- tious conduct, raised the office in respectability, but, in consequence of the active and zealous manner in which he discharged its duties, was, in May the following year, unanimously elected by his brother magistrates to be chairman of their sessions at Hick's Hall. 1 To set forth in detail, in our brief memoir, a cata- logue of Fielding's manifold miscellaneous writings would be a work of supererogation. With regard, however, to his three most important literary pro- ductions, * Joseph Andrews/ ' Tom Jones,' and ' Amelia,' it may not be inexpedient to exemplify their first introduction to the world by one or two ob- servations. ' Joseph Andrews,' written in admirable imitation of the style of Cervantes, was published in 1742. It was written, as is well known, as a caricature of Richardson's famous ' Pamela,' and as such not unnaturally gave much offence to that spoiled and sensitive writer. So great, indeed, was Richardson's prejudice against his brother novelist, that, even to . 1 Lawrence's ' Life of Fielding,' p. 268, and note. HENRY FIELDING. 77 Fielding's own accomplished sister, the authoress of * David Simple,' he had the indecency to speak of her brother as a low vulgar fellow. " Poor Fielding !" he himself writes with affected pity, " I could not help telling his sister that I was equally surprised at, and concerned for, his continued lowness. ' Had your brother,' said I, ' been born in a stable, or been a runner at a spunging-house, one should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company.' ' In like manner, when ' Tom Jones ' appeared, the rapid sale of that great work of fiction was in Richardson's jaundiced eyes " unaccountable." In * Amelia,' Richardson was not only unable to discover the slightest merit, but professes to have read only the first volume. 1 * Tom Jones ' was published in 1749, and was at once hailed with a general manifestation of delight and admiration. The world, it must be remembered, had not then learned to repel it on account of its impurities, which, after all, were little more than a reflex of the coarseness of the manners and literature of the age in which the great novelist lived. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in her copy of the work, " Ne plus ultra." La Harpe has proclaimed it " le premier roman du monde" and Gribbon, " the first of ancient or modern romances." " I never," writes Lord Monboddo, " saw anything that was so much 1 Richardson's ' Correspondence,' passim. 78 HENRY FIELDING. animated, and, as I may say, all alive with characters and manners, as ' The History of Tom Jones.' 1 " Upon my word," said Coleridge, " I think the ' (Edipus Tyrannus,' the ' Alchemist,' and * Tom Jones' the three most perfect plots ever planned.' 2 * Tom Jones ' was gratefully dedicated by Fielding to Lord Lyttelton. " To you," he writes," it is owing that this history was ever begun ; it was by your desire that I first thought of such a composition ;" and he adds " without your assistance this history had never been completed." Doubtless the completeness of ' Tom Jones,' both as regards its plot and its characters, is in a great degree owing to its having been written, not, like most of Fielding's other works, under the pressure and hurry of his immediate necessities, but in con- genial hours, and during a protracted period extend- ing apparently over as many as six or seven years. It was evidently, moreover, the work to which he looked forward for the realization of those glowing " hopes of charming ages yet to come," which he himself admits to have been the ruling passion of his existence. " Foretell me," he exclaims in a beautiful invocation to the Love of Fame, " that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my 1 Monlxxldo's ' Origin and Progress of Language,' vol. iii. p. 135. 2 ' Table Talk.' UENEY FIELDING. 79 Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay even to feed on, future praise. Comfort me by a solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew or saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see." 1 At the close of the year 1751 appeared with great success Fielding's third and last novel, * Amelia.' Inferior in merit to ' Tom Jones,' yet superior per- haps to any other novel in the English language, it has been styled the 'Odyssey' to Fielding's * Iliad.' Dr. Johnson, though little inclined to do justice to Fielding's genius, appears!*) have been so fascinated by 'Amelia,' that he read it through without stop- ping. 2 The person to whom it was dedicated was the well-known philanthropist, Ralph Allen, im- mortalized by Pope " Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame." Not only would Allen seem to have been a bene- factor to Fielding in the days of his urgent distress, but, before he had any personal knowledge of him, he is said to have sent him the noble present of two hundred guineas. 3 1 ' Tom Jones/ book xiii. chap. i. 2 Crokcr's ' Boswell's Life of Johnson,' p. 508 ; ed. 1848. 3 Sir W. Scott's 'Life of Fielding;' Scott's 'Proso Works/ vol. i. p. 103. Dedication of ' Tom Jones.' 80 HENRY FIELDING. It may be mentioned, that for the copyright of 1 Tom Jones,' Millar, the publisher, paid Fielding the sum of 600J, to which, on its achieving its signal success, he added the further sum of 100. For the copyright of * Amelia,' Millar paid him the sum of 1000J. 1 Many of the characters in Fielding's novels were, as is well known, portrayed by him from living models. In ' Joseph Andrews,' his first tutor, Oliver, is believed to have sat for Parson Trul liber ; Peter Walter the wealthy usurer celebrated by Pope and by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams is supposed to have been the original of Peter Pounce ; and the Rev. William Young remarkable for his benevolence, his absence of mind, and his passion for ^Eschylus to have sat for Parson Adams. Ralph Allen is stated to have been the original of Squire Allworthy, in * Tom Jones ; ' while from Fielding himself we may glean that the delicacy of mind and tenderness of heart of his first wife were depicted in Sophia Western. She certainly sat for Amelia. " Fielding," writes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 2 " has given a true picture of himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; and, 1 am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact," 1 Sir W. Scott, ut supra, pp. 104, 112. 2 ' Letters,' ut supra, vol. i. p. 93. HENRY FIELDING. 81 Doubtless, too, it was from living persons in the lower, as well as in the middle classes, that Fielding drew those accurate and admirable sketches of human nature and of English character for which his novels are so eminently distinguished. Horace Walpole, for instance, has bequeathed us a somewhat unjust, yet very curious, sketch of the great literary artist as he was on one occasion taken by surprise in the motley society of one or two of his living models. Of course, before accepting it as being a completely reliable description of what passed, some allowance must be made for aristocratic exaggeration on the part of Walpole's friends, if not of Walpole himself. " Rigby," writes the latter, " gave me a strong picture of nature. He and Peter Bathurst [brother of Allen Lord Bathurst] t'other night carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding, who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent word he was at supper ; that they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a blind man, a whore, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so often come to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, VOL. i. o 82 HENRY FIELDING. and pulled themselves chairs; on which he civilized." It has been ingeniously suggested by Sir Walter Scott that the blind guest may probably have been the novelist's half-brother, Sir John Fielding. In the mean time, severe mental exertions and anxiety, combined with the effects of earlier dissipa- tions, had made slow, but unceasing inroads on Field- ing's health. A complication of disorders, comprising asthma, dropsy, and jaundice at length reduced him to a miserable condition of emaciation and weakness. Twice he underwent the operation of tapping, but without its affording him any permanent benefit. He now removed to a small cottage which he had hired at Baling, in Middlesex ; but, though he speaks of the air of this place as " the best in the whole kingdom," he seems to have grown worse instead of better. At length, as a last desperate chance of prolonging his life, he was recommended by his physicians to try the air of a foreign climate ; and accordingly, Portugal having been suggested as the country most likely to afford him relief, he acquiesced in preparations being made for his embarkation for Lisbon. On the 26th of June, 1754, the dying novelist and fond father embraced his young children for the last time. " On this day, Wednesday, June 26," he writes, "the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of HENRY FIELDING. 83 those creatures on whom I doated with a mother-like fondness, guided by Nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philo- sophical school, where I had learned to bear pains, and to despise death. In this situation, as I could not conquer Nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever. Under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me in to suffer, the company of my little ones, during eight hours ; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than in all my distemper. At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me, than I kissed my children round, and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me. Some friends went with us, and others here took their leave ; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises, to which I well knew I had no title." ' On reaching Rotherhithe, whither this mournful party was first bound, and where lay the trading- vessel which had been engaged to convey him and his wife and daughter to Lisbon, Fielding's feebleness proved so excessive that it was found necessary to hoist him, in an arm-chair, by means of pulleys, into 1 ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.' Vr 2 84 HENRY FIELDING. the vessel. The voyage proved a long and tedious one ; a circumstance, however, so far of advantage to Fielding's votaries, that it incited him to commence and to continue his interesting ' Journal of a Yoyage to Lisbon,' a narrative which, though it sparkles with much of his native wit and humour, nevertheless reads too painfully like the last words of a dying man to afford unmixed gratification. According to his biographer, Murphy, " he puts us in mind of a person under sentence of death jesting on the scaffold." l " His perception of character, and power of describing it," writes Sir Walter Scott, " had not forsaken him in those sad moments ; for the master of the ship in which he sailed, the scolding landlady of the Isle of Wight, the military coxcomb who visits their vessel, are all portraits, marked with the master-hand which traced Parson Adams and Squire Western." 2 Owing to unfavourable winds, it was not till the 10th of July that the vessel bearing the invalid had passed through the Channel and appeared in sight of the Isle of Wight; this being two days previous to the date on which Fielding addressed the following hitherto unpublished letter to his half-brother, Sir John Fielding : 3 1 ' Essay on the Life and Genius of Fielding,' ut supra, p. 88. 2 Sir W. Scott's 'Works/ ut supra, p. L15. 3 From the original in the possession of Frederick Locker, Esq. HENRY FIELDING. 85 " On Board the ' Queen of Portugal,' Eichard Veal, at anchor on the Mother Bank off Kyde ; to the care of the Postmaster at Portsmouth. This is my date and your direction. July 12, 1754. "DEAR JACK, " After receiving that agreeable Wl. from Messrs. Fielding & Co., we weighed on Monday morning, and sailed from Deal to the westward. Four days' long, but inconceivably pleasant, passage brought us yesterday to an anchor on the Mother Bank, on the back of the Isle of Wight, where we had last night in safety the pleasure of hearing the winds roar over our heads in as violent a tempest as I have known, and where my only consideration were the fears which must possess any friend of ours (if there is happily any such), who really makes our well-being the object of his concern ; especially if such friend should be totally inex- perienced in sea affairs. I therefore beg that on the day that you receive this, Mrs. Daniel may know that we are just risen from breakfast in health and spirits this 12th inst., at 9 in the morning. Our voyage hath proved fruitful in adventures, all which being to be written in the book, you must postpone your curiosity. " As the incidents which fall under your cog- nizance will possibly be consigned to oblivion, do give them to us as they pass. Tell your neighbour that I am much obliged to him for recommending 86 HEN BY FIELDING. me to the care of a most able and experienced seaman, to whom other captains seem to pay such deference, that they attend and watch his motions, and think themselves only safe when they act tinder his directions and example. Our ship, in truth, seems to give laws on the water with as much authority and superiority as you dispense laws to the public, and examples to your brethren in commission. " Please to direct your answer to me on board as in the date ; if gone, to be returned, and then send it, by the post and packet, to Lisbon, to " Your affectionate brother, " H. FIELDING. " To John Fielding, Esq., at his house, in Bow Street, Covent Garden, London." After a tedious detention of eleven days off Byde, Fielding, on the 23rd of July, had the satisfaction of finding himself again under weigh for Lisbon, where he appears to have arrived early in August. During the voyage, notwithstanding his wretched state of bodily health, and the constant discomforts and perils to which he was exposed, his tender but manly nature shone forth with an unaffected serenity and resignation, which almost makes us forget the errors of his past life and sometimes licentious pen. His health, unfortunately, had not improved since he sailed from England. " The total loss of limbs," he had then written, " was apparent to all who saw me, and my face contained marks of a most diseased HENRY FIELDING. 87 state, if not of death itself. Indeed, so ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child had abstained from my house for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me." ] Yet, even in this bad condition, his brave heart could not only make the best of everything, but could even jest at his own sufferings. The comfort and welfare of his wife and daughter, and not his own, were evidently upper- most in his thoughts. The slightest kindnesses shown him on their part are recorded by him with expressions of the tenderest gratitude. His "dear wife and child," he writes after a storm, " were both too good and too gentle to be trusted to the power of any man he knew." 2 Although Fielding may possibly have not been, strictly speaking, orthodox in his religious principles, he was at all events a sincere believer in the pure and primitive truths of Christianity. In a sceptical age it was his honourable boast that he was a Christian. That he had devoted many earnest hours to the study of theology appears to be certain. On the day, for instance, on which he lay down to die in a foreign land, the ink could scarcely have been dry upon the pen with which, so long as his strength had permitted, he had employed himself in confuting the infidelities of Bolingbroke, as recently published under the pernicious editorship of David Mallet. The great novelist survived his arrival at Lisbon 1 ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.' 2 Ibid. 88 HENRY FIELDING. less than two months. Affectionately watched over by his wife and child, and happily free from pain at the last, he expired, unrepiningly and without a groan, on the 8th of October, 1754, in the forty- eighth year of his age. Provision was made for Fielding's widow and orphan children, partly by his half-brother, Sir John Fielding, to whom he had resigned his magistracy at Bow Street, and partly by his former munifi- cent benefactor, Ralph Allen, who, at his death, bequeathed an annuity of 100/. to the family. By his second wife, Fielding was the father of four children, of whom his eldest son, William, studied the law, and was called to the Bar. His second son entered holy orders, and resided at Canterbury. 89 RICHARD MOUNTENEY. RICHARD MOUNTENEY, whose frequently reprinted * Demosthenes Selectee Orationes ' have so intimately associated his name with that of the great Athenian orator, was the son of Richard Mounteney, of Putney, in Surrey. He was born in 1707, was educated on the foundation at Eton, and in 1725 was elected to King's College, where he remained till he obtained his fellowship. On quitting Cambridge, the young scholar entered himself at the Inner Temple, and, after a successful career at the Bar, became, in 1741, one of the Barons of the Exchequer in Ireland ; having two years previously, in 1739, married the Countess Dowager of Mount Alexander. " His intimacy with Sir Edward Wai pole at college," writes Nichols, " and his excellent [Latin] dedication of the Orations to Sir Robert, together with his strict honour and great abilities, raised him to that honourable office which he filled with much reputation." 1 The cause in 1 ' Life of Bowyer,' p. 429. 90 EICHARD MOUNTENEY. which, as presiding judge, he acquired the greatest credit, was in the famous trial which commenced on the llth of November, 1743, between Mr. James Annesley and his alleged uncle, Richard sixth Earl of Anglesey ; the former asserting himself to be the true and legitimate son of the earl's elder brother, the late lord, and to have been kidnapped in child- hood by his unnatural uncle, with the object of depriving him of the succession to the family honours and estates. 1 Richard Mounteney died in 1768. Besides having edited the * Select Orations of Demosthenes,' he pub- lished, in 1748, a treatise entitled ' Observations on the probable Issue of the Congress.' His edition of 'Demosthenes' was first published in 1731, when he was only twenty-four years old ; this work being accompanied by critical observations on the Ulpian Controversy by his learned Eton and King's con- temporary John Chapman, Archdeacon of Sudbury. According to Nichols, Mounteney's " celebrated dedi- cation " of his ' Demosthenes ' to Sir Robert Walpole, to which he partly owed his promotion to the Bench, was first published in 1748 ; yet in 1748, Sir Robert had been dead three years. In his youth Richard Mounteney had not only courted the Muses, but, if we are to place confidence in the following adulatory verses addressed to him by Paul Jodrell, solicitor- 1 See Burke's ' Extinct Peerage ;' article, Annesley's Earls of Anglesey. The plaintiff obtained a verdict in his favour. EIGHAED MOUNTENEY. 91 general to Frederick Prince of Wales, he was a poet of no mean promise : " To love and verse young Ovid's tender mind The Muse inspired, as Nature had inclined. In vain his sire, his fortune to improve, To learn his country's laws the stripling drove, He studied nothing still but verse and love. Nature, to you more eminently kind, The wide extremes of law and verse have joined. Alike in both you happily succeed, Eesistless when you sing or when you plead. By the same force of two commanding arts, Men gain estates and women lose their hearts. Whene'er the venerable coif shall spread Its sable honours o'er thy learned head, The Muse, expressive of thy other praise, Around the silk shall wreathe the sacred bays." 92 RALPH THICKNESSE. RESPECTING this almost forgotten scholar, 'we have been able to glean but little information beyond a fact, probably already well known to the classical reader, that he gave to the world an edition of Phsedrus with English notes. He was born in or about the year 1707. His father was the Rev. John Thicknesse, Rector of Farthinghoe, in Northampton- shire, who died in 1725, before his son had quitted Eton. His mother, Joyce Blencowe, was the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman, and niece of Sir John Blencowe, one of the Justices of the Common Pleas. According to one of his sons, Philip Thicknesse the author of a curious autobiography from which the preceding details have been chiefly gleaned she brought her husband no other fortune but "her many virtues," and proved the '' excellent mother " of eight children. 1 In 1727, Ralph Thicknesse was elected from the foundation at Eton to King's College, Cambridge ; in 1 ' Autobiography,' pp. 5, 6. EALPH THICKNESSE. 93 1730 he took his degree of B.A., and in 1736 as M.A. After having obtained his fellowship at King's, he passed ten years of his comparatively short life as an assistant master at Eton. Besides being an accom- plished scholar, he was a musician, a humorist, and apparently a man much beloved by his friends. The fact is a remarkable one, that in one and the same year (1742) the subject of this brief memoir should have been an Eton master, should have published his edition of Phgedrus, have narrowly missed the honour of being elected Provost of King's by his brother fellows, and have been appointed " lieutenant of an independent company at Jamaica." His commission was obtained for him by his friend, Sir Edward Walpole, its value being enhanced by \m receiving a promise of leave of absence till such time as he might succeed to the command of a company, of which the emoluments are said to have been worth 1000. a year. 1 He immediately hurried up to London to obtain his mandamus from the then Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Charles, famous as the " proud Duke of Somerset," to one of whose exclusive banquets he had the exceptional honour of being invited. One incident of the even- ing he related to his brother Philip. Dinner, he said, when served up, was announced to the company by one of his grace's servants presenting himself, 1 Nichols's ' Lit. Anecdotes of the 18th Centxary,' vol. ix. pp. 252, 253, 743. 94 RALPH THICKNESSE. holding in his right hand a silver staff, somewhat resembling a bishop's crosier, and three times pro- nouncing the words first of all forte, then piano, then pianissimo " My Lord Duke of Somerset My Lord Duke of Somerset My Lord Duke of Somerset Your Grace's dinner is upon the table." * From London Ealph Thicknesse proceeded to Bath, where he survived his arrival only a few days. He was playing the first violin at the performance of a composition of his own, at a morning concert in. that city, when his head suddenly dropped, and, almost as suddenly, life became extinct. The inscription placed on his monument in the Abbey Church at Bath was written by his former gifted schoolfellow, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams ; besides which, a Dr. Oliver, who was at his side when he expired, com- posed some elegiac verses on his death ; verses which less on account of their literary merit, than as bear- ing testimony to the social virtues and accomplish- ments of the dead we are induced to lay before the reader : " Weep, ye wits ! who ever laughed before, Thicknesse, your favourite Thicknesse, jokes no more. No more his Attic salt, his Eoman fire, The social band delighted shall admire. Hushed be all harmony except the strain That's taught in mournful numbers to complain How he, who sounds celestial could combine, Was snatch'd from earth in heavenly choir to shine. 1 Nichols's ' Lit. Anecdotes of the 18tt Century,' vol. xi. p. 253. Philip Thicknesse's ' Autobiography,' pp. 164, 165. RALPH THICKNESSE. 95 Ye poets, sweet companions of his youth, Quit all your fables, and adorn the truth; In elegiac plaints his story tell, How loved he lived, and how lamented fell." 1 Ralph Thicknesse expired on the llth of October, 1742, apparently at the age of thirty-five. 1 Nichols, ut supra, vol. ix. p. 253. 96 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. DURING the more than four centuries that Eton has been the prolific mother of the gifted and the illustrious, she has given birth to no nobler son than the elder William Pitt, " the Great Commoner," as he was affectionately styled by his contemporaries, " the great Earl of Chatham" of our own time. William Pitt was born on the 15th-of November, 1708. According to his biographer, the Rev. F. Thackeray, he first saw the light in the parish of St. James, Westminster ; while Seward, in his ' Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,' no less confidently states that he was born at Stratford House, at the foot of the fortress of Old Sarum, in Wiltshire. 1 The former statement we believe to comprise the truth. His father was Robert Pitt, Esq., of Boconnoc, in Cornwall, one of the Clerks of the Green Cloth to George II. when Prince of Wales, and Member of Par-liament suc- cessively for Old Sarum and Okehampton. He died 1 ' Seward/ vol. ii. p. 386. An engraved view of Stratford House forms the frontispiece to Scward's second volume. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 97 in 1727, apparently about two years after his son must have left Eton. Mr. Pitt's mother, who sur- vived her husband nine years, was Harriet Villiers, sister of John Lord Grandison. Through her he was lineally descended from Sir George Yilliers, father of the powerful favourite, George Villiers Duke of Buckingham; as likewise was his schoolfellow, Henry Fielding, through his ancestress, Susan Countess of Denbigh, sister of the great duke. Mr. Pitt's paternal grandfather, it should be mentioned, was the well- known Governor Pitt, who purchased in the East Indies, for 20,400/., the famous Pitt diamond, weighing 127 carats, which he afterwards sold for 135,000. to the King of France. Of William Pitt's Eton days we have little to record beyond the well-known legend of his having been once subjected to an unusually severe flogging, as the penalty of his having been caught out of bounds , to which we may add the further fact of his having, while still an Eton boy, suffered from the merciless enemy of his maturer years, the gout. On leaving Eton, where his progress in the classics is said to have been watched placido lumine by Dr. Bland, he studied for a short time at the University of Utrecht ; a fact overlooked by his biographers, but which he has himself recorded in a letter to Lord Shelburne. 1 His next removal was to Trinity College, 1 ' Chatham Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 107, and note. VOL. I. H 98 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. Oxford, where be was admitted as a gentleman com- moner on the 10th of January, 1726, and whence, without remaining long enough to take his degree, he departed on a tour through France and Italy. The profession he chose for himself was the army ; his first, and, indeed, the only commission which he ever held, being as a cornet in the Blues. In the year 1735, during the premiership of Sir Eobert Walpole, Mr. Pitt, at the age of twenty-seven, took his seat in the House of Commons as Member for Old Sarum. During the following seven years which preceded the fall of Walpole from power, Mr. Pitt figures as the formidable and uncompromising opponent of that celebrated minister, who in return avenged himself on the " terrible cornet of horse," as he paid him the compliment of styling bim, by de- priving him of his commission. Not only, it may be remarked, was this proceeding in itself a most ex- asperating one, but, inasmuch as, at this time, exclusive of his military pay, an inconsiderable annuity seems to have comprised his entire income, 1 his dismissal from the army probably subjected him to considerable embarrassment. The famous Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, indeed, as a token of her admiration of his patriotism and genius, bequeathed him a legacy of 10,000 ; but this was a windfall 1 According to Lord Chesterfield, it amounted to no more than one hundred a year. Chesterfield's 'Letters/ edited by Earl Stanhope, vol. ii. p. 267. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 99 which did not avail him till after he had sat in Parliament for some years. Under these circum- stances, then, it was fortunate for him that, in 1737, he had accepted the post of groom of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince of Wales, a post which not only established him on a most intimate and agreeable footing at the Prince's Court at Leicester House, com- posed, as it was at that time, according to Lord Chesterfield, of " the most promising of the young Whig lords and gentlemen, and of the prettiest and liveliest of the young Whig ladies," but which was coupled with a salary of 400/. a year no des- picable addition to the means of one whose income amounted to no more than a quarter of that sum. Nor, it may be added, were, at this time, the tastes and pursuits of the future austere and stately minister altogether at variance with those of the sprightly Court of which he now found himself a denizen. Opposed, indeed, as the fact may be to our precon- ceived notions of his character, these were days when, according to Lord Chesterfield, he was " a most agreeable and lively companion," l when, in the lan- guage of Horace Walpole, Lady Archibald Hamilton lost the heart of her paramour, Prince Frederick, " by giving him William Pitt as a rival ;" 2 and lastly, when, according to his friend, James Hammond, the poet, he was as much distinguished by " manners soft " 1 Chesterfield's ' Letters/ ut supra, vol. ii. pp. 468, 471. 2 Walpole's ' Reign of George II.' vol. i. p. 76. H 2 100 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. and the " courtier's ease " as he afterwards was by the " Roman's virtue." 1 To the downfall of Sir .Robert Walpole from power in 1742, and to the consequent accession of the Pelhams to power, Mr. Pitt had every reason to look as stepping-stones to his rising to high and respon- sible employment in the state. It was not, however, till after a brilliant parliamentary career of eleven years' duration that the long-deferred day of prefer- ment arrived. In 1745, indeed, the Duke of New- castle had earnestly recommended him to George II. for the appointment of Secretary at War ; but so obnoxious had Mr. Pitt rendered himself to the King by his unbending opposition to his Majesty's partial policy in regard to his Hanoverian dominions, that the duke's appeal was at once negatived. Taking into account, however, Mr. Pitt's consummate talents and splendid eloquence, so unreasonable a repugnance as that of the King could not be allowed to prevail for ever ; and accordingly, on the 22nd of February, 1746, he was gazetted Joint Yice-Treasurer for Ireland, a post which he held only till the 6th of May following, when he was nominated to the more lucrative office of Paymaster-General of the 1 " To Stew's delightful scenes I now repair * * * * There Pitt, in manners soft, in friendship warm, With mild advice my listening grief shall charm With sense to counsel, and with wit to please, A Koman's virtue with a courtier's ease." WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 101 Forces, and, about the same time, sworn a member of the Privy Council. Displaying a scrupulous probity, which, it is to be feared, had not always been a cha- racteristic of preceding paymasters, Mr. Pitt continued to hold this appointment during the ensuing ten years, when, on the 4th of December, 1756, his ad- vancement to the post of Secretary of State, in the room of his distinguished rival, Mr. Fox, at length afforded him full scope for the exercise and display of his transcendant abilities. In the mean time, he had greatly strengthened his political importance by marrying, on the 16th of October, 1754, a high-born as well as exemplary woman, Lady Hester Grenville, niece to Richard Viscount Cobham, Pope's Lord Cobham and sister of Mr. Pitt's Eton schoolfellow, fellow-minister and friend, Richard Earl Temple. We have said that the appointment of Mr. Pitt to the post of Secretary of State afforded him full scope for the display of his transcendant abilities. At this time, be it remembered, a year's unpropitious war with France had reduced Great Britain to a lament- able condition of disaster and discredit. Defeat had been followed by defeat ; disgrace by disgrace. The unfortunate expedition of General Braddock against Fort du Quesne ; the unsuccessful attempt against Ticonderoga ; the failure of the expedition against Rochefort, and the unsatisfactory result of the naval engagement between Admiral Byng and Galissoniere, had alike grievously 'tarnished the honour of England, 102 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. and fiercely exasperated the English people. It was under these circumstances that England loudly called for the services of Mr. Pitt as the wisest, the most eloquent, and the most patriotic of her sons ; nor could a statesman more admirably qualified to grapple with the emergency have possibly been a nation's choice. Though not altogether without weaknesses, he was unquestionably a great man. He possessed a mind singularly fertile in resources ; a perception as clear in devising expedients as it was prompt in carrying them into execution ; an un- daunted courage which never shrank from incurring responsibility, and an originality of genius which led him to despise precedents, and to regard as trifling hindrances such obstacles as to inferior intellects appeared to be impossibilities. Moreover, he was superior to every selfish consideration. To him the smiles or frowns of his sovereign, the applause or censure of the multitude, the tenure or loss of office, were as nothing compared with the one noble and all-absorbing object of his life the aggrandizement and prosperity of his native country. The patronage which accrues to office he gave up for the public good. For the claims of political friends, and the pleadings of pretty women, he had no ear. For high family connection and aristocratic pretensions he entertained the profoundest contempt. In the noblest sense of the word he was a patriot. He loved his country, and in the dark hours of her de- WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. 103 dining grandeur is said to have been impressed with the prophetic conviction that he was destined to save her. " My lord," he once said to the Duke of Devonshire, " I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can." Mr. Pitt had no sooner been installed as Secretary of State and War Minister, than he commenced establishing a severe and personal despotism over every naval and military department of the state. He not only exacted obedience from chiefs of depart- ments and under - secretaries, but prompt, tacit, implicit obedience. On one occasion, when confined to his bed by the gout, he sent a message to the Master - General of the Ordnance, Sir Charles Frederick, to attend him immediately. " The batter- ing-train from the Tower," he told him, " must be at Portsmouth by to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." The master-general attempted to explain to him that it was impossible. " At your peril, sir/' said the great minister, " let it be done ; and let an express be sent to me from every stage till the train arrives." By seven o'clock the train was at Portsmouth. 1 In his interviews with naval and military men, the dignity of Mr. Pitt's demeanour, the grandeur of his views, and the clearness with which he explained them, impressed them at once that they were in the presence of a great man. When they quitted his 1 Seward's ' Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,' vol. ii. p. 364, note, fifth edition. 104 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. presence to follow out his instructions in a foreign land, they felt that he had instilled into them a portion of his own sanguine and indomitable spirit. Civilian though he was, they admitted that the ablest commander might not only obey his instructions without a blush, but adopt his suggestions with advantage. " He was possessed," said Colonel Barre, in the House of Commons, " of the happy talent of transfusing his own zeal into the souls of all those who were to have a share in carrying his projects into execution ; and it is a matter well known to many officers now in the House, that no man ever entered the earl's closet, who did not feel himself, if possible, braver at his return than when he went in." l To those who were employed by him he ever extended his fullest support. A general officer having on one occasion been asked by him how many men he would require to succeed in carrying out a certain expedi- tion, the reply was, " Ten thousand." " Then you shall have twelve thousand," said the minister, " and if you do not succeed it will be your own fault." 2 Irresolution it was not in his nature to feel himself, nor was he ready to pardon it in others. " Irresolu- tion," once observed his rival, Henry Fox, " has been a general and is surely a fatal fault. I think Pitt almost the only man that I have seen in power who had not that fault, though he had many others." 3 1 ' Parliamentary History,' vol. xix. p. 1227. 2 Seward's ' Anecdotes,' ut supra, vol. ii. pp. 362-3. 3 Earl Russell's ' Memorials of Fox,' vol. i. p. 58. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 1C 5 Thus energetically did Mr. Pitt conduct towards a glorious conclusion a war which, had it been carried on by one of an inferior order of statesmen, might have been protracted for twenty years longer, at tenfold the expense, and probably with a tenth part only of the success with which it was ultimately crowned. Under his auspices the commerce of Great Britain was rendered prosperous beyond all prece- dent ; colony was added to colony ; while victory, gained after victory, had once more occasioned the name of an Englishman to be as much respected and dreaded over the world as it had been in the days of Cromwell and Queen Anne. " II faut avouer," said Frederick the Great of Prussia, " que 1'Angleterre a ete longtemps en travail, et qu'elle a beaucoup souiferte pour produire M. Pitt ; mais enfin elle est accouchee d'un homme." So habitual, indeed, became the triumphs of the British arms, that, during the later encounters between England and her foes, the one looked for victory as a matter of course, while the other appeared as if already panic-struck by the certainty of defeat. " There is scarcely more credit to be got," said a contemporary, " in beating a Frenchman than in beating a woman." Such eminent services as these naturally secured for Mr. Pitt the love and veneration of the people of England. The masses, moreover, loved him, not only because he had provided them with conquests and triumphs ; not only because the commercial prosperity 106 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. of England had, under his auspices, kept pace with her ancient military renown ; hut also because he was the minister of their own creation and choice, because it was his boast that he derived his power, not from, the favour of kings, but from the middle classes of his countrymen ; and, lastly, because he was still simply Mr. Pitt, without a garter below his knee or a ribbon across his breast ; without a title or a sine- cure, and above a bribe. Perhaps the best evidence which could be adduced of Mr. Pitt's vast intellectual superiority to the statesmen of the age in which he lived, was the awe in which he was held by his powerful colleagues in the Cabinet. " The whole council," as the Duke of Newcastle admitted to Rigby, " used to be in dread lest Mr. Pitt should frown." l The powerful favourite, Lord Bute, for instance, complained of his insolent treatment of him ; and even Lord Mansfield, notwithstanding the dignity of his office and charac- ter, would seem, at least on one occasion, to have been treated by him with something very nearly approaching to contempt. For example, at the discussion of an important point of war policy, to which he believed that Lord Mansfield was prepared to offer opposition, Mr. Pitt summed up the opinions of the other members of the council, without any reference to the great lawyer. " The Chief Justice of England," he said, " has no opinion to give in this 1 ' Correspondence of John Duke of Bedford,' vol. iii. pp. 6, 19, 56. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 307 matter." l But it was the Duke of Newcastle him- self, when Prime Minister, who seems to have stood in the greatest awe of, and to have winced- the oftenest under, the frown of his despotic colleague. " I recollect," writes Sir George Colebrooke, " his grace making this the subject of lively conversation at table at Claremont, but it was no subject of merri- ment at the time." According to Horace Walpole, if the duke happened to have committed a ministerial or official blunder, Mr. Pitt used to send for him and to read him a lecture, as if he had been a schoolboy. 2 He once, when the wants of the army seemed likely to be jeoparded by neglect, even went so far as to threaten him with impeachment. In a like threat, by-the-by, he at another time included the entire Board of Treasury. 3 In the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt's master mind, his brilliant eloquence, and especially his crushing powers of withering invective, rendered him quite as formidable and despotic as he was in the Cabinet. In Parliament he was what Lord Chesterfield de- scribes him, 4 " ipse agmen a host in himself." He was gifted by Nature with almost all the qualities which are requisite to form a great orator. His figure was imposing and graceful; his eye was 1 Sir George Colebrooke's MS. ' Memoirs,' quoted in Walpole's ' Me- moirs of the Eeign of George III.' vol. i. p. 81, note. 2 'Walpoliaua/p. 88. 3 Sir Geo. Colebrooke's ' Memoirs/ ut supra. * ' Letters/ ut supra, vol. iv. p. 353. 108 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. singularly eloquent and full of fire ; his features were capable of every variety of expression ; his full, rich, silvery voice was no less capable of every variety of intonation. Choice, however, as were his oratorical powers, his eloquence was not without its defects. His style was occasionally too florid, his action too theatrical. In the art of reply, and as a debater, he was inferior to more than one of his con- temporaries. But, on the other hand, his eloquence was distinguished by passionate and heart-stirring appeals to the feelings ; by bold flights of fancy ; by striking metaphors ; by varied and copious know- ledge ; by the occasional and happy introduction of anecdote ; by animated allusions to past historical events ; by clear and manly statements of his views and sentiments ; and, lastly, when it suited his purpose, by fierce denunciations and bitter sarcasms. To these qualities must be added the evidence which his speeches afforded of a noble and generous elevation of sentiment ; a loathing of all that is mean and sordid, and a keen appreciation of all that is good and beautiful. Mr. Pitt's set and studied orations were commonly failures. It was only when he spoke from the impulse of the occasion that his eloquence blazed forth in its full and unaffected splendour. It was usually some merely accidental circumstance in the course of a debate the ironical laugh of a political* opponent, the expression of some unworthy or illiberal sentiment, or some imagined WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 109 affront to himself or to his country which elicited from him those impassioned outbursts of eloquence on which his great fame as an orator mainly rests. On such occasions it was that, his ideas flowing 1 faster than his words, he gave vent to those heart- stirring appeals to the patriotism of his listeners, those withering denunciations of the living, and mournful and eloquent panegyrics on the dead, which half impressed his audience with the conviction that he was an inspired being. In the art and use of invective Mr. Pitt was un- rivalled. In such terror, indeed, was he held by the House of Commons, that usually a mere glance of his eye, whether expressive of contempt, defiance, or aver- sion, was sufficient to daunt the boldest. On one occa- sion, it is said, when a member, somewhat bolder than his fellows, rose to prefer a charge of inconsistency against the great minister, Mr. Pitt fixed on him a single look of mingled astonishment and scorn. That single look was sufficient. After having muttered a few words, the unfortunate man returned to his seat and his insignificance. At other times, when greatly offended or annoyed, it was his custom to bear down upon the culprit with such a vehemence of indigna- tion, contemptuous ridicule, and insulting sarcasm, that the exhibition is said to have been almost terrifying. Of Mr. Pitt's peculiar method of crushing a political adversary, the following anecdote may be 110 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. taken as an illustration. Mr. Morton, Chief Justice of Chester, a barrister of some eminence, happened, in the course of a speech, to introduce the words, " King, Lords, and Commons," to which he added, with his "glance fixed pointedly on Pitt, " or, as that right honourable gentleman would call them, Commons, Lords, and King." Astounded at his boldness, Pitt deliberately rose from his seat, and called him to order. " I have frequently," he said, " heard in this House doctrines which have surprised me ; but now my blood runs cold. I desire the words of the honourable member may be taken down." The clerks of the House having taken them down, " Bring them to me," he said in a voice of thunder. Morton by this time appears to have been frightened out of his senses, and began to stammer out his apologies. He meant nothing, he said ; indeed he meant nothing. Pitt sank his voice almost to a whisper. " I do not wish," he said, " to push the matter further." Then, assuming a louder tone of voice, he added, " The moment a man acknowledges his error, he ceases to be guilty. I have a great regard for the honourable member, and, as an instance of that regard, I give him this advice." Here he paused for a few moments, and then, fixing upon the delinquent a look of withering scorn, he added, " When that member means nothing,! recom- mend him to say nothing." l 1 ' Reminiscences of Charles Butler/ pp. 15 23. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. Ill Another instance of Mr. Pitt's contemptuous mode of crushing an enemy in the House of Commons, occurred when Sir William Young once ventured to interrupt him during one of his speeches by calling "Question, question." Mr. Pitt fixed on him the same ineffable look of scorn. " Pardon," he said, " my agitation, Mr. Speaker ; but when that member calls for the ' question,' I fear I hear the knell of my country's ruin." l It was observed by Benjamin Franklin that he had sometimes met with eloquence without wisdom, and often with wisdom without eloquence ; but in Mr. Pitt only had he seen them both united, and then both, he thought, in the highest degree. 2 For the success of his oratory Mr. Pitt was appa- rently but little indebted to profundity of learning. Doubtless he had read much ; but his reading seems to have been miscellaneous rather than deep. He once, for instance, mentioned to a friend that he had twice read Bailey's Dictionary from beginning to end ; adding that he had read some of Barrow's sermons so often as to have learned them by heart. 3 The sermons of two other divines for which he expressed an admir- ation were those of Abernethy and of the Reverend Mr. Mudge of Plymouth ; his preference in this latter case being shared by Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua 1 ' Reminiscences of Charles Butler,' p. 153. 2 Franklin's ' Works,' vol. i. p. 494, third edition. s ' Reminiscences of Charles Butler,' p. 145. 112 WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. Reynolds. 1 Like Burke, he was an ardent admirer of Lord Bolingbroke's style, and strongly recommended it to his illustrious son as a model of English compo- sition. Poetry Mr. Pitt delighted in ; and like his eminent contemporaries, Lord Camden and Bishop Warburton, held in no contempt the fictions of the novelist. Often, moreover, in his family circle, his fine voice might be heard reciting one or other of the historical plays of Shakespeare ; his custom being, when he came to any comic or burlesque part, to hand the passage over to be read out by some other person in the company. 2 Nevertheless, there would seem to have been no single branch of learning or science on which he had expended any long or patient amount of time or thought. It was objected to him, for instance, in his ministerial capacity by his sovereign, George the Second, that he had the effrontery to direct the affairs of the nation without having ever read Yattel on the ' Law of Nations.' According to his eccentric, but clever sister, Mrs. Anne Pitt, he knew nothing accurately except Spenser's ' Fairy Queen.' 3 Of the three branches of learning law, finance, and political economy of which, as a states- man, he ought to have been the most cognizant, he appears to have known comparatively little ; this deficiency, however, being in a great degree counter- 1 Croker's ' Boswell's Life of Johnson,' pp. 127, 128, and note, 679, ed. 1848. 2 Seward's ' Anecdotes/ vol. ii. 259. 3 Macaulay's ' Essay on Chatham.' WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. 113 acted by the singular quickness of his apprehension, which enabled him speedily to master any subject which he took in hand. It was observed of him, for instance, by Mr. Cummins, an eminent American Quaker " The first time I attend Mr. Pitt on any business I find him extremely ignorant ; the second time, I find him completely master of the subject." 1 Besides enjoying a taste for music, Mr. Pitt was not only fond of gardening, but is said to have been gifted with a happy taste in laying out pleasure- grounds and disposing flower-beds. A Temple of Pan, for example, with the ornamental ground sur- rounding it, which were designed by him for his villa at South Lodge, Enfield Chase, are quoted by Whately, in his ' Observations on Modern- Garden- ing,' as a very successful effort of bucolic art. With this predilection, Mr. Pitt was one afternoon employed in ornamenting the grounds of a friend's villa in the neighbourhood of London, when some important despatches were handed to him which required his earnest consideration. So fascinated, however, was he by his occupation, that he not only continued the task he had set himself, but, even after darkness had set in, remained on the spot superintending, by the light from lanterns, the disposition of the sticks which he intended should indicate where a shrub was to be planted or a flower-plot to be laid out. 2 1 Seward's ' Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 359. 3 Ibid., pp. 357, 359. VOL. I. I 114 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. However familiar Mr. Pitt may have been with the Latin Classics, his knowledge of the Greek would seem to have been but superficial. The prose writer of antiquity whom he appreciated the most highly appears to have been Plutarch, from whose * Lives,' as he once told the House of Commons, he had derived more instruction than from any other work he had ever read. The Latin poet whom in his youth he most admired, is said to have been Virgil ; although the frequency with which, in his maturer years, we find him quoting Horace, might lead to the presumption that the latter poet was the greater favourite with him of the two. According to the competent opinion of Professor Creasy, " Pitt's Latin verses attest his devotion to the best Augustan writers ;" the Professor, at the same time, citing as evidence of their general ex- cellence the copy of Latin hexameters composed by Mr. Pitt, when at Oxford, on the death of George the First. Of Mr. Pitt's merits, however, as a Latin scholar, or rather of the merits of this particular academical production, Lord Macaulay, on the other hand, thought but meanly. It proves, he writes, " that the young student had but a very limited knowledge even of the mechanical part of his art. All true Etonians will hear with concern that their illustrious schoolfellow is guilty of making the first syllable in labenti short. The matter of the poem is as worthless as that of any college exercise that was WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 115 ever written before or since. There is, of course, much about Mars, Themis, Neptune, and Cocytus. The Muses are earnestly entreated to weep over the urn of Caesar ; for Caesar, says the poet, loved the Muses ; Caesar, who could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and fat women." J Mr. Pitt was not only a writer of English, as well as of Latin, verse, but, in the partial opinion of his biographer, Thackeray, was qualified by natural genius to become as eminent as a poet as he had proved himself to be as a statesman. Nevertheless, of the admitted productions of Mr. Pitt's muse, the most ambitious namely, a poem written in imitation of Horace's fine ode, " TyrrhenaEegum progenies," &c. not only seems to us to rank below mediocrity, but in parts to be disfigured by a bombast and an ob- scurity which reflects no great credit on his classical nurture. Andromeda's " effulgent sire," for instance, " flames ;" Procyon's " kindled ray rages ;" " mad- dening Leo darts his stellar fire," and cliffs 1 Macaulay's ' Essay on Chatham.' Creasy's ' Eminent Etonians,' pp. 212, 213. See also Thackeray's ' Life of Chatham,' vol. i. p. 4, where the hexameters are given at length. Lord Macaulay, it is but fair to add, himself admits that Mr. Pitt probably wrote labanti, and that the printer may have misprinted the word Idbenti. Mr. Pitt, indeed, could scarcely have forgotten the double authority for the a, in labenti being long, as exemplified in the following familiar couplet of his favourite Horace : " Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis : at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis sevum." Epist. I. Lib. 2. I 2 116 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. " bellow ;" while the concluding stanza thus unskil- fully rhymes : " Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, My light-charged bark may haply glide, Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall cheer, And the small freight unanxious glide" 1 We have quoted this defective stanza as it has been rendered, not only by Thackeray, but also by Seward, who, with the permission of George Marquis of Buckingham, first printed the poem from the original MS. at Stow. 2 On the other hand, it may be true, as charitably suggested by Lord Macaulay, that, in the last line, Mr. Pitt, instead of glide, might have in- tended to write guide. The death of George the Second on the 25th of October, -1760 ; the accession of his youthful grandson to the throne ; the consequent rise to influence and power of the celebrated John Earl of Bute ; the aversion of the new sovereign to the great Whig party, of which Mr. Pitt's genius and popularity ' were the mainstays ; and, lastly, the ardent desire of the young King to substitute a lasting and honour- able peace for what he regarded as a costly and sanguinary war, had, as we have already indicated in our memoir of Lord Holland, the effect of completely interfering with for the present the triumphant position of England's greatest statesman. During 1 ' Invitation to South Lodge ;' addressed " To the Right Hon. Kichard Grenville Temple, Lord Cobham." Seward's 'Anecdotes,' yol. ii. pp. 360-2. 2 Ibid. p. 259. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 117 the first five months of the new reign, Lord Bute, it may be remembered, had contented himself with having been sworn a Privy Councillor, and with filling the subordinate post of Groom of the Stole. The time, however, had now arrived when, in his opinion, a blow might be struck at the "great Whig families " with good effect, and accordingly, as a preliminary step, the King, by the earl's advice, was induced to dismiss from the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer an efficient statesman, Henry Bilson Legge, a younger son of William first Earl of Dartmouth ; this step being speedily followed by the appointment of Bute as Secretary of State in the room of the Earl of Holder nesse, and, not long after- wards, by the fall of Mr. Pitt. At the commence- ment of October, 1761, he and Bute sat together at the same Cabinet Council for the last time, and on the 5th of that month he resigned the seals of office into the King's hands. In the following very few words Mr. Pitt has epitomized the immedjate cause of his fall. " I submitted," he said, " to a trembling council my advice for an immediate declaration of war with Spain;" 1 this advice, as it is almost needless to remark, being but coldly received by the majority of his colleagues. In the language of Horace Walpole, he had, by some " masterpiece of intelligence," obtained 1 Debate in the House of Lords, November 22, 1770, ' Parliamentary History,' vol. xvi. col. 1094. 118 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. private information of the existence of a secret treaty a treaty afterwards known as the " Family Com- pact " between the kings of France and Spain, by which the two princes of the House of Bourbon had covenanted to make common cause against Great Britain. Had Mr. Pitt's advice, then, been followed, and the warlike preparations of Spain been anticipated by prompt action on the part of this country, Spain might have lost her American fleet with its golden cargoes, while Havannah, Martinique, and the Philippine Islands would probably have been at the mercy of England. But Bute, warmly sup- ported as he was by the King, was now all-powerful in the Cabinet, and accordingly he not only un- hesitatingly raised his voice against the bold and sagacious measures proposed by Mr. Pitt, but had even the temerity to denounce them as "rash and unadvisable." Lord Temple alone supported the pro- posal of his illustrious brother-in-law, and accordingly Pitt found himself with no choice but to retire from the Ministry. He was grateful, he said, on taking leave of the Council, to such members of the Cabinet as had afforded him their support in the prosecution of the war. As for himself, he added, he had been called to the Ministry by the voice of the people ; it was to them that he looked upon himself as respon- sible, and, in justice to them, he felt that it was im- possible for him to continue in a situation in which he would be made answerable for measures over which he WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 119 had no control. Indignant at the democratic charac- ter of this language, the President of the Council, Earl Granville, rose from his seat. " When the gentleman," he said, " talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this Board he is only responsible to the King. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced before we resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes." Nevertheless, notwithstanding the strong incredulity and reprobation of Lords Bute and Grenville, Mr. Pitt's intelligence and advice proved to be trium- phantly correct. Thus, on the 2nd of January, 1762, the King in full council announced that peace with Spain was no longer maintainable : on the 4th Great Britain declared war against that country, and on the 16th Spain declared war against Great Britain. In the mean time, no sooner had it transpired that Mr. Pitt had ceased to be a minister of the Crown, than, in the words of Walpole, the nation was " thunderstruck, alarmed, indignant." The City of London proposed an Address to the Throne, desiring to be acquainted with the cause of his dismissal ; others suggested a vote of thanks and condolence to the fallen minister, while many went so far as to 1 ' Annual Register ' for 1761, pp. 43, 44. 120 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. propose a general mourning 1 , as in a time of national affliction. 1 Such, then, were the flattering tributes in the course of being paid to Mr. Pitt's patriotism and genius, when, four days after his resignation, it was announced, to the indignation of thousands, and to the disappointment of all, that the " Great Com- moner" had stooped to accept a pension of 3000/. a year for himself and a peerage for his wife. That he merited a quarter of the obloquy which was noto- riously heaped upon him on this occasion may very fairly be disputed. " It is a shame," said Burke, " that any defence should be necessary. What eye cannot distinguish the difference between this and the exceptional cases of titles and pensions ? What Briton, with the smallest sense of honour and grati- tude, but must blush for his country if such a man retired unrewarded from the public service, let the motives for that retirement be what they would !" 2 Lord Temple also, on the 16th of October, 1761, writes to Wilkes, " The Duke of Marlborough, Prince Ferdinand, Sir Edward Hawke, .&c., &c., did not disdain to receive pecuniary and honorary re- wards for their services, perhaps of a very inferior kind to the deserts of Mr. Pitt. I think, therefore, he would have been the most insolent, factious, and ungrateful man living, to the King, had he waived 1 Walpole's ' Eeign of George III.,' vol. i. p. 48. 2 ' Annual Register ' for 1761, p. 48. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 121 an offer of this sort, which binds him to nothing but to love and honour his Majesty." 1 Such also appears to have been the light in which Mr. Pitt himself viewed the question. To the King he not only expressed himself all gratitude and devotion, but, on delivering up the seals in the royal closet, he was singularly and painfully affected. He almost wished, he told his Majesty, that his services had ' remained unrewarded, in order that, as an entirely independent member of Parliament, he might have opportunities of showing how deep was his gratitude, how disin- terested were his zeal and affection for his sovereign. 2 When, on their parting, the young King expressed his regret at losing the services of so able a minister, " Sir," said Mr. Pitt, " I confess I had but too much reason to expect your majesty's displeasure. I did not come prepared for this exceeding goodness : pardon me, Sir it overpowers it oppresses me !" and he burst into tears. 3 That Mr. Pitt's decline in popular favour was but temporary was made sufficiently manifest when on the 9th of November only three or four weeks after the scene in the royal closet the young King and his newly-wedded consort, Queen Charlotte, dined in state at Guildhall. It was the King's first visit to the citizens of London since his accession, and being also " Lord Mayor's Day," the streets were, as may 1 ' Grenville Papers,' vol. i. p. 404. a Ibid. vol. i. p. 413. 3 Burke, ' Annual Register ' for 1761, p. 45. 122 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. readily be imagined, crowded to excess. Among the anticipated guests were Pitt and Bute ; and ac- cordingly the favourable or unfavourable reception which awaited each in their necessary progress through the streets on the day of entertainment was naturally a matter of anxious speculation to the friends of both. Doubtless it would have been worthier of Mr. Pitt's high character if, instead of running a race for popularity with his sovereign and with his sovereign's constitutional advisers, he had listened to the dictates of his better judgment, and absented him- self from the banquet. The fact, however, is, that in accepting the Lord Mayor's invitation, Mr. Pitt had been influenced, less by his own inclinations than by the exhortations of his intriguing and turbulent friends, Lord Temple and Alderman Beckford. " Men's hopes and fears," wrote Beckford to him, *' are strangely agitated at this critical juncture ; but all agree universally that you ought to make your appearance at Guildhall on Monday next with Lord Temple." l " My old friend," writes Lord Lyttelton, " was once a skilful courtier ; but since he himself has attained a kind of royalty, he seems more attentive to support his own majesty than to pay the necessary regards to that of his sovereign." 2 1 'Chatham Correspondence/ vol. ii. p. 165; indorsed, in Lady Chatham's handwriting " Mr. Beckford ; to press my lord to appear with Lord Temple : to which he yielded for his friend's sake ; but, as he always declared, both then and after, against his better judgment." 2 Phillimore's ' Memoirs of Lord Lyttelton,' vol. ii. p. 646. WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. 123 At length the anticipated day, the 9th of November, arrived. Fortunately for Bute, so little familiar, at this time, was the London populace with his person and liveries, that it was not till his equipage had approached to within a quarter of a mile of Guildhall that they were identified. On Ludgate Hill, indeed, he was mistaken for Mr. Pitt, the result being that the courtier was greeted with the plaudits which were intended for the patriot. At St. Paul's, how- ever, a stentorian voice, with a fierce oath, apprised the crowd of its error, when immediately groans, hisses, yells, shouts of " No Scotch rogues !" " No Bute!" " Pitt for ever !" resounded from all sides. A rush was made at the coach, which fortunately Bute's friends had had the precaution to surround with prize-fighters, hired for the occasion. In the melee, however, which followed, not only the rich liveries of the premier's coachmen and footmen, but the lace ruffles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Barrington, who had the courage to accompany his friend, were bespattered with mud. The hired bruisers fought their best for their employer, but, just as the coach was turning down King Street to Guildhall, they were overpowered and driven back. The mob, thus victorious, now turned its whole attention towards Bute, who was, in fact, in a most critical situation. The leaders of the outrage were on the point of cutting the traces of the carriage ; in a moment or two more the unpopular minister would 124 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. probably have been in the gripe of an infuriated rabble, when a large force of constables and peace- officers succeeded in forcing their way to his assist- ance. Even then, it was with no slight difficulty that they were able to effect his safe ingress into Guildhall ; nor was it till after some time had elapsed, that he became sufficiently composed to enable him to face the company which had assembled in the reception-room. At night, he wisely accepted an invitation of the Lord Chancellor to return with him in his state-coach, and thus eluded the vigilant look- out of the rabble. 1 In the mean time, the reception of Mr. Pitt had been very different from that which had greeted the recognition of his successful rival. As he passed through the crowded streets, seated in the same carriage with his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, the people, we are told, huzzaed him "to the very echo ;" handkerchiefs were waved from balconies and windows, while many persons were seen forcing their way through the crowd, contented so long as they were able to shake hands with one of his footmen or kiss the head of one of his horses. Lastly came the King. As the cumbrous, gilt state-coach rolled on between the avenues of people, scarcely a hand- kerchief was waved ; scarcely a voice cheered. Not 1 ' Chatham Correspondence/ vol. ii. pp. 166-8 ; Harris's ' Life of Lord Hardwicke/ vol. iii. pp. 291, 321 ; Walpole's ' Reign of George III." vol. i. p. 90. WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. 125 less chilling was the reception which he encountered in the grand old hall, as, preceded by the Lord Mayor, he passed up it to his seat at the banquet-table. Even when the impressive trumpet resounded, and when the toastmaster, advancing to the front of the dais, intimated that " our sovereign lord the King " drank the " loving cup " to the health and prosperity of the Corporation of London, scarcely a murmur of applause was elicited by the gracious announcement. Mr. Pitt, on the contrary, had been previously wel- comed at his entrance with a burst of huzzas and an enthusiastic clapping of hands, in which the members of the Corporation, headed by the impetuous Alder- man Beckford, had been among the first to join. On that day in the famous hall from which Mr. Pitt's statue still frowns down, as if denouncing the misgovernment of kings the triumph of the " Great Commoner " was complete. On the 3rd of November, 1762, just a year after the King's visit to Guildhall, the preliminary articles of peace between England and France were signed at Fontainebleau by John Duke of Bedford. Their final ratification or rejection, however, still awaited the acquiescence of Parliament, which was appointed to assemble on the 25th of that month, and, ac- cordingly, inasmuch as upon that acquiescence de- pended the continued existence or downfall of the unpopular Bute ministry, it was only natural that the approaching meeting of the two houses should 126 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. be looked forward to by the public with extraordinary interest and curiosity. The chances, we should men- tion, were greatly in Bute's favour. Not only, as may be remembered, had Fox guaranteed him a Parliamentary majority, but, to the dismay of the popular party no less than to the satisfaction of the Court, it transpired that Mr. Pitt was too ill to admit of a probability of his appearing in his seat in the House of Commons at the opening of the session. There was still, however, a chance of his being able to be present on the 9th of December the day fixed upon for the discussion of the peace preliminaries and accordingly, when that day arrived, Palace Yard was filled by dense masses of people, who, as Bute and other advocates of the peace made their appearance, greeted them with yells and execrations ; the uncertainty whether Mr. Pitt would be well enough to be present doubtless increasing the excite- ment. In the mean time, within the walls of the House of Commons, the friends of government, em- boldened by the deferred arrival of their dreaded opponent, found themselves breathing more freely. Already they had begun to feel themselves safe for a season from the bitter taunts, the fierce denuncia- tions, and the contemptuous language of their great political opponent; already, to their imaginations, the majority of votes on which they calculated was swelled into an overwhelming triumph, when suddenly there arose from the dense crowd in Palace WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 127 Yard a shout of exultation which peeled through every part of the ancient palace of the Confessor. The voice of the member who was addressing the House was drowned by the noise. The advocates of the peace were seized with consternation. After the lapse of a few seconds, a concourse of people, shouting and huzzaing, were heard ascending the stairs. The doors of the House of Commons were thrown open, and the imposing figure of the " Great Commoner," supported by two attendants, and pale almost to ghastliness, presented itself to the astonished as- sembly. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet ; his legs and thighs were wrapped in flannel ; his feet were enclosed in buskins of black cloth. His servants having set him down within the bar, several of his friends hurried to his assistance, with whose aid and with that of his crutch he reached his accustomed seat. " He had the appearance," writes Walpole, who was present, " of a man determined to die in that cause, and at that hour." The languor which pain had imprinted on his emaciated counten- ance, the recollection of the great and brilliant services which he had rendered to his country, the place, the occasion, and the attire so well timed and so artistically arranged, made a lasting impression on those who had the good fortune to be present on this memorable occasion. 1 Exhausted as he appeared to be, the great orator, 1 Walpole's ' Eeign of George III.,' vol. i. pp. 223-4-6. 128 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. by means of frequent recourse to cordials, was enabled to speak for three hours and forty minutes. Notwithstanding, he said, the excruciating tortures to which he was a martyr, he had resolved to attend Parliament upon that day, in order to lift up his voice, his hand, his arm, against a measure which not only threatened to rob the war of half its glory, but which, in his opinion, was opposed to the most vital interests of the nation. l Towards the close of his speech, his strength failed him, and he was compelled to discontinue his efforts. Like many of Pitt's premeditated orations, his speech on this famous occasion was not one of his happiest efforts. It was deficient, indeed, neither in argument nor in oc- casional beauties of thought and language ; but was altogether wanting in that fiery grandeur and in those impassioned outbursts of eloquence which had so often, on less momentous occasions, awed and silenced his opponents. His voice, moreover, which had formerly been so sonorous and thrilling as to penetrate the remotest lobbies of the old Saxon palace, was now so faint as at times to be inaudible even within the House itself. 2 Mr. Pitt had no sooner concluded his speech than Fox rose to reply to him, on which, to the infinite surprise of all present, the great orator raised himself from his seat, and, with the aid of his friends and his crutch, with- 1 ' Paxl. Hist.' vol. xxv. p. 1259, &c. 2 Walpole's ' Reign of George III./ vol. i. p. 220. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 129 drew from the assembly. Whether, in thus yielding the battle-ground to his dexterous and unscrupulous rival, Mr. Pitt was desirous of conveying an im- pression to the House that he despised Fox too much to care about replying to his arguments ; or whether, as his biographer supposes, he was really completely exhausted and in " an agony of pain," 1 would appear to be far from certain. At all events, his with- drawal threw a fatal damp over his party, and left Fox an easy triumph. On the illustrious invalid again making his appearance in Palace Yard, the former huzzas were redoubled. As his chariot drove off between the dividing masses of people, the crowd, affected by his emaciated aspect, still more loudly expressed their sympathy ; many of them shouting out in reference to the length of his speech " Three hours and a half ! three hours and a half ! " 2 It should be mentioned that the peace preliminaries were eventually approved of in the House of Com- mons by the large majority of three hundred and nineteen against sixty-five. In the House of Lords they were carried without any division. From October 1761 to July 1766, extending over the several administrations of Lord Bute, George Grenville, and Lord Rockingham, Mr. Pitt filled no office under the Crown. Twice, indeed, in that interval once in August, 1763, and again in 1 Thackeray's ' Life of Chatham/ vol. ii. p. 23. 8 Walpole's ' Keign of George III.,' vol. i. p. 231. VOL. I. K 130 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. May, 1765 he might have been at the head of an administration, but that the powers demanded by him were considered by his sovereign too excessive to be conceded to a subject. Nevertheless, during the time that he had been in opposition, the fruits of his wisdom and patriotism had not been altogether lost to his country. Even were there no other evidences of this fact than his crusades against the unconstitutional employment of General Warrants, and his noble opposition to the infatuated policy of taxing America, these services should alone endear him to every lover of freedom. In the mean time, Mr. Pitt's pension, combined with the legacy bequeathed him by the Duchess of Marlborough, had rendered him independent of the smiles and frowns of Fortune. Fortune, however, had lavished still another favour upon him. In 1765, an ardent admirer of his genius and virtues, Sir William Pynsent, an octogenarian baronet, bequeathed him, though personally entire strangers to each other, his whole fortune, consisting of his estate of Burton Pynsent, in Somersetshire, valued, according to the lowest computation, at 40,000/ M or 2,OOOZ. a year. l As regards a third bequest to which he all but succeeded, Fortune was less constant to him. The Hon. John Spencer, better known in his day as " Jack Spencer," had, con- 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 43; Walpoles 'Letters,' vol. iv. p. 312, ed. 1857. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 131 tingent on the death of his son, afterwards first Earl Spencer, bequeathed to Mr. Pitt the large Sunder- land estate of the Spencers. The son, however, by cutting off the entail as soon as he came of age, effectually deprived Mr. Pitt of the reversion. l At length, in the summer of 1766, the increasing weakness of the well-intentioned Rockingham Mi- nistry invited Mr. Pitt to resume the highest power which can be enjoyed by a subject. He was pleasantly passing his time at his new seat at Burton Pynsent, employed, as he writes to Lady Stanhope, in " farming, grazing, haymaking, and all the Lethe of Somersetshire," when, on the 9th of July, to his surprise, he received an autograph letter from his sovereign, summoning him in very courteous language to the royal presence. On the llth he arrived in London, fatigued and in ill-health, and on the following day was admitted to an interview with the King at Richmond. The result of their conference may be narrated in a few words. His Majesty not only received him with the kindest con- sideration, but gave him carte blanche for forming an administration. He had no terms, he said, to propose ; he placed himself entirely in Mr. Pitt's hands. Up to this time, it may be mentioned, Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, both as brothers-in-law and political allies, would seem to have remained united by the closest ties of amity and good accord. " Lord Temple 1 Walpole's ' Letters,' ut supra, p. 312, and note. K 2 132 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. is my friend," Mr. Pitt had recently exclaimed in the House of Commons ; " his fidelity is as unshaken as his virtue : we went into office together ; we went out of office together, and we will die together." l It was natural, therefore, under these circumstances, that Mr. Pitt, on consenting to accept office, should have looked to the friendship, the official experience, and the powerful family influence possessed by Lord Temple, as likely to render him the chief support of his projected administration. It was, then, agree- ably with the advice tendered to him by his new minister, that the King now summoned Lord Temple from Stow, and graciously proposed to place him at the head of the Treasury. To the surprise, however, of the King, no less than to the disappointment of Mr. Pitt, Lord Temple not only hesitated to come to the aid of his party, but offered every impediment to the consummation of the pending arrangements. He had expected, it seems, to be invested with powers equal to those of Mr. Pitt, including the privilege of nominating an equal number of friends to the Cabinet; and accordingly, finding himself signally disappointed in these anticipations, the earl, after two stormy interviews with his brother-in- law at Hampstead, and two equally unsatisfactory audiences with the King, indignantly refused the high post which had been offered him, and returned in high dudgeon to Stow. Thus, then, was converted, 1 'Parl. Hist.' vol. xv. p. 1363. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 133 for a time, into the bitterest animosity a friendship which had probably had its birth in the early Eton schoolboy-days of the now dissociated statesmen ; which had since ripened into the truest affection ; which had been further strengthened by the ties of family connection, and by a long participation in the same perils and in the same triumphs ; a friendship, lastly, which no attempts of their enemies had hither- to been able to weaken ! Of the state of Lord Temple's feelings at this time, he makes no secret in his correspondence with his family. To his sister, Lady Hester Pitt, for instance, he indignantly writes, that he has been offered to be stuck into a ministry as a great cipher at the head of the Treasury, sur- rounded with other ciphers named by Mr. Pitt; adding " I would not go in like a child, to corne out like a fool." l To his brother, George Grenville, he also writes " I might have stood a capital cipher, surrounded with ciphers of quite a different com- plexion, the whole under the guidance of that great luminary, the Great Commoner, with the Privy Seal in his hand." 2 The world, however, thought, and thought truly, that Lord Temple was inclined to rate his own importance somewhat too highly. " Temple," writes General Lee to King Stanislaus of Poland, "is eternally appealing to the public, forgetting that the public never considered him 1 ' Chatham Correspondence/ vol. ii. pp. 4689. 8 ' Grenville Papers/ vol. iii. p. 267. 134 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. farther than they would an old pair of boots, which Mr. Pitt might, through whim, have set a value upon, which, when he chose to throw aside, it mattered not if they were thrown into a lumber- room or the fire." l Eventually Mr. Pitt, notwithstanding the de- fection of Lord Temple, succeeded in forming what Burke has styled his " Mosaic Administration," his professed object being to " break all parties ; " but of which the unsatisfactory result was the construction of a ministry, which, eminent as may have been the qualifications of some of its members, was, to an almost fatal extent, composed of persons un- connected by the ties of political freemasonry or of personal cordiality. " He made an administration," said Burke, " so chequered and speckled ; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed ; a Cabinet so variously inlaid ; such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a tesselated pavement without cement here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white patriots and courtiers ; King's friends and Republicans ; Whigs and Tories ; treacherous friends and open enemies ; that is indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on." 2 The Duke of Grafton was appointed First Lord of the Treasury; the Earl of 1 Langworthy's ' Life of General Charles Lee,' p. 294. 2 Speech on American Taxation, 1774; Burke's 'Works/ vol. i. pp. 170-1, ed. 1841. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 136 Shelburne and General Conway were nominated Secretaries of State ; the celebrated Charles Towns- hend became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Camden was appointed Lord Chancellor ; and lastly, Mr. Pitt, though the acknowledged head of the Government, contented himself with the office of Privy Seal. As might have been anticipated, the announce- ment in the * Gazette ' of the return of the " Great Commoner" to power, called forth an outburst of almost universal popular congratulation and joy. The city of London not only went so far as to pro- pose to present him with a congratulatory address, but issued orders for a public illumination, as well as for the preparation of a banquet in his honour at Guildhall. l In the midst, however, of this enthu* siasm, it being authoritatively announced that the popular idol had voluntarily abandoned the arena of his greatness, the House of Commons, by having stooped to accept a peerage, the general exultation was at once converted into almost as general a feeling of indignation and sorrow. The address and the banquet were countermanded ; the coloured lamps, which had already been festooned round the Monument, were ordered to be removed. All his enemies, according to Lord Chesterfield, were re- joiced at his advancement; all his friends, on the 1 Walpole's ' Eeign of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 359. Adolphus's ' Hist, of England,' vol. i. p. 209, 4th edition. 136 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. other hand, were stupefied and dumb-founded. The pamphleteers and lampooners, hounded on by his merciless brother-iri-law, Lord Temple, hurled at him a perfect storm of calumny and abuse. The genius and eloquence, argued his friends, which had rendered him so formidable in the House of Commons, would be thrown away in the House of Lords. " To with- draw," writes Lord Chesterfield, " in the fullness of his power, and in the utmost gratification of his ambition, from the House of Commons, which procured him his power, and which alone could insure it to him, and to go into that Hospital of Incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable that nothing but proof positive could make me believe it. But true it is." l " That fatal title," writes Walpole, " blasted all the affection which his country had borne to him, and which he had deserved so well." 2 But, after all, it may be asked, were these censures fair, or were they unfair ; were they just, or were they unjust? Undoubtedly, had Mr. Pitt been still in the enjoyment of his pristine vigour of mind and body, their justice would be undeniable. For a long time past, however, his failing health had been unequal to the late hours and exciting debates of the House of Commons. Severe and frequent attacks of gout had alike unstrung his nerves and enfeebled his 1 Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters,' vol. iv. pp. 427-8; edited by Earl Stanhope. 2 Walpole' s ' Reign of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 358. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 137 body. Assuredly then, under these circumstances, the most illustrious Englishman of his age might, fairly and without reproach, lay claim to that ease and dignity which he had so eminently merited by the great services he had rendered to his King and country. An unquestioned blemish in the character of Lord Chatham, as Mr. Pitt must now be styled, was an imperious assumption of superiority in his inter- course with those who, with the exception of being inferior to him in genius, had every right to regard themselves as his equals. Time, unhappily, had failed to remedy this imperfection, and accordingly, on the present momentous occasion of his resuming office, its existence could scarcely fail to give great offence to his party, and consequently tend to weaken his administration. Such, at all events, were the results which sprang from the pompous and arrogant bearing of this otherwise great man. Such haughty, such despotic language as he used to his colleagues had never, said General Conway, been heard west of Constantinople. 1 At length his arbitrary dismissal of Lord Edgecumbe from the Treasurership of the Household completed the dissatisfaction of his co- labourers in the Cabinet. It was to no purpose that Conway, in a letter very creditable to his feelings, as well as in a stormy interview which took place between them, remonstrated with him on the "re- 1 Walpole's < Reign of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 382. 138 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. peated injuries" which he had inflicted on his party. 1 The great earl continued impracticable ; the result being, that the Duke of Portland angrily threw up the appointment of Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Bes- borough that of Postmaster-General, and the Earl of Scarborough that of Cofferer of the Household. From this period, the star of the Chatham Administration descended lower and lower in the political horizon. The new ministers, who had been appointed to replace the recent seceders from the Cabinet, instead of adding strength to, infused fresh weakness into, the administration. The epoch was, indeed, a most humiliating one in the career of the illustrious Chatham. The haughty dictator, for example, of former days had not only sunk into an ordinary bolsterer-up of a sickly administration, but of an administration as incompetent as any that had ever trembled at his sarcasms, or provoked his contempt. The aristocracy hated him for his arrogance and deference to the people ; while the people imagined he had sold them for a coronet. That he deeply felt the bitterness of his position there cannot be a question. His sense of diminished greatness, his estrangement from Lord Temple, and the constant and harassing attacks of a formidable opposition, not only distressed and irritated him, but produced, as may be readily believed, a most injurious effect upon 1 ' Chatham Correspondence/ vol. iii. p. 126, &c. ; ' Grenville Papers,' yol. iii. p. 345. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 139 a constitution which had long been impaired by disease, and upon a mind which seems to have been by nature hypochondriacal. Lord Chatham, then, was in this state of incipient prostration, when on the prorogation of Parliament, he endeavoured to obtain relief from the air and waters of Bath. " He has been at Bath," writes Walpole ; " they stood up the whole time he was in the rooms." 1 Some benefit, indeed, he seems to have derived from the change, but unfortunately, on his way back to London, so completely was he prostrated by the gout, as to be detained, for more than a fortnight, a prisoner at the Castle Inn at Marlborough ; the streets of which town, by-the-by, swarmed during his sojourn there with his liveries. " The truth was," writes Lord Macaulay, " that the invalid had insisted that, during his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should wear his livery." 2 Nor during the earl's previous stay at Bath, had this eccentric taste for display been much less os- tentatiously manifested. "Lord Chatham is here," writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn, " with more equipage, household, and retinue, than most of the old patriarchs used to travel with in ancient days. 1 Walpole's 'Letters,' voL iv. p. 503. 2 Macaulay's ' Essays,' vol. iii. p. 612, 10th edition. Lord Stanhope, it must be admitted, denies that this story has any foundation in fact ; while, on the other hand, Lord Kussell, on the authority of Lord Chatham's friend, Lord Shelburne, seems to entertain little doubt of its truth. See Lord Stanhope's ' Hist, of England,' vol. v. p. 287, note ; and Lord Russell's ' Memorials of Fox,' vol. i. p. 117. 140 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. He comes nowhere but the Pump Room. Then he makes a short essay and retires." 1 The fact is, that a taste for dramatic effect was inalienable from the nature and habits of this illustrious statesman. Though a great man, he was not the less a consum- mate actor. True it is that, in his own domestic circle, no man could be more entirely free from all stage artifices, and from all assumption of stage grandeur. There, at least, he was all gentleness, simplicity, and good humour ; clinging with fond affection to those who were near and dear to him, and having a smile ever ready for the humblest dependent who ate his bread. But between Lord Chatham reading the Bible aloud to his children, and Lord Chatham brow- beating and over-awing a colleague, there was a wide distinction. When he transacted business with his clerks, it was in all the dignity of a tie-wig and a full-dress coat ; while not only were his under secretaries compelled on these occasions to remain unseated, but, according to Dr. Johnson, even his old friend, Lord Camden, was kept standing by him during their official interviews. 2 If expecting a visit from a colleague, or from any person of consequence, the pre-arrangement of his easy chair, of his crutches, and of his flannels, are said to have been regarded by him as matters of consummate importance. But it was in the House of Commons, as well as latterly in 1 ' Selwyn Correspondence,' vol. ii. p. 60. 2 See ' Recollections by Samuel Rogers,' p. 51. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 141 the House of Lords, that he exhibited his most studied dramatic displays. Whether he was likely to pro- duce a deeper impression by addressing his audience in a court dress and in seemingly vigorous health, or whether by limping into the House supported by crutches and swathed in flannels, appear to have been as much a matter of consideration with him as if he had been a young actor preparing for his first appearance on the stage, or a young lady arranging her toilet for her first ball. From the date of the prorogation of Parliament in December, 1766, till his resignation of office in October, 1768, Lord Chatham's existence presents but few features of interest beyond the painful annals of a sick chamber. " Lord Chatham's state of health," writes Mr. Whately to Lord Lyttelton on the 30th of July, 1767, " is certainly the lowest dejection and debility that mind or body can be in. He sits all the day leaning on his hands, which he supports on the table ; does not permit any person to remain in the room ; knocks when he wants anything ; and having made his wants known, gives a signal, with- out speaking, to the person who answered his call to retire. 1 General Lee also, on the 1st of December following, writes to King Stanislaus of Poland : " He has fits of crying, starting, and every effect of hysterics." 2 If at any time, according to Walpole, 1 Phillimore's ' Memoirs of Lord Lyttelton/ vol. ii. p. 729. 2 Langworthy's ' Life of General Charles Lee,' p. 293. 142 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. allusion was made to politics in his presence, " he started, fell into tremblings, and the conversation was broken off." 1 In the mean time, when, on the 16th of January, 1767, Parliament had re-assembled, the great statesman, to the despair of his colleagues, was still pronounced to be in an unfit state to take a part in their deliberations. In vain the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne wrote to him for advice and instructions. The replies they received, which were usually in the handwriting either of Lady Chatham or of a private secretary, were invariably to the same purport, that he was in much too wretched a state of health to be able to attend to business. To the same effect had been his reply to the Duke of Grafton when his grace had offered to " run down " to Marlborough, and discuss the King's affairs with him. 2 Moreover, almost equally ineffectual had proved similar, but still stronger, appeals to his patriotism, addressed to him by his embarrassed sovereign. It was in vain that the King despatched one urgent letter to him after another ; in vain that his sovereign proposed to visit him in his sick- chamber at Hampstead, whither he had been removed from Marlborough ; in vain that he expressed the most earnest anxiety to converse with him, though only for a quarter of an hour. He " would 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George III./ vol. iii. p. 44 ; see also vol. ii. p. 451. 2 ' Chatham Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 218. WILLIAM PJTT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 143 not talk of business," wrote the King, " but only wanted to have the world know that he had attended him." 1 Disappointed in these repeated and gracious appeals to his prostrated minister, the King's next endeavour was to induce him to receive a visited from the Duke of Grafton. " Your duty and affection for my person, your own honour," he writes to him, " call on you to make an effort. Five minutes' conversation with you would raise his spirits, for his heart is good. Mine, I thank heaven, wants no rousing." 2 Overpowered at length by these pressing appeals to his loyalty and better feelings, the earl reluctantly consented to admit the Duke of Grafton to his sick-chamber at Hampstead. The interview proved to be a most distressing one for both. " Though I expected," writes the duke, /' to find Lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation was different from what I had imagined. His nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind, bowed down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief and concern, even if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his person and character. The confidence he reposed in me demanded every return on my part, and it appeared like cruelty in me to have been urged by any necessity to put a man I valued to so great suffering." J 1 ' Chatham Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 226. 2 Ibid., vol. iii. p. 261. s Ibid. ; Duke of Grafton's MS. Memoirs, quoted in Walpole's 'Eeign of George in.,' vol. iii. p. 51, note. 144 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. The consequences to his party and to the public of Lord Chatham's continued absence from the helm of government may without much difficulty be ima- gined. His colleagues, no longer overawed by his dreaded presence, and perhaps believing him to be permanently incapacitated from returning to office, not only began to differ among themselves, but to adopt measures in direct opposition to his well- known wishes and intentions. " If ever Lord Chatham," said Burke, " fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly contrary to his own were sure to predominate. When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea without chart or system." 1 Thus, then, for instance, it was that the first measure introduced by ministers into Parliament, a motion of Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, for keeping up the land tax at four shillings in the pound for another year, was defeated by a majority of eighteen. Unquestionably, in this divided and refractory Cabinet, the most arrant offender against the known views and intentions of their sick chief was that gifted, brilliant, but mercurial statesman, Charles Townshend, admittedly inferior only to Lord Chatham in genius, eloquence, and in the influence which he acquired over the House of Commons. " During his 1 Speech on American Taxation, in 1774; Burke's 'Works/ vol. i. p. 171. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 145 [Lord Chatham's] absence," writes Lord Chesterfield, " Charles Townshend has talked of him, and at him, in such a manner that henceforwards they must be either much worse or much better together than ever they were in their lives." 1 By the inde- pendence and authority, in fact, which he had begun to assume, both at the Council-table and in the House of Commons, it was evident that he was aspiring after the premiership. " His behaviour," writes his colleague, the Duke of Grafton, *' was on the whole such as no Cabinet will, I am confident, ever submit to." 2 It was to no purpose that the Duke and Lord Shelburne severally wrote to their chief complaining of his conduct. Either Lady Chatham shrank from agitating her husband by laying their letters before him, or else Lord Chatham was in too morbid a state to heed their representations. At this period it was that Charles Townshend, in the House of Commons, revived the famous and fatal measure of taxing the American colonies. "He knew," was his memorable expression, " the mode by which a revenue might be drawn from the Americans, without giving them offence." Agree- ably astonished at this admission, George Grenville, who was still smarting from the repudiation of his favourite Stamp Act, instantly sprang to his feet, 1 Chesterfield's ' Letters,' vol. iv. p. 447 ; edited by Earl Stanhope. 2 ' Chatham Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 232. VOL. I. L 146 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM, and vehemently challenged the incautious minister to make good his words. The challenge, to the incon- ceivable amazement of Townshend's colleagues, was at once accepted by him ; and accordingly thus, in order to realize a paltry revenue of some 35,000/. or 40,000/. a year, was America once more set in flames, and England destined to be deprived of her noblest colonies. " Mr. Conway," writes the Duke of Grafton, " stood astonished at the unauthorized proceedings of his vain and imprudent colleague." The Cabinet, of course, had the option either of adopting Townshend's measure, or of recommending the King to dismiss him from the ministry. Unfortunately, unsupported by the authority of Lord Chatham, they chose the former alternative. " No one of the ministry," writes the Duke of G-rafton, " had authority sufficient to advise the dismission of Mr. Charles Townshend, and nothing less could have stopped the measure." l At length, in the month of September, Lord Chatham had sufficiently recovered to be able to be removed from North End, Hampstead, to Burton Pynsent. Hopes had consequently been entertained that his health would be still further benefited by this change, but, instead of ameliorating, it would seem to have aggravated his mysterious disorder. There even were moments, it is said, when the sight of a neighbour's house in the distance, the sound of mirth escaping Irom his children's play-room, or a 1 Earl Stanhope's ' Hist, of England/ vol. v. p. xviii. ; Appendix. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 147 casual allusion to a debate in Parliament, produced an irritation in his mind amounting almost to frenzy. A certain bleak hill more especially offended his morbid fancies, and accordingly he ordered his gardener to plant it out with evergreens. The man inquired of what description of evergreen. " With cedars and cypresses," was the reply. The gardener was unable to conceal his surprise. "Why, my Lord ! " he remonstrated, " all the nursery-gardens in the county would not supply a hundredth part." " No matter," was the peremptory rejoinder, " send for them from London;" and accordingly the trees were, at a vast expense, brought by land-carriage from London. " His sickly and uncertain appetite," writes Walpole, " was never regular, and his temper could put up with no defect : thence a succession of chickens were boiling and roasting at every hour, to be ready whenever he should call." l Nearly as late as this time, the suffering invalid had been kept in entire ignorance of what had passed, and what was still passing, at head-quarters. The more painful the agitation which the intelligence was likely to cause him, the more anxious Lady Chatham had apparently been to conceal from him the distressing truth. Concealment, however, had at length been found no longer advisable, or perhaps possible, and accordingly, so soon as his nerves had gained a little strength, it had fallen to the painful 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. pp. 41, 42. L 2 148 WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. lot of the Duke of Grafton to explain to his chief the momentous condition of the King's affairs. " I had to relate," writes the Duke, " the struggles we had ex- perienced in carrying some points, especially in the House of Lords ; the opposition, also, we had en- countered in the East India business from Mr. Conway, as well as Mr. Townshend, together with the unaccountable conduct of the latter gentleman, who had suffered himself to be led to pledge himself at last, contrary to the known decision of every member of the Cabinet, to draw a certain revenue from the Colonies." l The astonishment of Rip Yan Winkle when he awoke from his long sleep in the Kaatskill mountains, or of Abou Hassan when he awoke in the bed of the Caliph Haroon Alraschid, could scarcely have exceeded that of Lord Chatham, as the Duke of Grafton unfolded to him the events of the last few months, and more especially the astounding insubor- dination and fatal policy of Charles Townshend. But, even had prevention been practicable, Lord Chatham was still incapacitated from making the required effort. He not only speedily relapsed into his late cruel state of mental distemper, but it was not till nearly a year and a half had elapsed that he was again capable of taking any interest in Stale affairs. It was not, indeed, till the month of October, 1768, that Lord Chatham may be said to have recovered from his mysterious malady. In the mean time, 1 Walpole's ' Eeign of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 51, note. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 149 nothing could have been more complete than the failure of his " mosaic Administration," nothing more distressing than his prostration both of mind and body. He had ceased alike to be consulted by his party, to be dreaded by his enemies, and almost to be remembered by his friends. Scarcely even the halo of his past glory illumined his sick-chamber. Thus, on his recovery, the painful task, which had formerly been undertaken by the Duke of Grafton, of breaking to him the principal political events which had occurred during his incapacity, devolved upon Lady Chatham. Much she had to relate which was calculated to shock or distress him, and much, especially as regarded the conduct and condition of his colleagues, which was likely to irritate him beyond measure. The brilliant Charles Townshend, in the midst of his dreams of greatness, had been summoned to the grave ; the Duke of Grafton had been virtually invested with the premiership ; Ministers had allowed France to seize upon Corsica, and thus had aban- doned the bravest of the brave in the hour of their great necessity. But that which gave him the deepest individual offence was the dismissal of his personal friend, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, from the Go- vernorship of Virginia, and the further contemplated removal of another of his friends, Lord Shelburne. 1 It was under these circumstances then, that, on the 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 246 ; ' Chatham Corre- spondence,' vol. iii. p. 338. 150 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 12th of October, Lord Chatham addressed a letter to the Duke of Grafton, in which, after having expressed his " deepest sense of his Majesty's long, most humane, and most gracious indulgence " towards him, he pleaded ill-health as a bar to his remaining in office, and resigned his post of Lord Privy Seal. His re- signation, though not without some earnest, and almost affectionate, remonstrances on the part of the King, was eventually accepted. 1 At this period, and, indeed, for some time to come, Lord Chatham's recovered interest in life seems to have chiefly centred in the education of his second and gifted son, William Pitt, whom he brought up at home, under his own immediate eye. Years afterwards, when the younger William Pitt had become Prime Minister, it used to be a favourite taunt of the wits at Brooks's Club, that he had been taught at home " by his dad on a stool." 2 That teaching, however, made him what he was; that home had been the resort of the Muses, and of all the domestic virtues. " When his lordship's health would permit," writes Bishop Tomline, " he never suffered a day to pass without giving instruction of some sort to the children, and seldom without reading a chapter of the Bible with them." 3 Lord Chatham was not only proud of his son's abilities, but made it 1 See ' Chatham Correspondence/ vol. iii. pp. 338, 343, 344 ; and Walpole's ' Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 246. 2 Macaulay's ' Biographies,' p. 145. * Tomline's ' Life of Pitt,' vol. i. p. 5. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 151 the great object of his life to train him up to achieve a distinction equal to his own in Parliamentary eloquence and statesmanship. For this purpose, he not only tutored him to express his thoughts with terseness, and to reply with readiness, but, in order to improve his naturally clear and deep-toned voice, caused him to recite the noblest passages of Shakes- peare and Milton. Pitt's friends, after his death, used to recall the delight with which they had heard him repeat his favourite passage in ' Paradise Lost,' the grand speech of Belial in Pandemonium, in the second book. 1 The great Earl, as a further means of disciplining his son to speak with fluency, especially encouraged classical dramatic representations in his family circle. To his friend Thomas Hollis, the philosopher, he writes on the 21st of October, 1772 : " Our young people are flattered and alarmed with the thought of exhibiting to Mr. Hollis their puerile powers of the scene. Bold is the attempt, but papa and mama, who, not undelighted, rock the cradle of Tragedy, exhort them to dismiss their fears." 2 On another occasion we find the future Prime Minister, Lord Shelburne, a spectator of one of these juvenile performances. " Our youthful aspirers to honest fame," writes Lord Chatham to him on the 22nd of January, 1773, "are, as I wished to see them, excessively vain of the applause with which you honour them." 3 1 Earl Stanhope's ' Life of Pitt,' vol. i. pp. 7-9. 2 Hollis MS. 3 ' Chatham Correspondence,' vol. iv. p. 240. 152 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. Happily, Lord Chatham had scarcely retired from the ministry, when a further and still more satis- factory improvement took place in his health. Suddenly, indeed, in the month of July, 1769, the newspapers surprised the world with the announce- ment that the great Earl had been present at the King's levee. On his being ushered on this occasion into the ante-chamber to the royal closet, the ministers and courtiers in attendance are said to have manifested as much bewilderment as if an apparition had appeared among them. " He he himself," writes Walpole, " in proprid persona, and not in a strait waistcoat, walked into the King's levee this morning." * He not only looked remark- ably well, but had grown stout. The King not having yet made his appearance, the Duke of Grafton glided into the royal closet to apprise him of the unexpected resuscitation. In the mean time, the Earl's recognition of his late colleagues, and es- pecially of the Duke of G-rafton, had been unmis- takably haughty and distant. " Even in the King's outer-room," writes the Duke, " where we met before the levee, when I went up to him with civility and ease, he received me with cold politeness, and from St. James's called and left his name at my door." "His lordship," adds the Duke, "desired no further interview ; and I had such a sense of the unkindness and injustice of such a treatment, when I thought I 1 Walpole's 'Letters/ vol. v. p. 175; ed. 1857. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 153 had a claim for the most friendly, that I was not disposed to seek any explanation." * On the other hand, by the King, on his entering the levee-room, Lord Chatham, as he himself informs us, was " most graciously " received. His Majesty not only warmly congratulated him on his recovery, but whispered to him to follow him into his closet on the breaking up of the levee. There, according to the Earl, " his Majesty again condescended to express in words of infinite goodness the satisfaction it gave him to see me recovered, as well as the regret his Majesty felt at my retiring from his service." 2 The interview was so far an interesting one, that it was the last occasion on which George III. and his haughty subject ever met in the royal closet. But though, from increasing years and infirmities, as well as from other causes, Lord Chatham never again took part in the councils of his sovereign, his wisdom and eloquence were not the less enthusias- tically devoted to the service of his country ; full scope unfortunately, in the closing years of his life, being afforded him for the exercise of these qualities by the continuance of the unnatural war in which Great Britain had been so infatuated as to embark for the subjection of her American colonies. To bring, then, this miserable contest to a close, and 1 MS. Memoirs of the Duke of Gratton; Earl Stanhope's 'Hist, of England/ vol. v. pp. xxxii.-xxxiv. ; Appendix. 2 Letter to Lord Temple, dated July 7, 1769 ; ' Grenville Papers/ vol. iv. p. 426. 154 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. at the same time to prevent the dismemberment of the great British empire, became the all-absorbing objects of his existence. Time after time, and in motion after motion in Parliament, despite his advanced years and his sufferings from an excru- ciating disorder, he continued to advocate, with much of the fervour and in all the beautiful language of former days, the cause of reason, justice, and common sense. But the time was near at hand when these touching efforts were to be made for the last time ; when the House of Lords was to listen to his thrilling eloquence no more. He had been for some time past confined by the gout to his sick-chamber at his villa of Hayes in Kent, enfeebled in mind as well as in body, when intimation reached him that the Duke of Richmond was about to move an Address to the Throne, recommending the withdrawal of his Majesty's armies and fleets from America. Such a motion, being evidently preliminary to a further re- commendation to the King to recognize the inde- pendence of the revolted provinces, naturally inflicted a bitter pang on the heart of the prostrated, if not dying, statesman. He loved his country, and he loved her not the less that it had formerly been his hand which had raised her from her fallen state ; that it had been his genius which had raised her to be glorious among the nations of the earth ; arid that to the end of time his name would probably be associated with many of the proudest of her triumphs. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 155 Now, therefore, that his imagination beheld her in a state of impending ruin and degradation ; now that it was suggested to her to deliver up her colonies, notoriously on account of recent military disaster, and the dread of armed interference on the part of France and Spain, his great heart rebelled against so humiliating a confession of weakness going forth to exulting Europe ; and consequently he resolved, so long as breath, strength, and reason might be spared him, to raise his voice in favour of war to the knife with his old and detested antagonist, the House of Bourbon. Turning therefore a deaf ear, alike to the remonstrances of his physicians and to the affec- tionate entreaties of his family, he expressed his fixed determination, ill and feeble as he was, of taking a part in the approaching debate in the House of Lords, and of preventing, if possible, the degradation of his country. It was on the 7th of April, 1778, that Lord Chatham made his last and memorable appearance in the House of Lords. He was attended to the House by his afterwards illustrious son, William Pitt, then in his nineteenth year ; by his third son, a young naval officer, who did not long survive him ; and by his son-in-law, Lord Mahon, who severally assisted him to the private apartment of the Lord Chancellor, where he rested himself till the commencement of the debate. " I saw him in the Prince's Chamber, before he went into the House," writes his friend, 156 WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. Lord Camden, to the Duke of Grafton, "and con- versed a little with him. But such was the feeble state of his body, and indeed the distempered agita- tion of his mind, that I forbode that his strength would certainly fail him before he had finished his speech." l When subsequently he entered the House, still supported by his sons and son-in-law, the sad spectacle of his attenuated frame, combined with the memory of the splendid services which he had rendered to his country, and the expiring effort which he was making in her cause, produced, on the minds of all present, mingled sensations of sympathy, admiration, and almost awe, to which no language probably would do adequate justice. To the peers, who paid him a spontaneous tribute of respect by rising to receive him, he bowed courteously as he tottered to his seat. His dress was of rich black velvet ; his legs were swathed in flannel. " He looked," said one who was present, " like a dying man, yet never was seen a figure of more dignity. He appeared like a being of a superior species." His face was pale and emaciated so emaciated, that, beneath his large wig, his aquiline nose and pene- trating eye were nearly all of his features that were discernible. 2 As soon as the Duke of Richmond had concluded 1 Lord Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. v. pp. 305, 306 ; ed. 1846. 2 Seward's ' Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,' vol. v. pp. 305, 306 ; ed. 1846. WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. 157 his speech, Lord Chatham, with the assistance of his sons and son-in-law, rose slowly and with difficulty from his seat. At first, he spoke in a feeble and almost inaudible tone, but, as he gradually warmed with his subject, his voice become more distinct, and his manner more animated. Taking his hand from his crutch, and raising it, with his eyes lifted towards heaven, he solemnly thanked God that he had been enabled to come there that day to perform his duty. " I am old," he said, " and infirm ; have one foot, more than one foot, in the grave. I have risen from my bed to stand up in the cause of my country, perhaps never again to speak in this House. I have made an effort almost beyond my strength to come here this day, to express my indignation at an idea which has gone forth of yielding up America. My Lords, I rejoice that the grave has not yet closed upon me ; that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy. Pressed down, as I am, by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture ; but, my Lords, whilst I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick of their fairest inheritance." " My Lords," he concluded, "any state is better than despair. Let us, at least, make one effort, and, if we must fall, let us fall like men.' My Lords, ill as I am, yet as long as I can crawl down to this House, and 158 WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. have strength to raise myself on my crutches, or lift my hand, I will vote against giving up the depen- dency of America on the sovereignty of Great Britain, and, if no other Lord is of opinion with me, I will singly protest against the measure." l As long as he continued speaking, the attention and reverence paid him by the House are said to have been deeply affecting. It was remarked that even the fall of a handkerchief to the floor might have been heard. Notwithstanding, in the spirited and affecting passages which we have quoted, there was much of Lord Chatham's accustomed animation of manner and language, it was nevertheless apparent to those who listened to him that his mental, no less than his physical, powers had become impaired. " His speech faltered," writes Lord Camden to the Duke of Grafton ; " his sentences [were] broken, and his mind not master of itself. He made shift with difficulty to declare his opinion, but was not able to enforce it by argument. His words were shreds of unconnected eloquence, and flashes of the same fire which he, Prometheus-like, had stolen from heaven, and which were then returning to the place whence they were taken." 2 The Duke of Richmond having replied to him in a flattering though, it is said, an 1 'Parliamentary History,' vol. xix., cols. 1023, 1026; Seward's ' Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 384. 2 Lord Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. v. p. 306. WILLIAM PITT, EABL OF CHATHAM. 159 irritating speech, Lord Chatham again rose, in some excitement, to address the House. At this moment he was observed to press his hand to his heart, and stagger. It was in vain that he made a painful effort to stand firm. Had it not been for the timely assistance of the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Temple, who caught him in their arms, he would have fallen to the ground. To all appearance he was in a dying state. The House was in the greatest commotion. The peers crowded round him ; the windows were thrown open, and strangers were ordered to withdraw. " He fell back upon his seat," continues Lord Camden, '* and was to all appearance in the agonies of death. This threw the whole House into confusion. Every person was upon his legs in a moment, hurrying from one place to another ; some sending for assistance, others producing salts, and others reviving-spirits ; many crowding about the Earl to observe his countenance ; all affected ; most part really concerned ; and even those who might have felt a secret pleasure at the accident, yet put on the appearance of distress, except only the Earl of M., who sat still, almost as unmoved as the senseless body itself." l " The scene," writes Walpole, " was very affecting. His two sons and son-in-law, Lord 1 Lord Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. v. p. 305. "It appears by the Journals," writes Lord Campbell, " that there were only two Earls bearing titles beginning with an M present that day the Earl of Marchmont and the Earl of Mansfield. I am much afraid that the latter is alluded to." 160 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. Mahon, were round him. The House paid a proper mark of respect by adjourning instantly." 1 From this, the scene of his many triumphs, Lord Chatham was carried insensible into the neighbouring Prince's Chamber, where he was promptly attended by his own physician, Dr. Addington. Thence he was removed to the residence of one of the officers of Parliament, in Downing Street, where he remained till he had regained sufficient strength to admit of his being carried io Hayes. He survived, however, his seizure in the House of Lords scarcely more than four weeks. On the llth of May, 1778, affectionately tended by his wife and children, in whose welfare and happiness was centred all the tenderness of his nature, the most illustrious Englishman of his time breathed his last at Hayes, in the seventieth year of his age. In the House of Commons, which happened to be sitting at the time that the news of Lord Chatham's death arrived from Hayes, its announcement created a profound sensation. For the moment, the imper- fections of the august deceased were forgotten in remembrance of his lofty genius, of the purity of his life, and in gratitude for the splendid triumphs and the prosperity which he had achieved for his country. In a brief but eloquent speech, Colonel Bar re pro- posed an Address to the Throne, recommending that the memory of the great Earl should be honoured 1 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. vii. p. 51 ; eel. 1857. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 161 with the high compliment of a public funeral. This, and subsequently other tributes of veneration, were agreed to by men of all opinions and of all parties. A public monument was voted by Parliament; the sum of 20,000/. was granted for the discharge of his debts ; and an annuity of 4,000. a year was annexed for ever to the Earldom of Chatham. The city of London petitioned that his remains might be al- lowed to repose under the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, but, whatever may have been the reasons, Westminster Abbey was selected to be their resting- place. The ceremony of Lord Chatham's interment took place on the 9th of June. After having lain in state for two days in the celebrated Painted Chamber, the body was brought through' Westminster Hall into New Palace Yard, where, immediately in front of the great hall of William Rufus, the procession formed which was to escort the remains of the patriot Earl to his last home. By a circuitous route along Parliament Street and round by King Street both of which streets were lined by the Foot Guards the body was carried to the great western entrance of Westminster Abbey. In the train of the chief mourner walked eight Peers. The banner of the Barony of Chatham was supported by two Dukes and a Marquis ; the " Great Banner " was carried by Colonel Barre' ; Edmund Burke was one of the pall- bearers. The chief mourner was young William VOL. I. if. 162 WILLIAM PITT, EAEL OF CHATHAM. Pitt, who, after the lapse of twenty-eight years, and after having achieved for himself a name almost as illustrious as that of Chatham, was destined to be lowered into the same vault, on the margin of which he was now solemnizing a parent's obsequies. The grave of Chatham lies near the northern door of Westminster Abbey, opposite the monument of the Duke of Newcastle. Since the day when they laid him in that time-honoured spot, the pavement around has been, from time to time, removed to make room for the remains of his illustrious son ; of the brilliant lawyer, Lord Mansfield; of Charles Fox ; of G-rattan, Canning, Wilberforce, and Palmer- ston. " In no other cemetery," are the striking words of Lord Macaulay, " do so many great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those vener- able graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from above, his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched hand, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate judg- ments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly revised by history. And history, while, for the warning of vehement, high, and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 163 left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name." l Not far, it may be mentioned, from the spot here so eloquently dilated upon, now lie the remains of Lord Macaulay himself, in their hallowed resting- place at the foot of Addison's statue in Poets' Corner. By his wife, Lady Hester Temple, Lord Chatham was the father of three sons of John Lord Pitt, who succeeded his father as second Earl of Chatham ; of William, the future illustrious statesman ; and of James Charles, an officer in the Royal Navy, who died at Barbadoes in December, 1780, at the age of nineteen. By Lady Hester also Lord Chatham was the father of two daughters of Hester, who became the first wife of Charles third Earl Stanhope, and of Harriet, who married the Hon. Edward James Eliot, eldest son of the first Lord Eliot, by whom she had a daughter, Harriet, who married Lieutenant-Colonel Pringle. 1 Macaulay's 'Essays,' vol. iii. p. 625; ed. 1860. M 2 164 SIR CHARLES H ANBURY WILLIAMS, K.B. THIS sparkling man of fashion, wit, poet, and diplo- matist, was the third son of John Hanbury, Esq., of Pontypool Park, in Monmouthshire, by Albinia, daughter of John Selwyn, Esq., of Matson, in Gloucestershire. He was thus nearly related in blood to another celebrated wit and brother Etonian, George Selwyn, whose senior he was by ten years. He was born in 1709. Unlike the great majority of poets, Charles Hanbury, by which names alone he was designated at Eton, was born to the enjoyment of a handsome fortune. In 1720, at the age of eleven, he succeeded, conditionally on his assuming the additional surname of Williams, to a considerable property bequeathed to him by the will of his godfather, Charles Williams, Esq. of Caerleon, in Monmouthshire; in addition to which his father, at his death, in 1723, left him his estate and mansion of Coldbrook, delightfully situated between Abergavenny and Monmouth. Sir Charles's knowledge of classical literature, for SIR CHARLES HANBURT WILLIAMS, KB. 165 which he was distinguished at an early age, would seem to have been acquired entirely at Eton. On quitting Eton, he set out on his travels over various parts of Europe, and, on his return to England, married in 1732, at the age of twenty-three, the Lady Frances, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Earl of Coningsby. On the death of his father, the following year, he was returned to Parliament as member for the county of Monmouth. Two marked defects in Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's character seem to have been libertinism and vanity. Nevertheless he was endowed with other and better qualities, which, combined with his social wit, his winning manners, his ample fortune, and liberal hospitality, secured him alike a prominent position in the most brilliant circles in the land, as well as the friendship of some of the most eminent men of his day. Horace Walpole, for instance, speaks of him as a man whom he loved ; l while Lord Holland, as well as that gifted statesman and charming companion, Thomas Winnington, alike delighted in his society, and valued his higher qualities. Sir Eobert Walpole, though many years his senior, admitted him to his intimate friendship, and in return Sir Charles is said to have idolized the great minister. Of Sir Charles's conversational wit, once so famous, the only example which we have to record consists 1 Walpole's 'Letters,' vol. ii. p. 100; ed. 1857. 166 SIB CHARLES HANBUEY WILLIAMS, K.B. of a remark of his on the celebrated circumnavigator, George Lord Anson, whose want of knowledge of the world was a surprise to his friends and acquaint- ances. " Lord Anson," said Sir Charles, " has been round the world, but never in it." 1 The following distich, composed by Sir Charles on the Queen of Hungary, was greatly admired at Vienna at the time it was written, it may be more so than its merits justify : " regina orbis prima et pulcherrima, ridens Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens." 2 It was once contemptuously observed by Dr. Johnson of Sir Charles Williams, that, as a poet, "he had no fame but from boys who drank with him." 3 At the time, however, that these words were pronounced, Johnson, as we learn from Boswell, happened to be " full of critical severity ; " thus rendering it probable that had his judgment, when in a less cynical mood, been consulted, his censure would have been less sweeping. Sir Charles's political squibs, in fact, are amongst the most vigorous in our language. According to Horace "Walpole, for instance, his satiric odes inflicted in six months deeper wounds upon Sir Robert Walpole's powerful rival, William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, than the * Craftsman,' though backed by the genius of 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George II.,' vol. i. p. 194. 2 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. ii. p. 331. 3 Croker's 'Boswell's Life of Johnson,' p. 357; ed. 1847. SIB CHARLES HANBUEY WILLIAMS, K.B. 167 Lord Bolingbroke, had been able to inflict upon Sir Robert in twice the number of years. 1 Neither are Sir Charles's other poetical compositions, whether grave or gay, without considerable occasional merit. Exceptionally speaking, indeed, his once approved epitaph on his friend, Mr. Winnington, as well as his ode to Mr. Poyntz in honour of the Duke of Cumberland, may have received greater praise than they deserve ; but, on the other hand, what can be more charming of its kind than his verses entitled .' Isabella, or the Morning,' descriptive of one of the morning receptions of the beautiful Isabella Duchess of Manchester ? Of a different description of poetry, though not less pleasing in their way, are Sir Charles's verses written on Lady Ilchester asking Lord Ilchester how many kisses he would have ; verses, by-the-by, which were probably sufficiently familiar to Moore, when he composed his early amatory poems, as well as to Lord Strangford, when he translated the minor poems of Camoens. It may be mentioned that Sir Charles's latest editor intro- duces them into the poet's works as imitated from Martial, lib. vi. Ep. 34, though the beautiful lines of Catullus, commencing " Quarts quot mihi basiationes," &c., would seem more likely to have inspired them. 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George II.,' vol. L p. 205. Sir C. H. Williams's < Works,' vol. i. p. 132, note; ed. 1822. 168 SIB CHARLES HANBUBT WILLIAMS, KB. " Dear Betty, come, give me sweet kisses, For sweeter no girl ever gave ; But why, in the midst of our blisses, Do you ask me how many I'd have ? I'm not to be stinted in pleasure, Then prithee, dear Betty, be kind ; For as I love thee beyond measure, To numbers I'll not be confined. " Count the bees that on Hybla are straying, Count the flowers that enamel the fields, Count the flocks that on Tempe are playing, Or the grains that each Sicily yields. Count how many stars are in heaven, Or reckon the sands on the shore ; And when so many kisses you've given, . I still shall be asking for more. " To a heart full of love let me hold thee, A heart that, dear Betty, is thine ; In my arms I'll for ever enfold thee, And curl round thy neck like a vine. What joy can be greater than this is? My life on thy lips shall be spent, But those who can number their kisses Will always with few be content." Unfortunately, the productions of Sir Charles's muse were not on all occasions as exempt from the inspiration of giving offence to others, as were the harmless and pleasing verses we have just quoted. In the year 1743, for instance, the unjustifiable use made by him in one of his odes of the name of the Duchess of Manchester had the effect of involving him in a very disagreeable, if not dangerous dilemma. The ode in question, under the name of ' The Conquered Duchess,' was, much to the regret of his friends and admirers, composed by him on the occa- SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS, K.B. 169 sion of the ill-assorted marriage of the stately and beautiful duchess, who had so far stooped from her high social position as to confer her hand on an obscure Irish gentleman, younger than herself, Mr. Edward Hussey, who, twenty years afterwards, was created Baron Beaulieu, and, in 1784, was advanced to be Earl of Beaulieu. " Fall'n is her power, her sway is o'er, She'll be no more adored, no more Shine forth the public care : Oh ! what a falling off is here, from her whose frowns made wisdom fear, Whose scorn begot despair ! " Wide was the extent of her commands ; O'er fertile fields, o'er barren sands She stretch'd her haughty reign ; The coxcomb, fool, and man of sense, Youth, manhood, age, and impotence, With pride received her chain." " But careful Heaven reserved her Grace For one of the Milesian race, On stronger parts depending ; Nature, indeed, denies them sense, But gives them legs and impudence, That beats all understanding. " Which to accomplish, Hussey came, Opening before the noble dame His honourable trenches," &c. Although Mr. Hussey, influenced probably by the duchess, would seem to have behaved with much forbearance on this annoying occasion, as much can scarcely be said for some of his hot-headed fellow- 170 SIB CHARLES HANBUBT WILLIAMS, K.B. countrymen. We have the authority, indeed, of Lord Holland, in a warning letter to his friend, Sir Charles, that a dozen or fourteen of them, straining what may be termed a reflection on the proclivities of their race in general into personal insult, 1 entered into a mutual agreement to affront the offender whenever they might meet him ; the result being that Sir Charles, though affecting to make light of the affair/ retired to his seat in Monmouthshire till the passing away of the threatened storm. It was not apparently till the year 1746, when Sir Charles had attained the mature age of thirty- seven, that he sought and was awarded the congenial employment which he continued for the next few years to hold in the diplomatic service of his country. According to his own account, a deep melancholy, in- duced by the death of his friend Winnington accord- ing to his enemies, a continued fear of the resentment of the Irish was the motive which thus led him to seek to exile himself from the brilliant and congenial society of his native land. 3 At all events, in the 1 Archdeacon Coxe's 'Historical Tour in Monmouthshire,' p. 272, and note. 2 See his ode, commencing " Stop, stop, my steed ! Hail, Cambria, hail !" 8 " Think you, because you basely fled To Saxony, to hide your head, On odes you still may venture," &c. Although the offensive ode was written soon after the duchess's marriage with Mr. Hussey, it was not, it appears, till 1746 that, much, it is said, to its author's annoyance, it found its way into print. SIB CHABLES HANBUBY WILLIAMS, K.B. 171 year 1746, having previously been installed a Knight of the Bath, he resigned the profitable appointment of Paymaster of Marines, which had been conferred upon him by Sir Eobert Walpole in 1739, and took his departure from England as Envoy to the Court of Saxony. Here he remained till July, 1749, when, attended by Garter King at Arms, he was delegated to convey the Blue Riband to the Margrave of Anspach. The same year, at the express desire of his sovereign, George II., he was nominated Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin. " What you have heard about my going to Berlin," he writes to a friend, " is very true. The King was pleased of his own accord to nominate me to that Court, and to give me a very large addition of salary upon the account, as he was pleased to say, of my diligent and able services. I think you will be glad to hear that I am very high in his Majesty's favour." 1 At Berlin Sir Charles remained no longer than till 1751, when, having giving some offence to the eccentric Prussian monarch, Frederick the Great, his recall and return to his former diplomatic position at Dresden were the consequences. Sir Charles's last mission was as Ambassador tp St. Petersburg, to which court he was accredited in 1755. Hitherto the diplomatic career of the man of pleasure and fashion had been an acknowledged 1 Letter to the Rev. Mr. Birt; Sir C. H. Williams's ' Works,' vol. iii. p. 88; ed. 1822. 172 SIB CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS, K.B. success. Not only had his lively wit, his genial good humour, and winning manners done him excellent service at each Court at which he had resided, but his negotiations had been conducted with singular shrewd- ness and ability, while his official despatches were admitted to be admirable. At St. Petersburg, how- ever, a bitter disappointment, awaited him. Having, agreeably with his instructions, successfully nego- tiated a treaty for a triple alliance between Great Britain, Austria, and Russia, he had the satisfaction of transmitting it, with the signature of the Empress Catherine attached to it, to George II., who happened at this time to be on a visit to his Hanoverian dominions. That Sir Charles's vanity and sanguine temperament exaggerated the merit of the service he had performed, and that he fondly anticipated an immediate and highly laudatory reply to his despatch, there seems to be too good reason for believing. Owing, however, to a radical change having taken place in the views of the English monarch and his advisers, the reply was long in reaching the impatient Minister at St. Petersburg. At length, as he was one day closeted with his confidential friend, Count Poniatowski, afterwards King of Poland, the long- expected despatch was placed in his hands, and of course eagerly opened by him. Having read it to the end, he flung it indignantly on the floor, struck his forehead with both his hands, and remained for some time absorbed in a deep reverie. " Would you SIR CHARLES HANBURT WILLIAMS, KB. 173 think it possible," he at length exclaimed to Count Poniatowski, " that, instead of receiving thanks for my zeal and activity in concluding the convention, I am blamed for an informality in the signature, and the King is displeased with my efforts to serve him ?" "This interesting anecdote," writes Archdeacon Coxe, " I received from the late King of Poland himself in 1785." 1 From this time, the story of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams becomes a mournful one. Not only did the reproof he received from his sovereign throw him into a painful state of despondency, but it probably sowed the seeds of that dreadful mental derangement by which he was subsequently pros- trated, the advances of which, combined with the wretched state of his bodily health, compelled him, in the autumn of 1757, to return to England. At Hamburg, where he appears to have landed in a very pitiable condition, he had the misfortune to fall into the society of a designing woman, who not only extorted from .him a note for 2,000/., but also obtained from him a contract of marriage, notwith- standing the fact of his wife, Lady Frances, being still living. On his passage home he grew worse. A fall from the deck of the vessel into the hold dangerously injured his side ; four times he was blooded during the voyage, and on his arrival in England was declared to be in a state of insanity. 1 'Hist. Tour in Monmouthshire,' ut supra, p. 273, and note. 174 SIR CHARLES HANBURT WILLIAMS, KB. Happily, Sir Charles's present attack proved to be of no very long duration. Within a little more than a month, he had so far recovered his health as to be able to revisit his paternal seat at Coldbrook, the quietude and beautiful scenery of which probably went far, during the ensuing summer, to restore him to that mental and bodily sanity, of which, for some time to come, he would seem to have remained in the enjoyment. " I am now," he writes to a friend, " as perfectly well as ever I was in my life, and im- proving this charming place, where I hope to see you one day to talk over things that nobody but you and I in England understand." 1 But " Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens Uxor." Unhappily, towards the end of 1759, Sir Charles was again seized with insanity, in which state, on the 2nd of November in that year, at the age of fifty, he died. It was not only in contemplation by his friends to honour his memory with a monument in Westminster Abbey, but Horace Walpole, as he himself informs us, had actually written the inscrip- tion for it, when the design was for some reason aban- doned. 2 If, however, as has been confidently stated, Sir Charles perished by his own hand, the exclusion of the projected memorial from Poets' Corner may not improbably be assignable to the lamentable fact. 1 Coxe's ' Hist. Tour in Monmouthshire,' p. 278. 2 Walpole's ' Letters,' vol. i. p. Ixxi. ; vol. iii. p. 60, note ; ed 1857. SIE CHARLES HANBURT WILLIAMS, KB. 175 Sir Charles by his wife left two daughters, of whom Frances, who was the partial inheritress of her father's sprightly wit, became the first wife of William Anne, fourth Earl of Essex. The second daughter, Charlotte, married Captain the Honourable Eobert Boyle Walsingham, of the Royal Navy, youngest son of Henry first Earl of Shannon. Captain Walsingham, when in command of the Thunderer, man-of-war, was lost on board that ship in the West Indies, in 1779. 176 GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. THE chief interest in the story of this benevolent and accomplished, but now half-forgotten poet and historian, consists, as in the case of his friend Gilbert West, in the example which he affords of an un- reflecting man of pleasure and fashion having been empowered, by earnest diligence and research, not only to silence to his own satisfaction the religious doubts by which he had been infected in the society of the shallow and the licentious, but to vindicate by his writings those important Christian truths which, in the heyday and confidence of youth, he had probably been but too frequently induced to make light of in his conversation. His treatise, entitled ' Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul,' still lives to " comfort and help the weak-hearted," a treatise to which, in the words of Johnson, " in- fidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer." 1 George Lyttelton, afterwards the first Lord Lyttel- 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets,' vol. iv. p. 481 ; ed. 1791. GEORGE LORD LTTTELTON. 177 ton, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Baronet, of Hagley, in Worcestershire, by Christian, daughter of Sir Eichard Temple, Baronet, of Stow, in Buckinghamshire, formerly a maid of honour to Queen Anne. The future poet was born in 1709. He is usually described, not only as having been what is called a seven months' child, but as having be- trayed so little sign of life at the time he was brought into the world, that his nurse pronounced him to be still-born. Certainly his pale and lean appearance in after-life lent some slight weight to the report, but on the other hand the truth of it seems to be borne out by no family authority or tradition. 1 At Eton, according to Dr. Johnson, young Lyttel- ton was "so much distinguished, that his exercises were recommended as models to his schoolfellows." What is more unusual at public schools, he seems to have written English verses from inclination almost as early as he composed Latin verses from com- pulsion. His ' Soliloquy of Beauty in the Country,' which was written at Eton, has not undeservedly met with commendation. " Ah ! what avails it to be young and fair, To move with negligence, to dress with care?" &c. From Eton he removed to Christ Church, where though he remained but for an inconsiderable time, 1 Phillimore's ' Life of Lord Lyttelton,' vol. i. p. 30. Nichols's words are, " he was thrown away by the nurse as a dead child." ' Life of Bowyer/ p. 639. VOL. I. N 178 GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. it was long enough to confirm the reputation for scholarship which he had already established, as well as to publish his * Blenheim,' a poem in blank verse. His * Progress of Love ' and his ' Persian Letters ' were also severally composed by him when very young. Of the Delia of his youthful verse we know little more than that, like Catherine Dashwood, the Delia of Hammond's love elegies, she long outlived the charms that " roused the poet's sigh." " She " (Catherine Dashwood), writes Walpole, after the accession of George III., " and Mrs. Boughton, Lord Lyttelton's ancient Delia, are revived again in a young court that never heard of them." 1 In 1728, at the age of nineteen, Mr. Lyttelton set out on a tour through France and Italy ; prolonging his travels till towards the close of the year 1731. In April, 1734, he was returned to Parliament as member for Okehampton, in Devonshire ; and in April, 1737, on the same evening that the illustrious Chatham made his maiden-speech in the House of Commons, his schoolfellow, Lyttelton, also addressed the House for the first time. "So much are men mistaken at their outset," writes Lord Stanhope, 2 " that Lyttelton appears to have been considered the greater of the two, and Pope calls him l the rising genius of this age.' ' That, of the number of gifted Etonians who were 1 Walpole's 'Letters,' vol. iii. p. 437; ed. 1857. 2 ' Hist, of England,' vol. ii. p. 304. GEOEOE LOED LTTTELTON. 179 returned to Parliament during the period that Sir Kobert Walpole was in the zenith of his power, a moiety should have been his devoted followers, and the other half his uncompromising opponents, was nothing more than might have been anticipated. In the former category, among the young men of the highest promise were Fox and Hanbury Williams ; in the latter, Pitt and Lyttelton. Lyttelton espe- cially, up to the hour that the great Minister was hounded from the helm of Government, was his persistent and unsparing assailant. As Johnson observes, he opposed the standing army ; he opposed the Excise ; he supported the motion for petitioning the King to remove Walpole. As a speaker, G-eorge Lyttelton was very far from being a despicable foe. Though not a powerful, he was a various, and sometimes a useful, debater ; while his high character for probity and consistency added weight to his political importance. " Mr. Pitt's followers," writes Lord Waldegrave, " were scarce a sufficient number to deserve the name of a party, consisting only of the Grenvilles and Lyttelton. The latter was an enthusiast, both in religion and politics; absent in business, not ready in debate, and totally ignorant of the world. On the other hand, his studied orations were excellent ; he was a man of parts, a scholar, no indifferent writer, and by far the honestest man of the whole society." : Twice, at all events, in Parlia- 1 Lord Waldegrave's ' Memoirs,' pp. 25, 26. N 2 180 GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. ment Lyttelton spoke with uncommon success ; once in the House of Commons on the 26th of November, 1753, on the Repeal of the Jews' Naturalization Bill ; and, secondly, in the House of Lords, in 1763, on a question affecting the privileges of Parliament. It has been suggested that Johnson's manifest dislike to, and depreciation of, Lyttelton may have had its origin in the Doctor's jealous recollections of a preference shown in their youth, either by Miss Boothby or Molly Aston, to Lyttelton ;* but if so, it could scarcely have been owing to the personal graces of the latter that he was indebted for the predilection. According, for instance, to his con- temporary, John Lord Hervey : " In his figure [Lyttelton was] extremely tall and thin : his face was so ugly, his person so ill made, and his carriage so awkward, that every feature was a blemish, every limb an incumbrance, and every motion a disgrace ; but, as disagreeable as his figure was, his voice was still more so, and his address more disagreeable than either." 2 Horace Walpole also writes : " With the figure of a spectre and the gesticulations of a puppet, he talked heroics through his nose, made declama- tions at a visit, and played at cards with scraps of history or sentences of Pindar." 3 Other evidences of his personal ungainliness might be quoted. Sir 1 Croker's 'Boswell's Life of Johnson,' pp. 672, 673, and note; ed. 1848. * Lord Hervey's ' Memoirs of the Reign of George II.' vol. i. p. 433-4. * Walpole's ' Reign of George II." vol. i. p. 202. GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. 181 Charles Hanbury Williams, for instance, in one of his odes distinguishes his old schoolfellow as " Lank Lyttelton," which, by-the-by, may have been his nickname at Eton, while an admirable caricature of the period introduces him as " Who's dat who ride astride de poney, So long, so lank, so lean, and boney ? Oh! he be de great orator, Little-toney." 1 Owing to Sir Robert Walpole's long tenure of power, Lyttelton, notwithstanding the advantages he derived from his abilities and family influence, was necessarily slow in rising to the higher offices in the State. It was not, indeed, till the year 1737, when he had attained the age of twenty-eight, that he was enabled to realize a small, but welcome augmentation of his moderate income, by accepting the post of Private Secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales, who at this time was not only living on the worst terms with the King his father, but who, in fact, was virtually at the head of the Opposition. The in- fluence which he was thus enabled to obtain over the Prince was not only supposed to be considerable, but is said to have been laudably employed by him in securing the patronage of his Royal Highness for men of genius and learning. David Mallet, for instance, was apparently indebted to him for the 1 Wright's ' England under the House of Hanover,' vol. i. pp. 178, 179. 182 GEORGE LOED LTTTELTON. appointment of Under-Secretary to the Prince, with a salary of 200/. a year, and Thomson, the poet, for a pension of 100. a year. Neither does his own purse appear to have been ever closed against the claims of literary merit, nor his heart against the attractions of literary men. He was the friend, indeed, of most of the men of genius of his day, more than one of whom have left on record the highest tributes to his virtues and talents. Fielding dedicated to him his magnificent novel, * Tom Jones ;' Lord Bolingbroke proposed to dedicate to him his * Idea of a Patriot King ;' 1 Thomson has celebrated him in his ' Castle of Indolence :' " Come, dwell with us ! true son of Virtue, come !" &c. ; and lastly, Pope has perpetuated his friendship for Lyttelton in undying verse : " Free as young Lyttelton, her cause pursue, Still true to virtue, and as warm as true." 2 In 1744, after the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, George Lyttelton was appointed a Lord of the Treasury, having previously, in 1741, married Lucy, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, Esq., of Filleigh, in Devonshire, by whom he became the father of Thomas, commonly called "the wicked Lord Lyttelton," and of two daughters. Unhappily, his connubial felicity lasted no long time, his beloved wife being snatched from 1 Phillimore's ' Memoirs of Lyttelton,' vol. ii. p. 427. 8 ' Imitations of Horace,' book i. ep. 1. GEOEGE LORD LYTTELTON. 183 him in childbed, on the 19th of January, 1747, at the age of twenty-nine. " Poor Mrs. Lyttelton," writes Mrs. Delany, two days afterwards, " has left a most disconsolate mother, and afflicted husband. She was happy in this world, according to our notion of happiness, an'd was an agreeable and deserving woman, which makes her much lamented." 1 To the memory of |his lady it was that her husband com- posed his once much criticised and famous ' Monody,' the fourth stanza of which, inasmuch as it seems to have satisfied the fastidious taste of Gray, the reader may not be unwilling to have transcribed : " In vain I look around O'er all the well-known ground My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry ; Where oft we used to walk, Where oft in tender talk We saw the summer sun go down the sky ; Nor by yon fountain's eide, Nor where its waters glide Along the valley, can she now be found. In all the wide stretch'd prospect's ample bound, No more my mournful eye Can aught of her espy, But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie. " shades of Hagley ! where is now your boast ? Your bright inhabitant is lost," &c. In melancholy contrast with these lines is another copy of verses, anticipatory of happiness to come, composed by the fond husband, only a few months before his wife's death, at his friend Gilbert West's 1 Mrs. Delany's ' Autobiography,' vol. ii. p. 461. 184 GEORGE LORD LTTTELTON. seat at Wickham, the scene, it would seem, of Lyttelton's honeymoon : " Here, first, my Lucy, sweet in virgin charms, Was yielded to my longing arms ; And round our nuptial bed, Hovering with purple wings, the Idalian boy Shook from his radiant torch the blissful fires Of innocent desires, While Venus scattered myrtles o'er her head." A wicked ' Burlesque Ode,' written by Smollett on Lyttelton's plaintive ' Monody,' and purporting to be an elegy on his grandmother, was familiar to the generality of readers of the middle of the last century : " Her liberal hand and sympathizing breast The brute creation kindly bless'd : Where'er she trod, grimalkin purred around ; The squeaking pigs her bounty own'd ; Nor to the waddling duck or gabbling goose Did she glad sustenance refuse. The strutting cock she daily fed, And turkey with his snout so red ; Of chickens careful as the pious hen ; Nor did she overlook the tomtit or the wren ; While redbreast hopped before her in the hall, As if she common mother were of all. " For my distracted mind What comfort can I find ? best of grannams !" &c. In further elucidation of the authorship of this irreverent doggrel, it may be mentioned that Lyttel- ton had formerly unintentionally given offence to Smollett, then a young medical student, who, in revenge, not only turned Lyttelton's ' Monody ' into GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. 185 ridicule, but subsequently introduced him as Gosling Scrag into the first edition of * Peregrine Pickle,' besides otherwise traducing him in * Roderick Random.' " Smollett," writes Walpole, " was bred a sea-surgeon, and turned author. He wrote a tragedy, 1 and sent it to Lord Lyttelton, with whom he was not acquainted. Lord Lyttelton, not caring to point out its defects, civilly advised him to try comedy. He wrote one, and solicited the same Lord to recommend it to the stage. The latter excused him- self, but promised, if it should be acted, to do all the service in his power for the author. Smollett's return was drawing an abusive portrait of Lord Lyttelton in ' Roderick Random,' a novel, of which sort he pub- lished two or three." 2 One of Lyttelton's reasons for withholding so long from publication his * History of Henry the Second ' is said to have been the fear of Smollett's criticisms, if not abuse. 3 In 1747, the same year in which Lyttelton lost his wife, and while his father was still living, he published his ' Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul.' Of all the pleasures of which human nature is susceptible, a purer one can scarcely be imagined than that of a pious father rejoicing over the fact of a beloved son, not only extricating himself from the trammels of infidelity, 1 ' The Eegicide,' printed in 1749. 8 Walpole's ' Eeign of George II.,' vol. iii. p, 259. 3 Croker's ' Boswell's Life of Johnson,' p. 504 ; ed. 1848. 186 GEORGE LORD LTTTELTON. but devoutly exercising his talents to impress upon the minds of others those divine truths which he has succeeded in impressing upon his own. Happily such a blessing, before he quitted the world, was reserved for Lyttelton's excellent father, Sir Thomas. " I have read your religious treatise," he writes to his son, " with infinite pleasure and satisfaction. The style is fine and clear ; the arguments close, cogent, and irresistible. May the King of Kings, whose glorious cause you have so well defended, reward your pious labours, and grant that I may be found worthy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to be an eye-witness of that happiness which I don't doubt He will bountifully bestow upon you. In the mean time, I shall never cease glorifying God for having endowed you with such useful talents, and giving me so good a son. " Your affectionate father, " THOMAS In 1749, having been a widower for two years, Lyttelton married a second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Rich, Bart., by whom he had no children. Unfortunately, the happiness with which he had been blest in his first marriage he failed to meet with in the second ; the ill-assorted couple separating after a season, never to reunite. 2 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets,' vol. iv. p. 482, ut supra. 2 Lyttelton's second wife survived him twenty-two years, dying on the 17th of September, 1795. GEOEGE LOBD LTTTELTON. 187 Two years after this second marriage, Lyttelton, on the 14th of September, 1751, not only succeeded to a baronetage by the death of his father, but at the same time inherited a large estate, including the beautiful family seat of Hagley Hall, in Worcester- shire. In 1754 he was constituted a Privy Councillor and Cofferer of the King's Household ; and, the same year, published his ' Dialogues of the Dead,' which, as Johnson admits, " were very eagerly read." On the 22nd of November, 1755, Lyttelton was appointed to the highest office he ever held in the State, that of Chancellor of the Exchequer, an ap- pointment apparently peculiarly ill suited to his particular abilities. " Had they dragged Dr. Halley from his observatory to make him Vice-Chamberlain," writes Horace Walpole, 1 "or Dr. Hales from his ventilators to act Bayes in the * Rehearsal,' the choice would have been as judicious. They turned an absent poet to the management of the revenue, and employed a man as visionary as Don Quixote to combat Demosthenes." "Our friend, Sir George Lyttelton," writes Walpole, two months afterwards, to Conway, 2 " opened the Budget ; well enough in general, but was strangely bewildered in the figures. He stumbled over millions, and dwelt pompously upon farthings." According to Walpole, the " warmest prayer " of Sir George Lyttelton's heart was to go to heaven in 1 ' Reign of George II.,' vol. ii. p. 63. 2 ' Letters,' vol. ii. p. 500. 188 GEOEGE LOED LYTTELTON. a coronet ; 1 a wish which, taken in the sense of Walpole's witticism, he lived to have gratified. On the 19th of November, 1757, on his being deprived, by a change of Ministry, of his post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was created a peer of Great Britain by the title of Lord Lyttelton, Baron of Frankley, in the county of Worcester. The last and most ambitious of Lord Lyttelton's published works was his * History of Henry the Second,' the labour of many years. Nervously sen- sitive to adverse literary criticism, and perhaps, as we have hinted, standing in especial awe of Smollett, who was now editor of the ' Critical Beview/ Lyttelton, in order to ensure as much as possible the correctness of his magnum opus, brought it out with a delibera- tion, labour, and expense probably unexampled in the annals of authorship. " The story of this publication," writes Dr. Johnson, " is remarkable. The whole work was printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times. The booksellers paid for the first impression, but the charges and repeated operations of the press were at the expense of the author, whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thousand pounds." The cost of employing especial punc- tuators was another heavy expense to the author. The result was that, though the printing of the work had commenced in 1755, not only was k it not 1 Walpole's ' Reign of George II.,' vol. i. p. 387. GEOEGE LORD LYTTELTON. 189 completed till 1771, but, notwithstanding all this delay, precaution, and cost, when a third edition of the history appeared, there was found appended to it a supplementary list of no fewer than nineteen pages of errors. 1 To George Montague, Horace Walpole writes in July, 1767, on the publication of the second edition of Lyttelton's first three volumes : " Have you waded through or into Lord Lyttelton ? How dull one may be, if one will but take pains for six or seven-and-twenty years together ! " 2 And again, to Lady Ossory, Walpole writes no less sarcastically on the completion of the work in 1771 : " Lord Lyttelton has published the rest of his * Henry the Second,' but I doubt has executed it a little carelessly, for he has not been above ten years about it." 3 Nevertheless, notwithstanding Walpole's sarcasms, and the occasional dullness and verbosity of Lord Lyttelton's work, it may still be consulted with advantage to the student of history. Uncomplainingly, and even cheerfully, as Lord Lyttelton to all appearance descended into the vale of years, his unhappy estrangement from the wife of his choice, combined with the irreclaimable libertinism of his only son, could scarcely have failed to cast occa- sional gloom and anxiety across his path to the grave. His household gods, indeed, lay shivered around him. "Poor Lord Lyttelton," writes Mrs. Delany, 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets/ vol. iv. pp. 485, 486, ut supra. 3 Walpole's 'Letters,' vol. v. p. 58. s Ibid., p. 356. 190 GEORGE LOED LTTTELTON. a few days after his death, " is happily released from a miserable life ; the wretched conduct of his wicked son, they say, broke his heart." 1 His accomplished friend, Mrs. Montagu, also writes to Lord Kames : " When I consider how unhappy his former, how blessed his present condition, I am ashamed to lament him : the world has lost the best example ; modest merit the most zealous protector ; mankind its gentlest friend." Lord Lyttelton died at Hagley, on the 22nd of August, 1773, at the age of sixty-four. Of the last illness and death of the converted sceptic the following affecting particulars were communicated to Mrs. Montagu by Doctor Johnston of Kidder- minster, the physician who attended him during the closing stages of his fatal disorder : " On Sunday evening the symptoms of his lord- ship's disorder, which for a week past had alarmed us, put on a fatal appearance. From this time he suffered by restlessness rather than pain, and though his nerves were apparently much fluttered, his mental faculties seemed stronger when he was thoroughly awake. His lordship's bilious and hepatic complaints seemed alone not equal to the expected mournful event : his long want of sleep, whether the consequence of the irritation of the bowels, or, which is more probable, of causes of a different kind, accounts for his loss of strength and for his death very sufficiently. Though his 1 ' Autobiography and Correspondence,' voL iv. p. 538. GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON. 191 lordship wished his approaching dissolution not to be lingering, he waited for it with resignation. He said, * It is a folly, a keeping me in misery, now to prolong life ; ' yet he was easily persuaded for the satisfaction of others to do or take anything thought proper for him. On Saturday he had been remark- ably better, and we were not without some hopes of his recovery. On Sunday, about eleven in the fore- noon, his lordship sent for me, and said he felt a great melancholy, and wished to have a little con- versation with me in order to divert it. He then proceeded to open the fountain of that heart from whence goodness had so long flowed, as from a copious spring. ' Doctor,' he said, * you shall be my confessor. When I first set out in the world, I had friends who endeavoured to shake my belief in the Christian religion. I saw difficulties which staggered me, but I kept my mind open to conviction. The evidences and doctrines of Christianity, studied with attention, made me a most firm and persuaded believer of the Christian religion. I have made it the rule of my life, and it is the ground of my future hopes. I have erred and sinned, but have repented, and never indulged any vicious habit. In politics and in public life, I have made the public good the rule of my conduct. I never gave counsels which I did not at the time think the best. I have seen that I was sometimes in the wrong, but I did not err designedly. I have endeavoured, in private life, to 192 GEORGE LOUD LTTTELTON. do all the good in my power, and never for a moment could indulge malicious or unjust designs upon any person whatever.' At another time, he said, ' I must leave my soul in the same state it was in before this illness ; I find this a very inconvenient time for solicitude about anything.' On the evening when the symptoms of death came on him, he said, * I shall die, but it will not be your fault.' When Lord and Lady Yalentia came to see his lordship, he gave them his solemn benediction, and said, * Be good, be virtuous, my Lord. You must come to this.' Thus he continued giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a lucid interval gave some small hopes, but these vanished in the evening ; and he continued dying, but with very little uneasiness, till Tuesday morning, August 22nd, when, between seven and eight o'clock, he expired, almost without a groan." 1 The Lady Yalentia who is here introduced with her husband, was Lord Lyttelton's only surviving daughter, Lucy, married to Arthur Viscount Yalentia, afterwards first Earl of Mountnorris. " His lord- ship," writes Dr. Beattie to the Earl of Kinnoul, "died, as he lived, a most illustrious example of every Christian virtue. His last breath was spent in comforting and instructing his friends. 'Be good and virtuous,' said he to Lord Yalentia, ' for know that to this you must come.' The devout and 1 Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets,' ut supra, vol. iv. pp. 487-90. GEOBGE LOED LYTTELTON. 193 cheerful resignation that occupied his mind during his illness, did not forsake him in the moment of dissolu- tion, but fixed a smile on his dying countenance. I sincerely sympathize with your lordship on the loss of this excellent man. Since I came last to town, I have had the honour and happiness to pass many an hour in his company, and to converse with him on all subjects ; and I hope I shall be the better, while I live, for what I have seen and what I have heard of Lord Lyttelton." 1 Lord Lyttelton lies buried at Hagley, where, on the right side of the monument erected by him to the memory of his first and beloved wife, Lucy Fortescue, is engraved the following inscription : THIS UNADORNED STONE WAS PLACED HEEE, BY THE PARTICULAR DESIEE AND EXPRESS DIRECTIONS OF THE LATE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON, WHO DIED AUGUST 22ND, 1773, AGED 64. Lord Lyttelton was succeeded in his title by his son, Thomas, the libertine peer, at whose death, without issue, on the 27th of November, 1779, the English Barony became extinct. 1 Forbes's ' Life of Beattie,' p. 292. VOL. I. 194 THE REVEREND SNEYD DAVIES, D.D. THERE were apparently, at this period of our annals, but few Etonians who were more beloved by their con- temporaries for their virtues, or more admired for their early display of genius, than was Sneyd, or as the " Alumni Etonenses " designate him, Sneydus Davies. The son of the Rev. John Sneyd, D.D., Prebendary of Hereford and St. Asaph Cathedrals, he was born at Shrewsbury on the 30th of October, 1709. Educated on the Foundation at Eton, he was the author, at the age of eighteen, of a copy of Latin verses entitled ' Res est sacra Misery printed in the first volume of the * Musse Etoneuses,' in 1755. In the partial opinion of his schoolfellow, Lord Camden, he was, next to Nicholas Hardinge, the best classical scholar of his age. 1 " I have often," writes Judge Hardinge, " heard the Chancellor [Lord Camden] speak of him as of an admired friend and favourite in Eton School." 2 Judge Hardinge himself also speaks of his father's 1 Nichols's ' Illustrations of Literary History,' vol. i. p. 501. 2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 486. THE REVEREND SNEYD DAVIES, D.D. 195 contemporary as "a man of consummate genius and of exemplary virtue." 1 In 1728 Sneyd Davies was elected from Eton to King's College, Cambridge; in 1732 he took his degree as B.A., in 1737 as M.A., and in 1759 the honour of D.D. was conferred upon him. In 1732, his father's death, which took place in that year, put him in possession of a competency for the remainder of his life, by transferring to him. the Rectory of Kingsland, in Herefordshire, of which the former had been impropriator, together with a portion of his father's landed property in the Yale of Clwyd, near St. Asaph. It was the lot of this learned and amiable man, and it was a lot which was thought to occasion him much secret disquietude, to see schoolfellow after schoolfellow and friend after friend, though gifted with abilities scarcely superior to his own, promoted one by one over his head to the highest offices in Church and State. Not only did Pitt, Fox, Hanbury Williams, Lyttelton, and George Grrenville, who were, within a year or two, of the same standing with him at Eton, thus pass over him, but, of his two most intimate friends at school, Frederick Cornwallis rose to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and Charles Pratt to be Earl Camden and Lord Chancellor of England. To the former, when Bishop of Lichfield, be it mentioned that he was indebted for 1 Nichols's 'Illustrations,' p. 485, &c., nt supra, vol. i. o 2 196 THE REVEREND SNETD DAVIES, D.D. a canomy in Lichfield Cathedral, as well as for the Mastership of St. John's Hospital in that city, and for the Archdeaconry of Derby. "All accounts of him that have reached me," writes Judge Hardinge, " describe him as the most amiable of human beings ; cheerful, though modest ; and pious, without parade of his religion ; friendly, humane, public-spirited, and virtuous in every sense of that word." " In my girlish days," writes, in somewhat inflated language, a contemporary poetess, Anna Seward, " I knew him well, and always shed tears of delight when I listened to him from the pulpit ; for his manner of preaching was ineffable ; a voice of tremulously pathetic soft- ness; religious energies struggling through con- stitutional timidity ; but in all his words, his looks, his manners, within and without the church, there looked out of a feeble frame a spirit beatified before its time." l It was evidently on the merit, not of his classical, but of his English literary compositions, that the friends and admirers of Sneyd Davies anticipated for him a more than ephemeral reputation. 2 Posterity, however, has failed to confirm the verdict passed on them by his contemporaries. Besides the usually prosaic character of the subjects which he selected for his themes, his verse seems to be signally devoid 1 Nichols's ' Illustrations,' &c., ut supra, vol. i. pp. 500, 503, 2 A large number of Sneyd Davies's poems, carefully collected by Judge Hardinge, will be found in the first volume of Nichols's ' Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th Century/ pp. 485-709. THE EEVEREND SNETD DAVIES, D.D. 197 of that tenderness and delicacy of sentiment and expression, without which poetry, whatever merit of a different kind it may possess, would scarcely appear to be deserving the name. His best poetical produc- tion, if we agree with Judge Hardinge, is his Epistle to his friend, Lord Camden ; and nearly equal to it in merit is his Epistle to Cornwallis : " In Frolic's hour, ere serious thoughts had birth, There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when The Muse would take me on her airy wing, And waft to views romantic," &c. A third Epistle, congratulating his friend, Nicholas Hardinge, on his escape from the fatigues of the House of Commons to his seat, Knoll Hills, Derby- shire, we would also venture to point out, as con- cluding with a successful couplet: " Here feast, when wrangling Senates are at rest, Eepos'd on Latian flowers and Attic thyme." 1 To eulogize the blessings, not of love, but friendship, was, indeed, evidently the tendency of Sneyd Davies's poetical flights. No suspicion of his having at any time been enamoured of one of the fair sex ever entered the minds of his friends. To him, we are told, women were " as if they formed no part of the world around him." 2 Partially affected by paralysis, the Rector ot 1 Nicholas Hardinge's ' Poems,' p. 216. K Nichols's ' Illustrations,' &c., ut supra, vol. i. p. 673. 198 THE EEVEEEND SNETD DAVIES, D.D. Kingsland, towards the close of his existence, would seem to have lived the life of a literary recluse. " Davies," writes one of his ardent admirers, Lady Knowles, 1 "resigned the world. He took little concern even in his own pecuniary affairs, but lived in his library, where his books, like those of the Hermit in Yaucluse, were his friends." Not that his affections had grown less tender, or his former friendships less steadfast. He loved to the last, we are told on the same authority, those whom he had loved in youth, besides attaching to himself the immediate circle of kind faces that surrounded him. '* Warm and affectionate," continues his eulogist, " he attached every human creature to him, high and low." 2 Of the last days of this gifted and amiable man no particulars appear to have reached posterity. We learn only, from his epitaph in Kingsland Church, that he died on the 20th of January, 1769, in his sixtieth year. 1 Wife of Admiral Sir Charles Knowles. Judge Hardinge writes of her on one occasion as his " sister-enthusiast for Davies." a Nichols's ' Illustrations,' &c., ut supra, vol. i. pp. 510, 674. 199 DR. WILLIAM COOKE, HEAD MASTER OF ETON, PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE, AND DEAN OF ELY. THIS able and learned scholar was yet but an Eton boy when he composed a Greek Tragedy, e^Xaros 2o -r " ^ ,^. * '" *^ft AA .i to . ->' - ^ - <- ' <^C~" < of c'c c; ^ ^< < - < c ' c C cc- c . ^ : > ,^ < c'p /rv- c - * ,- < - ^ c C< ^'C C c c c c <" ( < ; < . c < cc; C C < C C