And this highbred condition of affairs was the more repulsive, from the fact that the greater number of those disposers of office and dividers of empire were among the emptiest of mankind. The succession of ministers, from the days of Walpole, (unquestionably a shrewd, though a coarse mind, and profligate personage,) with the exception of Chatham, was a list of silken imbeciles; very rich, or very highborn, or very handsomely supplied with boroughs, but, in all other senses, the last men who should have been entrusted with power.
We have to thank the satirists, the public misfortunes, and even the demagogues, for extinguishing this smooth and pacific system. Junius, with his sarcastic pen, the American war, and even the gross impudence of Wilkes, stirred the public mind to remember that it had a voice in the state. A manlier period succeeded; and we shall no more hear of the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity.
As a specimen of this courtly affair, we give a few fragments from a confidential letter of Burke to the Marquis of Rockingham. "Lord Shelburne still continues in administration, though as adverse and as much disliked as ever.—The Duke of Grafton continues, I hear, his old complaints of his situation, and his genuine desire of holding it as long as he can. At same time, Lord Shelburne gets loose too. I know that Lord Camden, who adhered to him in these late divisions, has given him up, and gone over to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are horridly frightened at all this, for fear of seeing the tablethey had so well covered, and at which they sat down with so good an appetite, kicked down in the scuffle. They find things not ripe at present for bringing in Grenville, and that any capital move just now would only betray their weakness in the closet and the nation." Thus, those noble personages had it all to themselves. Again—
"If Grenville was peculiarly exceptionable, another middle person might have the Treasury. I fancy their middleman to be the same they had in their thoughts this time twelve-month—Lord Gower. They talked of the Duke of Northumberland as a proper person for the Treasury, in case of the Duke of Grafton's going out. The truth is, the Bedfords will never act any part, either fair or amiable, with your lordship or your friends, until they see you in a situation to give the law to them." No doubt all this was perfectly true; the whole was selfish, supercilious, and exclusive; one red riband matched against another, one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball, in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character, and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles. But those times have passed away, and, for the honour of common sense, they have passed never to return.
The long contested authorship of "Junius's Letters" makes the subject of a brief portion of hiscorrespondence. A letter from Charles Townshend, brother of Lord Sidney, says—"I met Fitzherbert last night, and talked to him on the subject of our late conversation. I told him that I had heard that he had asserted that you were the author of 'Junius's Letters,' for which I was very sorry, because, if it reached your ears, it would give you a great deal of concern. He assured me, that he had only said that the ministry now looked upon you as the author, but that he had constantly contradicted the report whenever it was mentioned in his company, particularly yesterday and the day before, to persons who affirmed that you were now fixed on as the writer of those papers. He declared that he was convinced in his own mind that you were not concerned in the publication, and that he had said so." This letter was written in 1771. Burke replies to it, in two days after, in a letter of thanks, unequivocally denying that he had any share in those letters. "My friends I have satisfied; my enemies shall never have any direct satisfaction from me. The ministry, I am told, are convinced of my having written Junius, on the authority of a miserable bookseller's preface, in which there are not three lines of common truth or sense. I have never once condescended to take the least notice of their invectives, or publicly to deny the fact on which some of them were grounded. At the same time to you or to any of my friends, I have been as ready as I ought to be in disclaiming, in the most precise terms, writings that are as superior, perhaps, to my talents, as they are most certainly different in many essential points from my regards and my principles." Burke seems to have been constantly bored on this subject, for he writes an angry letter to Markham, then bishop of Chester. Charles Townshend writes to him again to say that the Public require a more distinct disclaimer. Burke answers, "I have, I daresay to nine-tenths of my acquaintances, denied my being the author of Junius, or having any knowledge of the author, whenever the thing was mentioned, whether in jest or earnest. I now give you my word and honour that I am not the author of Junius, and that I know not the author of that paper, and I do authorize you to say so."
We believe that this is the first time in which Burke's disclaimer has been made public; but our only surprise in the matter is, how he could at any time have been considered as the author of Junius. We should have rather said that he was the last man in the kingdom who ought tohave been suspected. The styles of Burke and Junius are totally different: the one loose and flowing, the other terse and pungent; the one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. Of course, we have no intention of wandering into a topic so thoroughly beaten as that of the authorship of Junius; but we must acknowledge, if Sir Philip Francis was not the man, no other nominal candidate for the honour has been brought forward with equal claims. The only objection which we have ever heard to his title as author is, his not making it in person; for he was said to be a man of such inordinate admiration of his own powers, that he could not have kept the secret. It has been said, too, that no fear, after the lapse of twenty years, could have prevented its being divulged. But there are other motives than fear which might act upon a proud and powerful spirit. The author of a work like Junius was clearly contemptuous of mankind, and more contemptuous in proportion to the rank of his victims. To such a man even the excitement produced by the general enquiry into the authorship might be a triumph in itself. Though a solitary, it might be a high gratification to a morbid spirit of disdain, to see himself a problem to mankind, to hear perpetual arguments raised on his identity, and see the puzzled pens of the pamphleteering word all busy in sketching an ideal likeness which each fancied to be the original. If we could imagine the shade of Swift or Shaftesbury, of Scarron or Rabelais, to walk invisibly through the world playing its bitter and fantastic tricks in the ways of men, stinging some, astounding others, and startling all, we perhaps would approach nearest to the feelings which might, now and then, have indulged the habitual scorn and stimulated the conscious power of Junius.
It has also been said that Sir Philip Francis was not equal to the composition of those masterly letters; and it must be acknowledged that, though he made some very powerful and pointed speeches in the House of Commons, they wanted the penetration and the polish of Junius. But there are several letters by Sir Philip Francis in these volumes, which, though evidently written in the haste and desultoriness of private correspondence, exhibit conceptions strongly resembling the sarcastic strength and high-wrought point of Junius.
The Hastings' trial brought Francis full before the public; and we have a letter from Burke describing one of his speeches on this subject, which, with his usual good nature, he sent to the orator's wife. It is dated April 20, 1787.—"My dear madam, I cannot, with all honest appetite, or clear conscience, sit down to my breakfast, unless I first give you an account, which will make your family breakfast as pleasant to you, as I wish all your family meetings to be. I have the satisfaction of telling you, that, not in my judgment only, but in that of all who heard him, no man ever acquitted himself, on a day of great expectation, so well as Mr Francis did yesterday. He was clear, precise, forcible, and eloquent, in a high degree. No intricate business was ever better unravelled, and no iniquity ever placed so effectually to produce its natural horror and disgust. * * * * All who heard him were delighted, except those whose mortification ought to give pleasure to every good mind. He was two hours and a half on his legs, and he never lost attention for a moment."
We give a curious specimen of the daring criticism which this applauded personage now and then ventured, even on the authorship of Burke. In 1790, Burke had prepared his celebrated work on the French Revolution for the press early in the year, and appears to have sent fragments of it to several of his friends. Casual circumstances delayed the work until October. Francis's letter was written in February. It begins—"I am sorry you should have the trouble of sending for the printed paper you lent me yesterday, though I own I cannot much regret even a fault of my own, that helps to delay the publication of that paper. [This was probably a proof sheet of theReflections.] It isthe proper province, and ought to be the privilege, of an inferior to criticise and advise. The best possible critic of the Iliad, would be,ipso facto, and by virtue of that very character, incapable of being the author of it. Standing as I do in this relation to you, you would renounce your superiority, if you refused to be advised by me. Remember that this is one of the most singular, that it may be the most distinguished, and ought to be one of the most deliberate acts of your life. Your writings have hitherto been the delight and instruction of your own country. You now undertake to correct and instruct another nation; and your appeal in effect is to all Europe." After then objecting to Burke's exposure of Price and his fellow pamphleteers, as beneath the writer and his subject, he attacks him for his panegyric on the Queen of France. He then sneeringly asks, "Pray, sir, how long have you felt yourself so desperately disposed to admire the ladies of Germany?" This was an allusion to Queen Charlotte, whom Burke's particular friends had long regarded as one of their impediments to power. He proceeds—"The mischief you are going to do yourself, is to my apprehension, palpable. It is visible. It will be audible. I snuff it in the wind. I taste it already. I feel it in every sense; and so will you hereafter." This letter certainly wants the polish of Junius, but it has the power of bitter thought, and it sneers with practised piquancy. Of course, a broad line is to be drawn between a work of study and the work of the moment—between the elaborate vigour which prunes and purifies every straggling shoot away, and exhibits its production for a prize-show, and the careless luxuriance which suffers the tree to throw out its shoots under no direction, but that of the prolific power of nature. Yet the plant is the same, and though we by no means say, that even this letter gives demonstration, yet the arrogant ease of the style is such, as we should have expected to find in the familiar correspondence of Junius. His letter obviously excited in Burke a mixture of pain and indignation.
He answered it the next day in a long and eloquent vindication which was oddly enough inclosed in a letter from his son, scarcely less than menacing. It begins—"My dear sir, You must conceive that your letter, combating many old ideas of my father's, and proposing many new ones, could not fail to set his mind at work, and to make him address the effect of those operations to you. I must, therefore, entreat you not to draw him aside from the many and great labours he has in hand, byany further written communications of this kind, which would, indeed, be very useful, because they are valuable, if they were conveyed at a time when there was leisure to settle opinions." Those are hard hits at the critic, but harder were still to come. "There is one thing of which I must inform you. It is, that my father's opinions are never hastily adopted, and that even those ideas which have often appeared to me only the effect of momentary heat, or casual impression, I have afterwards found, beyond a possibility of doubt, to be the result of systematic meditation, perhaps of years. * * * * The thing, I say, is a paradox, butwhen we talk of things superior to ourselves, what is not paradox?"
He strikes harder still. "When we say, that one man is wiser than another, we allow that the wiser man forms his opinions upon grounds and principles which, though to him justly conclusive, cannot be comprehended and received byhim who is less wise. To be wise, is only to see deeper, and further, and differentlyfrom others."
Yet this strong rebuke, which was followed by a long letter from Burke himself, half indignant, half argumentative, does not seem to have disturbed the temper of Francis, proverbially petulant as he was, if it did not rather raise his respect for both parties. He tells Burke, in a subsequent letter, that he has looked for his work, hisReflections on the Revolution, with great impatience, and read it with studious delight. He proceeds—"My dear Mr Burke, when I took what is vulgarly called the liberty of opposing my thoughts and wishes to thepublicationof yours, on the late transactions in France, I do assure you that I was not moved so much by a difference of opinion on the subject, as byan apprehension of the personal uneasiness which, one way or other, I thought you would suffer by it. I know that virtue would be useless, if it were not active, and that it can rarely be active without exciting the most malignant of all enmity, that in which envy predominates, and which, having no injury to complain of, has no ostensible motive either to resent or to forgive." (How like Junius is all this! The likeness is still stronger as it proceeds.) "I have not yet had it in my power to read more than one third of your book. I must taste it deliberately. The flavour is too high—the wine is too rich; I cannot take a draught of it." In another passage he gives a powerful sketch of popery. In speaking of the French monarchy, and its presumed mildness in the last century, he attributes the cessation of its severities to the European change of manners. "We do not pillage and massacre quite so furiously as our ancestors used to do. Why? Because these nations are more enlightened—because the Christian religion is,de facto, not in force in the world! Suspect me not of meaning the Christian religion of thegospel. I mean that which was enforced, rather than taught, by priests, by bishops, and by cardinals; which laid waste a province, and then formed a monastery; which, after destroying a great portion of the human species, provided, as far as it could, for the utter extinction of future population, by instituting numberless retreats for celibacy; which set up an ideal being called the Church, capable of possessing property of all sorts for the pious use of its ministers, incapable of alienating, and whose property its usufructuaries very wisely said it should be sacrilege to invade; that religion, in short, which was practised, or professed, and with great zeal too, by tyrants and villains of every denomination."
These volumes show, in a strong light, the energy with which Burke watched over his party in the House of Commons, and the importance of his guardianship. He seems to have been called on for his advice in all great transactions, and to have watched over its interests during the period of Fox's absence. In 1788 the mental illness of George III. became decided, and the prospect of a regency with the Prince of Wales at its head, awoke all the long excluded ambition of the Whigs. Fox was at that period in Italy, and he was sent for by express to lead the party in the assault on office. He immediately turned his face to England, and arrived on the 24th of November, four days after the meeting of Parliament, which had, however, immediately adjourned to the fourth of the following month, for the purpose of ascertaining the health of his majesty. On this occasion Burke addressed to Fox a long and powerful letter, marking out the line which the parties should take, giving his opinion with singular distinctness, and expressing himself in the tone of one who felt his authority. He begins—"My dear Fox, If I have not been to see you before this time, it was not owing to my not having missed you in your absence, or my not having much rejoiced in your return. But I know that you are indifferent to every thing in friendship but the substance, and all proceedings of ceremony have, for many years, been out of the question between you and me." In allusion to the probable formation of a new ministry, he observes—"I do not think that a great deal of time is allowed you. Perhaps it is not for your interest that this state of things should continue long, even supposing that the exigencies of government should suffer it to remain on its present footing; but I speak without book. I remember a story of Fitzpatrick in his American campaign, that he used to say to the officers who were in the same tent, before they were up, that the only meals they had to consider how they were to procure for that day, were breakfast, dinner, and supper. I am worse off; for there are five meals necessary, and I do not know at present how to feel secure of one of them. The king, the prince, the Lords, the Commons, and the People." He then urges a bold line of policy—the public examination of the physicians, the acting independently of the ministers, and a movement on the part of the prince worthy of his station; but which, unhappily for the Whigs, was neither adopted by Fox, nor was consistent with the courtly indolence ofthe future king. "Might it not be better," says Burke boldly, "for the prince at once to assure himself, to communicate the king's melancholy state by a message to the Houses, and to desire their counsel and support in such an exigency? It would put him forward with advantage in the eyes of the people; it would teach them to look upon him with respect, as a person possessed of the spirit of command; and it would, I am persuaded, stifle a hundred cabals, both in parliament and elsewhere, which, if they were cherished by his apparent remissness and indecision, would produce to him a vexatious and disgraceful regency and reign."
Lord Thurlow seems, in some way or other, to have given offence to every remarkable man of his day. At once crafty and insolent, he toiled for power with an indefatigable labour, as he indulged his sense of authority by an intolerable arrogance. Among the multitude of distinguished men whom this legal savage irritated, was Sir William Jones, the Orientalist. He thus writes to Burke, "I heard last night, with surprise and affliction, that theΘηριον(the wild-beast—Thurlow) was to continue in office. Now, I can assure you, from my own positive knowledge, and I know him well, that though he hates our species in general, yet his particular hatred is directed against none more virulently, than against Lord North, and the friends of the late excellent marquis. He will, indeed, make fair promises, and enter into engagements, because he is the most interested of mortals; but his ferocity in opposing the Contractors' Bill, may convince you how little he thinks himself bound by hiscompacts. He will take a delight in obstructing all your plans, and will never say, 'Aha, I am satisfied,' until he has overthrown you. In fact, you will not be ministers, but tenants by copy of court-roll at the will of the lord. If you remove him, and put the seal in commission, his natural indolence is such, that he will give you little trouble, because he will give himself none; but, if he continue among you, his great joy will be, and you may rely upon my intelligence, to attack the reports of your select committee, to support all those whom you condemn, and to condemn all the measures which you may support. In a word, ifCalibanremain in power, there will be no Prospero in this fascinated island."
At this period, Jones was panting for an Indian judgeship, which he obtained shortly after, and proceeded to Calcutta. It may be doubted, whether his career would not have been happier and loftier had he remained at home. His indefatigable diligence must have soon conquered the difficulties of legal knowledge, and his early intercourse with the leading men of his time, would, in the common course of things, have raised him to distinction. He died at forty-seven, too early to accomplish any work of solid utility, but not too early to spread his reputation through Europe, for an extraordinary proficiency in the languages of India. Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge, and nothing can be more probable, than that attainment ofmanylanguages, with any approach to their fluent use, is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary, his memory retentive, and his understanding accomplished by classical knowledge; with those qualities, much might be done in any pursuit; and though modern orientalists protest against the superficiality of his acquirements, their variety has been admitted, and still remain unrivaled.
Jones had his fits of despondency, like less fortunate men, and concludes his letter, by intimating a speculation, not unlike that of Burke himself in his earlier time:—"As for me, I should either settle as a lawyer at Philadelphia, whither I have been invited, or retire on my small independence to Oxford; if I had not in England a very strong attachment, and many dear friends."
One of Burke's most anxious efforts was to make his son Richard a statesman. The efforts were unsuccessful. Richard was a good son, and willing to second the desires of his father; but nature had decided otherwise, and he remained honest and amiable, but without advancing a step. Burke first sent him on a kind of semi-embassy to the headquarters of the emigrant princes at Coblentz, and hethere carried on a semi-negotiation. But success was not to be the fate of any thing connected with these unfortunate men, and failure was scarcely a demerit, from its universality. The next experiment was sending him as a species of private envoy to the Irish Roman Catholics; but there his failure was even more conspicuous, though perhaps it was equally inevitable. Burke's imagination was at once his unrivaled gift and his perpetual impediment. Like a lover, his eye was no sooner caught, than he invested its charmer with all conceivable attractions. This susceptibility made him irresistible in a cause worthy of his powers, but plunged him into difficulties where the object was inferior to his capacity, and unworthy of his heart. His early admiration of Fox, of Whiggism, and Reform, was the rapture of an innamorato. He could discover no defects; he disdained all doubts as a dishonourable scepticism, and challenged all obstacles, as evidences of his energy, and trophies of his success. His prosecution of Hastings, a bold piece of patriot honesty, rapidly fermented into a splendid blunder. The culprit, who ought to have been tried at the Old Bailey, was elevated into a national criminal; and the assembled majesty of the legislature was summoned to settle a case in the lapse of years, which would have been decided in a day by "twelve good men and true," in a box in the city. It was in this ardour of spirit that he adopted the Romish cause. No man knew more thoroughly the measureless value of an established church, the endless, causeless, and acrid bitterness of sectarianism, and the mixture of unlearned doctrine and factious politics which constitute their creeds. Against Popery in power, Italian, German, or French, in the days of Louis Quatorze, he would have pledged himself on the ancestral altar to perpetual hostility. But the romance of popery in Ireland struck his fancy; he saw nothing but a figure drooping with long travel in pursuit of privilege; a pious pilgrim, or exhausted giant. Sitting in his closet at Beconsfield, he pictured the downcast eyes and dishevelled hair; the limbs loaded with fetters, and the hands help up in remediless supplication. He grew enamoured of his portraiture, and without waiting a moment to enquire whether it in the slightest degree resembled the reality, he volunteered the championship of Irish popery. His son was commissioned to represent him in this disastrous connexion. But Richard, once on the spot, was instantly and completely undeceived. Instead of his "fair penitent," he found a brawny, bustling Thalestris, wild as the winds, and fierce with the intoxication of impunity. The mild temperament of the plodding missionary was baffled, burlesqued, and thrown into fever: he laboured with humble diligence, but laboured in vain; he talked of conciliation, while popery talked of conquest; he proposed concession, while faction shouted triumph; and, when he suggested the suppression of the old and sharp acerbities of the sects, he was answered by universal laughter.
Burke, awakened at last to the truth of things, recalled him, in a long despatch, concluding in these words—"If you find the Roman Catholicsirreconcilable with each other, and that government is resolved to side with them, or rather, to direct those whowould betray the rest, then, my clear opinion is, that you ought not to wait the playing thelast card of a losing hand. It would be disreputable to you. But when you have given your instruction to thevery fewin whom you can place confidence for theirfuture temperateand persevering proceeding, that you will then, with acoolandsteady dignity, take your leave." So ended the attempt of this man of genius and sensibility to guide an Irish faction in the paths of public tranquillity. He had forgotten that clamour was their livelihood, and grievance their stock in trade. In the simplicity of a noble spirit, he had eloquently implored quacks to take their degrees and follow practice, and solemnly advised travelling showmen not to disturb the public ear by the braying of their cracked trumpets, and he succeeded accordingly. Great as he unquestionably was, he could not make bricks without straw; and after wondering at the perversity of fortune, and lavishing his indignant soul on a hundred splendid perplexities touching the nature of politiciansin general, and of Irish politicians in particular, he gave up Ireland as a problem too profound for his analysis, and to be postponed till the discovery of the philosopher's stone.
Richard remained in Ireland for a few months, until he saw the Romish petition thrown out in the House of Commons by an immense majority. He then returned to London, and with the rather forward air of an accredited minister, applied for an interview with the ministry. He was answered by a prompt note from Dundas, sarcastically informing him that there was a viceroy in Ireland, whom his Majesty's government had sent there for the purpose of transacting public business; that they considered him a very proper person for the purpose, and that, in consequence, they saw no positive necessity for managing Irish affairs through any other. "If," says this quiet rebuff, "any of his Majesty's Catholic subjects have any request or representation which they wish to lay before his Majesty, they cannot be at a loss for the means of doing so, in a mannermuchmoreproperandauthentic, than through the channel of private conversation. Having stated this to you, I shall forbearmaking any observations on the contentsof your letter."
On the 2d of August, 1794, his favourite son died, and Burke received the blow with the feelings of one, who regarded the hand of destiny as uplifted against him. His excessive sensibility was agonized by an event melancholy in its nature to all, but which a wise man will regard as the will of the Great Disposer, and a religious man will believe to be a chastisement in mercy.
Burke was both wise and religious, but his feelings habitually bewildered him. All the images of desolation rushed across his creative mind. He was "an uprooted tree," a stream whose course was swallowed up by an earthquake, a wanderer in the wilderness of the world, a man struck down by a thunderbolt! From those fearful fantasies, however, the emergency of public affairs soon summoned him to the exercise of his noble powers; and he gave his country and the world, perhaps the most powerful, certainly the most superb and imaginative, of all his works, the fiery pamphlets on the "regicide peace."
On this unhappy occasion for the condolence of friendship, he received many tributes; but we cannot help quoting one from the celebrated Grattan, which, though characterized by the peculiarities of his style, seems to us a model of tenderness and beauty.
"August 26, 1794.
"My Dear Sir,"May I be permitted to sympathize where I cannot presume to console."The misfortunes of your family are a public care. The late one is to me a personal loss. I have a double right to affliction, and to join my grief, and to express my deep and cordial concern at that hideous stroke which has deprived me of a friend, you of a son, and your country of a promise that would communicate to posterity the living blessings of your genius and your virtue. Your friends may now condole with you, that you should have now no other prospect of immortality than that which is common to Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there exists the beauty of order, or the love of virtue, and can fear no death except what barbarity may impose on the globe."If the same strength of reason which could persuade any other man to bear any misfortune, can administer to the proprietor a few drops of comfort, we may hope that your condition admits of relief. The greatest possible calamity which can be imposed on man, we hope may be supported by the greatest human understanding. For comfort, your friends must refer you to the exercise of its faculties, and to the contemplation of its gigantic proportions—Dura solatia—of which nothing can deprive you while you live. And, though death should mow down every thing about you, and plunder you of your domestic existence, you would still be the owner of a conscious superiority in life, and immortality after it.—I am, my dear sir, with the highest respect and regard,
"My Dear Sir,
"May I be permitted to sympathize where I cannot presume to console.
"The misfortunes of your family are a public care. The late one is to me a personal loss. I have a double right to affliction, and to join my grief, and to express my deep and cordial concern at that hideous stroke which has deprived me of a friend, you of a son, and your country of a promise that would communicate to posterity the living blessings of your genius and your virtue. Your friends may now condole with you, that you should have now no other prospect of immortality than that which is common to Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there exists the beauty of order, or the love of virtue, and can fear no death except what barbarity may impose on the globe.
"If the same strength of reason which could persuade any other man to bear any misfortune, can administer to the proprietor a few drops of comfort, we may hope that your condition admits of relief. The greatest possible calamity which can be imposed on man, we hope may be supported by the greatest human understanding. For comfort, your friends must refer you to the exercise of its faculties, and to the contemplation of its gigantic proportions—Dura solatia—of which nothing can deprive you while you live. And, though death should mow down every thing about you, and plunder you of your domestic existence, you would still be the owner of a conscious superiority in life, and immortality after it.—I am, my dear sir, with the highest respect and regard,
"Yours most truly,"H.Grattan."
We must hastily conclude.
The threatened ruin of Europe awakened Burke from this reverie at the tomb of his son. He required strong stimulants, and in the French Revolution, and the shock of nations,he found them. He now put the trumpet to his lips, and
"Blew a blast so loud and dread,Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe."
His appeal pierced to the heart of the nation. England had neversuccumbed, but an indefatigable faction had played every art of quackery to set her faculties asleep, with the appearance of having her eyes more open than ever. Whiggism, by its tricks, wasmesmerisingthe common sense of the country. From this adventitious torpor Burke recalled her to her natural temperament, restored sight to her eyes, taught her to resume the sword, and sent her forth to commence that career of victory which was consummated in the Tuilleries.
His advocacy of the Popish question was one of his romances. Popery was his "Jane Shore," fainting and feeble, wandering through the highways with those delicate limbs which had once been arrayed in silk and velvet, and soliciting the "charity of all good Christians" to her fallen condition. His nature was chivalric, and he at once unsheathed his sword for so affecting a specimen of penitence and pauperism; but he soon recovered from this hazardous compassion, and left the pilgrim to fitter protectors. But if he had lived till our day, what would Burke have thought of his delusion now? with what self-ridicule must he not have looked upon the burlesque grievances and the profitable privations? what an instructive lesson must not his powerful scorn of charlatanry have given to us, on the display of the whole system of sleight-of-hand, the popular cups and balls, the low dexterity and the rabble plunder? or, to sum all in one word, the reduction of all the claims, the rights, and the efforts of a party pronouncing itself national, to the collection of an annual tribute; the whole huge and rattling machinery of popular agitation, grinding simply for the "rint." How would this lion of the desert, shaking the forest with his roar, have looked on Jackoo, going round, shaking the penny box! Woe be to Jackoo if he had come within reach of his talons!
The volumes, of which we have given an account altogether too brief and too rapid for their importance, deserve to be studied, as containing some of the richest transcripts of the richest mind of England. Letters from various eminent persons diversify them, but the staple is Burke. If their style seldom rises to the elated ardour and buoyant strength of his speeches and pamphlets, they exhibit all his wisdom; they display the entire depth of that current which public difficulties and obstructions swelled into a cataract. We have the image of Burke reposing, but still we have all the proportion, all the dignity, and all the colossal grandeur of the form, ruling senates, and marshaling the mind of nations for the greatest of their fields.
Various notes illustrate the volumes, and the edition does every credit to Lord Fitzwilliam and General Bourke.
A heavy snow-storm, which confined Chesterton and myself pretty much to the walls of the college for the next few days, prevented us from paying our friend Brown a visit in his new quarters so soon after his installation as we intended. When we did succeed in wading there upon the commencement of a thaw, we found him rather sulky. The sweets of retirement had become somewhat doubtful; the Grange was certainly not the place one would have deliberately chosen to be snowed up in; and so far John was unfortunate in his first week of commencing hermit.
We found him in full possession of his easy chair, with Bruin extended on the only piece of carpeting in the room, which did duty as a hearth-rug. There was a volume of Sophocles open upon the table, with a watch on one side of it; the Quarterly Review had not at that time taken upon itself to enlighten undergraduates as to their real state of mind, and the secrets of successful reading, or there would doubtless have been the miniature of some fair girl on the other. (What the effect of such "companions to the classics" may be in general, I perhaps am no judge. I detest "fair girls," in the first place; but I have not yet forgotten, if the reader has, that a pair ofdarkeyes were the ruin of three months' reading in my own case.) However, there was no pictured face, except the watch-face, to cheer the studies of John Brown; and, perhaps, for that reason, our friend had evidently been asleep. How very glad he was to see us, was betrayed immediately by the copious abuse which he showered on us for not having come before.
"Why, what an unreasonable fellow you are!" said Chesterton; "If you wanted to see us, why on earth could'nt you come up to college? We can manage to keep the cold out there, quite as well as in your old castle here, I fancy; and as neither of us are web-footed any more than yourself, I don't really see why we are to do all the dabbling about this precious weather."
"Oh! I forgot; you have not seen the little note of remembrance which our darling dons were kind enough to send me before they broke up for the vacation?"
"No—what do you mean?"
"Oh! I'll find it for you in a moment." And he produced a letter sealed with the college arms, which ran as follows:—
"——Coll. Common Room,Dec. —, 18—.
"The principal and fellows regret to be under the unpleasant necessity of intimating to Mr Brown, that, although they do not feel called upon to notice his having fixed his residence in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford—a step, which, under the circumstances, they cannot look upon as otherwise than ill-judged—he must consider himself strictly prohibited from appearing within the college walls at any time during the ensuing vacation."
"The principal and fellows regret to be under the unpleasant necessity of intimating to Mr Brown, that, although they do not feel called upon to notice his having fixed his residence in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford—a step, which, under the circumstances, they cannot look upon as otherwise than ill-judged—he must consider himself strictly prohibited from appearing within the college walls at any time during the ensuing vacation."
"Now there's a civil card by way of P.P.C. Don't you call that a spiteful concoction? Silver and Hodgett's last—and worthy of them. So now, unless you want me to be rusticated for a term or two, you need not be over-civil in your invitations. But I'll tell you what you shall do: Hawthorne shall send over that box of Silvas he had just opened, (if they are good, you shall order some more,) and I'll keep that Westphalia you talked about here, if you like, Chesterton; and then you may come here to breakfast, lunch, or supper, if you please—but mind, I won't give you dinners; I'm not going to have Mrs Nutt put upon—or myself either."
We agreed to the terms with some modifications, and proceeded with some interest to inspect John's domestic arrangements. They were comfortable, though in some points peculiar. A sort of stand in one corner, covered with red baise, which supported a plaster bust of our most gracious majesty, and gave an air of mock grandeur to the apartment, proved, upon nearer inspection, to be nothing more or less than a barrel of Hall and Tawney's ale, an old-fashioned cabinet, once gay with lacquered gold and colours, which the industrious rubbings of Mrs Nutt and her hand-maid were fast effacing—the depository perhaps of carefully penned love-missives, and broidered gloves, jewels, and perfumes, and suchlike shreds and patches of feminine taste or trickery, in other times—now served as a resting-place for the heterogeneous treasures of a bachelor's private cupboard. Cigars and captain's biscuits, open letters and unpaid bills, packs of cards and lecture note-books; odd gloves, odd pence, and odd things of all kinds—these filled the drawers: while, from the lower recesses, our friend, in course of time, produced a decanter of port and a Stilton. There was an old-fashioned sofa, one of that stiff-backed, hard-hearted generation, which no man thinks of sitting down upon twice, and three or four of those comfortable high-backed arm-chairs, in which, when once fairly seated, in pleasant company, one never wishes to get up again; a round oak table occupied the space opposite the fire, and another in one corner held the few books which formed John Brown's studies at the present. One window looked into the wet meadows by which the house was nearly surrounded, and the other commanded a view of the square inclosure before mentioned as now forming the farm-yard—in former days the inner court of the mansion.
"Why, Brown, old fellow, you're quite a lively look-out here," said Chesterton, who had for some minutes been contemplating, apparently with much interest, the goings on below. "I wish they kept pigs and chickens in the college quadrangle. I declare, for the last three days, in this horrid snow, I've watched for hours out of my window, (that fellow Hawthorne has taken to reading, and sports oak against me till luncheon time,) and I hav'n't seen a moving creature. I began to fancy myself up in the Great St Bernard among the monks; and when that brute of yours came up and howled at my door the other day, I almost expected to find him carrying a frozen child on his back, and got out the cherry brandy to be ready for the worst—didn't I, Hawthorne?"
"I found you one day with Bruin shivering before the fire, and the cherry brandy on the table, certainly."
"Well, that's the explanation of it, I assure you. But you must have found it precious dull shut up here by yourself, Brown?"
"Why, yes—rather—sometimes—in spite of the pigs and poultry. Their proceedings are rather monotonous. I feed that brood of chickens, which have taken upon themselves to come into the world this unnatural weather, with bread-crumbs out of my window twice a-day. Ah! I see the old hen has only four to-day; one is gone since yesterday, and one the day before; there's consumption in the family, that's plain; and they have always wet feet; I want Mrs Nutt to make them worsted socks, and to let me put Burgundy pitch-plasters on their throats, but she won't."
"But come," said Chesterton, "suppose you give us some lunch, Brown; 'prome reconditum Cæcubum'—(I'm getting desperately classical;) that is, being freely translated—lift up that red baise drapery of yours, and let's taste the tap."
The tap was tasted, and approved of; so was the Stilton: and then we sat over the fire for an hour, and smoked some of the Silvas: then we paid a visit to Mrs Nutt in herpenetralia, and astonished her with our acquaintance with dairy matters; hazarded a criticism or two upon the pigs, which were well received, and were not so fortunate in our attempts to cultivate an intimacy with the incorruptible Boxer; and then set off on our return to Oxford, persuading Brown to start with us, as the afternoon was fine, in order to freshen his faculties by a stroll in the High Street.
Shorn, indeed, of all the glories of a full term, in which it had so lately shone, and looking doubly cold, cheerless, and deserted, in all the sloppy dirtiness of half-melted snow, was that never-equalled, and never-to-be-forgotten street! which the stranger gazes on with somewhat of an envious admiration, the freshman with an awful kind of delight—which the departing bachelor of arts quits with a half-concealed regret, and which the occasionally-returning master re-enters with feelings which are perhaps a mixture of all these; a stranger's admiration, an emancipated school-boy's delight, and a regret, either mellowed by passing years into a tender recollection, or blunted into indifference by altered habits, or embitteredby severed ties and disappointed hopes. We strolled once up and down its long sweep, but there was nothing to invite a longer promenade. Cigar-dealers stood at their shop-doors, or leaned over their counters, with their hands in their breeches-pockets, smoking their own genuine Havannahs in desperate independence: here a livery-stable keeper, with a couple of questionable friends, rattled a tandem over the stones, as if such things never were let out at two guineas a-day: then a fishmonger, whose wide front, but a week before, teemed with such quantity and quality, as spoke audibly to every passer-by of bursary dinners and passing suppers, was now soliciting a customer to take his choice of three lank cod-fish, ticketed at so much per lb. Billiard-rooms were silent, save where a solitary marker practised impossible strokes: print-shops exhibited a dull uniformity of stale engravings; and the innumerable horde of mongrel puppies of all varieties, that, particularly towards the end of term, are dragged about three or four in a string, and recommended as real Blenheims, genuine King Charles's, or "one of old Webb's black and tan, real good uns for rats"—had disappeared from public life, to come out again, possibly, as Oxford sausages.
In this kind of way the three first weeks of the vacation passed over without any very notable occurences. We were quiet enough in college—there is no fun in two men kicking up a row for the amusement of each other; even in the eye of the law three are required to constitute a riot; so, on the strength of our good characters, albeit somewhat recent of acquisition, we dined two or three times with the fellows who were still in residence, and who, to do them justice, sank a point or so from the usual stiffness of the common room, and made our evenings agreeable enough. We certainly flattered ourselves, that if they found us in turbot and champagne, we contributed at least our share to the more intellectual part of the entertainment; we kept within due bounds, of course, and never overstepped that respect which young men are usually the more willing to pay to age and station the less rigidly it is exacted; but we made the old oak pannels ring with such hearty laughter as they seldom heard; and the pictures of founders and benefactors might have longed to come down from their frames to welcome even the shadow of those good old times when sound learning and hearty good fellowship were not, as now, hereditary enemies in Oxford. If my graver companions, from the calm dignity of collegiate office, deign to look back upon the evenings thus spent with two undergraduates in a Christmas vacation, when, unbending from the formal and conventional dulness of term and its duties, they interchanged with us anecdote and jest, and mingled with the sparkling imaginations of youth the reminiscences of riper years—I am sure they will have no cause to regret their share in those not ungraceful saturnalia, even though they may remember that the hour at which we separated was not always what we used to call "canonical."
We paid our friend almost daily visits in his banishment. The history of the expedition was generally the same; a walk out, a lunch, a cigar or two, a chat with farmer Nutt or his wife, a review of the last litter of pigs, or an enquiry as to the increasing muster-roll of lambs. We did not make much progress in farming matters. Chesterton was the most enterprising, and succeeded in ploughing a furrow in that kind of line which heralds call wavy, and would, as he declared, have made a very fair hand of thrashing, if he could but have hit the sheaf oftener, and his own head not quite so often. The most important events that took place during this time at the Grange, were the installation of a successor to the barrel in the corner, and the catching of an enormous rat, who had escaped poison and traps to be snapped up in broad daylight, in an unguarded moment by Bruin. Still John Brown declared that on the whole he got on very well; we all read moderately; the examination was too near to be trifled with, and an occasional gallop with the harriers made our only really idle days.
We had not, since our first visit, heard John recur at all to the subject of the Dean; and to say the truth, we began to hope for his sake, thathe had given up a game which, however much longer it might be contested, had evidently begun to be a losing one on his part. But we were mistaken. We found him one morning in high spirits, and evidently in possession of some joke which he was anxious to impart.
"Shut the door and sit down," said he, before we were fairly within his premises. "I have a letter to show you."
"From the Dean?" (There was something in his manner, which made us sure that personage was concerned in some way.)
"No; but from his good mamma—from dear old Mrs Hodgett; you didn't know we were correspondents? Why, I wrote to her, you see, to ask where she lived now that she had resigned business, as I would not on any account have given up so valuable an acquaintance; and I begged her, at the same time, to order me a dozen pair of stockings from Mogg. (I assure you they were capital articles I had from him at first, and he's a very honest fellow; if you've sent that sparkling Moselle here to-day that you promised, Master Harry, we'll drink Mogg's very good health.) Well, I wrote to her, and here is her answer. You see Hodgett has been poisoning the old lady's mind."
I cannot give all John Brown's comments upon worthy Mrs Hodgett's epistle, without doing him great injustice in the recital; but here the contents are verbatim.