to lament were very faint indeed, and their distribution of naval force,
far from impeding, seemed to assist the views of the Holy Alliance. It
was, however, confidently asserted by some well-informed persons that
it was the real wish of the Duke of Wellington, and yet more of Lord
Castlereagh, even at that time to discountenance all armed interference
with the revolutions of countries nominally independent. Some even
maintain that had the negotiations remained in the hands of Lord Stewart,
the present Lord Londonderry,[311] the aggressive measures against
Naples would never have been resorted to. Accident or personal caprice
occasioned Lord Stewart’s absence at the time; and the conduct of the
affairs devolved on Robert Gordon,[312] who, deeply imbued with his
brother Lord Aberdeen’s predilection for the Austrians, was easily
cajoled by their arts to depart from the spirit of his instructions.
George IV. no doubt rejoiced in secret at the failure of any endeavours
to check the anti-revolutionary intervention of Austria; and is it
uncharitable to surmise that a Cabinet, weakened in numbers, talents,
and popularity by the secession of Mr. Canning and by the unsatisfactory
results of the proceedings against the Queen, were disposed to pacify
the King by injurious compliances with his passions, or at least by the
faintness of their resistance to his ruling prejudices and prepossessions?
In February and March there were many animated debates on these topics.
In the course of them I took an active and, as some thought, an
intemperate and imprudent part. In one of them, when called to order
by Lord Harrowby, I disdained to have the appearance of qualifying
by finishing my sentence as I had intended; and, so interrupted, it
seemed to charge the Emperor Alexander with a participation or at least
connivance at the murder of his father, whereas my meaning was to
utter a much less disputable, as well as less offensive, allegation,
namely, that it ill became him to charge those who derived their power
from insurrection or mutiny with being necessarily accessories after
the fact to the perpetration of a crime, for he was himself sitting
on the throne reeking with the blood of his own father, and would
consequently, by a parity of reasoning, be exposed to the unfounded or,
at least, questionable imputation of being cognisant of and responsible
for the murder. The diplomatic agents of Russia felt or affected great
indignation. Up to the period of Alexander’s death they pointedly
avoided my society. It was whispered that Count Lieven,[313] a very
gentlemanlike man, had some thoughts of making it a personal quarrel; and
my old friend Pozzo di Borgo soon after, at Paris, though not unwilling
to meet me, conveyed his regret that he could neither exchange visits nor
invite me to his house.
I was in France for five or six months in the summer of 1821; but before
I set out, I had the satisfaction of getting an act through Parliament,
which in turbulent times may have the beneficial effect of saving the
lives of many persecuted and obnoxious men. Availing myself of an
admission of Lord Eldon that the laws relating to treason should be
alike in all parts of the United Kingdom, I pointed out to him the fact
that the just and benevolent statute which requires two witnesses to an
overt act of treason was not in force in Ireland; and that men there, in
our own time, had been convicted and executed on the testimony of one
only. He promised not to oppose a bill to amend this defect; and when I
introduced it, [it] glided almost imperceptibly through both Houses of
Parliament, to my great satisfaction. Is it vanity to say that when one
has succeeded in enacting such an improvement one feels that one has not
lived in vain, and that one has done something to rescue from reproach
that anomaly which confers for birth alone an undue share in making laws
for the community to which one belongs? The bill for the relief of Roman
Catholics, having passed the House of Commons, was thrown out in the
Lords.
I soon after went to France. Such English intelligence as reached me
there may be better found in Parliamentary Reports, _Annual Registers_,
and other printed works. To them I refer my reader. He will, no doubt,
remark in the debates [on] the Grampound Enfranchisement Bill the gradual
but sure tokens of a rising statesman and philosopher in Lord Russell,
and in the measure itself the progress of the principle of Reform in the
public, as well as some indication of the effects likely to be produced
on that question by the shortsighted resistance of the High Tory party to
every improvement, however small.
The death of Napoleon was one of the events of this year. The manner it
reached me, and many other particulars relating to that extraordinary
man, are recorded in a separate book of this work, and require no
repetition here.[314]
The Queen’s attempt to force herself into the presence at the Coronation
was unsuccessful and undignified. It outraged the feelings of the
country, and was deprecated by a large portion of her friends and
advisers. Even Sir Robert Wilson, not the least zealous or rash of her
counsellors, vehemently protested against it, and absented himself
purposely on the occasion. The imputations cast upon him afterwards of
planning a mutiny and insurrection were utterly groundless. He was at
Paris when news of her death and the projected procession arrived, and he
consulted me on the propriety of attending it, after having so recently
parted with Her Majesty on a difference respecting her attempt to appear
at the Coronation. That gorgeous ceremony, though far less gratifying
to the people than those which have subsequently occurred, was lavishly
expensive and splendid; but it was very pernicious in its effects both on
the Royal and the public mind. George IV. acted the farce of deriving his
authority from Heaven with so much complacency that he almost persuaded
himself that it was true, and the people, though hardly the dupes of such
mummery, surrendered their better judgment and more reasonable feelings
of distrust to the glitter of pageantry and show. To disseminate this
disposition for parade the King exhibited himself shortly afterwards in
Ireland, and even in that nation, whose wrongs he was so intent upon
perpetuating, found a gentry and a populace base enough to greet his
arrival with shouts and adulation. So predominant is a childish love of
Princes in all parts of the British dominions.
It was during his absence on that excursion that Queen Caroline died.
The death of this luckless Princess, the consequence of an accidental
obstruction in her bowels, was rather a relief than loss to all parties
in the State. The King was overjoyed, the Ministers pleased, and perhaps
those hitherto politically and professionally connected with her were, on
reflection, not sorry at the event. Few could have adhered to her Court
without either discredit or disadvantage, and yet none could have held
entirely aloof without incurring the imputation of base servility to the
King and great want of generosity and feeling. To none was the release
greater than to Mr. Canning. It did not entirely efface the resentment of
the King against those who had espoused her cause, or those, including
the Ministers, whom he thought had by mismanagement given her a triumph;
but it removed the object which perpetually reminded him of his
mortification, as well as all occasions which might revive his wrath.
END OF THE MEMOIR
MISCELLANEOUS RECOLLECTIONS
A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER BEGUN IN 1826
In one supplementary chapter to my Memoirs I have endeavoured to
preserve the recollection of such foreign anecdotes and personages as
accident, credible report, or personal observation have brought within
my knowledge. In this, I propose to set down whatever I have learnt
worth commemorating concerning those persons who, whether Englishmen
or foreigners, have during my time, without immediate connection
with politics, acquired or deserved celebrity for genius or talent,
learning or wit, in science, in art, in poetry, in literature, or in
conversation. With some such I have been intimate, with many others
familiarly acquainted. All have, no doubt, had directly or indirectly
more or less influence on the taste, temper, and opinions of society.
The indistinct manner in which it was exerted would not, indeed, justify
the introduction of their names in my narrative of party contentions and
political events; but some traits of their characters and lives may not
be misplaced on the distant ground of the picture I have attempted to
trace. I do not, however, pretend to much accuracy of research, nor do I
aspire to the office of biographer of my contemporaries; still less am I
qualified to become the historian of literature, arts, or sciences. Mine
are notes and reminiscences of an idle, and in some senses ignorant,
spectator. They are rambling, desultory, and imperfect, and often more
calculated to raise than to satisfy curiosity. But they are true; they
relate also to subjects which, having afforded amusement and instruction
to the writer in the course of his life, may possibly prove neither
unpleasing nor uninstructive to some reader of similar habits and taste
after its close.
Though from my family connections I was during my childhood and early
education in the habit of seeing many of the leading characters in
fashionable and political life, yet I remember meeting but few men of
literary celebrity. The truth is, that at that period they were less
blended in society with men of business and pleasure than they have been
of late years. There was perhaps as much reading, but there was less
conversation about books. If equal homage was paid to authors of genius,
the intercourse between that class of men and fashionable company was
infinitely less than has since been established, to the credit, and I
should hope to the advantage, of both. Of course there were exceptions.
Some few, like Horace Walpole, Gibbon, Soame Jenyns, Sheridan, and
Tickell, had at different epochs of their lives partaken of the character
of both. Some others, who from birth and early habits might be deemed to
belong to one class, from taste or choice studiously devoted themselves
to the other. I had from the earliest youth great curiosity about men
remarkable for their literary attainments. My vanity and taste were
always gratified by any intercourse with them,
Quotque aderant vates rebar adesse Deos.
Hence I was flattered by occasionally visiting Horace Walpole in London
and at Strawberry Hill, at one or two letters I received from him, and
at the notice he took of me when I met him in houses which he habitually
frequented. His conversation, like his written compositions, displayed
a sprightly mind and a memory stored with anecdotes, historical and
literary, the result of much antiquarian research and the fruit of a
long life spent in the company of statesmen, authors, artists, and
wits. In his person he was slender and prim, in his manners extremely
artificial, in his temper somewhat susceptible about trifles. His
conversation, though much enlivened by fancy and epigram, had great marks
of preparation and study, and even effort. These circumstances made Lord
Ossory observe in some MS. notes that, “Walpole fell far short of his
friend, George Selwyn,” who, let me add, was a friend somewhat unmerciful
on the taste and appearance of Horace Walpole, describing Strawberry Hill
to me as a catacomb, or at best a museum, rather than a habitation, and
the master of it [as] one of the most carefully finished miniatures and
best preserved mummies in the whole collection.
But whatever were his peculiarities, Walpole’s published and unpublished
works are mines which abound in brilliant, and do not fail in solid,
materials for history and biography. No one employed as I have been in
editing and, as I now am, in imitating his labours,[315] can seriously
wish to disparage one whom he shows himself willing and perhaps unequal
to copy and to emulate. The scandalous chronicle reported him to be son
of a Lord Hervey.[316] In affected humour, laborious application to
trifles, occasional and unprovoked malignity, and whimsical ingenuity
of understanding, he certainly bore some resemblance to that family. He
felt, or pretended to feel, great disgust at the practice adopted by
the bookmaking admirers of Johnson, who scrupled not to commit to print
whatever they heard in private conversation. Hence he would suddenly
purse up his mouth in a pointed but ludicrous manner whenever Boswell
came into the room, and sit as mute as a fish till that angler for
anecdote and repartee had left it. It is more than probable that he
dreaded and disliked Dr. Johnson himself. Whig principles, Republican
affectations, and loose notions of religion, were all likely to invite
an attack; and I much suspect that Walpole practised some artifice or
resorted to some meanness to elude the notice or disarm the hostility
of that formidable enemy of fashionable philosophy. In conversation and
private correspondence, as well as in his posthumous works, he was by no
means sparing of sneers and sarcasms on the priesthood and the Church.
I well remember that, on the publication of _The Microcosm_,[317] Lady
Ossory enclosed to me a letter she had received from Horace Walpole,
in which he humorously but earnestly exploded a prevalent notion that
the juvenile authors were assisted by the masters. Walpole urged the
incapacity, ignorance, and sycophancy of the tutors and parsons in terms
highly offensive to clerical ears. I, in truth, did not understand the
force of many of his allusions; but, vain of possessing the handwriting
of an eminent wit, ran to communicate the panegyric of my schoolfellows
to my tutor, Dr. Langford. He, though “Etonian to the backbone,” was far
from relishing such a compliment to the scholars, but, nettled at the
irreverence or truth of the remarks, made me feel that I had not risen in
his favour by becoming the depositary of so heterodox a document.
Walpole’s conjectures were not, however, unfounded, nor his sarcasms
unmerited. The fellows, masters, and tutors were in my time, a period of
nearly ten years, singularly deficient in common sense and experience,
and by no means distinguished even in that narrow path of learning
which they are expected most earnestly to pursue. Dr. Goodall[318] was
perhaps an exception to the last clause of this censure. He was a showy
scholar and quick man, but with as little usage of the world or solidity
of judgment as his colleagues. I was diverted, when I met him at our
Ambassador’s many years afterwards, at the good-humoured simplicity
with which he acknowledged what had delighted him most in Parisian
society. It was, forsooth, the precedence given to the Nuncio, the red
stockings, imposing dress, and dignified carriage of an ecclesiastic,
who from perhaps a pedagogue like himself had risen to be a diplomat
and a Cardinal, and walked before nobles, generals, and Princes. Dr.
Roberts,[319] the Provost, who for a short time had been tutor to Mr.
Fox, was something more of a literary character. He had published a
volume of verses, and was supposed to have assisted Dr. Glynn[320] (an
abler man than himself) in his Seatonian Prize on the Day of Judgment,
which is a poetical composition of unquestionable merit and full of happy
imitations both of Milton and of Virgil. I suspect, however, that Dr.
Roberts is now better remembered in “Colleges and Halls” for a speech to
the King, highly characteristic of his profession, than for the truth or
taste of his poetry. In thanking His Majesty for his Provostship, he
added, “And I am the more sensible of the favour conferred, Sir, as it is
tenable with any other preferment.”
Among the fellows was a Dr. Barford,[321] who passed for a great scholar.
I could never discover on what his reputation was founded, except a Greek
translation of Gray’s _Elegy_. The boys affirmed that he could read a
newspaper off-hand into classical Greek, a common hyperbole to express a
scholar’s familiarity with that language. George Selwyn used the same to
me of his Master, Dr. George: he added that he knew the Greek for every
English word except _Mutton cabobbed_, that he had taught his wife also
many words, but that he reproved her for using them ungrammatically, as,
when in playing whist she said, “I lead ὁ βασιλέυς,” he would turn up his
eyes and earnestly exclaim, “τὸν βασιλέα, τὸν βασιλέα, my dear.”[322] I
know not why I repeat so silly a story, especially as I cannot vouch for
its truth. I might, however, have asked the lady herself, for I remember
seeing her at Mrs. Hewitt’s (who was, I think, her granddaughter) at the
age of one hundred and one—the oldest person I ever met in company. Of
this same Dr. George, it is related, that on hearing the King of Prussia,
then a young military hero, extolled for his abilities, he observed, “I
should like to have him up in my school to a verb in μί.”
Similar notions of excellence might be brought home to the pedants and
masters of my own time. My schoolfellows, however, aspired even during
their education to a better kind of literary fame, and not without
success. _The Microcosm_ was published while I was at Eton. I was myself
too young, idle, and ignorant to contribute to the work. The four chief
conductors were John or Joseph Smith, usually called by a nickname
Easley; Robert Percy Smith, yet more generally designated by his nickname
Bobus—both collegers, but unconnected by blood—and George Canning and
John Hookham Frere—Oppidans. Among the occasional contributors were Lord
Henry Spencer,[323] who, notwithstanding his constitutional shyness and
reserve, would have distinguished himself by his wit and ingenuity,
but died at the early age of twenty-four when employed on a mission to
Berlin; and Mr. Mellish, who passed an adventurous life chiefly abroad,
and translated many German works for the booksellers in London.
The elder Smith, surnamed Easley, was nephew of Sir Nathaniel Grove, the
Puisne Judge, and, through the interest of his uncle or of Mr. Canning,
obtained some places in the Courts of Justice and the Colonies, in which
he silently enjoyed the profits, without offence, but without rising or
aspiring to any eminence in his profession or in literature.[324] His
numbers, in which there was rather an ostentatious display of learning
and a dash of unintelligible metaphysics, were great favourites with the
schoolboys. They passed with us for prodigies of learning and profound
speculation. Boys generally form a very correct prognostic of the temper,
disposition, and courage, and a very erroneous one of the prudence,
sense, and abilities of their schoolfellows.
Of Robert Percy Smith,[325] elder brother of Sydney; married to my
aunt, Miss Vernon; first, Advocate-General of Calcutta, and afterwards,
representative for Lincoln in two successive Parliaments, I shall
probably speak more than once in the course of these pages: but, having
mentioned him as an Eton boy, I cannot withhold my testimony to his
early proficiency and extraordinary promise. He was clearly the soundest
scholar of his day; he had not only by his own unaided exertions
mastered the Italian language and literature, but had already read and
reflected on as many and as profound works, both ancient and modern,
on ethics, politics, and divinity, as would have enabled an ordinary
student in either of our Universities to set up for an accomplished
metaphysician. Yet nature had done more for him than study. He was a
descendant of a sister of Sir Isaac Newton, and his powers of application
and reasoning, though never directed to science, seemed to claim and
justify the relationship. He had, too, a wonderful command of language.
If he seldom displayed his pleasantry and imagination, enough escaped
him to satisfy even a superficial observer that he had in store, though
he perhaps disdained to use it, as much of both of those commodities as
glittered in the conversation of his brother and attracted the applause
of fashionable society in London. Perhaps the strict discipline to which
Robert Smith had inured his mind even at Eton perverted rather than
directed, encumbered rather than enriched it. Notions not very friendly
to our species and crudely adopted from books when a boy, though quite
foreign from his natural character, which was sanguine and gay as well
as ambitious, checked him in the career of his profession, aggravated
many little unavoidable but not insuperable disappointments, dimmed the
brilliancy of his spirits, and though they could not extinguish the
native warmth of his heart, confined its influence to too small a circle,
and gave up, not to party, but to the parlour and the fireside, what was
meant and admirably formed for mankind.
The early inclinations of George Canning destined him to another career
than that of letters. His success in it renders it superfluous to say
much of him as a writer or companion, though in both those capacities
he rose far beyond mediocrity. In all, his quick sense of ridicule,
his readiness and exuberance, both in fancy and in expression, were
conspicuous. Perhaps his characteristic excellence when a boy, viz.,
prodigious facility of composition, is more necessary in this country
to the success of an orator or a Minister than depth and originality of
thought. He was, indeed, when compared with some of his fellow labourers
in _The Microcosm_, more showy than solid, but it does not follow from
thence that he was for that early age in any degree superficial. His
papers in that work were the most lively, and his verses more easy and
sonorous than those of his associates. His Latin exercises and English
effusions excelled in splendour of diction and brilliancy of wit, rather
than in the expression of passion or truth of poetical feeling.
[Illustration: _Right Hon. John Hookham Frere_
_Sir M. A. Shee Pinx._
_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]
Considering the station[326] he now occupies and the events that are
passing, it is curious to reflect that his first copy of English verses
(written, as he assured me, before he came to Eton, and consequently ere
he was twelve years of age) was on the Slavery of Greece, and contains a
fervent exhortation and prayer for the liberation of its inhabitants. It
is to be found in the 5th number of _The Microcosm_.
The least successful in that juvenile work was John Hookham Frere; yet
he had a genius better adapted to letters than any of his coadjutors.
Although indistinct or, at least, inconsistent in his reasoning, he
excelled them all in originality of thought, humour, and expression. His
merits (to use a happy phrase of his own) were of a manufacture less
suited to foreign export than to home consumption. It was therefore
mistaken friendship in Mr. Canning to engage him in diplomacy. His
artless temper, his ill-directed suspicions, his absence, occasional
rudeness, and habitual indolence and singularity, all obviously
disqualified him for that line. Had he been employed in England, his
devotion to his friends, the ardour of his mind, and the stores of his
memory, but, above all, the originality of his humour, would doubtless
have made him a first-rate political writer. Had he yet more fortunately
confined himself to literature, his genius might have raised him to the
character of an original critic and moralist, and perhaps have placed him
on the same form with those poets who have furnished the best models of
excellence in our language. As it was, the very habits which disqualified
him for serious business added a zest to his conversation and gave a
relish to all private intercourse with him in society. You laughed with
him when he was facetious, you smiled at him when he was odd. He had warm
and generous affections, but it was shrewdly observed of him that his
attachments, like those of a cat, were stronger to places than to persons.