CHAPTER XXV.

I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone—abroad—to fetch his

daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son

still—there as here? My father has finished the first portion of his

work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some time has been

looking melancholy, and who now seldom stirs out, except on Sundays, (on

which days we all meet at my father’s and dine together)—Uncle Jack, I

say, has undertaken to sell it.

“Don’t be over sanguine,” says Uncle Jack, as he locks up the MS. in two

red boxes with a slit in the lids, which belonged to one of the defunct

companies. “Don’t be over sanguine as to the price. These publishers

never venture much on a first experiment. They must be talked even into

looking at the book.”

“Oh!” said my father, “if they will publish it at all, and at their own

risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. ‘Nothing great,’ said

Dryden, ‘ever came from a venal pen!’”

“An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden’s,” returned Uncle Jack:

“he ought to have known better.”

“So he did,” said I, “for he used his pen to fill his pockets—poor man!”

“But the pen was not venal, master Anachronism,” said my father. “A

baker is not to be called venal if he sells his loaves—he is venal if he

sells himself: Dryden only sold his loaves.”

“And we must sell yours,” said Uncle Jack emphatically. “A thousand

pounds a volume will be about the mark, eh?”

“A thousand pounds a volume?” cried my father. “Gibbon, I fancy, did not

receive more.”

“Very likely; Gibbon had not an Uncle Jack to look after his interests,”

said Mr Tibbets, laughing, and rubbing those smooth hands of his. “No!

two thousand pounds the two volumes!—a sacrifice, but still I recommend

moderation.”

“I should be happy, indeed, if the book brought in any thing,” said my

father, evidently fascinated—“for that young gentleman is rather

expensive; and you, my dear Jack;—perhaps half the sum may be of use to

you!”

“To me! my dear brother,” cried Uncle Jack—“to me! why, when my new

speculation has succeeded, I shall be a millionnaire!”

“Have you a new speculation, Uncle?” said I anxiously. “What is it?”

“Mum!” said my uncle, putting his finger to his lip, and looking all

round the room—“Mum!! Mum!!!”

PISISTRATUS.—“A Grand National Company for blowing up both Houses of

Parliament!”

MR CAXTON.—“Upon my life, I hope something newer than that; for they, to

judge by the newspapers, don’t want brother Jack’s assistance to blow up

each other!”

UNCLE JACK, mysteriously.—“Newspapers! you don’t often read a newspaper,

Austin Caxton!”

MR CAXTON.—“Granted, John Tibbets!”

UNCLE JACK.—“But if my speculation made you read a newspaper every day?”

MR CAXTON, astounded.—“Made me read a newspaper every day!”

UNCLE JACK, warming, and expanding his hands to the fire.—“As big as the

Times!”

MR CAXTON, uneasily.—“Jack, you alarm me!”

UNCLE JACK.—“And make you write in it, too,—a leader!”

MR CAXTON, pushing back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his

command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek.—“Τους μεν

γαρ ειναι χαλεπους, ὁσε λαι ανθροποφαγειν!”[7]

UNCLE JACK, nothing daunted.—“Ay, and put as much Greek as you like into

it!”

MR CAXTON, relieved, and softening.—“My dear Jack, you are a great

man,—let us hear you!”

Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that

this illustrious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His

speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel,

considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made

him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am

convinced, make a man’s fortune one of these days; and I relate it with

a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then, it

was nothing less than setting up a daily paper on the plan of the Times,

but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science—_Mental_ Progress

in short; I say on the plan of the Times, for it was to imitate the

mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary

Salmoneus of the political Jupiter: and rattle its thunder over the

bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the

globe; every thing that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the

labour of a missionary in the South Sea islands, or the research of a

traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to the last new

novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek particle at a

German university, was to find a place in this focus of light. It was to

amuse, to instruct, to interest—there was nothing it was not to do. Not

a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms, not

only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was

not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most

crotchety member of the intellectual community might find his own hobby

in those stables.

“Think,” cried Uncle Jack—“think of the march of mind—think of the

passion for cheap knowledge—think how little quarterly, monthly, weekly

journals can keep pace with the main wants of the age. As well have a

weekly journal on politics, as a-weekly journal on all the matters still

more interesting than politics to the mass of the public. My Literary

Times once started, people will wonder how they had ever lived without

it! Sir, they have not lived without it—they have vegetated—they have

lived in holes and caves like the Troggledikes.”

“Troglodytes,” said my father mildly—“from _trogle_, a cave—and _dumi_,

to go under. They lived in Ethiopia, and had their wives in common.”

“As to the last point, I don’t say that the Public, poor creatures, are

as bad as that,” said Uncle Jack candidly; “but no simile holds good in

all its points. And the public are not less Troggledummies, or whatever

you call them, compared with what they will be when living under the

full light of my Literary Times. Sir, it will be a revolution in the

world. It will bring literature out of the clouds into the parlour, the

cottage, the kitchen. The idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find

something to her taste; the busiest man of the mart and counter will

find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The practical man will

see the progress of divinity, medicine, nay, even law. Sir, the Indian

will read me under the banyan; I shall be in the seraglios of the East;

and over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calumet of peace.

We shall reduce politics to its proper level in the affairs of

life—raise literature to its due place in the thoughts and business of

men. It is a grand thought; and my heart swells with pride while I

contemplate it!”

“My dear Jack,” said my father, seriously, and rising with emotion, “it

_is_ a grand thought, and I honour you for it! You are quite right—it

would be a revolution! It would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my

life, I should be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, you

will immortalise yourself!”

“I believe I shall,” said Uncle Jack, modestly; “but I have not said a

word yet on the greatest attraction of all—”

“Ah! and that—”

“THE ADVERTISEMENTS!” cried my uncle, spreading his hands, with all the

fingers at angles, like the threads of a spider’s web. “The

advertisements—oh, think of them!—a perfect _El Dorado_. The

advertisements, sir, on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in

£50,000 a-year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry, you are my

heir. Embrace me!”

So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and squeezed out of

breath the prudential demur that was rising to my lips.

My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, faltered out—“And it is

_my_ brother who will pay back to _his_ son all, all he gave up for me!”

While my father walked to and fro’ the room, more excited than ever I

saw him before, muttering,—“A sad useless dog I have been hitherto! I

should like to serve the world! I should indeed!”

Uncle Jack had fairly done it this time! He had found out the only bait

in the world to catch so shy a carp as my father—“_hæret lethalis

arundo_.” I saw that the deadly hook was within an inch of my father’s

nose, and that he was gazing at it with a fixed determination to

swallow.

But if it amused my father? Boy that I was, I saw no further. I must own

I myself was dazzled, and perhaps, with childlike malice, delighted at

the perturbation of my betters. The young carp was pleased to see the

waters so playfully in movement, when the old carp waved his tail, and

swayed himself on his fins.

“Mum!” said Uncle Jack, releasing me: “not a word to Mr Trevanion, to

any one.”

“But why?”

“Why? God bless my soul. Why? If my scheme gets wind, do you suppose

some one will not clap on sail to be before me? You frighten me out of

my senses. Promise me faithfully to be silent as the grave—”

“I should like to hear Trevanion’s opinion too—”

“As well hear the town-crier! Sir, I have trusted to your honour. Sir,

at the domestic hearth all secrets are sacred. Sir, I—”

“My dear Uncle Jack, you have said quite enough. Not a word will I

breathe!”

“I’m sure you may trust him, Jack,” said my mother.

“And I do trust him—with wealth untold,” replied my uncle. “May I ask

you for a little water—with a trifle of brandy in it—and a biscuit, or

indeed a sandwich. This talking makes me quite hungry.”

My eye fell upon Uncle Jack as he spoke. Poor Uncle Jack, he had grown

thin!

LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE II.[8]

It has been the fortune of England to have undergone more revolutions

than any other kingdom of Europe. Later periods have made Revolution

synonymous with popular violence; but the more effectual revolution is

that which, being required by the necessities of a people, is directed

by the national judgment. It is not the convulsion of a tempest, which,

if it purifies the air, strips the soil; it is a change, not of

temperature but of the seasons, gradual but irresistible; it is a great

operation of moral Nature, in every change preparing for the more

abundant provision of public prosperity.

It is an equally remarkable contrast to the condition of other kingdoms,

that while their popular revolutions have almost always plunged the

country into confusion, and been ultimately rectified only by the

salutary despotism of some powerful master, the hazards of our

revolutions have chiefly originated in personal ambition, and have been

reduced to order by popular sentiment.

The Reformation was the first _great_ revolution of England: it formed

the national circle of light and darkness. All beyond it was civil war,

arbitrary power, and popular wretchedness—all within it has been

progress, growing vigour, increasing illumination, and more systematic

liberty. Like the day, it had its clouds; but the sun was still above,

ready to shine through their first opening. That sun has not yet stooped

from its meridian, and will go down, only when we forget to honour the

Beneficence and the power which commanded it to shine.

The accession of the Hanoverian line was one of those peaceful

revolutions—it closed the era of Jacobitism. The reign of Anne had

vibrated between the principles of the constitution and the principles

of Charles II. Never was a balance more evenly poised, than the fate of

freedom against the return to arbitrary power. Anne herself was a

Jacobite—she had all the superstition of “Divine right.” By her nature

she had the infirmities of the convent. She was evidently fitter to be

an abbess than a queen: a character of frigidness and formality

designated her for the cloister; and if the Hanoverian succession had

not been palpably prepared before the national eye, to ascend the throne

at the moment when the royal coffin sank into the vault, England might

have seen the profligate son of James dealing out vengeance through a

corrupted or terrified legislature; the Reformation extinguished by the

Inquisitor; the jesuit at the royal ear, mass in Westminster Abbey, and

the scaffold the instrument of conversion to the supremacy of Rome.

The expulsion of the Stuarts had left the throne to the disposal of the

nation. By the Bill of Rights, it was determined that the succession

should go to the heirs of William and Mary; and, in their default, to

Anne, daughter of James. But the deaths of Mary, and of the Duke of

Gloucester, awoke the hopes of Popery and the cabals of Jacobitism once

more. The danger was imminent. William became deeply anxious for the

Protestant succession, and a bill was brought into the House of Commons,

declaring that the crown should devolve on the Electress Sophia,

Duchess-dowager of Hanover, and her heirs,—the Electress of Hanover (or

more correctly, of Brunswick and Luneburg) being the tenth child of

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., the only Protestant

princess among the foreign relations of the line. The next in succession

to Anne in the Roman Catholic line would have been the houses of Savoy,

France, and Spain, through Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. This order

of succession was made law by the 12th of William III., and confirmed in

the next session by the Abjuration Act, (13th William,) so named from

the oath _abjuring_ the Pretender.

It is striking to observe how many high matters of legislation have

seemed the work of casualty. The Habeas Corpus Act, confessedly the

noblest achievement of British liberty since Magna Charta, was said to

have been carried by a mistake in counting the votes of the House; the

limitation to the Electress was proposed by a half-lunatic; the oath of

abjuration was carried but by a majority of one; and the Reform Bill,

which, though a measure as doubtful in its principles as disappointing

in its promises, has yet exercised an extraordinary power over the

constitution, was carried in its second reading by a majority of only

one.

It is more important to observe how large a share of legislation, in the

reign of Anne, was devoted to the security of the Protestant succession.

The 4th, 6th, and 10th of Anne are occupied in devising clauses to give

it force. It was guaranteed in all the great diplomatic transactions of

the reign,—in the Dutch Treaty of 1706, in the Barrier Treaty of 1709,

in the Guarantee Treaty of 1713, and in the Treaty of Utrecht of the

same year, between England and France, and England and Spain.

This diligence and determination seem wholly due to the spirit of the

people. The Queen was almost a Jacobite; her ministers carried on

correspondences with the family of James; there was scarcely a man of

influence in public life who had not an agent at St Germains. Honest

scruples, too, had been long entertained among individuals of high rank.

Six of the seven bishops who had so boldly resisted the arrogance of

James, shrank from repudiating the claims of his son. It is true, that

nothing could be feebler than their reasons; for nothing could be more

evident than the treason of James to the oath which he had sworn at his

coronation. Its violation was his virtual dethronement—his abdication

was his actual dethronement; and the principles of his family, all

Papists like himself, rendered it impossible to possess freedom of

conscience, while any one of a race of bigots and tyrants retained the

power to oppress. Thus the nation only vindicated itself, and used only

the common rights of selfdefence; and used them only in the calm and

deliberate forms of self-preservation.

This strong abhorrence of the exiled family arose alike from a sense of

religion, and a sense of fear. The people had seen with disgust and

disdain the persecution of Protestantism by the French King. They had

seen the scandalous treachery which had broken all compacts, the

ostentatious falsehood which had trafficked in promises, and the

remorseless cruelty which had strewed the Protestant provinces with

dead. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes gave a sanguinary and

perpetual caution “not to put their trust in princes;” and the generous

spirit of the people, doubly excited by scorn for the persecutor, and

pity for his victims, was thenceforth armed in panoply alike against the

arts and the menaces of Jacobitism and Popery. So it has been, and so

may it ever be. The Stuarts have passed away—they mouldered from the

sight of men; they have no more place or name on earth; they have been

sunk in the mire of their monkism; their “drowned honour” is incapable

of being plucked up even “by the locks;” but their principles survive,

and against their corruption we must guard the very air we breathe.

The Electress, a woman of remarkable intelligence, died in 1714, in her

84th year. The Queen died in the August following. George I., Elector of

Brunswick, son of Sophia, arrived in England in September, and was King

of the fairest empire in the world. He was then fifty-four years old.

The habits of George I. were Continental—a phrase which implies all of

laxity that is consistent with the etiquette of a court. His personal

reign was anxious, troubled, and toilsome; but the nation prospered, and

the era had evidently arrived when the character of the sitter on the

throne had ceased to attract the interest, or influence the conduct of

the nation. The King had no taste for the fine arts: he had no knowledge

of literature. He had served in the army, like all the German princes,

but had served without distinction. He loved Hanoverian life, and he was

incapable of enjoying the life of England. He lived long enough to be

easily forgotten, and died of apoplexy on his _way to Hanover_!

George II., the chief object of these Memoirs, only son of George I. and

Sophia Dorothea, was forty-four at his accession. In 1705 he had married

Caroline, daughter of the Margrave of Brandenburg Anspach.

The reign of George II. was the era of another revolution—the supremacy

of ministers. A succession of ambitious and able men governed the

country by parties. The King was intelligent and active, yet they

controlled him, until he found his chief task to be limited to

obedience. He was singularly fond of power, and openly jealous of

authority, but his successive ministers were the virtual masters of the

crown. His chief vexations arose from their struggles for office; and

his only compensation to his injured feelings was, in dismissing one

cabinet, to find himself shackled by another. He seems to have lived in

a state of constant ebullition with the world—speaking sarcastically of

every leading person of his own society, and on harsh terms with his

family. His personal habits were incapable of being praised, even by

flattery, and the names of the Walmodens, the Deloraines, and the

Howards, still startle the graver sensibilities of our time.

But his public conduct forms a striking contrast to those painful

scenes. He was bold in conception and diligent in business. He felt the

honour of being an English king; and though he wasted time and

popularity in his childish habit of making his escape to Hanover

whenever he could, he offered no wilful offence to the feelings of the

people. His letters on public affairs exhibit strong sense, and he had

the wisdom to leave his finance in the hands of Walpole, and the

manliness to suffer himself to be afterwards eclipsed by the lustre of

Chatham. His reign, which had begun in difficulties, and was carried on

in perils, closed in triumph.—The French navy was swept from the ocean;

the battle of the Heights of Abraham gave him Canada; the battle of

Plassy gave him India; and at his death, in 1760, at the age of

seventy-seven, he left England in a blaze of glory.

The death of George I. had brought Walpole forward as the minister of

his son. The story of Sir Spencer Compton has been often told, but never

so well as in these Memoirs. The King died on the 11th of June 1727 at

Osnaburg. The news reached Walpole on the 14th, at his villa in Chelsea.

He immediately went to Richmond to acquaint the Prince of Wales with

this momentous intelligence. The Prince was asleep after dinner,

according to his custom; but he was awakened for the intelligence, which

he appeared to receive with surprise. Yet, neither the sense of his

being raised to a throne, nor the natural feelings of such an occasion,

prevented the exhibition of his dislike to Walpole. On being asked, when

it was his pleasure that the Council should be summoned, the King’s

abrupt answer was, “Go to Chiswick, and take your directions from Sir

Spencer Compton.” Sir Robert bore this ill-usage with his habitual

philosophy, and went to Compton at once. There he acted with his usual

address; told him that he was minister, and requested his protection;

declaring that he had no desire for power or business, but wished to

have one of the “white sticks,” as a mark that he was still under the

shelter of the crown.

Lord Hervey delights in portraiture, and his portraits generally have a

bitter reality, which at once proves the truth of the likeness and the

severity of the artist. He daguerreotypes all his generation. He thus

describes Sir Spencer: “He was a plodding, heavy fellow, with great

application but no talents; with vast complaisance for a court; always

more concerned for the manner of the thing than for the thing itself;

fitter for a clerk to a minister than for a minister to a prince. His

only pleasures were money and eating; his only knowledge forms and

precedents; and his only insinuation bows and smiles.” Walpole and he

went together to the Duke of Devonshire, President of the Council, but

laid up with the gout. Lord Hervey’s sketch of him is certainly not

flattering—but such is the price paid by personal feebleness for public

station—“He was more able as a virtuoso than a statesman, and a much

better jockey than a politician.”

At the council Sir Spencer took Walpole aside, and begged of him, as a

speech would be necessary for the King in Council, that, as Sir Robert

was more accustomed to that sort of composition than himself, he should

go into another room, and make a draft of the speech. Sir Robert retired

to draw up his paper, and Sir Spencer went to Leicester Fields, where

the King and Queen were already, followed by all who had any thing to

ask, or any thing to hope—a definition which seems to have included the

whole of what, in later parlance, are called the fashionable world.

Whether the present sincerity of court life is purer than of old may be

doubtful, but the older manners were certainly the more barefaced. When

the new premier was returning to his coach he walked through a lane of

“bowers,” all shouldering each other to pay adoration to the new idol.

During the four days of the King’s remaining in town, Leicester House,

which used to be a desert, was “thronged from morning till night, like

the ‘Change at noon.’” But Walpole walked through those rooms “as if

they had been empty.” The same people who were officiously, a-week

before, crowding the way to flatter his prosperity, were now getting out

of it to avoid sharing his disgrace. Horace Walpole says, that his

mother could not make her way to pay her respects to the King and Queen

between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could

approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row, until the

Queen cried out,—“There, I am sure I see a friend.” The torrent then

divided, and shrank to either side. In short, Walpole, with his brother

Horace, ambassador to France, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Townshend,

the two Secretaries of State, were all conceived to be as much undone,

as a pasha on the arrival of the janizary with the bowstring.

The evidences, it must be owned, seemed remarkably strong. The King had

openly, and more than once, called Walpole “rogue and rascal;” he had

called the ambassador “a scoundrel and a fool;” he had declared his

utter contempt for the Duke, and his determination never to forgive him.

Townshend fared still worse. The King looked on him to be no more an

honest man than an able minister, and attributed all the confusion in

foreign affairs to the heat of his temper and his scanty genius, to the

strength of his passions and the weakness of his understanding. There

can be no doubt that a minister of foreign affairs, with those

qualities, might become a very mischievous animal.

On Compton’s receiving the speech drawn up by Walpole, he carried it, in

his own handwriting, to the King. The King objected to a paragraph,

which Sir Spencer Compton was either unwilling or unable to amend; and

not being satisfied of his own powers of persuasion, he actually

solicited Walpole to go to the King, and persuade him to leave it as it

was! The Queen, who was the friend of Walpole, instantly took advantage

of this singular acknowledgment of inferiority, and advised the King to

retain the man whom his intended successor so clearly acknowledged to be

his superior.

Nothing can be more evident than that Sir Spencer played the fool

egregiously. To place a rival in immediate communication with the King

was, at least, an unusual way of supplanting him; while, to give him the

advantage of his authorship, by sending him to explain it to the King,

would have been ridiculous under any circumstances. But there are no

miracles in politics; and he was evidently so far convinced of his own

security, that the idea of a rival was out of the question. Compton had

been all his life a political personage. He had been Paymaster; he had

been Speaker in three Parliaments; he was _au fait_ in the routine of

office; and he had evidently received the King’s order to make a

ministry. But we have had such sufficient proof in our own time that

princes and kings are different persons according to circumstances, that

we can perfectly comprehend the cessation of the royal favouritism on

one side, and of the royal aversion on the other. The civil list was

still to be voted—the subject dearest to the royal heart. Walpole was

noted for financial management, and Compton’s awkwardness in the

preceding transaction might well have startled the monarch. The general

result was, that Walpole remained minister, Compton was quietly put out

of the way with a peerage, as Lord Wilmington, and an enormous civil

list was carried, with but a single vote, that of Mr William Shippen,

against it. The civil list was little less than £900,000 a-year, an

immense revenue, when we consider that the value of money at that time

probably made it equal to double the sum now. The present civil list

would be practically not much more than a fourth of the amount in 1777.

The Queen’s jointure was equally exorbitant; it was £100,000 a-year,

besides Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, a sum amounting to double

what any Queen of England had before.

Walpole was now paramount; he had purchased his supremacy by his

official prodigality. Lord Hervey thinks that he was still hurt by two

mortifications—the displacement of his son-in-law, Lord Malpas, and of

Sir William Yonge, a Lord of the Treasury, and his notorious tool. But,

contrasting those trifling changes with the plenitude of Walpole’s

power, and recollecting the extraordinary wiliness of his nature, it

seems not improbable that he either counselled or countenanced those

dismissals, to escape the invidiousness of absolute power; for both

Malpas and Yonge clung to the court, and, after a decent interval, were

replaced in office. Walpole was, perhaps, one of the most singular

instances of personal dexterity in the annals of statesmanship. Without

eloquence in the House, or character out of it; without manners in the

court, or virtue any where, he continued to hold supreme ministerial

power for nearly a quarter of a century, under the most jealous of

kings, with the weakest of cabinets, against the most powerful

Opposition, and in the midst of the most contemptuous people. His power

seems even to have grown out of those sinister elements. By constantly

balancing them against each other, by at once awaking fears and exciting

hopes, he deluded all the fools, and enlisted all the knaves of public

life in his cause. The permanency of his office, however, wholly rested

upon the Queen; and he had the dexterity to discover, from the moment of

the Royal accession, that, insulted as she was by the King’s conduct,

she was the true source of ministerial power. He accordingly adhered to

her, in all the fluctuations of the court, appeared to consult her on

all occasions, studied her opinions, and provided for her expenses. The

want of money, or its possession, seem to have exerted an extraordinary

influence on the higher ranks in those days; and one of the first acts

of Walpole was to offer the Queen £60,000 a-year. Sir Spencer Compton

had been impolitic enough to propose but £40,000, on the ground that

this sum had been sufficient for Charles II.’s queen. The sum was at

last settled at £50,000, and the donor was not forgotten.

But it seems impossible to doubt, that Walpole’s character was

essentially corrupt; that he regarded corruption as a legitimate source

of power; that he bribed every man whom he had the opportunity to bribe:

that he laughed at political integrity, and did his best to extinguish

the little that existed; that no minister ever went further to degrade

the character of public life; and that the period of his supremacy is a

general blot upon the reign, the time, and the people.

The celebrated Burke, in that magnanimous partiality which disposed him

to overlook the vices of individuals in the effect of their measures,

has given a high-flown panegyric on the administration of Walpole; but

the whole is a brilliant paradox. He looked only to the strength of the

Brunswick succession, and, taking his stand upon that height, from which

he surveyed grand results alone, neglected or disdained to examine into

the repulsive detail. Seeing before him a national harvest of peace and

plenty, he never condescended to look to the gross and offensive

material by which the furrow was fertilised. Nothing is more certain,

than that the daily acts of Walpole would now stamp a ministry with

shame—that no man would dare now to express the sentiments which form

the maxims of the minister; and that any one of the acts which, though

they passed with many a sneer, yet passed with practical impunity, in

the days of George II., would have ruined the proudest individual, and

extinguished the most powerful cabinet, of the last fifty years.

The arguments which Lord Hervey puts into the lips of the Queen are

scarcely less corrupt in another style. She tells the King not merely

that Walpole’s long experience and known abilities would make him the

best minister, but that his simply being in power would make him the

most submissive—that his having made a vast fortune already would make

him less solicitous about his own interest—that _new_ leeches would be

more hungry, and that, Walpole’s fortune being made, he would have

nothing in view but serving the King, and securing the government, to

keep what he had got—closing all this grave advice with that maxim of

consummate craft, that in royal breasts both enmity and friendship alike

should always give way to policy. If such were to be regarded as the

habitual rules of the highest rank, well might we remonstrate against

their baseness. The bigotry of James, or the morals of Charles II.,

would be preferable to this scandalous selfishness. But those maxims

have never found tolerance among the people of England. We are to

recollect that they came from a despotic soil, that they were the wisdom

of courts where the great corrective of state-craft, public opinion, was

unknown; that they were the courage of the timid, and the integrity of

the intriguing; and that the maxims, the manners, and the system, have

alike been long since consigned to a deserved and contemptuous oblivion.

By much the best part of Lord Hervey’s authorship consists in his

characters of public personages. No rank is suffered to shield any man.

He exercises a sort of Egyptian judgment even upon kings, and pronounces

sentence upon their faults with all the indignation of posthumous

virtue. The King of France at that period had begun to exercise a

powerful influence over Europe. France, always liable to great changes,

had been for half a century almost prostrated before the great powers of

Europe. The triumphs of Marlborough in the earliest years of the century

had swept her armies from the field, as the close of the preceding

century had desolated the industry of her southern provinces by

persecution. The supremacy of the Regent had subsequently dissolved

almost the whole remaining force of public character in a flood of

profligacy, and the reigning King was perhaps the most profligate man in

the most licentious nation of the world. The description of him in these

volumes is equally disdainful and true. “I cannot,” says Lord Hervey,

“by the best accounts I have had, and by what I have myself seen of this

insensible piece of royalty, venture absolutely to say that he was of a

good or bad disposition, for, more properly speaking, he was of no

disposition at all. He was neither merciful nor cruel, without affection

or enmity, without gratitude or resentment, and, to all appearance,

without pleasure or pain.” His actions are described as resembling more

the mechanical movements of an automaton, than the effects of will and

reason. The state of his mind seemed to be a complete apathy, neither

acting nor acted on. If he had any passion, it was avarice; and if he

took pleasure in any amusement, it was in gaming. It is observed that he

had not any share in the “epidemical gaiety that runs through the French

nation.” He appeared to take as little pleasure as he gave, to live to

as little purpose to himself as to any body else, and to have no more

joy in being King, than his people had advantage in being his subjects.

It was the good fortune of France to be governed at this period by

Cardinal Fleury, a man of no distinction for talents, yet possessing a

plain, practical understanding, habitual prudence, and personal honesty.

But his most important qualification was a remarkable absence of the

passion for disturbing the world, which seems to have made him an

exception to all Frenchmen since the days of Julius Cæsar. Fleury loved

peace, and was so far an illustrious anomaly in French nature. Something

of this singular contradiction to his countrymen may have arisen from

his being eighty years old, from his habits as an ecclesiastic, and from

his being fully acquainted with the fact, that France had not the power

to go to war. The result of this policy was not merely tranquillising to

Europe, but fortunate for France. Her task was to recover from the

wasteful wars of Louis XIV., from the general corruption of the Regency,

from the financial follies of the Mississippi scheme, and from the weak

and rapacious ministry of the Duke of Bourbon. The administration of

Cardinal Fleury met all her evils, and met them with patience, and thus

with success. France has been always the great disturber of Europe, and

will be so whenever she has the power to disturb; but the old Cardinal,

conscious of her helplessness, applied himself to restrain her ambition,

and taught her that the indulgence of vanity was no compensation for

defeat, and that war was folly, at least until success was possible.

Under this rational course of government, the public mind was turned to

intellectual advancement and national industry. Paris, instead of being

the centre of European profligacy, rapidly became the centre of European

science. A succession of extraordinary men threw light upon every

kingdom of nature and knowledge. The Continent actually basked in the

beams of France; her language became universal, her literature the

general model, her taste the leader of European refinement, her manners

the standard of fashion to the world; and, at the accession of the

unfortunate Louis XVI., Paris, the court, and the people, possessed an

acknowledged supremacy over the opinions, the habits, and the

accomplishments of Europe, to which no kingdom of the modern world has

ever exhibited a parallel.

The closing period of the eighteenth century has already been given to

the world by a historian equal to the magnitude of his subject. The

“History of the French Revolution,” by Alison, will never be superseded.

The extent of its information, the clearness of its details, the

freshness and fidelity of its descriptions, and the force and vividness

of its language, place it at the head of all contemporary annals. But we

should wish also to see a History of the whole preceding portion of the

century. The French Revolution was a result: we should desire to see the

origin. It was a burst of gigantic violence, and gigantic strength: we

should desire to have the primal _myth_ of this assault of the Titans;

the narrative of their growth, their passions, and their powers, until

the moment when they moved against the battlements of all that was

lofty, magnificent, and glittering in the land. There is nothing without

a cause on earth,—accident is a name which has no place in the

Providential supremacy of things. To investigate the sources of even the

common events of nature, is a subject worthy of the philosopher. But

there never was a time when it was more important to connect its

mightier changes with the mystery in which they find their birth; to

ascertain the laws of national convulsion; to fix the theory of moral

storms and inundations. Such would be among the highest services, as

they might administer to the most effective security of the social

system.

It strikes us, that our chief historians have hitherto limited their

view too much to England: a broader view would have been more

productive. The combinations of this great country with the Continental

kingdoms; the contrasts furnished by them all; the variety in their

means of working out the same object of national power; their

comparative tardiness; even their failures, would have supplied new

conceptions of history, and have added alike to the illustration and the

interest of that political science which is among the noblest bequests

of a great nation to posterity. We are fully convinced that politics,

rightly examined, will be found to constitute a _system_, as much as

astronomy, and that a _solitary_ kingdom would be as much a

contradiction to nature as a solitary star.

We now glance over the pages of these volumes: they are very amusing. If

they do not give the court _costumes_ of a hundred years ago, they give

the mental costumes. The witty and the wise, the great and the little,

pass before the eye with the rapidity and the oddity of the figures in a

show-box. Kings, queens, and courtiers are exhibited to the life; and,

harsh as their physiognomies may sometimes seem, the exhibition is

always amusing.

The King was generally regarded as being governed by his wife, and the

opinion was not the less general because the King constantly boasted of

his own independence. One day, alluding to this subject, he said,

“Charles I. was governed by his wife, Charles II. by his mistresses,

James by his priests, William by his men-favourites, and Anne by her

women-favourites.” He then turned with a significant and satisfied air,

and asked, “Who do they say governs now?” The political squibs of the

time were, however, of a different opinion from the King. For example—

“You may strut, dapper George, but ‘twill all be in vain,

We know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—

You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.

Then, if you would have us fall down and adore you,

Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.”

The “dapper” was an allusion to the King’s figure, which was much under

size. The locking up was an allusion to the imprisonment of the wife of

George I., whom, by an atrocious act of cruelty, he had shut up in one

of his castles for thirty-two years. It argues something in favour of

the progress of public opinion, that in our day the most despotic or

powerful sovereign of Europe would not dare to commit an act, which was

then committed with perfect impunity by a little German Elector. Another

of those squibs began—

“Since England was England there never was seen

So strutting a King, and so prating a Queen.”

The first of those brought Lord Scarborough into a formidable scrape;

for, being taxed by the King with having seen it, evidently in private,

the King demanded to know who had shown it to him. Scarborough declared

that he was on his honour, not to reveal it. On this the King became

furious, and said to him, “Had I been Lord Scarborough in this

situation, and you king, the man should have shot me, or I him, who had

dared to affront me in the person of my master, by showing me such

insolent nonsense!” His Lordship replied, that he never told his Majesty

it was a man from whom he had it. He consequently left the King, (who

never spoke to him for three months after,) almost as much irritated

against him as the author.

Lord Hervey’s portrait of the celebrated Chesterfield is a work of

elaborate peevishness. It has all the marks of an angry rival, and all

the caricature of a pen dipped in personal mortification. He allows him

wit, but with an utter “mismanagement in its use;” talent without

common-sense, and a ridiculous propensity to love-making, with an

ungainly face and a repulsive figure. This character is new to those who

have been so long accustomed to regard Chesterfield even on the more

unfavourable side of his character. To his admirers the portrait is of

course intolerable; but we must leave some future biographer to settle

those matters with the ghost of his libeller.

An anecdote is given illustrative of the violence of Lord Townshend’s

temper, and the cutting calmness of Walpole’s. Townshend was a man of

considerable powers, but singularly irritable. He had been from an early

period engaged in office, and was a constant debater in the House. His

temper, however, made him so publicly disliked, and his selfishness so

much alienated public men, that when he left office he did not leave a

regret behind. He was followed only by epigrams, of which one is given—

“With such a head, and such a heart,

If fortune fails to take thy part,

And long continues thus unkind,

She must be deaf as well as blind,

And, quite reversing every rule,

Nor see the knave, nor hear the fool.”

Lord Townshend had been Foreign Secretary, and Walpole had to defend his

blunders in the Commons. This made the latter anxious, and the former

jealous. Another source of discontent was added, probably with still

greater effect. Walpole, who had begun as a subordinate to Townshend,

had risen above him. He had begun poor, and now exceeded him in fortune;

and, as the last offence, he had built Houghton, a much handsomer

mansion than Lord Townshend’s house at Raynham, which his lordship had

once considered as the boast of Norfolk. Thus both were in a condition

for perpetual squabble. The anecdote to which we have alluded was

this:—One evening, at Windsor, on the Queen’s asking Walpole and

Townshend where they had dined that day, the latter said that he had

dined at home with Lord and Lady Trevor; on which Walpole said to her

Majesty, smiling, “My lord, Madam, I think, is grown _coquet_ from a

long widowhood, and has some design upon my Lady Trevor; for his

assiduity of late, in that family, is grown so much beyond common

civility, that without this solution I know not how to account for it.”

The burlesque of this not very decorous observation was obvious, for

Lady Trevor was nearly seventy years old, and, besides being a woman of

character, was of the “most forbidding countenance that natural

ugliness, age, and small-pox, ever compounded.”

But Townshend, affecting to take the remark literally, replied with

great warmth—“No, sir, I am not one of those fine gentlemen who find no

time of life, nor any station in the world, preservatives against

follies and immoralities that are hardly excusable when youth and

idleness make us most liable,” &c., &c. In short, his lordship made a

speech in which his voice trembled, and every limb shook with passion.

But Walpole, always master of his temper, made him no other answer than

asking him with a smile, and in a very mild tone of voice, “What, my

lord, all this for Lady Trevor!”

The Queen grew uneasy, and, to avoid Townshend’s replying, only laughed,

and turned the conversation.

An anecdote is told of the Duchess of Queensberry’s being forbid the

court; which belongs to the literary history of the cleverest opera in

our own or any other language—Gay’s famous production. Walpole, justly

regarding himself as caricatured in the “Beggar’s Opera,” obtained the

Duke of Grafton’s authority as Lord Chamberlain to suppress the

representation of his next opera, “Polly.” Gay resolved to publish it by

subscription, and his patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry, put herself

at the head of the undertaking, and solicited every person she met, to

subscribe. As the Duchess was handsome, a wit, and of the first fashion,

she obtained guineas in all directions, even from those who dreaded to

encourage this act of defiance. The Duchess’s zeal, however, increased

with her success; and she even came to the drawing-room, and under the

very eye of majesty solicited subscriptions for a play which the monarch

had forbidden to be acted. When the King came into the drawing-room,

seeing the Duchess very busy in a corner with three or four persons, he

asked her what she was doing. She answered, “What must be agreeable, she

was sure, to any body so humane as his Majesty, for it was an act of

charity; and a charity to which she did not despair of bringing his

Majesty to contribute.” This proceeding was so much resented, that Mr

Stanhope, vice-chamberlain to the King, was sent in form to the Duchess

to forbid her coming to court. The message was verbal; but she desired

to send a written answer—wrote it on the spot—and thus furnished a

document, whose style certainly exhibited more sincerity than

courtiership.

“That the Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the

King has given her so agreeable a command as to stay from court, where

she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King

and Queen. She hopes that, by such an unprecedented order as this, the

King will see as few as he wishes at his court, particularly such as

dare to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and ought not,

nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very highest

compliment I could possibly pay the King, to endeavour to support truth

and innocence in his house—particularly when the King and Queen both

told me that they had not read Mr Gay’s play. I have certainly done

right, then, to stand by my own words rather than his Grace of

Grafton’s, who hath neither made use of truth, judgment, nor honour,

through this whole affair, either for himself or his friends.

“C. QUEENSBERRY.”

When her Grace had finished this paper, drawn up, as Lord Hervey

observes, “with more spirit than accuracy,” Stanhope requested of her to

think again, and give him a more courtly message to deliver. The Duchess

took her pen and wrote another, but it was so much more disrespectful,

that he asked for the former one and delivered it.

There was, of course, a prodigious quantity of court gossip on this

occasion: and, doubtless, though some pretended to be shocked, many were

pleased at the sting of royalty, and many more were amused at the

dashing oddity of the Duchess. But public opinion, on the whole, blamed

the court. It certainly was infinitely childish in the King, to have

inquired into what the Duchess was doing among her acquaintances in the

drawing-room; it was equally beneath the natural notions of royal

dignity that the King should put himself in a state of hostility with a

subject, and in so trifling a matter as the subscription to an

unpublished play; and it was equally impolitic, for the world was sure

to range itself on the side of the woman, especially when that woman was

handsome, eccentric, and rich. It produced some inconvenience, however,

to the lady’s husband, as he, in consequence, gave up the office of

Admiral of Scotland.

The history of the “Beggar’s Opera” is still one of those mysticisms

which perplex the chroniclers of the stage. It has been attributed to

the joint conception of Swift, Pope, and Gay. The original idea probably

belonged to Swift, who, in that fondness for contrasts, and contempt of

romance, which belonged to him in every thing, had observed, “What a

pretty thing a Newgate pastoral would make!” Pope may have given hints

for the epigrammatic pungency of the dialogue; while the general

workmanship may have been left to Gay. It is scarcely possible to doubt

the sharp and worldly hand of Swift in some of the scenes and songs.

Pope may have polished the dialogue, or nerved some of the songs,

otherwise it is difficult to account for the total failure of all those

characters of sternness, sharpness, and knowledge of the world, in Gay’s

subsequent and unassisted drama, “Polly.” For, as the note on the

subject observes, nothing can be more dull and less sarcastic, or, in

fact, less applicable to either public characters or public events than

the latter opera, against which a prime minister levelled the

hostilities of the Lord Chamberlain, and engaged the indignation of the

King.

Gay had been a dependant on Mrs Howard,—a matter which, in the

scandalous laxity of the time, was by no means disgraceful. He had been

solicitor for some place under the court, and had been disappointed. But

the “Beggar’s Opera” had been written before his disappointment. Of

course, it is unlikely that he should have then thought of burlesquing

the minister. His disappointment, however, may have given him new

intentions, and a few touches from Swift’s powerful hand might have

transformed Macheath, Peachum, and Lockit into the fac-similes of the

premier and his cabinet. It is remarkable that Gay had never attempted

any thing of the kind before, nor after. His solitary muse was the very

emblem of feebleness, his ambition never soared beyond a salary, and his

best authorship was fables.

As ours is the day when rioting is popular, and rebels in every country

are modellers of government, it may be amusing to remember how those

matters were managed in the last century. The history of the famous

Excise scheme, which in its day convulsed England, and finally shook the

most powerful of all ministers out of the most powerful of all cabinets,

is amongst the curious anecdotes of a time full of eccentricity. Walpole

was no more superior to the effects of prosperity than honester men.

Long success had confirmed him in a belief of its perpetual power; and

the idea that, with a court wholly at his disposal, with a Queen for his

agent, a King almost for his subject, the peerage waiting his nod, and

the commons in his pay, he could be cast down and shattered like a

plaster image, seems never to have entered into his dreams. But in this

plenitude of power, whether to exercise his supremacy, or for the mere

want of something to do, it occurred to him to relieve the country

gentlemen by reducing the land-tax to a shilling in the pound, turning

the duty on tobacco and wine, then payable on importation, into inland

duties,—that is, changing customs on those two commodities into excise.

By which scheme, and the continuation of the salt-duty, he proposed to

improve the revenue half a million a-year, so as to supply the abatement

of the shilling in the pound. The plan seemed feasible, and it also

appeared likely to attract popularity among the country gentlemen, who

had frequently complained of the pressure of the land-tax—two shillings

in the pound.

The result, however, showed that a man may govern a court who is unequal

to govern a people. The very mention of excise raised a universal

storm,—all kinds of exaggerations flew through the land. The subject, at

no time popular, was converted into a source of frantic indignation. The

orators alleged, that if excise was once to be made a substitute for the

land-tax, it might be made a substitute for every tax; that if it was

laid on wine and tobacco, it would soon be laid on corn and clothing;

that every man’s house would be at the mercy of excise-officers, whose

numbers would amount to a standing army, and of the most obnoxious kind,

an army of tax-gatherers; that liberty must perish; Magna Charta be not

worth its own parchment; parliament be voted useless; and the monarch,

who could extract every shilling from the pockets of his subjects under

the pretext of an excise, might soon ride roughshod over the liberties

of England. Petition on petition, of course, showered into parliament;

the boroughs angrily advised their representatives to vote against the

measure; and the towns and cities haughtily commanded their

parliamentary delegates to resist all extension of the excise, however

qualified, corrected, or modelled by the minister.

Walpole was thunderstruck; but he still relied upon his fortune. His

friends crowded round him with entreaties that he would abandon the

measure. But his argument was the argument of infatuation—the old

absurdity of exposing himself to immediate ruin, through fear of being

ruined at some future time, which might never arrive. In fact, his

flexibility, which often saves a minister, was suddenly exchanged for

the stubbornness which is the ministerial road to ruin. At last the

memorable day came, March 14, 1743, when the bill was to be presented to

parliament. It was reported that thousands of the people would block up

the House, and there was a general order for constables, peace-officers,

and the Guards to be in readiness. The mob, however, were neither so

numerous nor so unruly as was expected. The debate was long, and the

question was carried for the excise scheme by a majority of 61—the

numbers being 204 and 265. The King was so anxious on the subject, that

he made Lord Hervey write to him from the House at five o’clock; and,

when the debate broke up at one in the morning, and Lord Hervey came to

St James’s to mention the result, the King carried him into the Queen’s

bedchamber, and kept him there till three in the morning, (without

having dined;) asking him ten thousand questions, not merely about the

speeches, but the very looks of the speakers.

The memoirs of persons in high life have a certain use for those who

will draw the true moral from them; which is, that the highest rank is

by no means the happiest. The exterior glitters to the eye, and

doubtless there are few pedestrians who would not rejoice to drive in a

gilt coach, with a squadron of hussars prancing round them. But the

Memoirs of George II. and his Queen, altogether independently of private

character, give formidable evidence of the cares which haunt even

thrones. Yet, perhaps, there was no more palmy state of public affairs

than that which saw George and Caroline on the throne. The country was

in profound peace, commerce was flourishing, there was no impediment to

the wheels of society—neither famine nor pestilence, nor rebellion; and

yet distress, vexation, and perplexity seem to be as frequent inmates of

the palace as they could have been of the workhouse. Even the great

minister himself, though the head and front of the whole immediate

disturbance, and likely to suffer more severely than all the rest, bore

the crisis with more equanimity than either of their majesties.

“This evening,” says Lord Hervey, “Sir Robert Walpole saw the King in

the Queen’s apartment, and the final resolution was then taken to drop

the bill; but as there was a petition to come from the city of London

against it the next day, it was resolved that the bill should not be

dropped till that petition was rejected, lest it should be thought to be

done by the weight and power of the city.” Walpole, on coming from this

conference, called on Lord Hervey to let him know what had passed. Sir

Robert was extremely disconcerted. Lord Hervey told him that he had been

twice that afternoon sent for by the King; but, not knowing in what

strain to talk to him, as he was ignorant whether Sir Robert intended to

go forward or retreat, and expecting that he should be asked millions of

questions relating to what he saw, and what he heard, and what he

thought; to avoid the difficulties which this catechism would lay him

under, he kept out of the way.

In the mean time, Sir Robert had gone to the Queen, and told her, that

the clamour had grown so great, that there were but two ways of trying

to appease it, one by dropping the project, and the other by dropping

the projector. The Queen chid him extremely “for thinking it possible

she could act so cowardly a part.” When Lord Hervey went up to the

drawing-room, he saw that her Majesty had been weeping very plentifully,

and found her so little able to disguise what she felt, that she was

forced to pretend headach and vapours, and break up her quadrille party

sooner than the usual hour. When the drawing-room was over, the King

called Lord Hervey into the Queen’s bedchamber, and began with great

eagerness to ask him where he had been all day, whom he had seen, what

he had heard, and how both friends and foes looked? To some of the

replies, referring to the Opposition, the King said with great warmth,

“It is a lie; those rascals in the Opposition are the greatest liars

that ever spoke.” The city petition was presented the next morning, and

attended by a train of coaches reaching from Temple Bar to Westminster.

The prayer of the petition was, that they might be heard by counsel

against the bill. After a debate till midnight the petition was

rejected, but only by a majority of seventeen—214 to 197. Walpole was

never more deeply smitten than by this defeat, for so small a majority

was a virtual defeat. He stood for some time after the House was up,

leaning against the table, with his hat pulled over his eyes, and some

few friends, with melancholy countenances, round him. As soon as the

whole was over, Pelham went to the King, and Hervey to the Queen, to

acquaint them with what had passed. When Hervey, at his first coming

into the room, shook his head and told her the numbers, the tears ran

down her cheeks, and for some time she could not utter a word. At last

she said, “It is over—we must give way; but pray tell me a little how it

passed.”

On the next day, Walpole proposed the postponement of the tobacco bill

for two months. On coming out of the House, the mob, who had increased

in numbers, continued to insult the members. Walpole, though warned of

the reception which he was likely to get, determined to face the mob, as

he boldly said, “there was no end of flying from their menaces, and that

meeting dangers of this kind was the only way to put an end to them.”

With some friends, and to a certain degree protected by the constables,

who made a passage for the members to go out, he at last worked his way

through the mob; though there was a great deal of jostling, and the

constables were obliged to make large use of their staves. Three of his

friends (among whom was Lord Hervey) were hurt. The city had been filled

with illuminations and bonfires the night before, when Sir Robert

Walpole, with a fat woman, (meant for the Queen,) was burnt in effigy.

It is singular that this triumph was carried as far as Oxford, where for

three nights together, round the bonfires in the streets, the healths of

Ormond, Bolingbroke, and James III. were publicly drunk!

Lord Hervey’s sketches of character are among the best specimens of his

writing, and the most interesting portions of his book. They are always

acute and forcible, natural though epigrammatic, and remorseless though

polished. As the lives of Chancellors have been, of late, so frequently

brought before the public, we give his sketch of Lord Chancellor King.

Speaking of King as having risen from obscurity to the woolsack, without

an obstruction in his career, and with the general approbation of all

judges of legal merit, he observes that, from the moment of his

presiding in Chancery, his reputation began to sink. But this is

explained, not by any newly discovered deficiency of talent, but by

deficiency of decision. “Expedition,” says Lord Hervey, “was never

reckoned among the merits of the Court of Chancery; but while Lord King

presided there, its delays became insupportable. He had such a

diffidence of himself, that he dared not do right for fear of doing

wrong. Decrees were always extorted from him; and, had he been left

alone, he would never have given any suitor his due, for fear of giving

him what was not so; never reflecting that the suspension of justice was

almost as bad as the total privation of it. His understanding was of

that balancing irregular kind, which gives people just light enough to

see difficulties and form doubts, yet not enough to surmount the one, or

remove the other. This sort of understanding, which was of use to him as

a pleader, was a trouble to him as a judge, and made him make a great

figure at the bar, but an indifferent one upon the bench. The Queen once

said of him, very truly, as well as agreeably, that ‘he was just in the

law, what he had formerly been in the gospel—making creeds of the one,

without any steady belief, and judgments in the other, without any

settled opinion. But the misfortune,’ said she, ‘for the public is, that

though they can reject his silly creeds, they are forced to submit to

his silly judgments.’” (Lord King had dabbled in divinity, and published

a history of the Apostles’ Creed.) Complaints soon arose, that all the

equity of the nation was at a stand. He afterwards nearly lost his

senses by repeated attacks of apoplexy. He was at last induced to retire

on a pension of £3000. He died in the next year, “little regretted by

any body, but least of all by his Majesty, who saved £3000 a-year by

it.”

The condition of the court seems to have been perpetual conflict. The

King’s personal conduct was inexcusable; the Queen’s great object was

the possession of power; and the Prince was an object of suspicion to

both, as both were objects of vexation to the Prince. His case in short

was this: “He had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised

him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set

of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use to him, nor

capable of being of use, nor desirous of being of use.”

The Opposition were in pretty much the same condition: they, too, were

in a state of civil war. Lord Carteret and Bolingbroke had no

correspondence at all; Pulteney and Bolingbroke hated each other;

Carteret and Pulteney were jealous of each other; Sir William Wyndham

and Pulteney the same; while Chesterfield had a little correspondence

with them all, but was confided in by none.

The Princess’s marriage to the Prince of Orange had long engrossed the

consideration of the court. The Princess was not ill-looking, but her

figure was short, and inclined to be fat. She seems to have resembled

both the King and the Queen in their better, and in their worst,

qualities. She was quick, intelligent, and passionate; yet could be

cool, callous, and ready to sacrifice every thing to power. The Prince

of Orange was poor, having but £12,000 a-year, and he was deformed,

having a humpback, and altogether exhibiting the least attractive object

possible in the eyes of a princess as haughty as any in Christendom. The

marriage was solemnised at seven in the evening: the chapel was

splendidly fitted up; but the Queen and the Princesses exhibited so much

undisguised concern, that the procession to the chapel, and the aspect

of matters there, looked more like a sacrifice than a marriage. We

cannot go any further into details which, however suitable to foreign

manners, can only disgust the fortunate delicacy of the English mind.

But Lord Hervey’s manner of consoling the philosophic Queen in her

disdain and disgust, is capital, as a specimen at once of the man of the

world and of the courtier.

His answer was, “Madam, in half a year all persons are alike; and the

figure one is married to, like the prospect of the place one lives at,

grows so familiar to one’s eyes, that we look at it mechanically,

without regarding either the beauties or deformities that strike a

stranger.” The Queen’s answer was clever: “One may, and I believe one

does, grow blind at last; but you must allow, my dear Lord Hervey, that

there is a great difference, as long as one sees, in the _manner_ of

one’s growing blind.” The sisters spoke much in the same style as the

mother, with horror at his figure, and commiseration for his wife. The

Princess Emily said, “nothing on earth should have induced her to marry

the monster.” The Princess Caroline, in her soft sensible way, spoke

truth and said, “She must own it was very bad, but that, in her sister’s

situation, all things considered, she believed she should have come to

the same resolution.”

From time to time, some traits of men and history oddly remind us of

foreign courts in our own day. The Emperor of Germany, a personage in

whom ambition and imbecility seem to have contended for the mastery, had

commenced a war, which transferred hostilities into Italy. France,

Sardinia, and Spain attacked him there, and pushed his army to the walls

of Mantua. The position of Radetsky, while he continued constrained by a

court which gave him little more than orders and counter-orders, was

evidently the _fac-simile_ of Austrian affairs in 1733. “Those affairs,”

says Lord Hervey, “were so _well managed_, that with thirteen thousand

men in Lombardy, and provisions for double the number, and ammunition in

proportion, those essentials of war were so dispersed and scattered,

that, wherever there were provisions there was no ammunition, and where

there was ammunition there were no provisions, and where there were men

there was neither ammunition nor provisions.”

The German war engaged a good deal of the public attention at this time;

but much less in the nation than at the court. Prince Eugene, on the

Rhine, marched to the relief of Philipsburg, while Marshal Berwick, with

one hundred thousand men, carried on the siege. The high reputation of

Prince Eugene had excited the King’s hope that Philipsburg would be

relieved. It was, however, taken. This gave rise to a smart saying of

the Princess Royal. She observed to Lord Hervey, after the drawing-room,

shrugging up her shoulders, “Was there ever any thing so unaccountable

as the temper of papa! He has been snapping and snubbing every mortal

for this week, because he began to think that Philipsburg would be

taken; and this very day, that he hears it is actually taken, he is in

as good humour as ever I saw him in my life. But all this seems so odd,

that I am more angry at his good humour than I was at his bad.” Lord

Hervey said, with that sort of wit which was fashionable at the time,

“that this was like David, who, when his child lived wore sackcloth, but

when it was dead, shaved and drank wine.”—“It may be like David,” said

the Princess, “but I am sure it is not like Solomon.”

The King had a foolish habit of talking of war, of imagining his genius

made for renown, and of pronouncing himself infinitely unlucky in not

being permitted by his minister to gain laurels in Germany. Walpole

exhibited his power in nothing more effectually than in preventing the

operation of this thirst for “glory.”—“He could not bear,” said the

monarch, “that while he was engaged only in treaties, letters, and

despatches, his booby brother, the brutal King of Prussia, should pass

his time in camps and in the midst of arms,” neither desirous of the

glory, nor fit for the employment.

Walpole, who saw the danger of involving England in this war, and

probably the absurdity of going to war for the sake of any foreigners,

reminded the King of the existence of the Pretender, and of the

probability “that his crown would yet have to be fought for on British

ground.” As to the Queen, Lord Hervey said, “the _shadow_ of the

Pretender would beat the whole German body.”

His lordship’s knowledge of the world appears to have extinguished all

his ideas of its generosity: for he finds a personal motive in every

thing. Thus, he assigns three reasons for Walpole’s pacific advice. One

was, to avoid new clamour against his administration; the next was, to

avoid the unpopularity of new taxes; and the third was, that military

business might not throw his power into the hands of military men.

The Memoir then proceeds “to toss and gore” all the prominent public men

in succession. It tells us “that the Duke of Newcastle, who always

talked as his master talked,” echoed all the King’s “big words,” and

expatiated for ever on regaining Italy for the Emperor, chastising

Spain, and humbling the pride of France. Next comes the Duke of Grafton;

of whom it is said, that loving to make his court as well as the Duke of

Newcastle, he talked in the same strain, and for the same reason; but

“could never make any great compliment to the King and Queen of

embracing their opinions, as he never understood things enough to have

one of his own.” Next comes Lord Grantham. “He was a degree still lower,

and had the gift of reasoning in so small a proportion, that his

existence was barely distinguished from a vegetable.” Then follows Lord

Harrington. Of him it is said that, “with all his seeming phlegm, he was

as tenacious of an opinion, when his indolence suffered him to form one,

as any man living. His parts were of the common run of mankind. He was

well bred, a man of honour, and fortunate, loved pleasure, and was

infinitely lazy.” The Queen once in speaking of him said, “There is a

heavy insipid sloth about that man, that puts me out of all patience: he

must have six hours to dress, six more to dine, six more for his

intrigues, and six more to sleep; and there, for a minister, are the

four-and-twenty admirably disposed of; and if, now and then, he borrows

six of those hours, to do any thing relating to his office, it is for

something that might be done in six minutes, and ought to have been done

six days before.”

We have then another instance of the discomforts of Royalty in those

times. The day before the birthday, October 29, 1734, the court removed

from Kensington to London, and the Queen, “who had long been out of

order with a cough and a little lurking fever, notwithstanding she had

been twice blooded, grew every hour worse and worse. However, the King

forced her, the night she came from Kensington—the first of Farinelli’s

performances—to the Opera, and made her the next day go through all the

tiresome ceremonies of drawing-rooms and balls, the fatigues of heats

and crowds, and every other disagreeable appurtenance to the celebration

of a birthday.”

His lordship observes that “there was a strange affectation of an

incapacity of being sick, that ran through the whole royal family. I

have known the King to get out of his bed, choking with a sore throat,

and in a high fever, only to dress and have a levee, and, in five

minutes after it, undress and return to his bed, till the same

ridiculous farce of health was to be presented the next day at the same

hour. He used to make the Queen, in like circumstances, commit the same

extravagances; but never with more danger than at this time. In the

morning drawing-room, she found herself so near swooning, that she was

forced to send Lord Grantham to the King, to beg he would retire, for

that she was unable to stand any longer; notwithstanding which, at

night, he brought her into a still greater crowd at the ball, and there

kept her till eleven o’clock.”

The recollections of those times constantly bring the name of Lady

Suffolk before the eye. We have no wish to advert to the grossnesses

connected with the name; but the waning of her power gave a singular

pungency to opinion in the palace. The Princesses were peculiarly candid

upon the occasion. The Princess Emily “wished Lady Suffolk’s disgrace,

because she wished misfortune to most people. The Princess Caroline,

because she thought it would please her mother. The Princess Royal was

for having her crushed; and, when Lord Hervey made some remonstrance,

she replied, that Lady Suffolk’s conduct, with regard to politics, had

been so impertinent, that she cannot be too ill used.” It must seem

strange to us that such topics should have been in the lips of any

women, especially women of such rank—but they seem to have been

discussed with the most perfect familiarity; and a name and conduct

which ought to have been suppressed through mere delicacy, appear to

have furnished the principal conversation of the court.

The next affair was the quarrel with the Princess of Orange, from her

reluctance to return to Holland. As she was about to be confined, her

husband was desirous that his child should be born in Holland. To this

the Princess demurred. However, they at length contrived to send her on

board, and she sailed from Harwich; but after she had been some time at

sea, she either grew so ill, or pretended to be so ill, that she either

was, or pretended to be, in convulsions: we give his lordship’s rather

ungallant surmise. On this, and the wind not being quite fair, she

obliged the captain of the yacht to put back to Harwich. She then

despatched a courier to London with letters, written, as it was

supposed, by her own absolute command, from her physician, her

accoucheur, and her nurse, to say that she was disordered with her

expedition, and that she could not be stirred for ten days from her bed,

nor put to sea again, without the hazard of her child’s life and her

own. The King and Queen declined giving any orders. The Prince of Orange

was written to, and he desired that his wife might go by France to

Holland. The King, hating the bustle of a new parting, directed that she

should cross the country from Harwich to Dover; but his Majesty, after

having been informed that the roads were impassable at this time of the

year in a coach, (how strangely this sounds in our day of universal

locomotion!) permitted her to come to London and go over the bridge; but

it was a positive command that she should not lie in in London, nor even

come to St James’s. Accordingly, “after all her tricks and schemes, to

avoid going to Holland, and to get back to London, she was obliged to

comply with those orders; and had the mortification and disgrace to go,

without seeing any of her family, over London Bridge to Dover.”

A note conjectures, that the Princess Royal might have had some

expectation of ascending the throne of England, neither of her brothers

being then married; a circumstance, which may account for the Princess’s

anxiety to have her child born in this country.

The next scene is laid among the bishops. The bishopric of Winchester

had been promised to Hoadly. Willis, the Bishop of Winchester, was

seized with an apoplectic fit, and Lord Hervey instantly wrote to

Hoadly, who was then Bishop of Salisbury, to come up to town and enforce

his claim. The bishop wrote to the Queen and Sir Robert letters, which

were to be delivered as soon as Willis was dead. The Queen, on

presenting those letters, asked Lord Hervey if he did not blush for the

conduct of his friend in this early and pressing application for a thing

not yet vacant. While he was speaking, the King came in, and both King

and Queen talked of Hoadly, in such a manner as plainly showed that they

neither esteemed nor loved him. Potter, Bishop of Oxford, a great

favourite of the Queen, strongly solicited Winchester, and would have

obtained it, but for Walpole’s suggestion, that the engagements to

Hoadly could not be broken without scandal. Hoadly at last obtained

Winchester; and, as the Memoir observes, one of the best preferments in

the church was conferred upon a man hated by the King, disliked by the

Queen, and long estranged from the friendship of Walpole. Then all

followed in the way which might have been anticipated; the King not

speaking a word to the new bishop, either when he kissed his hand or did

homage; the Queen, when she found it could not be helped, making the

most of promoting him,—and Sir Robert taking the whole merit of the

promotion to himself.

Another source of contention now arose. The Chancellor Talbot had

recommended Rundle, a chaplain of his father, the late Bishop of Durham,

for the see of Gloucester, which had been vacant a twelvemonth. Gibson,

Bishop of London, objected to him, that fourteen or fifteen years before

he had been heard to speak disrespectfully of some portions of

Scripture, and Rundle was suspected of Arianism. This reason was

certainly sufficient to justify inquiry.

Sir Robert, in his usual style, tried to mediate; begged of the

Chancellor to give up his support of Rundle, offering him at the same

time a deanery, or to give him the Bishopric of Derry in Ireland, then

possessed by Henry Downes; of whom the Memoir speaks as a crazy old

fellow with three thousand a-year. This affair ended in Benson’s being

made Bishop of Gloucester, and Secker Bishop of Bristol, both formerly

chaplains to the Chancellor’s father. Rundle was subsequently made

Bishop of Derry, where he died, nine years after, in his sixtieth year,

much regretted.

Walpole was now visibly approaching decline. He had become negligent of

the claims of his friends, and solicitous only to conciliate his

enemies. Of course, where he bought over one opponent, there were fifty

others ready to fill up his place. This policy failed, and ought always

to fail. At the close of the session, say the Memoirs, “the harvest of

court favour was small, though the labourers were many.” The only things

to give away were the Privy Seal, by the retirement of Lord Lonsdale,

and the Secretaryship at War, by the dismissal of Sir William

Strickland, “who was become so weak in mind and body, that his head was

as much in its second infancy as his limbs.”

A new source of ministerial vexation was added to the _mêlée_, by the

King’s sudden determination to run over to Hanover, in spite of all

remonstrance—the royal answer being always “Pooh, stuff! You think to

get the better of me, but you shall not.”

Walpole, who dreaded that the King, once in Hanover, would plunge the

country into a war, tried to set the Queen against this untoward

journey; but her Majesty, though she gave the minister fair words, was

in favour of the freak. The reasons assigned by the Memoir for her

conduct being those rather irreverent ones, on the part of his

lordship—pride in the _éclat_ of the regency; the ease of being mistress

of her hours, which was not the case for two hours together, when the

King was in England; and, “besides these _agrémens_, she had the

certainty of being, for six months at least, not only free from the

fatigue of being obliged to entertain him for twenty hours in the

twenty-four, but also from the more irksome office of being set up to

receive the _quotidian_ sallies of a temper that, let it be charged by

what hand it would, used always to discharge its hottest fire, on some

pretence or other, upon her.”

But “one trouble arose from the King’s going to Hanover, which her

Majesty did not at all foresee;” and which was his becoming, soon after

his arrival, so much attached to a Madame Walmoden, “a married woman of

the first fashion in Hanover,” that nobody in England talked of any

thing but the declining power of the Queen.

They might justly have talked much more of the insult of this conduct to

public morals; but we shall not go further into those details. They

absolutely repel the common-sense of propriety, to a degree which, we

hope, will never be endurable in England. The King, however, gave her

Majesty, in the long succession of his correspondence, the complete

history of his passion, its progress, and his final purchase of the lady

for 1000 ducats! A proof, as Lord Hervey says, more of his economy than

his passion.

The life of courts is stripped of its glitter a good deal by the

indefatigable courtier who has here left us his reminiscences; but it

requires strong evidence, to believe that the persons who constitute the

officials of royal households _can_ submit to the humiliations described

in these volumes.

The Queen narrates a sort of quarrel which she had with Lady Suffolk, a

woman so notoriously scandalous, that the wife of George II. ought not

to have suffered her to approach her person. The quarrel was, as a note

conceives it, not about holding a basin for the Queen to wash in, but

about holding it on her knees. (What person of any degree of

self-respect can discover the difference?) But Lady Suffolk, on this

nice distinction, consulted the well-known Lady Masham, bedchamber woman

to Queen Anne, as to the point of etiquette. This authority delivered

her judgment of chambermaid duties, in the following style:—“When the

Queen washed her hands, a page of the backstairs brought and set down

upon a side-table the basin and ewer. Then the bedchamber _woman_ set it

before the Queen, and _knelt_ on the other side of the table over

against the Queen, the bedchamber _lady_ only looking on. The bedchamber

_woman_ brought in the chocolate, and gave it _kneeling_.” Lady Suffolk,

formerly Mrs Howard, had been bedchamber _woman_, and of course had

performed this menialism! “We shall see by-and-by,” adds the note,

“that, the _lady_ of the bedchamber, though a countess, presented the

basin for the Queen’s washing, _on her knees_.”

If such things were done, we must own that it wholly exceeds our

comprehension how they could be exacted on the one side, or submitted to

on the other. We are sure that there is not a scullion in England who

would stoop to hold a basin for her mistress’s ablutions on her knees.

Yet, however we may be surprised at the existence of such practices, it

is impossible to feel the slightest sympathy for the persons whom their

salaries tempt to the sufferance.

We have left ourselves but little room for the biography of Lord Hervey

himself. He was born in 1696, the second son of the first Lord Bristol.

He travelled; returned to solicit a commission; failed in his

solicitation; became, of course, “a virtuous opponent of the court,” and

attached himself to the Prince and Princess, who held a sort of

Opposition court at Richmond. Hervey, young, handsome, and polished,

became a general favourite. He won the most accomplished woman of her

time; married; and, in 1723, became Lord Hervey by the death of his

elder brother, a man of ability, but of habits remarkably profligate.

On the death of George I., Hervey changed his politics; abandoned

Pulteney; leveed Walpole; obtained a pension of £1000 a-year; received

another gilded fetter, in the office of vice-chamberlain, and became a

courtier for life.

Whether to console himself for this showy slavery, or to indulge a

natural taste for the sarcasm which is forbidden in the atmosphere of

high life, he wrote the Memoirs, of which we have given a sketch. The

prudence of his son, the third earl, kept them in secret. The marquis,

nephew of that earl, probably regarding the time as past when they could

provoke private resentment, has suffered them to emerge, and Mr Croker

has edited them, for the benefit of the rising generation.

Whether the editor has done credit to himself or service to the public,

by this employment of his hours of retirement, has been the subject of

considerable question. That the volumes are amusing there can be no

doubt; that they are flippant and frivolous there can be no question

whatever; that they disclose conceptions of the interior of courts which

may “make the rabble laugh and the judicious grieve,” that, though

filtered through three generations of correctors, they yet remain miry

enough still, requires no further proof than their perusal.

We say this in no favouritism for either the King or the Queen: the

truth was probably told of both. Their foreign habits evidently clung to

them; and the purer feelings of England, as evidently, had not the power

to purify the practices of their foreign descent. But if Lord Hervey’s

mind was exercised in giving the secret life of courts to the world, we

think that a much more contemptuous subject for the pencil might be

found, in the man who, earning his daily bread by his courtiership,

pretended to independence of opinion; who, listening to every expression

of royalty with a bow, and receiving every command with the submission

of a slave, threw off the sycophant only to assume the satirist, and

revenged his sense of servitude only by privately registering the errors

of those, the dust of whose shoes he licked for twelve hours in every

twenty-four.

But we must hope that the Memoirs of Lord Hervey will be the last with

which the national curiosity is to be stimulated. We must have no

further ill-natured overflowing on the absurdities of high life. If this

fashion shall invade the shelves and _scrinia_ of noble families, there

is probably not a household of the higher ranks which may not furnish

its tribute. We shall be overrun with feeble gossiping and obsolete

scandal. No rational purpose can be held in view by indulging the

posthumous malice of a discontented slave. No manly curiosity can be

gratified by breaking up the tomb, showing us only the decay so long

hidden by its marbles and escutcheons from the eye.—_Requiescat._

THE GREAT TRAGEDIAN.

CHAPTER I.

Amidst a storm of applause the curtain fell. The applause continued, and

the curtain rose once more; and the favourite actor, worn out with

emotion and fatigue, reappeared to receive the homage which an

enthusiastic multitude paid to his genius.

I saw a proud flush of triumph steal over his wan face, which lighted it

for a moment with almost supernatural expression. As he passed behind

the scenes, amidst the rustling dresses of the rouged and spangled

crowd, I observed his face contracted by a pang, which struck me the

more forcibly from its so quickly succeeding the look of triumph. He

passed on to his room without uttering a word—there to disrobe himself

of the kingly garments in which he had “strutted his brief hour on the

stage;” and in a little while again passed me (as I was hammering out

compliments, in voluble but questionable German, to the pretty

little * * *) in his sober-suited black, and, stepping into his

carriage, drove to the Behren Strasse.

I knew he was going there, as I had been earnestly pressed to meet him

that very evening; so, collecting all my forces, I uttered the happiest

thing my German would permit me, and accompanying it with my most

killing glance, raised the tiny hand of * * * to my lips and withdrew,

perfectly charmed with her, and perfectly satisfied with myself.

There was a brilliant circle that night at Madame Röckel’s. To use the

received phrase, “all Berlin was there.” I found Herr Schoenlein, the

great actor, surrounded by admirers, more profuse than delicate in their

adulation. He was pale; looked wearied. He seemed to heed that

admiration so little—and yet, in truth, he needed it so much! Not a

muscle moved—not a smile answered their compliments; he received them as

if he had been a statue which a senseless crowd adored. Yet, fulsome as

the compliments were, they were never too fulsome for his greed. He had

the fever-thirst of praise upon him now more than ever—now more than at

any period of his long career, during which his heart had always

throbbed at every sound of applause, did he crave more and more

applause. That man, seemingly so indifferent, was sick at heart, and

applause alone could cure him! Had he not applause enough? Did not all

Germany acknowledge his greatness? Did not Berlin worship him? True; but

that was not enough: he hungered for more.

I was taken up to him by Madame Röckel, and introduced as an “English

admirer.” Now, for the first time, he manifested some pleasure. It was

not assuredly _what_ I said—(for although, _of course_, I am always

“mistaken for a German,” so pure is my accent, so correct my

diction!)—it was the fact of my being a foreigner—an Englishman—which

made my praise so acceptable. I was a countryman of Shakspeare’s, and,

of course, a discerning critic of Shakspearian acting. We rapidly passed

over the commonplace bridges of conversation, and were soon engaged in a

discussion respecting the stage.

With nervous energy, and a sort of feverish irritability, he questioned

me about our great actors—our Young, Kean, Kemble, and Macready—which

gave me an opportunity for displaying that nice critical discrimination

which my friends are kind enough to believe I possess—with what reason

it is not for me to say.

When I told him that, on the whole, I was more gratified with the

performances of Shakspeare in Germany, he turned upon me with sudden

quickness and asked—

“In what towns?”

“At Berlin and Dresden,” I answered.

“You have seen Franz, then?”

“I have.”