Lord Macaulay .........................................................................................................................................1

FRANCIS ATTERBURY. .......................................................................................................................2

JOHN BUNYAN.....................................................................................................................................9

OLIVER GOLDSMITH........................................................................................................................15

SAMUEL JOHNSON. ...........................................................................................................................22

WILLIAM PITT....................................................................................................................................39

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.........................................................................67

EPITAPH ON HENRY MARTYN.......................................................................................................68

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF PITT. ..................................................................................................68

A RADICAL WAR SONG. ...................................................................................................................69

THE BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. ...................................................................................................71

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,...............................................................................................................71

SERMON IN A CHURCHYARD. ........................................................................................................73

TRANSLATION FROM A.V. ARNAULT..........................................................................................75

DIES IRAE............................................................................................................................................76

THE MARRIAGE OF TIRZAH AND AHIRAD.................................................................................78

THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN'S TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE.............................................................89

SONG. ....................................................................................................................................................92

POLITICAL GEORGICS. .....................................................................................................................93

THE DELIVERANCE OF VIENNA....................................................................................................94

THE LAST BUCCANEER...................................................................................................................98

EPITAPH ON A JACOBITE. ................................................................................................................99

LINES WRITTEN IN AUGUST. ..........................................................................................................99

TRANSLATION FROM PLAUTUS..................................................................................................102

INSCRIPTION ON THE STATUE OF LORD WM. BENTINCK....................................................105

EPITAPH ON SIR BENJAMIN HEATH MALKIN..........................................................................106

EPITAPH ON LORD METCALFE....................................................................................................106

The Battle of Naseby, by Obadiah Bindtheirkingsinchainsandtheirnobleswithlinksofiron,

Francis Atterbury, a man who holds a conspicuous place in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of

England, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was

rector. Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried thence to Christchurch a stock of learning

which, though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial

observers believed his attainments to be immense. At Oxford, his parts, his taste, and his bold, contemptuous,

and imperious spirit, soon made him conspicuous. Here he published at twenty, his first work, a translation of

the noble poem of Absalom and Achitophel into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the versification of the

young scholar was that of the Augustan age. In English composition he succeeded much better. In 1687 he

distinguished himself among many able men who wrote in defence of the Church of England, then persecuted

by James II., and calumniated by apostates who had for lucre quitted her communion. Among these apostates

none was more active or malignant than Obadiah Walker, who was master of University College, and who

had set up there, under the royal patronage, a press for printing tracts against the established religion. In one

of these tracts, written apparently by Walker himself, many aspersions were thrown on Martin Luther.

Atterbury undertook to defend the great Saxon Reformer, and performed that task in a manner singularly

characteristic. Whoever examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the contrast between the feebleness of

those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and the vigour of those parts which are rhetorical and

aggressive. The Papists were so much galled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young polemic that they

raised a cry of treason, and accused him of having, by implication, called King James a Judas.

After the Revolution, Atterbury, though bred in the doctrines of nonresistance and passive obedience,

readily swore fealty to the new government. In no long time he took holy orders. He occasionally preached in

London with an eloquence which raised his reputation, and soon had the honour of being appointed one of the

royal chaplains. But he ordinarily resided at Oxford, where he took an active part in academical business,

directed the classical studies of the undergraduates of his college, and was the chief adviser and assistant of

Dean Aldrich, a divine now chiefly remembered by his catches, but renowned among his contemporaries as a

scholar, a Tory, and a highchurchman. It was the practice, not a very judicious practice, of Aldrich to

employ the most promising youths of his college in editing Greek and Latin books. Among the studious and

welldisposed lads who were, unfortunately for themselves, induced to become teachers of philology when

they should have been content to be learners, was Charles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of

Robert Boyle, the great experimental philosopher. The task assigned to Charles Boyle was to prepare a new

edition of one of the most worthless books in existence. It was a fashion, among those Greeks and Romans

who cultivated rhetoric as an art, to compose epistles and harangues in the names of eminent men. Some of

these counterfeits are fabricated with such exquisite taste and skill that it is the highest achievement of

criticism to distinguish them from originals. Others are so feebly and rudely executed that they can hardly

impose on an intelligent schoolboy. The best specimen which has come down to us is perhaps the oration for

Marcellus, such an imitation of Tully's eloquence as Tully would himself have read with wonder and delight.

The worst specimen is perhaps a collection of letters purporting to have been written by that Phalaris who

governed Agrigentum more than 500 years before the Christian era. The evidence, both internal and external,

against the genuineness of these letters is overwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in

company with much that was far more valuable, from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by

Politian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar on our side of the Alps. In truth, it

would be as easy to persuade an educated Englishman that one of Johnson's Ramblers was the work of

William Wallace as to persuade a man like Erasmus that a pedantic exercise, composed in the trim and

artificial Attic of the time of Julian, was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian, who roasted

people alive many years before there existed a volume of prose in the Greek language. But, though

Christchurch could boast of many good Latinists, of many good English writers, and of a greater number of

clever and fashionable men of the world than belonged to any other academic body, there was not then in the

college a single man capable of distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek literature. So

superficial indeed was the learning of the rulers of this celebrated society that they were charmed by an essay

which Sir William Temple published in praise of the ancient writers. It now seems strange that even the

eminent public services, the deserved popularity, and the graceful style of Temple should have saved so silly

a performance from universal contempt. Of the books which he most vehemently eulogised his eulogies

proved that he knew nothing. In fact, he could not read a line of the language in which they were written.

Among many other foolish things, he said that the letters of Phalaris were the oldest letters and also the best

in the world. Whatever Temple wrote attracted notice. People who had never heard of the Epistles of Phalaris

began to inquire about them. Aldrich, who knew very little Greek, took the word of Temple who knew none,

and desired Boyle to prepare a new edition of these admirable compositions which, having long slept in

The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who was Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of

the college. It was an edition such as might be expected from people who would stoop to edite such a book.

The notes were worthy of the text; the Latin version worthy of the Greek original. The volume would have

been forgotten in a month, had not a misunderstanding about a manuscript arisen between the young editor

and the greatest scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters, Richard Bentley. The

manuscript was in Bentley's keeping. Boyle wished it to be collated. A mischiefmaking bookseller informed

him that Bentley had refused to lend it, which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of

the letters attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by such counterfeits, which was

perfectly true. Boyle, much provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironical compliment to Bentley's

courtesy. Bentley revenged himself by a short dissertation, in which he proved that the epistles were spurious,

and the new edition of them worthless: but he treated Boyle personally with civility as a young gentleman of

great hopes, whose love of learning was highly commendable, and who deserved to have had better

Few things in literary history are more extraordinary than the storm which this little dissertation raised.

Bentley had treated Boyle with forbearance; but he had treated Christchurch with contempt; and the

Christchurchmen, wherever dispersed, were as much attached to their college as a Scotchman to his country,

or a Jesuit to his order. Their influence was great. They were dominant at Oxford, powerful in the Inns of

Court and in the College of Physicians, conspicuous in Parliament and in the literary and fashionable circles

of London. Their unanimous cry was, that the honour of the college must be vindicated, that the insolent

Cambridge pedant must be put down. Poor Boyle was unequal to the task, and disinclined to it. It was,

The answer to Bentley, which bears the name of Boyle, but which was, in truth, no more the work of Boyle

than the letters to which the controversy related were the work of Phalaris, is now read only by the curious,

and will in all probability never be reprinted again. But it had its day of noisy popularity. It was to be found,

not only in the studies of men of letters, but on the tables of the most brilliant drawingrooms of Soho Square

and Covent Garden. Even the beaus and coquettes of that age, the Wildairs and the Lady Lurewells, the

Mirabells and the Millaments, congratulated each other on the way in which the gay young gentleman, whose

erudition sate so easily upon him, and who wrote with so much pleasantry and good breeding about the Attic

dialect and the anapaestic measure, Sicilian talents and Thericlean cups, had bantered the queer prig of a

doctor. Nor was the applause of the multitude undeserved. The book is, indeed, Atterbury's masterpiece, and

gives a higher notion of his powers than any of those works to which he put his name. That he was altogether

in the wrong on the main question, and on all the collateral questions springing out of it, that his knowledge

of the language, the literature, and the history of Greece was not equal to what many freshmen now bring up

every year to Cambridge and Oxford, and that some of his blunders seem rather to deserve a flogging than a

refutation, is true; and therefore it is that his performance is, in the highest degree, interesting and valuable to

a judicious reader. It is good by reason of its exceeding badness. It is the most extraordinary instance that

exists of the art of making much show with little substance. There is no difficulty, says the steward of

Moliere's miser, in giving a fine dinner with plenty of money: the really great cook is he who can set out a

banquet with no money at all. That Bentley should have written excellently on ancient chronology and

geography, on the development of the Greek language, and the origin of the Greek drama, is not strange. But

that Atterbury should, during some years, have been thought to have treated these subjects much better than

Bentley is strange indeed. It is true that the champion of Christchurch had all the help which the most

celebrated members of that society could give him. Smalridge contributed some very good wit; Friend and

others some very bad archaeology and philology. But the greater part of the volume was entirely Atterbury's:

what was not his own was revised and retouched by him: and the whole bears the mark of his mind, a mind

inexhaustibly rich in all the resources of controversy, and familiar with all the artifices which make falsehood

look like truth, and ignorance like knowledge. He had little gold; but he beat that little out to the very thinnest

leaf, and spread it over so vast a surface that to those who judged by a glance, and who did not resort to

balances and tests, the glittering heap of worthless matter which he produced seemed to be an inestimable

treasure of massy bullion. Such arguments as he had he placed in the clearest light. Where he had no

arguments, he resorted to personalities, sometimes serious, generally ludicrous, always clever and cutting.

But, whether he was grave or merry, whether he reasoned or sneered, his style was always pure, polished, and

Party spirit then ran high; yet, though Bentley ranked among Whigs, and Christchurch was a stronghold of

Toryism, Whigs joined with Tories in applauding Atterbury's volume. Garth insulted Bentley, and extolled

Boyle in lines which are now never quoted except to be laughed at. Swift, in his "Battle of the Books,"

introduced with much pleasantry Boyle, clad in armour, the gift of all the gods, and directed by Apollo in the

form of a human friend, for whose name a blank is left which may easily be filled up. The youth, so

accoutred, and so assisted, gains an easy victory over his uncourteous and boastful antagonist. Bentley,

meanwhile, was supported by the consciousness of an immeasurable superiority, and encouraged by the

voices of the few who were really competent to judge the combat. "No man," he said, justly and nobly, "was

ever written down but by himself." He spent two years in preparing a reply, which will never cease to be read

and prized while the literature of ancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. This reply proved, not

only that the letters ascribed to Phalaris were spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, his eloquence, his

skill in controversial fence, was the most audacious pretender that ever wrote about what he did not

understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter of indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute

about matters far more important and exciting than the laws of Zaleucus and the laws of Charondas. The rage

of religious factions was extreme. High church and Low church divided the nation. The great majority of the

clergy were on the highchurch side; the majority of King William's bishops were inclined to

latitudinarianism. A dispute arose between the two parties touching the extent of the powers of the Lower

House of Convocation. Atterbury thrust himself eagerly into the front rank of the highchurchmen. Those

who take a comprehensive and impartial view of his whole career will not be disposed to give him credit for

religious zeal. But it was his nature to be vehement and pugnacious in the cause of every fraternity of which

he was a member. He had defended the genuineness of a spurious book simply because Christchurch had put

forth an edition of that book; he now stood up for the clergy against the civil power, simply because he was a

clergyman, and for the priests against the episcopal order, simply because he was as yet only a priest. He

asserted the pretensions of the class to which he belonged in several treatises written with much wit,

ingenuity, audacity, and acrimony. In this, as in his first controversy, he was opposed to antagonists whose

knowledge of the subject in dispute was far superior to his; but in this, as in his first controversy, he imposed

on the multitude by bold assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, above all, by his peculiar knack of

exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner as to make it look like a great deal. Having passed himself off on

the world as a greater master of classical learning than Bentley, he now passed himself off as a greater master

of ecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson. By the great body of the clergy he was regarded as the ablest

and most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their rights against the oligarchy of prelates. The lower

House of Convocation voted him thanks for his services; the University of Oxford created him a doctor of

divinity; and soon after the accession of Anne, while the Tories still had the chief weight in the government,

Soon after he had obtained this preferment, the Whig party rose to ascendency in the state. From that party he

could expect no favour. Six years elapsed before a change of fortune took place. At length, in the year 1710,

the prosecution of Sacheverell produced a formidable explosion of highchurch fanaticism. At such a

moment Atterbury could not fail to be conspicuous. His inordinate zeal for the body to which he belonged,

his turbulent and aspiring temper, his rare talents for agitation and for controversy, were again signally

displayed. He bore a chief part in framing that artful and eloquent speech which the accused divine

pronounced at the bar of the Lords, and which presents a singular contrast to the absurd and scurrilous

sermon which had very unwisely been honoured with impeachment. During the troubled and anxious months

which followed the trial, Atterbury was among the most active of those pamphleteers who inflamed the

nation against the Whig ministry and the Whig parliament. When the ministry had been changed and the

parliament dissolved, rewards were showered upon him. The Lower House of Convocation elected him

prolocutor. The Queen appointed him Dean of Christchurch on the death of his old friend and patron Aldrich.

The college would have preferred a gentler ruler. Nevertheless, the new head was received with every mark

of honour. A congratulatory oration in Latin was addressed to him in the magnificent vestibule of the hall;

and he in reply professed the warmest attachment to the venerable house in which he had been educated, and

paid many gracious compliments to those over whom he was to preside. But it was not in his nature to be a

mild or an equitable governor. He had left the chapter of Carlisle distracted by quarrels. He found

Christchurch at peace; but in three months his despotic and contentious temper did at Christchurch what it

had done at Carlisle. He was succeeded in both his deaneries by the humane and accomplished Smalridge,

who gently complained of the state in which both had been left. "Atterbury goes before, and sets everything

on fire. I come after him with a bucket of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he was made a

bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous

altercations took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to fear that the great Tory

college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of

Rochester, which was then always united with the deanery of Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be

before him. For, though there were many able men on the episcopal bench, there was none who equalled or

approached him in parliamentary talents. Had his party continued in power, it is not improbable that he would

have been raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury. The more splendid his prospects, the more reason he had

to dread the accession of a family which was wellknown to be partial to the Whigs. There is every reason to

believe that he was one of those politicians who hoped that they might be able, during the life of Anne, to

prepare matters in such a way that at her decease there might be little difficulty in setting aside the Act of

Settlement and placing the Pretender on the throne. Her sudden death confounded the projects of these

conspirators. Atterbury, who wanted no kind of courage, implored his confederates to proclaim James III.,

and offered to accompany the heralds in lawn sleeves. But he found even the bravest soldiers of his party

irresolute, and exclaimed, not, it is said, without interjections which ill became the mouth of a father of the

church, that the best of all causes and the most precious of all moments had been pusillanimously thrown

away. He acquiesced in what he could not prevent, took the oaths to the House of Hanover, and at the

coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best to ingratiate himself with the royal

family. But his servility was requited with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who

has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious of all the opponents of the

government. In the House of Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace of

pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration even of a hostile majority. Some of the

most remarkable protests which appear in the journals of the peers were drawn up by him; and in some of the

bitterest of those pamphlets which called on the English to stand up for their country against the aliens who

had come from beyond the seas to oppress and plunder her, critics easily detected his style. When the

rebellion of 1715 broke out, he refused to sign the paper in which the bishops of the province of Canterbury

declared their attachment to the Protestant succession. He busied himself in electioneering, especially at

Westminster, where, as dean, he possessed great influence; and was, indeed, strongly suspected of having

After having been long in indirect communication with the exiled family, he, in 1717, began to correspond

directly with the Pretender. The first letter of the correspondence is extant. In that letter Atterbury boasts of

having, during many years past, neglected no opportunity of serving the Jacobite cause. "My daily prayer," he

says, "is that you may have success. May I live to see that day, and live no longer than I do what is in my

power to forward it." It is to be remembered that he who wrote thus was a man bound to set to the church of

which he was overseer an example of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of

Brunswick; that he had assisted in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had abjured James

III., "without equivocation or mental reservation, on the true faith of a Christian."

It is agreeable to turn from his public to his private life. His turbulent spirit, wearied with faction and treason,

now and then required repose, and found it in domestic endearments, and in the society of the most illustrious

of the living and of the dead. Of his wife little is known: but between him and his daughter there was an

affection singularly close and tender. The gentleness of his manners when he was in the company of a few

friends was such as seemed hardly credible to those who knew him only by his writings and speeches. The

charm of his "softer hour" has been commemorated by one of those friends in imperishable verse. Though

Atterbury's classical attainments were not great, his taste in English literature was excellent; and his

admiration of genius was so strong that it overpowered even his political and religious antipathies. His

fondness for Milton, the mortal enemy of the Stuarts and of the church, was such as to many Tories seemed a

crime. On the sad night on which Addison was laid in the chapel of Henry VII., the Westminster boys

remarked that Atterbury read the funeral service with a peculiar tenderness and solemnity. The favourite

companions, however, of the great Tory prelate were, as might have been expected, men whose politics had

at least a tinge of Toryism. He lived on friendly terms with Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. With Prior he had a

close intimacy, which some misunderstanding about public affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in Atterbury,

not only a warm admirer, but a most faithful, fearless, and judicious adviser. The poet was a frequent guest at

the episcopal palace among the elms of Bromley, and entertained not the slightest suspicion that his host,

now declining in years, confined to an easy chair by gout, and apparently devoted to literature, was deeply

The spirit of the Jacobites had been cowed by the events of 1715. It revived in 1721. The failure of the South

Sea project, the panic in the money market, the downfall of great commercial houses, the distress from which

no part of the kingdom was exempt, had produced general discontent. It seemed not improbable that at such a

moment an insurrection might be successful. An insurrection was planned. The streets of London were to be

barricaded; the Tower and the Bank were to be surprised; King George, his family, and his chief captains and

councillors, were to be arrested; and King James was to be proclaimed. The design became known to the

Duke of Orleans, regent of France, who was on terms of friendship with the House of Hanover. He put the

English government on its guard. Some of the chief malecontents were committed to prison; and among them

was Atterbury. No bishop of the Church of England had been taken into custody since that memorable day

when the applauses and prayers of all London had followed the seven bishops to the gate of the Tower. The

Opposition entertained some hope that it might be possible to excite among the people an enthusiasm

resembling that of their fathers, who rushed into the waters of the Thames to implore the blessing of Sancroft.

Pictures of the heroic confessor in his cell were exhibited at the shop windows. Verses in his praise were sung

about the streets. The restraints by which he was prevented from communicating with his accomplices were

represented as cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the Inquisition. Strong appeals were made to the

priesthood. Would they tamely permit so gross an insult to be offered to their cloth? Would they suffer the

ablest, the most eloquent member of their profession, the man who had so often stood up for their rights

against the civil power, to be treated like the vilest of mankind? There was considerable excitement; but it

was allayed by a temperate and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability, of Bishop Gibson, who

stood high in the favour of Walpole, and shortly after became minister for ecclesiastical affairs.

Atterbury remained in close confinement during some months. He had carried on his correspondence with the

exiled family so cautiously that the circumstantial proofs of his guilt, though sufficient to produce entire

moral conviction, were not sufficient to justify legal conviction. He could be reached only by a bill of pains

and penalties. Such a bill the Whig party, then decidedly predominant in both houses, was quite prepared to

support. Many hotheaded members of that party were eager to follow the precedent which had been set in

the case of Sir John Fenwick, and to pass an act for cutting off the bishop's head. Cadogan, who commanded

the army, a brave soldier, but a headstrong politician, is said to have exclaimed with great vehemence: "Fling

him to the lions in the Tower." But the wiser and more humane Walpole was always unwilling to shed blood;

and his influence prevailed. When Parliament met, the evidence against the bishop was laid before

committees of both houses. Those committees reported that his guilt was proved. In the Commons a

resolution, pronouncing him a traitor, was carried by nearly two to one. A bill was then introduced which

provided that he should be deprived of his spiritual dignities, that he should be banished for life, and that no

British subject should hold any intercourse with him except by the royal permission.

This bill passed the Commons with little difficulty. For the bishop, though invited to defend himself, chose to

reserve his defence for the assembly of which he was a member. In the Lords the contest was sharp. The

young Duke of Wharton, distinguished by his parts, his dissoluteness, and his versatility, spoke for Atterbury

with great effect; and Atterbury's own voice was heard for the last time by that unfriendly audience which

had so often listened to him with mingled aversion and delight. He produced few witnesses; nor did those

witnesses say much that could be of service to him. Among them was Pope. He was called to prove that,

while he was an inmate of the palace at Bromley, the bishop's time was completely occupied by literary and

domestic matters, and that no leisure was left for plotting. But Pope, who was quite unaccustomed to speak in

public, lost his head, and, as he afterwards owned, though he had only ten words to say, made two or three

The bill finally passed the Lords by eightythree votes to forty three. The bishops, with a single exception,

were in the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharp taunt from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of

Atterbury and a zealous Tory. "The wild Indians," he said, "give no quarter, because they believe that they

shall inherit the skill and prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. Perhaps the animosity of the right

Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a dignity and tenderness worthy of a better man. Three

"Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon: The world was all before him, where to chuse His

At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with a disingenuousness of which no man who had

studied the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty: "If ever you learn that I have any dealings with

the Pretender, I give you leave to say that my punishment is just." Pope at this time really believed the bishop

to be an injured man. Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same opinion. Swift, a few months later, ridiculed

with great bitterness, in the "Voyage to Laputa," the evidence which had satisfied the two Houses of

Parliament. Soon, however, the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased to assert his innocence,

and contented themselves with lamenting and excusing what they could not defend. After a short stay at

Brussels, he had taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the leading man among the Jacobite refugees

who were assembled there. He was invited to Rome by the Pretender, who then held his mock court under the

immediate protection of the Pope. But Atterbury felt that a bishop of the Church of England would be

strangely out of place at the Vatican, and declined the invitation. During some months, however, he might

flatter himself that he stood high in the good graces of James. The correspondence between the master and

the servant was constant. Atterbury's merits were warmly acknowledged; his advice was respectfully

received; and he was, as Bolingbroke had been before him, the prime minister of a king without a kingdom.

But the new favourite found, as Bolingbroke had found before him, that it was quite as hard to keep the

shadow of power under a vagrant and mendicant prince as to keep the reality of power at Westminster.

Though James had neither territories nor revenues, neither army nor navy, there was more faction and more

intrigue among his courtiers than among those of his successful rival. Atterbury soon perceived that his

counsels were disregarded, if not distrusted. His proud spirit was deeply wounded. He quitted Paris, fixed his

residence at Montpellier, gave up politics, and devoted himself entirely to letters. In the sixth year of his exile

he had so severe an illness that his daughter, herself in very delicate health, determined to run all risks that

she might see him once more. Having obtained a licence from the English Government, she went by sea to

Bordeaux, but landed there in such a state that she could travel only by boat or in a litter. Her father, in spite

of his infirmities, set out from Montpellier to meet her; and she, with the impatience which is often the sign

of approaching death, hastened towards him. Those who were about her in vain implored her to travel slowly.

She said that every hour was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to die. She met him at

Toulouse, embraced him, received from his hand the sacred bread and wine, and thanked God that they had

passed one day in each other's society before they parted forever. She died that night.

It was some time before even the strong mind of Atterbury recovered from this cruel blow. As soon as he was

himself again he became eager for action and conflict; for grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement,

to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he

was, had found out that he had not acted wisely in parting with one who, though a heretic, was, in abilities

and accomplishments, the foremost man of the Jacobite party. The bishop was courted back, and was without

much difficulty induced to return to Paris and to become once more the phantom minister of a phantom

monarchy. But his long and troubled life was drawing to a close. To the last, however, his intellect retained

all its keenness and vigour. He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, that he had been accused by

Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from oblivion by the Dunciad,

of having, in concert with other Christchurchmen, garbled Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. The charge,

as respected Atterbury, had not the slightest foundation: for he was not one of the editors of the History, and

never saw it till it was printed. He published a short vindication of himself, which is a model in its kind,

luminous, temperate, and dignified. A copy of this little work he sent to the Pretender, with a letter singularly

eloquent and graceful. It was impossible, the old man said, that he should write anything on such a subject

without being reminded of the resemblance between his own fate and that of Clarendon. They were the only

two English subjects that had ever been banished from their country and debarred from all communication

with their friends by act of parliament. But here the resemblance ended. One of the exiles had been so happy

as to bear a chief part in the restoration of the Royal house. All that the other could now do was to die

asserting the rights of that house to the last. A few weeks after this letter was written Atterbury died. He had

His body was brought to England, and laid, with great privacy, under the nave of Westminster Abbey. Only

three mourners followed the coffin. No inscription marks the grave. That the epitaph with which Pope

honoured the memory of his friend does not appear on the walls of the great national cemetery is no subject

Those who wish for more complete information about Atterbury may easily collect it from his sermons and

his controversial writings, from the report of the parliamentary proceedings against him, which will be found

in the State Trials, from the five volumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr Nichols, and from the first

volume of the Stuart papers, edited by Mr Glover. A very indulgent but a very interesting account of the

bishop's political career will be found in Lord Mahon's valuable History of England.

John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the English language, was born at Elstow, about a mile

from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said to have been born a tinker. The tinkers then formed an

hereditary caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and were

often confounded with the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. Bunyan's father was more

respectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to a village school

The years of John's boyhood were those during which the puritan spirit was in the highest vigour all over

England; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that

a lad to whom nature had given a powerful imagination, and sensibility which amounted to a disease, should

have been early haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports were interrupted by fits of remorse

and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away with him. As he grew older,

his mental conflicts became still more violent. The strong language in which he described them has strangely

misled all his biographers except Mr Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with pious writers to cite

Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest

depths of wickedness. He is called in one book the most notorious of profligates; in another, the brand

plucked from the burning. He is designated in Mr Ivimey's History of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan,

the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr Ryland, a man once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into the

following rhapsody:"No man of common sense and common integrity can deny that Bunyan was a

practical atheist, a worthless contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common profligate, a

souldespising, a soulmurdering, a soul damning, thoughtless wretch as could exist on the face of the

earth. Now be astonished, O heavens, to eternity! and wonder, O earth and hell! while time endures. Behold

this very man become a miracle of mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, and love." But

whoever takes the trouble to examine the evidence will find that the good men who wrote this had been

deceived by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing it and using it all their lives, they ought to have

understood better. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, from the strong expressions in which a

devout man bemoans his exceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbours. Many

excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to

their fellow creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with

sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs Brownrigg. It is quite certain that

Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely puritanical circles, would have been considered

as a young man of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many other

penitents who, in general terms, acknowledged themselves to have been the worst of mankind, fired up and

stood vigorously on his defence, whenever any particular charge was brought against him by others. He

declares, it is true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in all

transgressions against the divine law, and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner

of vice. But, when those who wished him ill accused him of licentious amours, he called on God and the

angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, or hell, could charge him with having ever

made any improper advances to her. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his wife; but he had even before

his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of his

enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using profane language; but

he tells us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he never offended again. The worst that can be

laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of

reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless in

themselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a

great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church,

playing at tipcat, and reading the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A rector of the school of Laud would

have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had

been learned in a very different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his

When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his life was interrupted by an event which gave a

lasting colour to his thoughts. He enlisted in the parliamentary army, and served during the decisive

campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military career is that, at the siege of Leicester, one of his

comrades, who had taken his post, was killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered himself

as having been saved from death by the special interference of Providence. It may be observed that his

imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he

loved to draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags

of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his

Captain Credence, are evidently portraits, of which the originals were among those martial saints who fought

In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as

her only portion some pious books. And now his mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by

education, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious virulence of the enthusiasm which was then

epidemic in England, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became a strict Pharisee. He

was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His favourite amusements were one after another

relinquished, though not without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tipcat he paused, and

stood staring wildly upwards with his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him whether he would

leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seen an awful countenance

frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of bellringing he renounced; but he still for a time ventured to

go to the church tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. But soon the thought struck him that, if he

persisted in such wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head; and he fled in terror from the accursed place.

To give up dancing on the village green was still harder; and some months elapsed before he had the fortitude

to part with this darling sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried by the maxims

of that austere time, faultless. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious youth. But his own mind was

more unquiet than ever. Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding in religion

no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, he began to

apprehend that he lay under some special malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies

At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out

that he partook of that blood; but his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no

At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: "If I have not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I

can work miracles." He was tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry," and to

Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the neighbouring villages was past: that all

who were to be saved in that part of England were already converted; and that he had begun to pray and strive

Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong.

Then he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to

the parish bull. As yet, however, he was only entering the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Soon the darkness

grew thicker. Hideous forms floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wailing were in his ears. His way ran

through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by a strange

curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the

forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the

benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were

repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him, sell him." He struck at the hobgoblins; he pushed them from

him; but still they were ever at his side. He cried out in answer to them, hour after hour: "Never, never; not

for thousands of worlds, not for thousands." At length, worn out by this long agony, he suffered the fatal

words to escape him, "Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more fearful than ever. He had done

what could not be forgiven. He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his

birthright; and there was no longer any place for repentance. "None," he afterwards wrote, "knows the terrors

of those days but myself." He has described his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. He

envied the brutes; he envied the very stones in the street, and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to

withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, though cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the

highest vigour of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear of death and judgment. He fancied that

this trembling was the sign set on the worst reprobates, the sign which God had put on Cain. The unhappy

man's emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He had such pains that he expected to burst asunder like

Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a

case like his. His small library had received a most unseasonable addition, the account of the lamentable end

of Francis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piety, whom the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion

which might well have produced fatal consequences. "I am afraid," said Bunyan, "that I have committed the

sin against the Holy Ghost." "Indeed," said the old fanatic, "I am afraid that you have."

At length the clouds broke; the light became clearer and clearer; and the enthusiast, who had imagined that he

was branded with the mark of the first murderer, and destined to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed peace and

a cheerful confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, before his nerves, which had been so

perilously overstrained, recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society at Bedford, and was for

the first time admitted to partake of the Eucharist, it was with difficulty that he could refrain from

imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some

time a member of the congregation, he began to preach; and his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was

indeed illiterate; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through which he had passed had given

him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could never have

gathered from books; and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him, not only

to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half contemptuous admiration of scholars.

Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible

Counterirritants are of as great use in moral as in physical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally

relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. He had

been five years a preacher, when the Restoration put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen

all over the country to oppress the Dissenters; and of all the Dissenters whose history is known to us, he was

perhaps the most hardly treated. In November 1660, he was flung into Bedford gaol; and there he remained,

with some intervals of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years. His persecutors tried to extort from

him a promise that he would abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that he was divinely set apart and

commissioned to be a teacher of righteousness; and he was fully determined to obey God rather than man. He

was brought before several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain. He was facetiously

told that he was quite right in thinking that he ought not to hide his gift; but that his real gift was skill in

repairing old kettles. He was compared to Alexander the coppersmith. He was told that, if he would give up

preaching, he should be instantly liberated. He was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the law, he

would be liable to banishment, and that, if he were found in England after a certain time his neck would be

stretched. His answer was, "If you let me out today, I will preach again tomorrow." Year after year he lay

patiently in a dungeon, compared with which the worse prison now to be found in the island is a palace. His

fortitude is the more extraordinary, because his domestic feelings were unusually strong. Indeed, he was

considered by his stern brethren as somewhat too fond and indulgent a parent. He had several small children,

and among them a daughter who was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. He could not, he

said, bear even to let the wind blow on her; and now she must suffer cold and hunger; she must beg; she must

be beaten; "yet," he added, "I must, I must do it." While he lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his

old trade for the support of his family. He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make

long tagged thread laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. While

his hands were thus busied, he had other employment for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction

to his fellow captives, and formed from among them a little flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He

studied indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two chief companions were the Bible and Fox's

Book of Martyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might have been called a living concordance;

and on the margin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill spelt lines of doggrel in which he

expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the mystical Babylon.

At length he began to write; and though it was some time before he discovered where his strength lay, his

writings were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed; but they showed a keen mother wit, a great

command of the homely mother tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, and a vast and dearly

bought spiritual experience. They therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the syntax and the

Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems

always to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a remarkable fact that he adopted one of their peculiar

fashions: his practice was to write, not November or December, but eleventh month and twelfth month.

He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according to him, had less affinity than

the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of

prayer are all to be found in gaol; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at

the alehouse. The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, and defended against some

Arminian clergymen who had signed them. The most acrimonious of all his works is his answer to Edward

Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the taint of Pelagianism.

Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with

perfect sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect; but he did not consider that tenet as one of high

importance, and willingly joined in communion with quiet Presbyterians and Independents. The sterner

Baptists, therefore, loudly pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the

original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric

against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical

During the years which immediately followed the Restoration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have been

strict. But, as the passions of 1660 cooled, as the hatred with which the Puritans had been regarded while

their reign was recent gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly treated. The distress of his family, and

his own patience, courage, and piety softened the hearts of his persecutors. Like his own Christian in the

cage, he found protectors even among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The bishop of the Diocese, Dr Barlow, is

said to have interceded for him. At length the prisoner was suffered to pass most of his time beyond the walls

of the gaol, on condition, as it should seem, that he remained within the town of Bedford.

He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts of one of the worst governments that England has

ever seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in power. Charles II. had concluded the treaty by which he bound himself to

set up the Roman Catholic religion in England. The first step which he took towards that end was to annul, by

an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes against the Roman Catholics; and, in

order to disguise his real design, he annulled at the same time the penal statutes against Protestant

nonconformists. Bunyan was consequently set at large. In the first warmth of his gratitude he published a

tract in which he compared Charles to that humane and generous Persian king who, though not himself blest

with the light of the true religion, favoured the chosen people, and permitted them after years of captivity, to

rebuild their beloved temple. To candid men, who consider how much Bunyan had suffered, and how little he

could guess the secret designs of the court, the unsuspicious thankfulness with which he accepted the

Before he left his prison he had begun the book which has made his name immortal. The history of that book

is remarkable. The author was, as he tells us, writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to speak of the

stages of the Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many others had compared it, to a pilgrimage.

Soon his quick wit discovered innumerable points of similarity which had escaped his predecessors. Images

came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into words, quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark

and horrible glens, soft vales, sunny pastures, a gloomy castle of which the courtyard was strewn with the

skulls and bones of murdered prisoners, a town all bustle and splendour, like London on the Lord Mayor's

Day, and the narrow path, straight as a rule could make it, running on up hill and down hill, through city and

through wilderness, to the Black River and the Shining Gate. He had found out, as most people would have

said, by accident, as he would doubtless have said, by the guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. He

had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a masterpiece. He could not guess what place his allegory

would occupy in English literature; for of English literature he knew nothing. Those who suppose him to

have studied the Fairy Queen might easily be confuted, if this were the proper place for a detailed

examination of the passages in which the two allegories have been thought to resemble each other. The only

work of fiction, in all probability, with which he could compare his Pilgrim, was his old favourite, the legend

of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious business of

his life, from his expositions, his controversies, and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with

what he considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare moments that he returned to the

House Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but

himself saw a line, till the whole was complete. He then consulted his pious friends. Some were pleased.

Others were much scandalised. It was a vain story, a mere romance, about giants, and lions, and goblins, and

warriors, sometimes fighting with monsters and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in stately palaces. The loose

atheistical wits at Will's might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court: but did it become a

minister of the gospel to copy the evil fashions of the world? There had been a time when the cant of such

fools would have made Bunyan miserable. But that time was passed; and his mind was now in a firm and

healthy state. He saw that, in employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was only

following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself; and he determined to print.

The "Pilgrim's Progress" stole silently into the world. Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in

existence. The year of publication has not been ascertained. It is probable that, during some months, the little

volume circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries. But soon the irresistible charm of a book which

gratified the imagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his

ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which interested his feelings for human

beings, frail like himself, and struggling with temptations from within and from without, which every

moment drew a smile from him by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his

mind a sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. In puritanical

circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius, though

it were superior to the Iliad, to Don Quixote, or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulge

in literary luxury. In 1678 came forth a second edition with additions; and then the demand became immense.

In the four following years the book was reprinted six times. The eighth edition, which contains the last

improvements made by the author, was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of

the engraver had early been called in; and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on

execrable copper plates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in the

grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in

his native country. Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in New England his dream was the

daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding.

He had numerous admirers in Holland, and among the Huguenots of France. With the pleasures, however, he

experienced some of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name;

and envious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker should really be the author

He took the best way to confound both those who counterfeited him and those who slandered him. He

continued to work the goldfield which he had discovered, and to draw from it new treasures, not indeed with

quite such ease and in quite such abundance as when the precious soil was still virgin, but yet with success

which left all competition far behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of the "Pilgrim's Progress." It was

soon followed by the "Holy War," which, if the "Pilgrim's Progress" did not exist, would be the best allegory

Bunyan's place in society was now very different from what it had been. There had been a time when many

Dissenting ministers, who could talk Latin and read Greek, had affected to treat him with scorn. But his fame

and influence now far exceeded theirs. He had so great an authority among the Baptists that he was popularly

called Bishop Bunyan. His episcopal visitations were annual. From Bedford he rode every year to London,

and preached there to large and attentive congregations. From London he went his circuit through the

country, animating the zeal of his brethren, collecting and distributing alms, and making up quarrels. The

magistrates seem in general to have given him little trouble. But there is reason to believe that, in the year

1685, he was in some danger of again occupying his old quarters in Bedford gaol. In that year the rash and

wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the Government a pretext for persecuting the Nonconformists; and

scarcely one eminent divine of the Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested.

Baxter was in prison: Howe was driven into exile: Henry was arrested. Two eminent Baptists, with whom

Bunyan had been engaged in controversy, were in great peril and distress. Danvers was in danger of being

hanged; and Kiffin's grandsons were actually hanged. The tradition is that, during those evil days, Bunyan

was forced to disguise himself as a waggoner, and that he preached to his congregation at Bedford in a

smokefrock, with a cartwhip in his hand. But soon a great change took place. James the Second was at

open war with the Church, and found it necessary to court the Dissenters. Some of the creatures of the

government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. They probably knew that he had written in praise of the

indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped that he might be equally pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But

fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him wiser. Nor were the cases

exactly parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant: James was a professed Papist. The object of Charles's

indulgence was disguised; the object of James's indulgence was patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He

exhorted his hearers to prepare themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger which menaced their civil and

religious liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier who came down to remodel the corporation of

Bedford, and who, as was supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity to the Bishop of the

Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the summer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son

with an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not to disinherit the young one. This good work

cost the benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings

on Snow Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. He was buried in Bunhill Fields; and

the spot where he lies is still regarded by the Nonconformists with a feeling which seems scarcely in harmony

with the stern spirit of their theology. Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid by Roman Catholics to the

reliques and tombs of saints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath that

their coffins might be placed as near as possible to the office of the author of the "Pilgrim's Progress."

The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the century which followed his death, was indeed great, but

was almost entirely confined to religious families of the middle and lower classes. Very seldom was he

during that time mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary eminence. Young coupled his prose

with the poetry of the wretched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, the adventures of Christian are ranked with

those of Jack the GiantKiller and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the great allegorist, but did

not venture to name him. It is a significant circumstance that, till a recent period, all the numerous editions of

the "Pilgrim's Progress" were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall. The paper, the printing,

the plates, were all of the meanest description. In general, when the educated minority and the common

people differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The "Pilgrim's

Progress" is perhaps the only book about which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has

The attempts which have been made to improve and to imitate this book are not to be numbered. It has been

done into verse: it has been done into modern English. "The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience," "The

Pilgrimage of Good Intent," "The Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," "The Pilgrimage of Theophilus," "The Infant

Pilgrim," "The Hindoo Pilgrim," are among the many feeble copies of the great original. But the peculiar

glory of Bunyan is that those who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow the help of his genius. A

Catholic version of his parable may be seen with the head of the Virgin in the titlepage. On the other hand,

those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is not strong enough may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in

which nothing will be found which can be construed into an admission of free agency and universal

redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by which a fine work of art was ever

defaced was committed so late as the year 1853. It was determined to transform the "Pilgrim's Progress" into

a Tractarian book. The task was not easy: for it was necessary to make the two sacraments the most

prominent objects in the allegory; and of all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan was

the one in whose system the sacraments held the least prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate became a

type of Baptism, and the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The effect of this change is such as assuredly the

ingenious person who made it never contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim passes through the Wicket

Gate in infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, the lesson which the fable

in its altered shape teaches, is that none but adults ought to be baptised, and that the Eucharist may safely be

neglected. Nobody would have discovered from the original "Pilgrim's Progress" that the author was not a

Paedobaptist. To turn his book into a book against Paedobaptism was an achievement reserved for an

AngloCatholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a

Oliver Goldsmith, one of the most pleasing English writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protestant

and Saxon family which had been long settled in Ireland, and which had, like most other Protestant and

Saxon families, been, in troubled times, harassed and put in fear by the native population. His father, Charles

Goldsmith, studied in the reign of Queen Anne at the diocesan school of Elphin, became attached to the

daughter of the schoolmaster, married her, took orders, and settled at a place called Pallas in the county of

Longford. There he with difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could earn, partly as a curate

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. That spot was then, for all practical purposes,

almost as remote from the busy and splendid capital in which his later years were passed, as any clearing in

Upper Canada or any sheepwalk in Australasia now is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture to

make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to perform the latter part of their journey on foot.

The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often a lake. The lanes

would break any jaunting car to pieces; and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly built

While Oliver was still a child, his father was presented to a living worth about 200 pounds a year, in the

county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on

a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters by a maidservant, and was

sent in his seventh year to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on halfpay, who professed to teach

nothing but reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts,

banshees, and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about

the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega.

This man must have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the aboriginal race, and not only spoke the

Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life

continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some

of the last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the

Englishry, and though connected by numerous ties with the Established Church, never showed the least sign

of that contemptuous antipathy with which, in his days, the ruling minority in Ireland too generally regarded

the subject majority. So far indeed was he from sharing in the opinions and feelings of the caste to which he

belonged, that he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal Memory, and, even when George the

Third was on the throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of the banished dynasty could save the

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Goldsmith was removed in his ninth year. He went to

several grammar schools, and acquired some knowledge of the ancient languages. His life at this time seems

to have been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admirable portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh

even to ugliness. The smallpox had set its mark on him with more than usual severity. His stature was small,

and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule

excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder

which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in

the playground, and flogged as a dunce in the schoolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those who had

once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets

which had dropped from him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a

century later, to indicate the powers which produced the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village."

In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food

and tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to perform some menial services from which they have

long been relieved. They swept the court: they carried up the dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the

plates and poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on

the window of which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. (The glass on which the name

is written has, as we are informed by a writer in "Notes and Queries" (2d. S. ix. p. 91), been inclosed in a

frame and deposited in the Manuscript Room of the College Library, where it is still to be seen.) From such

garrets many men of less parts than his have made their way to the woolsack or to the episcopal bench. But

Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations, threw away all the advantages, of his situation. He

neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his class

for playing the buffoon in the lectureroom, was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was

caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some gay youths and damsels from

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father

died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some

time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother had retired was his home. He was now in his

twentyfirst year; it was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to have fitted him

to do nothing but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of which he was as fond as a magpie, to take a hand at

cards, to sing Irish airs, to play the flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories by the fire in winter. He

tried five or six professions in turn without success. He applied for ordination; but, as he applied in scarlet

clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent family, but

soon quitted his situation in consequence of a dispute about play. Then he determined to emigrate to America.

His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him set out for Cork on a good horse with thirty pounds in his

pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a miserable hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that

the ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had

sailed without him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generous kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this

sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming house, and lost every shilling. He then thought of

medicine. A small purse was made up; and in his twentyfourth year he was sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh

he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up some superficial information

about chemistry and natural history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He left that

celebrated university, the third university at which he had resided, in his twentyseventh year, without a

degree, with the merest smattering of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes and his flute.

His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland,

playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a

bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His musical performances, indeed, were not to the taste of the Italians; but

he contrived to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates of the convents. It should, however, be

observed that the stories which he told about this part of his life ought to be received with great caution; for

strict veracity was never one of his virtues; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely to be

more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of

truth as to assert in print that he was present at a most interesting conversation between Voltaire and

Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire never was within a

hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the Continent.

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, without a friend, and without a calling. He had,

indeed, if his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained from the University of Padua a doctor's

degree; but this dignity proved utterly useless to him. In England his flute was not in request: there were no

convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He turned strolling player;

but his face and figure were ill suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran

about London with phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe

Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly

that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack; but he soon found the

new yoke more galling than the old one, and was glad to become an usher again. He obtained a medical

appointment in the service of the East India Company; but the appointment was speedily revoked. Why it was

revoked we are not told. The subject was one on which he never liked to talk. It is probable that he was

incompetent to perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself at Surgeon's Hall for examination,

as mate to a naval hospital. Even to so humble a post he was found unequal. By this time the schoolmaster

whom he had served for a morsel of food and the third part of a bed was no more. Nothing remained but to

return to the lowest drudgery of literature. Goldsmith took a garret in a miserable court, to which he had to

climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a dizzy ladder of flagstones called Breakneck Steps. The court and the

ascent have long disappeared; but old Londoners will remember both. (A gentleman, who states that he has

known the neighbourhood for thirty years, corrects this account, and informs the present publisher that the

Breakneck Steps, thirtytwo in number, divided into two flights, are still in existence, and that, according to

tradition, Goldsmith's house was not on the steps, but was the first house at the head of the court, on the left

hand, going from the Old Bailey. See "Notes and Queries" (2d. S. ix. 280).) Here, at thirty, the unlucky

In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some things which have survived and many which have

perished. He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspapers; children's books which, bound in gilt

paper and adorned with hideous woodcuts, appeared in the window of the once farfamed shop at the corner

of Saint Paul's Churchyard; "An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe," which, though of little

or no value, is still reprinted among his works; a "Life of Beau Nash," which is not reprinted, though it well

deserves to be so (Mr Black has pointed out that this is inaccurate: the life of Nash has been twice reprinted;

once in Mr Prior's edition (vol. iii. p. 249), and once in Mr Cunningham's edition (vol. iv. p. 35).); a

superficial and incorrect, but very readable, "History of England," in a series of letters purporting to be

addressed by a nobleman to his son; and some very lively and amusing "Sketches of London Society," in a

series of letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these works were

anonymous; but some of them were wellknown to be Goldsmith's; and he gradually rose in the estimation of

the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was, indeed, emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or

grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately: his

reading had been desultory; nor had he meditated deeply on what he had read. He had seen much of the

world; but he had noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents and

characters which had happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily stored with

materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have been

many greater writers; but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure

and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his

descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable

sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum,

hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars,

streetwalkers and merry andrews, in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals.

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson,

who was then considered as the first of living English writers; to Reynolds, the first of English painters; and

to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, but had distinguished himself greatly by his writings and by

the eloquence of his conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 he was one

of the nine original members of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been called the Literary Club,

but which has always disclaimed that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of The Club.

By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwelling at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken

chambers in the more civilised region of the Inns of Court. But he was still often reduced to pitiable shifts.

Towards the close of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his landlady one morning called in the help of a

sheriff's officer. The debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson; and Johnson, always

friendly, though often surly, sent back the messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. He

came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of

Madeira. Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly how money was to

be procured. Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced at the manuscript, saw

that there were good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for 60 pounds, and soon returned with the

money. The rent was paid; and the sheriff's officer withdrew. According to one story, Goldsmith gave his

landlady a sharp reprimand for her treatment of him; according to another, he insisted on her joining him in a

bowl of punch. Both stories are probably true. The novel which was thus ushered into the world was the

But, before the "Vicar of Wakefield" appeared in print, came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In

Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem, entitled the "Traveller." It was the first work to which he had

put his name; and it at once raised him to the rank of a legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most

skilful critics was, that nothing finer had appeared in verse since the fourth book of the "Dunciad." In one

respect the "Traveller" differs from all Goldsmith's other writings. In general his designs were bad, and his

execution good. In the "Traveller," the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the

design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. An

English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks

down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of

government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion just or

unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of

While the fourth edition of the "Traveller" was on the counters of the booksellers, the "Vicar of Wakefield"

appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to our own time, and which is likely to

last as long as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst that ever was constructed. It wants, not

merely that probability which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, but that consistency which

ought to be found even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. But the earlier chapters have

all the sweetness of pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his spectacles, the

vicar and his monogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aristotle that relatives are

related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the controversy

between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and Dr

Burdock's verses, and Mr Burchell with his "Fudge," have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been

caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the

beginning. As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker; and the gleams of

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He

wrote the "Goodnatured Man," a piece which had a worse fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it

at Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared

by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than 500 pounds, five times as much as he had

made by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" together. The plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like

almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more

ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False

Delicacy," had just had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more tears

were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than a

grave smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the "Goodnatured

Man," that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full

court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night.

In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village." In mere diction and versification this celebrated poem is fully

equal, perhaps superior, to the "Traveller;" and it is generally preferred to the "Traveller" by that large class

of readers who think, with Bayes in the "Rehearsal," that the only use of a plan is to bring in fine things.

More discerning judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by one

unpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The fault we mean is not that theory about wealth and luxury

which has so often been censured by political economists. The theory is indeed false: but the poem,

considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse on that account. The finest poem in the Latin

language, indeed the finest didactic poem in any language, was written in defence of the silliest and meanest

of all systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill; but he

cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits

bear no resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous combinations of things

which never were and never could be found together. What would be thought of a painter who should mix

August and January in one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a

sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the

appletrees loaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburned reapers

wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the ice and the boys sliding were also very fine? To such a

picture the "Deserted Village" bears a great resemblance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in

its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery

which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries; and to two different stages in

the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of

plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his "Auburn." He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants

of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The

hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster: but, by joining the two,

he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world.

In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with a second play, "She Stoops to Conquer." The

manager was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece out. The sentimental comedy still

reigned; and Goldsmith's comedies were not sentimental. The "Goodnatured Man" had been too funny to

succeed; yet the mirth of the "Goodnatured Man" was sober when compared with the rich drollery of "She

Stoops to Conquer," which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, genius

triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries, were in a constant roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and

Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced by a general cry of "turn him out," or "throw

him over." Two generations have since confirmed the verdict which was pronounced on that night.

While Goldsmith was writing the "Deserted Village," and "She Stoops to Conquer," he was employed on

works of a very different kind, works from which he derived little reputation but much profit. He compiled

for the use of schools a "History of Rome," by which he made 300 pounds, a "History of England," by which

he made 600 pounds, a "History of Greece," for which he received 250 pounds, a "Natural History," for

which the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These works he produced without any elaborate

research, by merely selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language what

he found in books wellknown to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He committed some

strange blunders; for he knew nothing with accuracy. Thus in his "History of England," he tells us that

Naseby is in Yorkshire; nor did he correct this mistake when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly

hoaxed into putting into the "History of Greece" an account of the battle between Alexander the Great and

Montezuma. In his "Animated Nature" he relates, with faith and with perfect gravity, all the most absurd lies

which he could find in books of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach sermons,

nightingales that repeat long conversations. "If he can tell a horse from a cow," said Johnson, "that is the

extent of his knowledge of zoology." How little Goldsmith was qualified to write about the physical sciences

is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion denied that the sun is longer in the northern than

in the southern signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. "Maupertuis!" he cried, "I understand

those matters better than Maupertuis." On another occasion he, in defiance of the evidence of his own senses,

maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by moving his upper jaw.

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done more to make the first steps in the laborious road to

knowledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely distinguished from the compilations of ordinary

bookmakers. He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts of selection and condensation. In

these respects his histories of Rome and of England, and still more his own abridgements of these histories,

well deserve to be studied. In general nothing is less attractive than an epitome: but the epitomes of

Goldsmith, even when most concise, are always amusing; and to read them is considered by intelligent

Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. He had the means of living in comfort, and even in

what to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must have been luxury. His fame was great and was

constantly rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the best society of the kingdom, in a society in which

no talent or accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was cultivated with splendid

success. There probably were never four talkers more admirable in four different ways than Johnson, Burke,

Beauclerk, and Garrick; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four. He aspired to share in

their colloquial renown; but never was ambition more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote

with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an

empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the

contrast between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole

described him as an inspired idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll."

Chamier declared that it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer could have really

written the "Traveller." Even Boswell could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked very well to

hear honest Goldsmith run on. "Yes, sir," said Johnson, "but he should not like to hear himself." Minds differ

as rivers differ. There are transparent and sparkling rivers from which it is delightful to drink as they flow; to

such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of which the

water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, but becomes pellucid as crystal, and delicious to the taste, if it

be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment; and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His

first thoughts on every subject were confused even to absurdity; but they required only a little time to work

themselves clear. When he wrote they had that time; and therefore his readers pronounced him a man of

genius: but when he talked he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughingstock of his hearers. He was

painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation; he felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient

judgment and selfcommand to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to

try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and

His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, which, in spite of their admiration of his writings,

was not unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his character much to love, but very little to respect.

His heart was soft even to weakness: he was so generous that he quite forgot to be just: he forgave injuries so

readily that he might be said to invite them; and was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing left for his tailor

and his butcher. He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice of a darker shade was

imputed to him, envy. But there is not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, though it sometimes

made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of

any of his rivals. The truth probably is, that he was not more envious, but merely less prudent, than his

neighbours. His heart was on his lips. All those small jealousies, which are but too common among men of

letters, but which a man of letters who is also a man of the world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed

with the simplicity of a child. When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, instead of damning

with faint praise, instead of doing injuries slily and in the dark, he told everybody that he was envious. "Do

not, pray, do not talk of Johnson in such terms," he said to Boswell; "you harrow up my very soul." George

Steevens and Cumberland were men far too cunning to say such a thing. They would have echoed the praises

of the man whom they envied, and then have sent to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. Both what

was good and what was bad in Goldsmith's character was to his associates a perfect security that he would

never commit such villany. He was neither ill natured enough, nor long headed enough, to be guilty of any

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to

struggle with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But no representation can be more remote from the

truth. He did, indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done anything considerable in literature.

But, after his name had appeared on the titlepage of the "Traveller," he had none but himself to blame for

his distresses. His average income, during the last seven years of his life, certainly exceeded 400 pounds a

year; and 400 pounds a year ranked, among the incomes of that day, at least as high as 800 pounds a year

would rank at present. A single man living in the Temple with 400 pounds a year might then be called

opulent. Not one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had so

much. But all the wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas from

Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He

wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be

remembered, to the honour of his heart, though not of his head, a guinea, or five or ten, according to the state

of his purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous

amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a gambler, and at

once the most sanguine and the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by

temporary expedients. He obtained advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he

never began. But at length this source of supply failed. He owed more than 2000 pounds; and he saw no hope

of extrication from his embarrassments. His spirits and health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous fever,

which he thought himself competent to treat. It would have been happy for him if his medical skill had been

appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree which he pretended to have

received at Padua, he could procure no patients. "I do not practise," he once said; "I make it a rule to

prescribe only for my friends." "Pray, dear Doctor," said Beauclerk, "alter your rule; and prescribe only for

your enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy

aggravated the malady. The sick man was induced to call in real physicians; and they at one time imagined

that they had cured the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness continued. He could get no sleep. He could

take no food. "You are worse," said one of his medical attendants, "than you should be from the degree of

fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?" "No, it is not," were the last recorded words of Oliver

Goldsmith. He died on the third of April 1774, in his forty sixth year. He was laid in the churchyard of the

Temple; but the spot was not marked by any inscription, and is now forgotten. The coffin was followed by

Burke and Reynolds. Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when he heard of Goldsmith's

death, had burst into a flood of tears. Reynolds had been so much moved by the news that he had flung aside

A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts,

associate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. It has already been mentioned that he

sometimes felt keenly the sarcasm which his wild blundering talk brought upon him. He was, not long before

his last illness, provoked into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen; and at that weapon he proved

himself a match for all his assailants together. Within a small compass he drew with a singularly easy and

vigorous pencil the characters of nine or ten of his intimate associates. Though this little work did not receive

his last touches, it must always be regarded as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish that four

or five likenesses which have no interest for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery; and that their places

were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick.

Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honoured him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens

was the sculptor; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to

posterity a more durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an

inestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's writings more justly than

Johnson; no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits; and no man was more

competent to delineate with truth and spirit the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were found in

company with great weaknesses. But the lists of poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the

booksellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttleton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn

expressly for the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the series.

Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his life has been written by Mr

Prior, by Mr Washington Irving, and by Mr Forster. The diligence of Mr Prior deserves great praise; the style

of Mr Washington Irving is always pleasing; but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned to the

Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael

Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note

in the midland counties. Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well

acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the country rectors of

Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy,

indeed, there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had

qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a

Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to every traveller who visits Lichfield,

Samuel was born on the 18th of September 1709. In the child, the physical, intellectual, and moral

peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible; great muscular strength

accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity

to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited

from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were

weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up

to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, and stroked and presented

with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections was that of a stately lady in a diamond

stomacher and a long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were originally

noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the

sight of one eye; and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind overcame every

impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school to

which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to

his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were without guidance and without plan.

He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and passed

over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way: but

much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek: for his proficiency in that

language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he

had left school a good Latinist; and he soon acquired, in the large and miscellaneous library of which he now

had the command, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan delicacy of taste which is the

boast of the great public schools of England he never possessed. But he was early familiar with some

classical writers who were quite unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. He was peculiarly

attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a

huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity; and he eagerly devoured hundreds of

pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael

Johnson was much better qualified to pore upon books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His

business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his household were

defrayed. It was out of his power to support his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbour offered

assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered at

Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were

amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious

information which he had picked up during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first

day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and one of the most learned among them

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. He was poor, even to raggedness; and his appearance

excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the

quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of that aristocratical society cast at the

holes in his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them away in a fury.

Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for

oneandtwenty, could have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy

scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing

a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an

undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was

pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made

himself known by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly

Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor of

Arts: but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been

kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than

he could pay. In the autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree.

In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole

was appropriated to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that

struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound

mind. Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel

form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at

least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds

sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings,

sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit

of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawingroom by suddenly

ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley,

and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in

the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards

and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his

imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the town clock without being able to tell

the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name.

But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views

of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot

themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but

he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour.

In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of

his own character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure

splendour. The rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled and

discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul; and, though they might be sufficiently clear to

With such infirmities of body and mind, this celebrated man was left, at twoandtwenty, to fight his way

through the world. He remained during about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace

and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry

Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of

the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, did

himself honour by patronising the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners, and

squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. At

Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar

school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of

dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few

guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long

forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription the

poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse: but subscriptions did not come in;

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs

Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators, the lady appeared to be

a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting

provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson,

however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural

bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he

called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned

cannot be doubted; for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour,

the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage, however, in spite of occasional

wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. The lover continued to be under the illusions of

the weddingday till the lady died in her sixtyfourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription

extolling the charms of her person and of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to

mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!"

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took

a house in the neighbourhood of his native town, and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed

away; and only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temper so

violent, that his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry painted grandmother

whom he called his Titty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David

Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into

convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair.

At length Johnson, in the twentyeighth year of his age, determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a

literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or

Never, since literature became a calling in England, had it been a less gainful calling than at the time when

Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to

be munificently rewarded by the government. The least that he could expect was a pension or a sinecure

place; and, if he showed any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the

treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to name several writers of

the nineteenth century of whom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers.

But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages

of prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish

under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then

considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of state. But

this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose reputation was established, and whose works were

popular, such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every library, such an author as Fielding, whose

Pasquin had had a greater run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera, was sometimes glad to obtain, by

pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could wipe his

hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what

humiliations and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers

to whom Johnson applied for employment measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame,

and exclaimed, "You had better get a porter's knot, and carry trunks." Nor was the advice bad; for a porter

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any literary connection from which he

could expect more than bread for the day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with

which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. "Harry Hervey,"

said the old philosopher many years later, "was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog

Hervey I shall love him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more

agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on sixpenny worth of meat,

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time was discernible to the last in his

temper and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being

frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being

often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness.

Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild

beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beefshops, was

far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a

meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled, and the

moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and lowminded men

to offer to him would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity.

Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense respectable,

accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly

provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough

to abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers,

who proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular

employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor of the

"Gentleman's Magazine." That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long existence, was the only

periodical work in the kingdom which then had what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed,

the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, to publish an

account of the proceedings of either House without some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain his

readers with what he called "Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput." France was Blefuscu; London

was Mildendo: pounds were sprugs: the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of State: Lord

Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad: and William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was,

during several years, the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished with notes, meagre indeed, and

inaccurate, of what had been said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both for the

ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational convictionfor his serious opinion

was that one form of government was just as good or as bad as anotherbut from mere passion, such as

inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus against the Greens. In his

infancy he had heard so much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that he

had become a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted on being

taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect,

and probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which had

been begun in the nursery had been completed by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was

the most Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of the most Jacobital colleges in Oxford. The

prejudices which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest.

Charles II. and James II. were two of the best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did,

said, or wrote anything indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts

and learning over whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more

honourable name than that of "the zealot of rebellion." Even the ship money, condemned not less decidedly

by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an

unconstitutional impost. Under a government, the mildest that had ever been known in the worldunder a

government, which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty of speech and actionhe fancied that he

was a slave; he assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedom and

happiness of those golden days in which a writer who had taken but onetenth part of the license allowed to

him would have been pilloried, mangled with the shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into a noisome

dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and stockjobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and

continental connections. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he could not remember

the commencement, but which, he owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the

nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates on great party questions were

likely to be reported by a man whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show of fairness

was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he

had saved appearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and, in fact, every

passage which has lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed

him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in London

had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and

degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which

overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had recently

appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had

done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold and yet judicious. For between

Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.

Johnson's London appeared without his name in May 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and

vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid, and the success complete. A second edition was required within a

week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that

the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It ought to be

remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a

rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not

long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain

an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet. The attempt failed;

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and the

most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different

circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and index makers. Among

Johnson's associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin

verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket; who composed very respectable

sacred poetry when he was sober; and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk:

Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical

diagrams on the board where he sate crosslegged; and the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who,

after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged

himself at night with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkable

of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's

apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands in Saint James's Square,

and had lain with fiftypounds' weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had,

after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His

patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their

bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined

on venison and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had been

unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under

the Piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the furnace of

a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of

anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed the great

men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of

patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over decent. During some

months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears.

Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had

lived everywhere, and in 1743, died, penniless and heartbroken, in Bristol gaol.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his

not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny lives of

eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in

ease and variety; and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language. But the little

work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed in any language,

living or dead; and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the

The life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer.

During the three years which followed, he produced no important work, but he was not, and indeed could not

be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts

and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747,

several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the

English language, in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred

guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been

celebrated for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his taste. He was

acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a

momentous conjuncture, with eminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become Secretary

of State. He received Johnson's homage with the most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas,

bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his carpets blackened

with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the

waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and uttered strange

growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call

on his patron, but after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint,

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not

till 1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years which he passed in the

drudgery of penning definitions and making quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary

labour of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of

the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the ancient or to the

modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble

when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of

Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the statues rolling down

from their pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook through

the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the

concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly

short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's

Charles; and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson received only fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on the

stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields,

had at once risen to the first place among actors, and was now, after several years of almost uninterrupted

success, manager of Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his old preceptor was of a very

singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them

of very different clay; and circumstances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of both. Sudden

prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with

more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which the little

mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the

exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, while all the rest of the world was

applauding him, he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, scarcely

any compliment not acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections in

common, and sympathised with each other on so many points on which they sympathised with nobody else in

the vast population of the capital, that, though the master was often provoked by the monkeylike

impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they

were parted by death. Garrick now brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the author, yet

not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. The public, however, listened with little emotion,

but with much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. After nine representations the play was

withdrawn. It is, indeed, altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in the closet, will be found

hardly worthy of the author. He had not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. A change in the

last syllable of every other line would make the versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely

resemble the versification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the

About a year after the representation of Irene, he began to publish a series of short essays on morals,

manners, and literature. This species of composition had been brought into fashion by the success of the

Tatler, and by the still more brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers had vainly attempted

to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion, and other

works of the same kind, had had their short day. None of them had obtained a permanent place in our

literature; and they are now to be found only in the libraries of the curious. At length Johnson undertook the

adventure in which so many aspirants had failed. In the thirtysixth year after the appearance of the last

number of the Spectator appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 1750 to March 1752 this

From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired by a few eminent men. Richardson, when only five

numbers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed

their approbation not less warmly. Bubb Doddington, among whose many faults indifference to the claims of

genius and learning cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In consequence probably of

the good offices of Doddington, who was then the confidential adviser of Prince Frederic, two of his Royal

Highness's gentlemen carried a gracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven copies for

Leicester House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly received. Johnson had had enough of the

patronage of the great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt any other door as he had haunted

By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly received. Though the price of a number was only

twopence, the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the

flying leaves were collected and reprinted they became popular. The author lived to see thirteen thousand

copies spread over England alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. A large

party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be impossible for the

writer himself to alter a single word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, vehemently accused him

of having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The best critics admitted that his diction was too

monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did justice to the

acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, to the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his

language, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasing

humour of some of the lighter papers. On the question of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a

question which, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a decision from which there

is no appeal. Sir Roger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza,

the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah and

Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men and

women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and Mrs Busy, Quisquilius

and Venustulus, the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs Johnson had been given over by the physicians.

Three days later she died. She left her husband almost brokenhearted. Many people had been surprised to

see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and denying himself almost every comfort,

for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but little

gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor

daughter. To him she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings was

more important to him than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly

Review. The chief support which had sustained him through the most arduous labour of his life was the hope

that she would enjoy the fame and the profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in

that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet it was

necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the

It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished

nobleman to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well knew the value of such a compliment; and

therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at

the same time of delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. Since the

Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been entertained by a journal called the World, to which many

men of high rank and fashion contributed. In two successive numbers of the World the Dictionary was, to use

the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was

proposed that he should be invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our language, and

that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios, it

was said, would of course be bought by everybody who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that

these papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a

letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the tardy advances of his

patron. The Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In the preface the author truly declared that he owed

nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and

pathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and something more than justice. The best

lexicographer may well be content if his productions are received by the world with cold esteem. But

Johnson's Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited. It was indeed

the first dictionary which could be read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought

and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers are so skilfully

selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the

book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He

knew little or nothing of any Teutonic language except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a

Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of Junius and Skinner.

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred

guineas which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced and spent before the last sheets

issued from the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the course of the year which followed the

publication of this great work, he was arrested and carried to spunginghouses, and that he was twice

indebted for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still necessary for the man who had been

formally saluted by the highest authority as Dictator of the English language to supply his wants by constant

toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription; and

many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so little to his

taste that he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed many papers to a new monthly journal,

which was called the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much interest; but among them was the

very best thing that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays, entitled the Idler. During two years these

essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and indeed, impudently

pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler

may be described as a second part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than the first part.

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at

Lichfield. It was long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of his small

means, to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left,

he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without reading them over. A

hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously

disappointed when they found that the new volume from the circulating library was little more than a

dissertation on the author's favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was

without a mistress, and the princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down

exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. The Monthly

Review and the Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous pedant,

who would never use a word of two syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not

make a waiting woman relate her adventures without balancing every noun with another noun, and every

epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in which

weighty meaning was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour. And both the censure and the

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite

severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare for neglecting the proprieties of time and place,

and for ascribing to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in

this way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be

Abyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth

century; and the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton

discovered, and which was not fully received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. What a real

company of Abyssinians would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. But Johnson, not content

with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into

philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly

accomplished as Mrs Lennox or Mrs Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt.

Into a land of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being seen, he

introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ballrooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of

divorce, wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. "A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or

brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of each other.

Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process of marriage." Such it may have been, and may still be, in

London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty of such improprieties had little right to blame the

poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano as flourishing in the days of the oracle

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great

change in his circumstances took place. He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His

Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in his works and in his conversation. Even in

his massy and elaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted bitter and

contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favourite resource of Whig financiers,

he had designated as a hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in language so coarse

that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up

the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade." A pension he had defined

as pay given to a state hireling to betray his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to obey

a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a

time of wonders. George the Third had ascended the throne; and had, in the course of a few months,

disgusted many of the old friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of his house. The city was

becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets

and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory,

and could have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and

Johnson was one of the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three

hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very little hesitation accepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no

longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and

drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking

till four in the morning, without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer.

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. He had received large subscriptions for his

promised edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions during some years: and he could not

without disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly exhorted him to make an

effort; and he repeatedly resolved to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions, month

followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness; he

determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his

time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private notes at this time are made

up of selfreproaches. "My indolence," he wrote on Easter Eve in 1764, "has sunk into grosser sluggishness.

A kind of strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last year." Easter

1765 came, and found him still in the same state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, and

seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days

pass over me." Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was at length broken by no gentle

or friendly hand. He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a

house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to St

John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the

spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl

of eleven had been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. Churchill, who, confidant in

his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established

fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson

Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly

accused the great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual; and in October 1765 appeared,

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and

learning. The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most valuable

notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had during many years

observed human life and human nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius. Nothing

so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must

end. It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great classic. The reader

may turn over play after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and

satisfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in his

prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had,

as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English language than any of his

predecessors. That his knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had

altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of

Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion,

that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any

dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson

might easily, in a few months, have made himself well acquainted with every old play that was extant. But it

never seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessary preparation for the work which he had

undertaken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity in a man who was not

familiar with the works of Aeschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to

publish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single

scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and

scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had little to say in praise of the manner in which he had

discharged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain on

his conscience; and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire had roused him. He long

continued to live upon the fame which he had already won. He was honoured by the University of Oxford

with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in

which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the

interval, however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two or three political tracks, the longest of

which he could have produced in fortyeight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the life of Savage and

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence exercised by his conversation,

directly upon those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without a

parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick discernment, wit,

humour, immense knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As respected

style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped from his lips was as correct in

structure as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in his talk there was no pompous triads, and

little more than a fair proportion of words in "osity" and "ation". All was simplicity, ease, and vigour. He

uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of

emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by

the asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness

which made him unwilling to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment

orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might

have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he

said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on

anybody who would start a subject, on a fellowpassenger in a stage coach, or on the person who sate at the

same table with him in an eatinghouse. But his conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when

he was surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once expressed it, to

send him back every ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which

gradually became a formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this

conclave on new books were speedily known over all London, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition

in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunkmaker and the pastrycook. Nor shall we think

this strange when we consider what great and various talents and acquirements met in the little fraternity.

Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political

eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest

linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry,

and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were two highborn and

highbred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of widely different characters and habits;

Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the

sanctity of his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge of the gay world, his

fastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not easy. Yet even over such a

society Johnson predominated. Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which others were under

the necessity of submitting. But Burke, though not generally a very patient listener, was content to take the

second part when Johnson was present; and the club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this day

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet

who was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had not without difficulty obtained a seat among

them. This was James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honourable name and a fair estate. That he

was a coxcomb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who were acquainted

with him. That he could not reason, that he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from his

writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely

to be read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a slave

and an idolater. His mind resembles those creepers which the botanists call parasites, and which can subsist

only by clinging round the stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must have fastened himself

on somebody. He might have fastened himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the Bill of

Rights Society. He might have fastened himself on Whitfield, and have become the loudest field preacher

among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself on Johnson. The pair might seem ill

matched. For Johnson had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country. To a man of Johnson's strong

understanding and irritable temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as

the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was eternally catechising him on all

kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such questions as "What would you do, sir, if you were locked

up in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was a water drinker; and Boswell was a winebibber, and indeed little

better than a habitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect harmony between two such

companions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he said things

which the small man, during a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up.

During twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master: the master continued to scold the disciple,

to sneer at him, and to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each other.

Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occasional visits to London.

During those visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the

conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to say something remarkable, and to fill quarto note

books with minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the materials out of which was

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connection less important indeed to his fame, but much

more important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent

brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was

married to one of those clever, kindhearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are perpetually doing

or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the

Thrales became acquainted with Johnson; and the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. They were

astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so

widely celebrated, preferred their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities which seemed to unfit

him for civilised society, his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way in

which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his dinner, his fits of

melancholy, his fits of anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the interest which his

new associates took in him. For these things were the cruel marks left behind by a life which had been one

long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only

disgust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect was to add pity to admiration and esteem.

Johnson soon had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant apartment at the villa

of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part of every year he passed in those abodes, abodes which

must have seemed magnificent and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had generally

been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the

endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she

sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic

sweetness of temper. When he was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No

comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly

compassion, could devise, was wanting to his sickroom. He requited her kindness by an affection pure as

the affection of a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry, which, though awkward, must have been more

flattering than the attentions of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, of Buck and

Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under the

roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to

Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the

north of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection of books, falling to

pieces and begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain

dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during

his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought

together. At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief

recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave

an asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs Desmoulins, whose family he had known many

years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter of Mrs Desmoulins, and for another destitute

damsel, who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous host called Polly. An old

quack doctor named Levett, who bled and dosed coalheavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees

crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menagerie.

All these poor creatures were at constant war with each other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank.

Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant to the master, complained that a better

table was not kept for them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape to

Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of

mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purseproud

bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must

have gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne and

bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs Desmoulins, Polly, and Levett, continued to torment him

The course of life which has been described was interrupted in Johnson's sixtyfourth year by an important

event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and had been much interested by learning that there was

so near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and simple as in the middle ages. A wish to

become intimately acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen frequently

crossed his mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have overcome his habitual sluggishness, and

his love of the smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt the

adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and

plunged courageously into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and perilous

wilderness. After wandering about two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in rude boats which did

not protect him from the rain, and sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he

returned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images and new theories. During the following year he

employed himself in recording his adventures. About the beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was

published, and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation in all circles in which any attention

was paid to literature. The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the speculations,

whether sound or unsound, are always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat

easier and more graceful than that of his early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at length become

little more than matter of jest; and whatever remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by the

kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course,

not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye

accustomed to the hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and

East Lothian. But even in censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened Scotchmen, with

Lord Mansfield at their head, were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were moved to

anger by a little unpalatable truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose

to consider as the enemy of their country with libels much more dishonourable to their country than anything

that he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, articles in the magazines,

sixpenny pamphlets, fiveshilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being bleareyed; another for

being a pensioner; a third informed the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony in

Scotland, and had found that there was in that country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an

Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Journey to be an impudent forgery,

threatened to take vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the charge

of forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, with a cudgel, which, if the

impostor had not been too wise to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, to borrow the

sublime language of his own epic poem, "like a hammer on the red son of the furnace."

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He had early resolved never to be drawn into

controversy; and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which is the more extraordinary, because

he was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made. In conversation, he

was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had recourse to

sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when he

took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented

him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of having been thought by him worthy of a

refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons, did their best to annoy

him, in the hope that he would give them importance by answering them. But the reader will in vain search

his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on

vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter.

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, both from his own observation and from literary

history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is

written about them, but by what is written in them; and that an author whose works are likely to live is very

unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He always maintained that

fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and

which would soon fall if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his

envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes

between England and her American colonies had reached a point at which no amicable adjustment was

possible. Civil war was evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought that the eloquence of

Johnson might with advantage be employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here, and against the

rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and domestic

policy of the government; and those tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of

pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his Taxation No Tyranny was a pitiable

failure. The very title was a silly phrase, which can have been recommended to his choice by nothing but a

jingling alliteration which he ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys use in debating

societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to

own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace of his master's powers. The general opinion was

that the strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary and the Rambler were beginning to feel the effect

of time and of disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit by writing no more.

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote

Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him,

a subject such as he would at no time have been competent to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never

willingly read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved biography, literary history, the history of

manners; but political history was positively distasteful to him. The question at issue between the colonies

and the mother country was a question about which he had really nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the

greatest men must fail when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit; as Burke would have failed if

Burke had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds would have failed if Reynolds had

tried to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving most

On Easter Eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in

London, called upon him. Though he had some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his

visitors with much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition of the English poets, from Cowley

downwards, was in contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily

undertook the task, a task for which he was preeminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history of

England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly

from sources which had long been closed; from old Grub Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten

poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as

Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays of two

generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had

rendered services of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore sate down to his task with a

mind full of matter. He had at first intended to give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or

five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism overflowed the narrow channel. The

work, which was originally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes, small volumes, it

is true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 1781.

The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as

any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are

often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied. For, however

erroneous they may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice and

deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain a portion of valuable truth

which deserves to be separated from the alloy; and, at the very worst, they mean something, a praise to which

Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn

to the other lives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances

he had written little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the

mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elaborate composition was less

perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The

improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets

Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all

This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, much just and much unjust censure: but even

those who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in spite of themselves. Malone computed the

gains of the publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was very poorly remunerated. Intending

at first to write very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The booksellers, when

they saw how far his performance had surpassed his promise, added only another hundred. Indeed, Johnson,

though he did not despise, or affect to despise, money, and though his strong sense and long experience ought

to have qualified him to protect his own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his

literary bargains. He was generally reputed the first English writer of his time. Yet several writers of his time

sold their copyrights for sums such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson received

four thousand five hundred pounds for the History of Charles V.; and it is no disrespect to the memory of

Robertson to say that the History of Charles V. is both a less valuable and a less amusing book than the Lives

Johnson was now in his seventysecond year. The infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That

inevitable event of which he never thought without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life was

darkened by the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he lost what

could never be replaced. The strange dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in spite of their

faults, he was strongly attached by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he regretted

even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and it would have been

well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived to be the laughingstock of those who had envied

her, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world tears far more

bitter than he would have shed over her grave. With some estimable and many agreeable qualities, she was

not made to be independent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own was necessary to her

respectability. While she was restrained by her husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in

trifles, but always the undisputed master of his house, her worst offences had been impertinent jokes, white

lies, and short fits of pettishness ending in sunny good humour. But he was gone; and she was left an opulent

widow of forty, with strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She soon fell in love with a

musicmaster from Brescia, in whom nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. Her pride, and

perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her

nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her health. Conscious that her choice was one which

Johnson could not approve, she became desirous to escape from his inspection. Her manner towards him

changed. She was sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not conceal her joy when he left

Streatham; she never pressed him to return; and, if he came unbidden, she received him in a manner which

convinced him that he was no longer a welcome guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He

read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek testament in the library which had been formed by himself. In a

solemn and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with

emotions which choked his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left for ever that beloved home for the

gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days which still remained to him were

to run out. Here, in June 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and which does

not appear to have at all impaired his intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His

asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking under a

complication of diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen

years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; and that the

newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet.

He vehemently said that he would try to forget her existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial of

her which met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter and hisses of her

countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and

learned, while passing a merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man with

He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily affliction, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described

in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last

hour drew near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath more easily in a southern climate, and

would probably have set out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense of the journey. That

expense, indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, the fruit of

labours which had made the fortune of several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard;

and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the

government might be induced to increase his pension to six hundred pounds a year: but this hope was

disappointed; and he resolved to stand one English winter more. That winter was his last. His legs grew

weaker; his breath grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous

against pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care

which had mitigated his sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, he was not left

desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted

from him with deep emotion. Windham sate much in the sick room, arranged the pillows, and sent his own

servant to watch a night by the bed. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly kindness,

stood weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety eminently qualified him to be an adviser and

comforter at such a time, received the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When at length the moment,

dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. His temper

became unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to think with terror of death, and of that which lies beyond

death; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind

he died on the 13th of December 1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent

men of whom he had been the historian,Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and

Since his death the popularity of his worksthe Lives of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human

Wishes, exceptedhas greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been altered by editors till it can scarcely be

called his. An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. The fame even

of Rasselas has grown somewhat dim. But, though the celebrity of the writings may have declined, the

celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has done for him more than the best

of his own books could do. The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But the memory of

Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the

metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his

fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more

than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance

with what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves only to

William Pitt, the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of Lady Hester Granville, daughter of

Hester Countess Temple, was born on the 28th of May 1759. The child inherited a name which, at the time of

his birth, was the most illustrious in the civilised world, and was pronounced by every Englishman with

pride, and by every enemy of England with mingled admiration and terror. During the first year of his life,

every month had its illuminations and bonfires, and every wind brought some messenger charged with joyful

tidings and hostile standards. In Westphalia the English infantry won a great battle which arrested the armies

of Louis the Fifteenth in the midst of a career of conquest; Boscawen defeated one French fleet on the coast

of Portugal; Hawke put to flight another in the Bay of Biscay; Johnson took Niagara; Amherst took

Ticonderoga; Wolfe died by the most enviable of deaths under the walls of Quebec; Clive destroyed a Dutch

armament in the Hooghly, and established the English supremacy in Bengal; Coote routed Lally at

Wandewash, and established the English supremacy in the Carnatic. The nation, while loudly applauding the

successful warriors, considered them all, on sea and on land, in Europe, in America, and in Asia, merely as

instruments which received their direction from one superior mind. It was the great William Pitt, the great

commoner, who had vanquished French marshals in Germany, and French admirals on the Atlantic; who had

conquered for his country one great empire on the frozen shores of Ontario, and another under the tropical

sun near the mouths of the Ganges. It was not in the nature of things that popularity such as he at this time

enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity had lost its gloss before his children were old enough to

understand that their father was a great man. He was at length placed in situations in which neither his talents

for administration nor his talents for debate appeared to the best advantage. The energy and decision which

had eminently fitted him for the direction of war were not needed in time of peace. The lofty and

spiritstirring eloquence which had made him supreme in the House of Commons often fell dead on the

House of Lords. A cruel malady racked his joints, and left his joints only to fall on his nerves and on his

brain. During the closing years of his life, he was odious to the court, and yet was not on cordial terms with

the great body of the opposition. Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt, but an awful and majestic ruin, not to be

contemplated by any man of sense and feeling without emotions resembling those which are excited by the

remains of the Parthenon and of the Coliseum. In one respect the old statesman was eminently happy.

Whatever might be the vicissitudes of his public life, he never failed to find peace and love by his own

hearth. He loved all his children, and was loved by them; and, of all his children, the one of whom he was

The child's genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rare and almost unnatural precocity. At seven,

the interest which he took in grave subjects, the ardour with which he pursued his studies, and the sense and

vivacity of his remarks on books and on events, amazed his parents and instructors. One of his sayings of this

date was reported to his mother by his tutor. In August 1766, when the world was agitated by the news that

Mr Pitt had become Earl of Chatham, little William exclaimed, "I am glad that I am not the eldest son. I want

to speak in the House of Commons like papa." A letter is extant in which Lady Chatham, a woman of

considerable abilities, remarked to her lord, that their younger son at twelve had left far behind him his elder

brother, who was fifteen. "The fineness," she wrote, "of William's mind makes him enjoy with the greatest

pleasure what would be above the reach of any other creature of his small age." At fourteen the lad was in

intellect a man. Hayley, who met him at Lyme in the summer of 1773, was astonished, delighted, and

somewhat overawed, by hearing wit and wisdom from so young a mouth. The poet, indeed, was afterwards

sorry that his shyness had prevented him from submitting the plan of an extensive literary work, which he

was then meditating, to the judgment of this extraordinary boy. The boy, indeed, had already written a

tragedy, bad of course, but not worse than the tragedies of his friend. This piece is still preserved at

Chevening, and is in some respects highly curious. There is no love. The whole plot is political; and it is

remarkable that the interest, such as it is, turns on a contest about a regency. On one side is a faithful servant

of the Crown, on the other an ambitious and unprincipled conspirator. At length the King, who had been

missing, reappears, resumes his power, and rewards the faithful defender of his rights. A reader who should

judge only by internal evidence would have no hesitation in pronouncing that the play was written by some

Pittite poetaster at the time of the rejoicings for the recovery of George the Third in 1789.

The pleasure with which William's parents observed the rapid development of his intellectual powers was

alloyed by apprehensions about his health. He shot up alarmingly fast; he was often ill, and always weak; and

it was feared that it would be impossible to rear a stripling so tall, so slender, and so feeble. Port wine was

prescribed by his medical advisers: and it is said that he was, at fourteen, accustomed to take this agreeable

physic in quantities which would, in our abstemious age, be thought much more than sufficient for any

fullgrown man. This regimen, though it would probably have killed ninetynine boys out of a hundred,

seems to have been well suited to the peculiarities of William's constitution; for at fifteen he ceased to be

molested by disease, and, though never a strong man, continued, during many years of labour and anxiety, of

nights passed in debate and of summers passed in London, to be a tolerably healthy one. It was probably on

account of the delicacy of his frame that he was not educated like other boys of the same rank. Almost all the

eminent English statesmen and orators to whom he was afterwards opposed or allied, North, Fox, Shelburne,

Windham, Grey, Wellesley, Grenville, Sheridan, Canning, went through the training of great public schools.

Lord Chatham had himself been a distinguished Etonian: and it is seldom that a distinguished Etonian forgets

his obligations to Eton. But William's infirmities required a vigilance and tenderness such as could be found

only at home. He was therefore bred under the paternal roof. His studies were superintended by a clergyman

named Wilson; and those studies, though often interrupted by illness, were prosecuted with extraordinary

success. Before the lad had completed his fifteenth year, his knowledge both of the ancient languages and of

mathematics was such as very few men of eighteen then carried up to college. He was therefore sent, towards

the close of the year 1773, to Pembroke Hall, in the university of Cambridge. So young a student required

much more than the ordinary care which a college tutor bestows on undergraduates. The governor, to whom

the direction of William's academical life was confided, was a bachelor of arts named Pretyman, who had

been senior wrangler in the preceding year, and who, though not a man of prepossessing appearance or

brilliant parts, was eminently acute and laborious, a sound scholar, and an excellent geometrician. At

Cambridge, Pretyman was, during more than two years, the inseparable companion, and indeed almost the

only companion of his pupil. A close and lasting friendship sprang up between the pair. The disciple was

able, before he completed his twentyeighth year, to make his preceptor Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of St

Paul's; and the preceptor showed his gratitude by writing a life of the disciple, which enjoys the distinction of

Pitt, till he graduated, had scarcely one acquaintance, attended chapel regularly morning and evening, dined

every day in hall, and never went to a single evening party. At seventeen, he was admitted, after the bad

fashion of those times, by right of birth, without any examination, to the degree of the Master of Arts. But he

continued during some years to reside at college, and to apply himself vigorously, under Pretyman's direction,

The stock of learning which Pitt laid in during this part of his life was certainly very extraordinary. In fact, it

was all that he ever possessed; for he very early became too busy to have any spare time for books. The work

in which he took the greatest delight was Newton's Principia. His liking for mathematics, indeed, amounted

to a passion, which, in the opinion of his instructors, themselves distinguished mathematicians, required to be

checked rather than encouraged. The acuteness and readiness with which he solved problems was pronounced

by one of the ablest of the moderators, who in those days presided over the disputations in the schools, and

conducted the examinations of the Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor was the youth's

proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect, indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when

compared with even secondrate and thirdrate men from public schools. He had never, while under

Wilson's care, been in the habit of composing in the ancient languages: and he therefore never acquired that

knack of versification which is sometimes possessed by clever boys whose knowledge of the language and

literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial. It would have been utterly out of his power to produce such

charming elegiac lines as those in which Wellesley bade farewell to Eton, or such Virgilian hexameters as

those in which Canning described the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it may be doubted whether any scholar has

ever, at twenty, had a more solid and profound knowledge of the two great tongues of the old civilised world.

The facility with which he penetrated the meaning of the most intricate sentences in the Attic writers

astonished veteran critics. He had set his heart on being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry of

Greece, and was not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron's Cassandra, the most obscure work in the

whole range of ancient literature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties of which have perplexed and repelled

many excellent scholars, "he read," says his preceptor, "with an ease at first sight, which, if I had not

To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew no living language except French; and

French he knew very imperfectly. With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly with

Shakspeare and Milton. The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well deserved to be, one of his favourite

passages; and his early friends used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the melodious

cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial. He had indeed been

carefully trained from infancy in the art of managing his voice, a voice naturally clear and deeptoned. His

father, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to that art, had been a most skilful and judicious

instructor. At a later period, the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing, night after night, how powerfully

Pitt's sonorous elocution fascinated the rows of country gentlemen, reproached him with having been "taught

His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a great parliamentary speaker. One argument often urged

against those classical studies which occupy so large apart of the early life of every gentleman bred in the

south of our island is, that they prevent him from acquiring a command of his mother tongue, and that it is

not unusual to meet with a youth of excellent parts, who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and Horatian Latin

Alcaics, but who would find it impossible to express his thoughts in pure, perspicuous, and forcible English.

There may perhaps be some truth in this observation. But the classical studies of Pitt were carried on in a

peculiar manner, and had the effect of enriching his English vocabulary, and of making him wonderfully

expert in the art of constructing correct English sentences. His practice was to look over a page or two of a

Greek or Latin author, to make himself master of the meaning, and then to read the passage straightforward

into his own language. This practice, begun under his first teacher Wilson, was continued under Pretyman. It

is not strange that a young man of great abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during ten years,

should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of putting his thoughts, without premeditation, into words

Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on which he bestowed the most minute examination.

His favourite employment was to compare harangues on opposite sides of the same question, to analyse them,

and to observe which of the arguments of the first speaker were refuted by the second, which were evaded,

and which were left untouched. Nor was it only in books that he at this time studied the art of parliamentary

fencing. When he was at home, he had frequent opportunities of hearing important debates at Westminster;

and he heard them, not only with interest and enjoyment, but with a close scientific attention resembling that

with which a diligent pupil at Guy's Hospital watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeon through a

difficult operation. On one of these occasions, Pitt, a youth whose abilities were as yet known only to his own

family and to a small knot of college friends, was introduced on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords

to Fox, who was his senior by eleven years, and who was already the greatest debater, and one of the greatest

orators, that had appeared in England. Fox used afterwards to relate that, as the discussion proceeded, Pitt

repeatedly turned to him, and said, "But surely, Mr Fox, that might be met thus;" or, "Yes; but he lays himself

open to this retort." What the particular criticisms were Fox had forgotten; but he said that he was much

struck at the time by the precocity of the lad who, through the whole sitting, seemed to be thinking only how

One of the young man's visits to the House of Lords was a sad and memorable era in his life. He had not quite

completed his nineteenth year, when, on the 7th of April 1778, he attended his father to Westminster. A great

debate was expected. It was known that France had recognised the independence of the United States. The

Duke of Richmond was about to declare his opinion that all thought of subjugating those states ought to be

relinquished. Chatham had always maintained that the resistance of the colonies to the mother country was

justifiable. But he conceived, very erroneously, that on the day on which their independence should be

acknowledged the greatness of England would be at an end. Though sinking under the weight of years and

infirmities, he determined, in spite of the entreaties of his family, to be in his place. His son supported him to

a seat. The excitement and exertion were too much for the old man. In the very act of addressing the peers, he

fell back in convulsions. A few weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomy pomp, from the Painted

Chamber to the Abbey. The favourite child and namesake of the deceased statesman followed the coffin as

chief mourner, and saw it deposited in the transept where his own was destined to lie.

His elder brother, now Earl of Chatham, had means sufficient, and barely sufficient, to support the dignity of

the peerage. The other members of the family were poorly provided for. William had little more than three

hundred a year. It was necessary for him to follow a profession. He had already begun to eat his terms. In the

spring of 1780 he came of age. He then quitted Cambridge, was called to the bar, took chambers in Lincoln's

Inn, and joined the western circuit. In the autumn of that year a general election took place; and he offered

himself as a candidate for the university; but he was at the bottom of the poll. It is said that the grave doctors,

who then sate robed in scarlet, on the benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumption in so young a man to

solicit so high a distinction. He was, however, at the request of a hereditary friend, the Duke of Rutland,

The dangers of the country were at that time such as might well have disturbed even a constant mind. Army

after army had been sent in vain against the rebellious colonists of North America. On pitched fields of battle

the advantage had been with the disciplined troops of the mother country. But it was not on pitched fields of

battle that the event of such a contest could be decided. An armed nation, with hunger and the Atlantic for

auxiliaries, was not to be subjugated. Meanwhile the House of Bourbon, humbled to the dust a few years

before by the genius and vigour of Chatham, had seized the opportunity of revenge. France and Spain were

united against us, and had recently been joined by Holland. The command of the Mediterranean had been for

a time lost. The British flag had been scarcely able to maintain itself in the British Channel. The northern

powers professed neutrality; but their neutrality had a menacing aspect. In the East, Hyder had descended on

the Carnatic, had destroyed the little army of Baillie, and had spread terror even to the ramparts of Fort Saint

George. The discontents of Ireland threatened nothing less than civil war. In England the authority of the

government had sunk to the lowest point. The King and the House of Commons were alike unpopular. The

cry for parliamentary reform was scarcely less loud and vehement than in the autumn of 1830. Formidable

associations, headed, not by ordinary demagogues, but by men of high rank, stainless character, and

distinguished ability, demanded a revision of the representative system. The populace, emboldened by the

impotence and irresolution of the government, had recently broken loose from all restraint, besieged the

chambers of the legislature, hustled peers, hunted bishops, attacked the residences of ambassadors, opened

prisons, burned and pulled down houses. London had presented during some days the aspect of a city taken

by storm; and it had been necessary to form a camp among the trees of Saint James's Park.

In spite of dangers and difficulties abroad and at home, George the Third, with a firmness which had little

affinity with virtue or with wisdom, persisted in his determination to put down the American rebels by force

of arms; and his ministers submitted their judgment to his. Some of them were probably actuated merely by

selfish cupidity; but their chief, Lord North, a man of high honour, amiable temper, winning manners, lively

wit, and excellent talents both for business and for debate, must be acquitted of all sordid motives. He

remained at a post from which he had long wished and had repeatedly tried to escape, only because he had

not sufficient fortitude to resist the entreaties and reproaches of the King, who silenced all arguments by

passionately asking whether any gentleman, any man of spirit, could have the heart to desert a kind master in

The opposition consisted of two parties which had once been hostile to each other, and which had been very

slowly, and, as it soon appeared, very imperfectly reconciled, but which at this conjuncture seemed to act

together with cordiality. The larger of these parties consisted of the great body of the Whig aristocracy. Its

head was Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, a man of sense and virtue, and in wealth and parliamentary

interest equalled by very few of the English nobles, but afflicted with a nervous timidity which prevented him

from taking a prominent part in debate. In the House of Commons, the adherents of Rockingham were led by

Fox, whose dissipated habits and ruined fortunes were the talk of the whole town, but whose commanding

genius, and whose sweet, generous, and affectionate disposition, extorted the admiration and love of those

who most lamented the errors of his private life. Burke, superior to Fox in largeness of comprehension, in

extent of knowledge, and in splendour of imagination, but less skilled in that kind of logic and in that kind of

rhetoric which convince and persuade great assemblies, was willing to be the lieutenant of a young chief who

A smaller section of the opposition was composed of the old followers of Chatham. At their head was

William, Earl of Shelburne, distinguished both as a statesman and as a lover of science and letters. With him

were leagued Lord Camden, who had formerly held the Great Seal, and whose integrity, ability, and

constitutional knowledge commanded the public respect; Barre, an eloquent and acrimonious declaimer; and

Dunning, who had long held the first place at the English bar. It was to this party that Pitt was naturally

On the 26th of February 1781, he made his first speech, in favour of Burke's plan of economical reform. Fox

stood up at the same moment, but instantly gave way. The lofty yet animated deportment of the young

member, his perfect selfpossession, the readiness with which he replied to the orators who had preceded

him, the silver tones of his voice, the perfect structure of his unpremeditated sentences, astonished and

delighted his hearers. Burke, moved even to tears, exclaimed, "It is not a chip of the old block; it is the old

block itself." "Pitt will be one of the first men in Parliament," said a member of the opposition to Fox. "He is

so already," answered Fox, in whose nature envy had no place. It is a curious fact, well remembered by some

who were very recently living, that soon after this debate Pitt's name was put up by Fox at Brookes's.

On two subsequent occasions during that session Pitt addressed the House, and on both fully sustained the

reputation which he had acquired on his first appearance. In the summer, after the prorogation, he again went

the western circuit, held several briefs, and acquitted himself in such a manner that he was highly

On the 27th of November the Parliament reassembled. Only forty eight hours before had arrived tidings of

the surrender of Cornwallis and his army; and it had consequently been necessary to rewrite the royal speech.

Every man in the kingdom, except the King, was now convinced that it was mere madness to think of

conquering the United States. In the debate on the report of the address, Pitt spoke with even more energy and

brilliancy than on any former occasion. He was warmly applauded by his allies; but it was remarked that no

person on his own side of the house was so loud in eulogy as Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland,

who spoke from the ministerial ranks. That able and versatile politician distinctly foresaw the approaching

downfall of the government with which he was connected, and was preparing to make his own escape from

the ruin. From that night dates his connection with Pitt, a connection which soon became a close intimacy,

About a fortnight later, Pitt spoke in the committee of supply on the army estimates. Symptoms of dissension

had begun to appear on the Treasury bench. Lord George Germaine, the Secretary of State, who was

especially charged with the direction of the war in America, had held language not easily to be reconciled

with declarations made by the First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt noticed the discrepancy with much force and

keenness. Lord George and Lord North began to whisper together; and Welbore Ellis, an ancient placeman

who had been drawing salary almost every quarter since the days of Henry Pelham, bent down between them

to put in a word. Such interruptions sometimes discompose veteran speakers. Pitt stopped, and, looking at the

group, said, with admirable readiness, "I shall wait till Nestor has composed the dispute between

After several defeats, or victories hardly to be distinguished from defeats, the ministry resigned. The King,

reluctantly and ungraciously, consented to accept Rockingham as first minister. Fox and Shelburne became

Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish, one of the most upright and honourable of men, was made

Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thurlow, whose abilities and force of character had made him the dictator of

To Pitt was offered, through Shelburne, the ViceTreasurership of Ireland, one of the easiest and most highly

paid places in the gift of the crown; but the offer was, without hesitation, declined. The young statesman had

resolved to accept no post which did not entitle him to a seat in the cabinet: and, in a few days later, he

announced that resolution in the House of Commons. It must be remembered that the cabinet was then a

much smaller and more select body than at present. We have seen cabinets of sixteen. In the time of our

grandfathers a cabinet of ten or eleven was thought inconveniently large. Seven was an usual number. Even

Burke, who had taken the lucrative office of paymaster, was not in the cabinet. Many therefore thought Pitt's

declaration indecent. He himself was sorry that he had made it. The words, he said in private, had escaped

him in the heat of speaking; and he had no sooner uttered them than he would have given the world to recall

them. They, however, did him no harm with the public. The second William Pitt, it was said, had shown that

he had inherited the spirit, as well as the genius, of the first. In the son, as in the father, there might perhaps

be too much pride; but there was nothing low or sordid. It might be called arrogance in a young barrister,

living in chambers on three hundred a year, to refuse a salary of five thousand a year, merely because he did

not choose to bind himself to speak or vote for plans which he had no share in framing; but surely such

Pitt gave a general support to the administration of Rockingham, but omitted, in the meantime, no

opportunity of courting that UltraWhig party which the persecution of Wilkes and the Middlesex election

had called into existence, and which the disastrous events of the war, and the triumph of republican principles

in America, had made formidable both in numbers and in temper. He supported a motion for shortening the

duration of Parliaments. He made a motion for a committee to examine into the state of the representation,

and, in the speech, by which that motion was introduced, avowed himself the enemy of the close boroughs,

the strongholds of that corruption to which he attributed all the calamities of the nation, and which, as he

phrased it in one of those exact and sonorous sentences of which he had a boundless command, had grown

with the growth of England and strengthened with her strength, but had not diminished with her diminution

or decayed with her decay. On this occasion he was supported by Fox. The motion was lost by only twenty

votes in a house of more than three hundred members. The reformers never again had so good a division till

The new administration was strong in abilities, and was more popular than any administration which had held

office since the first year of George the Third, but was hated by the King, hesitatingly supported by the

Parliament, and torn by internal dissensions. The Chancellor was disliked and distrusted by almost all his

colleagues. The two Secretaries of State regarded each other with no friendly feeling. The line between their

departments had not been traced with precision; and there were consequently jealousies, encroachments, and

complaints. It was all that Rockingham could do to keep the peace in his cabinet; and, before the cabinet had

In an instant all was confusion. The adherents of the deceased statesman looked on the Duke of Portland as

their chief. The King placed Shelburne at the head of the Treasury. Fox, Lord John Cavendish, and Burke,

immediately resigned their offices; and the new prime minister was left to constitute a government out of

very defective materials. His own parliamentary talents were great; but he could not be in the place where

parliamentary talents were most needed. It was necessary to find some member of the House of Commons

who could confront the great orators of the opposition; and Pitt alone had the eloquence and the courage

which were required. He was offered the great place of Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he accepted it. He

The Parliament was speedily prorogued. During the recess, a negotiation for peace which had been

commenced under Rockingham was brought to a successful termination. England acknowledged the

independence of her revolted colonies; and she ceded to her European enemies some places in the

Mediterranean and in the Gulf of Mexico. But the terms which she obtained were quite as advantageous and

honourable as the events of the war entitled her to expect, or as she was likely to obtain by persevering in a

contest against immense odds. All her vital parts, all the real sources of her power, remained uninjured. She

preserved even her dignity: for she ceded to the House of Bourbon only part of what she had won from that

House in previous wars. She retained her Indian empire undiminished; and, in spite of the mightiest efforts of

two great monarchies, her flag still waved on the rock of Gibraltar. There is not the slightest reason to believe

that Fox, if he had remained in office, would have hesitated one moment about concluding a treaty on such

conditions. Unhappily that great and most amiable man was, at this crisis, hurried by his passions into an

error which made his genius and his virtues, during a long course of years, almost useless to his country.

He saw that the great body of the House of Commons was divided into three parties, his own, that of North,

and that of Shelburne; that none of those three parties was large enough to stand alone; that, therefore, unless

two of them united, there must be a miserably feeble administration, or more probably, a rapid succession of

miserably feeble administrations, and this at a time when a strong government was essential to the prosperity

and respectability of the nation. It was then necessary and right that there should be a coalition. To every

possible coalition there were objections. But, of all possible coalitions, that to which there were the fewest

objections was undoubtedly a coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would have been generally applauded

by the followers of both. It might have been made without any sacrifice of public principle on the part of

either. Unhappily, recent bickerings had left in the mind of Fox a profound dislike and distrust of Shelburne.

Pitt attempted to mediate, and was authorised to invite Fox to return to the service of the Crown. "Is Lord

Shelburne," said Fox, "to remain prime minister?" Pitt answered in the affirmative. "It is impossible that I can

act under him," said Fox. "Then negotiation is at an end," said Pitt; "for I cannot betray him." Thus the two

As Fox and his friends would not treat with Shelburne, nothing remained to them but to treat with North.

That fatal coalition which is emphatically called "The Coalition" was formed. Not three quarters of a year had

elapsed since Fox and Burke had threatened North with impeachment, and had described him, night after

night, as the most arbitrary, the most corrupt, the most incapable of ministers. They now allied themselves

with him for the purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom they cannot be said to have differed

as to any important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the patience to wait for some occasion on

which they might, without inconsistency, have combined with their old enemies in opposition to the

government. That nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators, who had, during seven years,

thundered against the war, determined to join with the authors of that war in passing a vote of censure on the

The Parliament met before Christmas 1782. But it was not till January 1783 that the preliminary treaties were

signed. On the 17th of February they were taken into consideration by the House of Commons. There had

been, during some days, floating rumours that Fox and North had coalesced; and the debate indicated but too

clearly that those rumours were not unfounded. Pit was suffering from indisposition: he did not rise till his

own strength and that of his hearers were exhausted; and he was consequently less successful than on any

former occasion. His admirers owned that his speech was feeble and petulant. He so far forgot himself as to

advise Sheridan to confine himself to amusing theatrical audiences. This ignoble sarcasm gave Sheridan an

opportunity of retorting with great felicity. "After what I have seen and heard tonight," he said, "I really feel

strongly tempted to venture on a competition with so great an artist as Ben Jonson, and to bring on the stage a

second Angry Boy." On a division, the address proposed by the supporters of the government was rejected by

But Pitt was not a man to be disheartened by a single failure, or to be put down by the most lively repartee.

When a few days later, the opposition proposed a resolution directly censuring the treaties, he spoke with an

eloquence, energy, and dignity which raised his fame and popularity higher than ever. To the coalition of Fox

and North he alluded in language which drew forth tumultuous applause from his followers. "If," he said,

"this illomened and unnatural marriage be not yet consummated, I know of a just and lawful impediment;

The ministers were again left in a minority; and Shelburne consequently tendered his resignation. It was

accepted; but the King struggled long and hard before he submitted to the terms dictated by Fox, whose faults

he detested, and whose high spirit and powerful intellect he detested still more. The first place at the board of

Treasury was repeatedly offered to Pitt; but the offer, though tempting, was steadfastly declined. The young

man, whose judgment was as precocious as his eloquence, saw that his time was coming, but was not come,

and was deaf to royal importunities and reproaches. His Majesty, bitterly complaining of Pitt's

faintheartedness, tried to break the coalition. Every art of seduction was practised on North, but in vain.

During several weeks the country remained without a government. It was not till all devices had failed, and

till the aspect of the House of Commons became threatening, that the King gave way. The Duke of Portland

was declared First Lord of the Treasury. Thurlow was dismissed. Fox and North became Secretaries of State,

The year was far advanced before the new arrangements were completed; and nothing very important was

done during the remainder of the session. Pitt, now seated on the opposition bench, brought the question of

parliamentary reform a second time under the consideration of the Commons. He proposed to add to the

House at once a hundred county members and several members for metropolitan districts, and to enact that

every borough of which an election committee should report that the majority of voters appeared to be

After the prorogation, Pitt visited the Continent for the first and last time. His travelling companion was one

of his most intimate friends, a young man of his own age, who had already distinguished himself in

Parliament by an engaging natural eloquence, set off by the sweetest and most exquisitely modulated of

human voices, and whose affectionate heart, caressing manners, and brilliant wit, made him the most

delightful of companions, William Wilberforce. That was the time of Anglomania in France; and at Paris the

son of the great Chatham was absolutely hunted by men of letters and women of fashion, and forced, much

against his will, into political disputation. One remarkable saying which dropped from him during this tour

has been preserved. A French gentleman expressed some surprise at the immense influence which Fox, a man

of pleasure, ruined by the dicebox and the turf, exercised over the English nation. "You have not," said Pitt,

In November 1783 the Parliament met again. The government had irresistible strength in the House of

Commons, and seemed to be scarcely less strong in the House of Lords, but was, in truth, surrounded on

every side by dangers. The King was impatiently waiting for the moment at which he could emancipate

himself from a yoke which galled him so severely that he had more than once seriously thought of retiring to

Hanover; and the King was scarcely more eager for a change than the nation. Fox and North had committed a

fatal error. They ought to have known that coalitions between parties which have long been hostile can

succeed only when the wish for coalition pervades the lower ranks of both. If the leaders unite before there is

any disposition to union among the followers, the probability is that there will be a mutiny in both camps, and

that the two revolted armies will make a truce with each other, in order to be revenged on those by whom

they think that they have been betrayed. Thus it was in 1783. At the beginning of that eventful year, North

had been the recognised head of the old Tory party, which, though for a moment prostrated by the disastrous

issue of the American war, was still a great power in the state. To him the clergy, the universities, and that

large body of country gentlemen whose rallying cry was "Church and King," had long looked up with respect

and confidence. Fox had, on the other hand, been the idol of the Whigs, and of the whole body of Protestant

dissenters. The coalition at once alienated the most zealous Tories from North, and the most zealous Whigs

from Fox. The University of Oxford, which had marked its approbation of North's orthodoxy by electing him

chancellor, the city of London, which had been during two and twenty years at war with the Court, were

equally disgusted. Squires and rectors, who had inherited the principles of the cavaliers of the preceding

century, could not forgive their old leader for combining with disloyal subjects in order to put a force on the

sovereign. The members of the Bill of Rights Society and of the Reform Associations were enraged by

learning that their favourite orator now called the great champion of tyranny and corruption his noble friend.

Two great multitudes were at once left without any head, and both at once turned their eyes on Pitt. One party

saw in him the only man who could rescue the King; the other saw in him the only man who could purify the

Parliament. He was supported on one side by Archbishop Markham, the preacher of divine right, and by

Jenkinson, the captain of the Praetorian band of the King's friends; on the other side by Jebb and Priestley,

Sawbridge and Cartwright, Jack Wilkes and Horne Tooke. On the benches of the House of Commons,

however, the ranks of the ministerial majority were unbroken; and that any statesman would venture to brave

such a majority was thought impossible. No prince of the Hanoverian line had ever, under any provocation,

ventured to appeal from the representative body to the constituent body. The ministers, therefore,

notwithstanding the sullen looks and muttered words of displeasure with which their suggestions were

received in the closet, notwithstanding the roar of obloquy which was rising louder and louder every day

Such was their confidence in their strength that, as soon as the Parliament had met, they brought forward a

singularly bold and original plan for the government of the British territories in India. What was proposed

was that the whole authority, which till that time had been exercised over those territories by the East India

Company, should be transferred to seven Commissioners who were to be named by Parliament, and were not

to be removable at the pleasure of the Crown. Earl Fitzwilliam, the most intimate personal friend of Fox, was

to be chairman of this board; and the eldest son of North was to be one of the members.

As soon as the outlines of the scheme were known, all the hatred which the coalition had excited burst forth

with an astounding explosion. The question which ought undoubtedly to have been considered as paramount

to every other was, whether the proposed change was likely to be beneficial or injurious to the thirty millions

of people who were subject to the Company. But that question cannot be said to have been even seriously

discussed. Burke, who, whether right or wrong in the conclusions to which he came, had at least the merit of

looking at the subject in the right point of view, vainly reminded his hearers of that mighty population whose

daily rice might depend on a vote of the British Parliament. He spoke, with even more than his wonted power

of thought and language, about the desolation of Rohilcund, about the spoliation of Benares, about the evil

policy which had suffered the tanks of the Carnatic to go to ruin; but he could scarcely obtain a hearing. The

contending parties, to their shame it must be said, would listen to none but English topics. Out of doors the

cry against the ministry was almost universal. Town and country were united. Corporations exclaimed against

the violation of the charter of the greatest corporation in the realm. Tories and democrats joined in

pronouncing the proposed board an unconstitutional body. It was to consist of Fox's nominees. The effect of

his bill was to give, not to the Crown, but to him personally, whether in office or in opposition, an enormous

power, a patronage sufficient to counterbalance the patronage of the Treasury and of the Admiralty, and to

decide the elections for fifty boroughs. He knew, it was said, that he was hateful alike to King and people;

and he had devised a plan which would make him independent of both. Some nicknamed him Cromwell, and

some Carlo Khan. Wilberforce, with his usual felicity of expression, and with very unusual bitterness of

feeling, described the scheme as the genuine offspring of the coalition, as marked by the features of both its

parents, the corruption of one and the violence of the other. In spite of all opposition, however, the bill was

supported in every stage by great majorities, was rapidly passed and was sent up to the Lords. To the general

astonishment, when the second reading was moved in the Upper House, the opposition proposed an

adjournment, and carried it by eightyseven votes to seventynine. The cause of this strange turn of fortune

was soon known. Pitt's cousin, Earl Temple, had been in the royal closet, and had there been authorised to let

it be known that His Majesty would consider all who voted for the bill as his enemies. The ignominious

commission was performed; and instantly a troop of Lords of the Bedchamber, of Bishops who wished to be

translated, and of Scotch peers who wished to be reelected, made haste to change sides. On a later day, the

Lords rejected the bill. Fox and North were immediately directed to send their seals to the palace by their

Under Secretaries; and Pitt was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The general opinion was, that there would be an immediate dissolution. But Pitt wisely determined to give

the public feeling time to gather strength. On this point he differed from his kinsman Temple. The

consequence was, that Temple, who had been appointed one of the Secretaries of State, resigned his office

fortyeight hours after he had accepted it, and thus relieved the new government from a great load of

unpopularity; for all men of sense and honour, however strong might be their dislike of the India Bill,

disapproved of the manner in which that bill had been thrown out. Temple carried away with him the scandal

which the best friends of the new government could not but lament. The fame of the young prime minister

preserved its whiteness. He could declare with perfect truth that, if unconstitutional machinations had been

He was, however, surrounded by difficulties and dangers. In the House of Lords, indeed, he had a majority;

nor could any orator of the opposition in that assembly be considered as a match for Thurlow, who was now

again Chancellor, or for Camden, who cordially supported the son of his old friend Chatham. But in the other

House there was not a single eminent speaker among the official men who sate round Pitt. His most useful

assistant was Dundas, who, though he had not eloquence, had sense, knowledge, readiness, and boldness. On

the opposite benches was a powerful majority, led by Fox, who was supported by Burke, North, and

Sheridan. The heart of the young minister, stout as it was, almost died within him. He could not once close

his eyes on the night which followed Temple's resignation. But, whatever his internal emotions might be, his

language and deportment indicated nothing but unconquerable firmness and haughty confidence in his own

powers. His contest against the House of Commons lasted from the 17th of December 1783, to the 8th of

March 1784. In sixteen divisions the opposition triumphed. Again and again the King was requested to

dismiss his ministers. But he was determined to go to Germany rather than yield. Pitt's resolution never

wavered. The cry of the nation in his favour became vehement and almost furious. Addresses assuring him of

public support came up daily from every part of the kingdom. The freedom of the city of London was

presented to him in a gold box. He went in state to receive this mark of distinction. He was sumptuously

feasted in Grocers' Hall; and the shopkeepers of the Strand and Fleet Street illuminated their houses in his

honour. These things could not but produce an effect within the walls of Parliament. The ranks of the

majority began to waver; a few passed over to the enemy; some skulked away; many were for capitulating

while it was still possible to capitulate with the honours of war. Negotiations were opened with the view of

forming an administration on a wide basis; but they had scarcely been opened when they were closed. The

opposition demanded, as a preliminary article of the treaty, that Pitt should resign the Treasury; and with this

demand Pit steadfastly refused to comply. While the contest was raging, the Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure

place for life, worth three thousand a year, and tenable with a seat in the House of Commons, became vacant.

The appointment was with the Chancellor of the Exchequer: nobody doubted that he would appoint himself;

and nobody could have blamed him if he had done so: for such sinecure offices had always been defended on

the ground that they enabled a few men of eminent abilities and small incomes to live without any profession,

and to devote themselves to the service of the state. Pitt, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, gave the

Pells to his father's old adherent, Colonel Barre, a man distinguished by talent and eloquence, but poor and

afflicted with blindness. By this arrangement a pension which the Rockingham administration had granted to

Barre was saved to the public. Never was there a happier stroke of policy. About treaties, wars, expeditions,

tariffs, budgets, there will always be room for dispute. The policy which is applauded by half the nation may

be condemned by the other half. But pecuniary disinterestedness everybody comprehends. It is a great thing

for a man who has only three hundred a year to be able to show that he considers three thousand a year as

mere dirt beneath his feet, when compared with the public interest and the public esteem. Pitt had his reward.

No minister was ever more rancorously libelled; but, even when he was known to be overwhelmed with debt,

when millions were passing through his hands, when the wealthiest magnates of the realm were soliciting

him for marquisates and garters, his bitterest enemies did not dare to accuse him of touching unlawful gain.

At length the hard fought fight ended. A final remonstrance, drawn up by Burke with admirable skill, was

carried on the 8th of March by a single vote in a full House. Had the experiment been repeated, the supporters

of the coalition would probably have been in a minority. But the supplies had been voted; the Mutiny Bill had

The popular constituent bodies all over the country were in general enthusiastic on the side of the new

government. A hundred and sixty of the supporters of the coalition lost their seats. The First Lord of the

Treasury himself came in at the head of the poll for the University of Cambridge. His young friend,

Wilberforce, was elected knight of the great shire of York, in opposition to the whole influence of the

Fitzwilliams, Cavendishes, Dundases, and Saviles. In the midst of such triumphs Pitt completed his

twentyfifth year. He was now the greatest subject that England had seen during many generations. He

domineered absolutely over the cabinet, and was the favourite at once of the Sovereign, of the Parliament,

and of the nation. His father had never been so powerful, nor Walpole, nor Marlborough.

This narrative has now reached a point, beyond which a full history of the life of Pitt would be a history of

England, or rather of the whole civilised world; and for such a history this is not the proper place. Here a very

slight sketch must suffice; and in that sketch prominence will be given to such points as may enable a reader

who is already acquainted with the general course of events to form a just notion of the character of the man

If we wish to arrive at a correct judgment of Pitt's merits and defects, we must never forget that he belonged

to a peculiar class of statesmen, and that he must be tried by a peculiar standard. It is not easy to compare him

fairly with such men as Ximenes and Sully, Richelieu and Oxenstiern, John de Witt, and Warren Hastings.

The means by which those politicians governed great communities were of quite a different kind from those

which Pitt was under the necessity of employing. Some talents, which they never had any opportunity of

showing that they possessed, were developed in him to an extraordinary degree. In some qualities, on the

other hand, to which they owe a large part of their fame, he was decidedly their inferior. They transacted

business in their closets, or at boards where a few confidential councillors sate. It was his lot to be born in an

age and in a country in which parliamentary government was completely established. His whole training from

infancy was such as fitted him to bear a part in parliamentary government; and, from the prime of his

manhood to his death, all the powers of his vigorous mind were almost constantly exerted in the work of

parliamentary government. He accordingly became the greatest master of the whole art of parliamentary

government that has ever existed, a greater than Montague or Walpole, a greater than his father Chatham, or

his rival Fox, a greater than either of his illustrious successors, Canning and Peel.

Parliamentary government, like every other contrivance of man, has its advantages and disadvantages. On the

advantages there is no need to dilate. The history of England during the hundred and seventy years which

have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful body in the state, her immense and still

growing prosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in arms, her maritime

ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires,

sufficiently prove the excellence of her institutions. But those institutions, though excellent, are assuredly not

perfect. Parliamentary government is government by speaking. In such a government, the power of speaking

is the most highly prized of all the qualities which a politician can possess: and that power may exist, in the

highest degree, without judgment, without fortitude, without skill in reading the characters of men or the

signs of the times, without any knowledge of the principles of legislation or of political economy, and

without any skill in diplomacy or in the administration of war. Nay, it may well happen that those very

intellectual qualities which give a peculiar charm to the speeches of a public man may be incompatible with

the qualities which would fit him to meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and firmness. It was thus

with Charles Townshend. It was thus with Windham. It was a privilege to listen to those accomplished and

ingenious orators. But in a perilous crisis they would have been found far inferior in all the qualities of rulers

to such a man as Oliver Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as William the Silent, who did not talk at all.

When parliamentary government is established, a Charles Townshend or a Windham will almost always

exercise much greater influence than such men as the great Protector of England, or as the founder of the

Batavian commonwealth. In such a government, parliamentary talent, though quite distinct from the talents of

a good executive or judicial officer, will be a chief qualification for executive and judicial office. From the

Book of Dignities a curious list might be made out of Chancellors ignorant of the principles of equity, and

First Lords of the Admiralty ignorant of the principles of navigation, of Colonial ministers who could not

repeat the names of the Colonies, of Lords of the Treasury who did not know the difference between funded

and unfunded debt, and of Secretaries of the India Board who did not know whether the Mahrattas were

Mahometans or Hindoos. On these grounds, some persons, incapable of seeing more than one side of a

question, have pronounced parliamentary government a positive evil, and have maintained that the

administration would be greatly improved if the power, now exercised by a large assembly, were transferred

to a single person. Men of sense will probably think the remedy very much worse than the disease, and will

be of opinion that there would be small gain in exchanging Charles Townshend and Windham for the Prince

Pitt was emphatically the man of parliamentary government, the type of his class, the minion, the child, the

spoiled child, of the House of Commons. For the House of Commons he had a hereditary, an infantine love.

Through his whole boyhood, the House of Commons was never out of his thoughts, or out of the thoughts of

his instructors. Reciting at his father's knee, reading Thucydides and Cicero into English, analysing the great

Attic speeches on the Embassy and on the Crown, he was constantly in training for the conflicts of the House

of Commons. He was a distinguished member of the House of Commons at twentyone. The ability which he

had displayed in the House of Commons made him the most powerful subject in Europe before he was

twentyfive. It would have been happy for himself and for his country if his elevation had been deferred.

Eight or ten years, during which he would have had leisure and opportunity for reading and reflection, for

foreign travel, for social intercourse and free exchange of thought on equal terms with a great variety of

companions, would have supplied what, without any fault on his part, was wanting to his powerful intellect.

He had all the knowledge that he could be expected to have; that is to say, all the knowledge that a man can

acquire while he is a student at Cambridge, and all the knowledge that a man can acquire when he is First

Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But the stock of general information which he brought

from college, extraordinary for a boy, was far inferior to what Fox possessed, and beggarly when compared

with the massy, the splendid, the various treasures laid up in the large mind of Burke. After Pitt became

minister, he had no leisure to learn more than was necessary for the purposes of the day which was passing

over him. What was necessary for those purposes such a man could learn with little difficulty. He was

surrounded by experienced and able public servants. He could at any moment command their best assistance.

From the stores which they produced his vigorous mind rapidly collected the materials for a good

parliamentary case; and that was enough. Legislation and administration were with him secondary matters.

To the work of framing statutes, of negotiating treaties, of organising fleets and armies, of sending forth

expeditions, he gave only the leavings of his time and the dregs of his fine intellect. The strength and sap of

his mind were all drawn in a different direction. It was when the House of Commons was to be convinced and

Of those powers we must form our estimate chiefly from tradition; for of all the eminent speakers of the last

age Pitt has suffered most from the reporters. Even while he was still living, critics remarked that his

eloquence could not be preserved, that he must be heard to be appreciated. They more than once applied to

him the sentence in which Tacitus describes the fate of a senator whose rhetoric was admired in the Augustan

age: "Haterii canorum illud et profluens cum ipso simul exstinctum est." There is, however, abundant

evidence that nature had bestowed on Pitt the talents of a great orator; and those talents had been developed

in a very peculiar manner, first by his education, and secondly by the high official position to which he rose

At his first appearance in Parliament he showed himself superior to all his contemporaries in command of

language. He could pour forth a long succession of round and stately periods, without premeditation, without

ever pausing for a word, without ever repeating a word, in a voice of silver clearness, and with a

pronunciation so articulate that not a letter was slurred over. He had less amplitude of mind and less richness

of imagination than Burke, less ingenuity than Windham, less wit than Sheridan, less perfect mastery of

dialectical fence, and less of that highest sort of eloquence which consists of reason and passion fused

together, than Fox. Yet the almost unanimous judgment of those who were in the habit of listening to that

remarkable race of men placed Pitt, as a speaker, above Burke, above Windham, above Sheridan, and not

below Fox. His declamation was copious, polished, and splendid. In power of sarcasm he was probably not

surpassed by any speaker, ancient or modern; and of this formidable weapon he made merciless use. In two

parts of the oratorical art which are of the highest value to a minister of state he was singularly expert. No

man knew better how to be luminous or how to be obscure. When he wished to be understood, he never failed

to make himself understood. He could with ease present to his audience, not perhaps an exact or profound,

but a clear, popular, and plausible view of the most extensive and complicated subject. Nothing was out of

place; nothing was forgotten; minute details, dates, sums of money, were all faithfully preserved in his

memory. Even intricate questions of finance, when explained by him, seemed clear to the plainest man

among his hearers. On the other hand, when he did not wish to be explicit,and no man who is at the head

of affairs always wishes to be explicit,he had a marvellous power of saying nothing in language which left

on his audience the impression that he had said a great deal. He was at once the only man who could open a

budget without notes, and the only man who, as Windham said, could speak that most elaborately evasive and

The effect of oratory will always to a great extent depend on the character of the orator. There perhaps never

were two speakers whose eloquence had more of what may be called the race, more of the flavour imparted

by moral qualities, than Fox and Pitt. The speeches of Fox owe a great part of their charm to that warmth and

softness of heart, that sympathy with human suffering, that admiration for everything great and beautiful, and

that hatred of cruelty and injustice, which interest and delight us even in the most defective reports. No

person, on the other hand, could hear Pitt without perceiving him to be a man of high, intrepid, and

commanding spirit, proudly conscious of his own rectitude and of his own intellectual superiority, incapable

of the low vices of fear and envy, but too prone to feel and to show disdain. Pride, indeed, pervaded the

whole man, was written in the harsh, rigid lines of his face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in

which he sate, in which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed. Such pride, of course, inflicted many

wounds. It may confidently be affirmed that there cannot be found, in all the ten thousand invectives written

against Fox, a word indicating that his demeanour had ever made a single personal enemy. On the other hand,

several men of note who had been partial to Pitt, and who to the last continued to approve his public conduct

and to support his administration, Cumberland, for example, Boswell, and Matthias, were so much irritated

by the contempt with which he treated them, that they complained in print of their wrongs. But his pride,

though it made him bitterly disliked by individuals, inspired the great body of his followers in Parliament and

throughout the country with respect and confidence. They took him at his own valuation. They saw that his

selfesteem was not that of an upstart, who was drunk with good luck and with applause, and who, if fortune

turned, would sink from arrogance into abject humility. It was that of the magnanimous man so finely

described by Aristotle in the Ethics, of the man who thinks himself worthy of great things, being in truth

worthy. It sprang from a consciousness of great powers and great virtues, and was never so conspicuously

displayed as in the midst of difficulties and dangers which would have unnerved and bowed down any

ordinary mind. It was closely connected, too, with an ambition which had no mixture of low cupidity. There

was something noble in the cynical disdain with which the mighty minister scattered riches and titles to right

and left among those who valued them, while he spurned them out of his own way. Poor himself, he was

surrounded by friends on whom he had bestowed three thousand, six thousand, ten thousand a year. Plain

Mister himself, he had made more lords than any three ministers that had preceded him. The garter, for which

the first dukes in the kingdom were contending, was repeatedly offered to him, and offered in vain.

The correctness of his private life added much to the dignity of his public character. In the relations of son,

brother, uncle, master, friend, his conduct was exemplary. In the small circle of his intimate associates, he

was amiable, affectionate, even playful. They loved him sincerely; they regretted him long; and they would

hardly admit that he who was so kind and gentle with them could be stern and haughty with others. He

indulged, indeed, somewhat too freely in wine, which he had early been directed to take as a medicine, and

which use had made a necessary of life to him. But it was very seldom that any indication of undue excess

could be detected in his tones or gestures; and, in truth, two bottles of port were little more to him than two

dishes of tea. He had, when he was first introduced into the clubs of Saint James's Street, shown a strong taste

for play; but he had the prudence and the resolution to stop before this taste had acquired the strength of

habit. From the passion which generally exercises the most tyrannical dominion over the young he possessed

an immunity, which is probably to be ascribed partly to his temperament and partly to his situation. His

constitution was feeble; he was very shy; and he was very busy. The strictness of his morals furnished such

buffoons as Peter Pindar and Captain Morris with an inexhaustible theme for merriment of no very delicate

kind. But the great body of the middle class of Englishmen could not see the joke. They warmly praised the

young statesman for commanding his passions, and for covering his frailties, if he had frailties, with decorous

obscurity, and would have been very far indeed from thinking better of him if he had vindicated himself from

the taunts of his enemies by taking under his protection a Nancy Parsons or a Marianne Clark.

No part of the immense popularity which Pitt long enjoyed is to be attributed to the eulogies of wits and

poets. It might have been naturally expected that a man of genius, of learning, of taste, an orator whose

diction was often compared to that of Tully, the representative, too, of a great university, would have taken a

peculiar pleasure in befriending eminent writers, to whatever political party they might have belonged. The

love of literature had induced Augustus to heap benefits on Pompeians, Somers to be the protector of

nonjurors, Harley to make the fortunes of Whigs. But it could not move Pitt to show any favour even to

Pittites. He was doubtless right in thinking that, in general, poetry, history, and philosophy ought to be

suffered, like calico and cutlery, to find their proper price in the market, and that to teach men of letters to

look habitually to the state for their recompense is bad for the state and bad for letters. Assuredly nothing can

be more absurd or mischievous than to waste the public money in bounties for the purpose of inducing people

who ought to be weighing out grocery or measuring out drapery to write bad or middling books. But, though

the sound rule is that authors should be left to be remunerated by their readers, there will, in every generation,

be a few exceptions to this rule. To distinguish these special cases from the mass is an employment well

worthy of the faculties of a great and accomplished ruler; and Pitt would assuredly have had little difficulty in

finding such cases. While he was in power, the greatest philologist of the age, his own contemporary at

Cambridge, was reduced to earn a livelihood by the lowest literary drudgery, and to spend in writing squibs

for the "Morning Chronicle" years to which we might have owed an all but perfect text of the whole tragic

and comic drama of Athens. The greatest historian of the age, forced by poverty to leave his country,

completed his immortal work on the shores of Lake Leman. The political heterodoxy of Porson, and the

religious heterodoxy of Gibbon, may perhaps be pleaded in defence of the minister by whom those eminent

men were neglected. But there were other cases in which no such excuse could be set up. Scarcely had Pitt

obtained possession of unbounded power when an aged writer of the highest eminence, who had made very

little by his writings, and who was sinking into the grave under a load of infirmities and sorrows, wanted five

or six hundred pounds to enable him, during the winter or two which might still remain to him, to draw his

breath more easily in the soft climate of Italy. Not a farthing was to be obtained; and before Christmas the

author of the English Dictionary and of the Lives of the Poets had gasped his last in the river fog and coal

smoke of Fleet Street. A few months after the death of Johnson appeared the Task, incomparably the best

poem that any Englishman then living had produceda poem, too, which could hardly fail to excite in a well

constituted mind a feeling of esteem and compassion for the poet, a man of genius and virtue, whose means

were scanty, and whom the most cruel of all the calamities incident to humanity had made incapable of

supporting himself by vigorous and sustained exertion. Nowhere had Chatham been praised with more

enthusiasm, or in verse more worthy of the subject, than in the Task. The son of Chatham, however,

contented himself with reading and admiring the book, and left the author to starve. The pension which, long

after, enabled poor Cowper to close his melancholy life, unmolested by duns and bailiffs, was obtained for

him by the strenuous kindness of Lord Spencer. What a contrast between the way in which Pitt acted towards

Johnson and the way in which Lord Grey acted towards his political enemy Scott, when Scott, worn out by

misfortune and disease, was advised to try the effect of the Italian air! What a contrast between the way in

which Pitt acted towards Cowper and the way in which Burke, a poor man and out of place, acted towards

Crabbe! Even Dundas, who made no pretensions to literary taste, and was content to be considered as a

hardheaded and somewhat coarse man of business, was, when compared with his eloquent and classically

educated friend, a Maecenas or a Leo. Dundas made Burns an exciseman, with seventy pounds a year; and

this was more than Pitt, during his long tenure of power, did for the encouragement of letters. Even those who

may think that it is, in general, no part of the duty of a government to reward literary merit will hardly deny

that a government, which has much lucrative church preferment in its gift, is bound, in distributing that

preferment, not to overlook divines whose writings have rendered great service to the cause of religion. But it

seems never to have occurred to Pitt that he lay under any such obligation. All the theological works of all the

numerous bishops whom he made and translated are not, when put together, worth fifty pages of the Horae

Paulinae, of the Natural Theology, or of the View of the Evidences of Christianity. But on Paley the

allpowerful minister never bestowed the small benefice. Artists Pitt reasoned as contemptuously as writers.

For painting he did simply nothing. Sculptors, who had been selected to execute monuments voted by

Parliament, had to haunt the antechambers of the Treasury during many years before they could obtain a

farthing from him. One of them, after vainly soliciting the minister for payment during fourteen years, had

the courage to present a memorial to the King, and thus obtained tardy and ungracious justice. Architects it

was absolutely necessary to employ; and the worst that could be found seem to have been employed. Not a

single fine public building of any kind or in any style was erected during his long administration. It may be

confidently affirmed that no ruler whose abilities and attainments would bear any comparison with his has

His first administration lasted seventeen years. That long period is divided by a strongly marked line into two

almost exactly equal parts. The first part ended and the second began in the autumn of 1792. Throughout both

parts Pitt displayed in the highest degree the talents of a parliamentary leader. During the first part he was a

fortunate and, in many respects, a skilful administrator. With the difficulties which he had to encounter

during the second part he was altogether incapable of contending: but his eloquence and his perfect mastery

of the tactics of the House of Commons concealed his incapacity from the multitude.

The eight years which followed the general election of 1784 were as tranquil and prosperous as any eight

years in the whole history of England. Neighbouring nations which had lately been in arms against her, and

which had flattered themselves that, in losing her American colonies, she had lost a chief source of her wealth

and of her power, saw, with wonder and vexation, that she was more wealthy and more powerful than ever.

Her trade increased. Her manufactures flourished. Her exchequer was full to overflowing. Very idle

apprehensions were generally entertained, that the public debt, though much less than a third of the debt

which we now bear with ease, would be found too heavy for the strength of the nation. Those apprehensions

might not perhaps have been easily quieted by reason. But Pitt quieted them by a juggle. He succeeded in

persuading first himself, and then the whole nation, his opponents included, that a new sinking fund, which,

so far as it differed from former sinking funds, differed for the worse, would, by virtue of some mysterious

power of propagation belonging to money, put into the pocket of the public creditor great sums not taken out

of the pocket of the taxpayer. The country, terrified by a danger which was no danger, hailed with delight

and boundless confidence a remedy which was no remedy. The minister was almost universally extolled as

the greatest of financiers. Meanwhile both the branches of the House of Bourbon found that England was as

formidable an antagonist as she had ever been. France had formed a plan for reducing Holland to vassalage.

But England interposed; and France receded. Spain interrupted by violence the trade of our merchants with

the regions near the Oregon. But England armed; and Spain receded. Within the island there was profound

tranquillity. The King was, for the first time, popular. During the twentythree years which had followed his

accession he had not been loved by his subjects. His domestic virtues were acknowledged. But it was

generally thought that the good qualities by which he was distinguished in private life were wanting to his

political character. As a Sovereign, he was resentful, unforgiving, stubborn, cunning. Under his rule the

country had sustained cruel disgraces and disasters; and every one of those disgraces and disasters was

imputed to his strong antipathies, and to his perverse obstinacy in the wrong. One statesman after another

complained that he had been induced by royal caresses, intreaties, and promises, to undertake the direction of

affairs at a difficult conjuncture, and that, as soon as he had, not without sullying his fame, and alienating his

best friends, served the turn for which he was wanted, his ungrateful master began to intrigue against him,

and to canvass against him. Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham, men of widely different characters, but all

three upright and highspirited, agreed in thinking that the Prince under whom they had successively held the

highest place in government was one of the most insincere of mankind. His confidence was reposed, they

said, not in those known and responsible counsellors to whom he had delivered the seals of office, but in

secret advisers who stole up the back stairs into his closet. In Parliament his ministers, while defending

themselves against the attacks of the opposition in front, were perpetually, at his instigation, assailed on the

flank or in the rear by a vile band of mercenaries who called themselves his friends. These men constantly,

while in possession of lucrative places in his service, spoke and voted against bills which he had authorised

the First Lord of the Treasury or the Secretary of State to bring in. But from the day on which Pitt was placed

at the head of affairs there was an end of secret influence. His haughty and aspiring spirit was not to be

satisfied with the mere show of power. Any attempt to undermine him at Court, any mutinous movement

among his followers in the House of Commons, was certain to be at once put down. He had only to tender his

resignation; and he could dictate his own terms. For he, and he alone, stood between the King and the

Coalition. He was therefore little less than Mayor of the Palace. The nation loudly applauded the King for

having the wisdom to repose entire confidence in so excellent a minister. His Majesty's private virtues now

began to produce their full effect. He was generally regarded as the model of a respectable country

gentleman, honest, goodnatured, sober, religious. He rose early: he dined temperately: he was strictly

faithful to his wife: he never missed church; and at church he never missed a response. His people heartily

prayed that he might long reign over them; and they prayed the more heartily because his virtues were set off

to the best advantage by the vices and follies of the Prince of Wales, who lived in close intimacy with the

How strong this feeling was in the public mind appeared signally on one great occasion. In the autumn of

1788 the King became insane. The opposition, eager for office, committed the great indiscretion of asserting

that the heir apparent had, by the fundamental laws of England, a right to be Regent with the full powers of

royalty. Pitt, on the other hand, maintained it to be the constitutional doctrine that, when a Sovereign is, by

reason of infancy, disease, or absence, incapable of exercising the regal functions, it belongs to the Estates of

the realm to determine who shall be the vicegerent and with what portion of the executive authority such

vicegerent shall be entrusted. A long and violent contest followed, in which Pitt was supported by the great

body of the people with as much enthusiasm as during the first months of his administration. Tories with one

voice applauded him for defending the sickbed of a virtuous and unhappy Sovereign against a disloyal

faction and an undutiful son. Not a few Whigs applauded him for asserting the authority of Parliaments and

the principles of the Revolution, in opposition to a doctrine which seemed to have too much affinity with the

servile theory of indefeasible hereditary right. The middle class, always zealous on the side of decency and

the domestic virtues, looked forward with dismay to a reign resembling that of Charles II. The palace, which

had now been, during thirty years, the pattern of an English home, would be a public nuisance, a school of

profligacy. To the good King's repast of mutton and lemonade, despatched at three o'clock, would succeed

midnight banquets, from which the guests would be carried home speechless. To the backgammon board at

which the good King played for a little silver with his equerries, would succeed faro tables from which young

patricians who had sate down rich would rise up beggars. The drawingroom, from which the frown of the

Queen had repelled a whole generation of frail beauties, would now be again what it had been in the days of

Barbara Palmer and Louisa de Querouaille. Nay, severely as the public reprobated the Prince's many illicit

attachments, his one virtuous attachment was reprobated more severely still. Even in grave and pious circles

his Protestant mistresses gave less scandal than his Popish wife. That he must be Regent nobody ventured to

deny. But he and his friends were so unpopular that Pitt could, with general approbation, propose to limit the

powers of the Regent by restrictions to which it would have been impossible to subject a Prince beloved and

trusted by the country. Some interested men, fully expecting a change of administration, went over to the

opposition. But the majority, purified by these desertions, closed its ranks, and presented a more firm array

than ever to the enemy. In every division Pitt was victorious. When at length, after a stormy interregnum of

three months, it was announced, on the very eve of the inauguration of the Regent, that the King was himself

again, the nation was wild with delight. On the evening of the day on which His Majesty resumed his

functions, a spontaneous illumination, the most general that had ever been seen in England, brightened the

whole vast space from Highgate to Tooting, and from Hammersmith to Greenwich. On the day on which he

returned thanks in the cathedral of his capital, all the horses and carriages within a hundred miles of London

were too few for the multitudes which flocked to see him pass through the streets. A second illumination

followed, which was even superior to the first in magnificence. Pitt with difficulty escaped from the

tumultuous kindness of an innumerable multitude which insisted on drawing his coach from Saint Paul's

Churchyard to Downing Street. This was the moment at which his fame and fortune may be said to have

reached the zenith. His influence in the closet was as great as that of Carr or Villiers had been. His dominion

over the Parliament was more absolute than that of Walpole of Pelham had been. He was at the same time as

high in the favour of the populace as ever Wilkes or Sacheverell had been. Nothing did more to raise his

character than his noble poverty. It was wellknown that, if he had been dismissed from office after more

than five years of boundless power, he would hardly have carried out with him a sum sufficient to furnish the

set of chambers in which, as he cheerfully declared, he meant to resume the practice of the law. His admirers,

however, were by no means disposed to suffer him to depend on daily toil for his daily bread. The voluntary

contributions which were awaiting his acceptance in the city of London alone would have sufficed to make

him a rich man. But it may be doubted whether his haughty spirit would have stooped to accept a provision

To such a height of power and glory had this extraordinary man risen at twentynine years of age. And now

the tide was on the turn. Only ten days after the triumphal procession to Saint Paul's, the StatesGeneral of

France, after an interval of a hundred and seventyfour years, met at Versailles.

The nature of the great Revolution which followed was long very imperfectly understood in this country.

Burke saw much further than any of his contemporaries: but whatever his sagacity descried was refracted and

discoloured by his passions and his imagination. More than three years elapsed before the principles of the

English administration underwent any material change. Nothing could as yet be milder or more strictly

constitutional than the minister's domestic policy. Not a single act indicating an arbitrary temper or a jealousy

of the people could be imputed to him. He had never applied to Parliament for any extraordinary powers. He

had never used with harshness the ordinary powers entrusted by the constitution to the executive government.

Not a single state prosecution which would even now be called oppressive had been instituted by him.

Indeed, the only oppressive state prosecution instituted during the first eight years of his administration was

that of Stockdale, which is to be attributed not to the government, but to the chiefs of the opposition. In office

Pitt had redeemed the pledges which he had, at his entrance into public life, given to the supporters of

parliamentary reform. He had, in 1785, brought forward a judicious plan for the improvement of the

representative system, and had prevailed on the King, not only to refrain from talking against that plan, but to

recommend it to the Houses in a speech from the throne. (The speech with which the King opened the session

of 1785, concluded with an assurance that His Majesty would heartily concur in every measure which could

tend to secure the true principles of the constitution. These words were at the time understood to refer to Pitt's

Reform Bill.) This attempt failed; but there can be little doubt that, if the French Revolution had not produced

a violent reaction of public feeling, Pitt would have performed, with little difficulty and no danger, that great

work which, at a later period, Lord Grey could accomplish only by means which for a time loosened the very

foundations of the commonwealth. When the atrocities of the slave trade were first brought under the

consideration of Parliament, no abolitionist was more zealous than Pitt. When sickness prevented Wilberforce

from appearing in public, his place was most efficiently supplied by his friend the minister. A humane bill,

which mitigated the horrors of the middle passage, was, in 1788, carried by the eloquence and determined

spirit of Pitt, in spite of the opposition of some of his own colleagues; and it ought always to be remembered

to his honour that, in order to carry that bill, he kept the Houses sitting, in spite of many murmurs, long after

the business of the government had been done, and the Appropriation Act passed. In 1791 he cordially

concurred with Fox in maintaining the sound constitutional doctrine, that an impeachment is not terminated

by a dissolution. In the course of the same year the two great rivals contended side by side in a far more

important cause. They are fairly entitled to divide the high honour of having added to our statutebook the

inestimable law which places the liberty of the press under the protection of juries. On one occasion, and one

alone, Pitt, during the first half of his long administration, acted in a manner unworthy of an enlightened

Whig. In the debate on the Test Act, he stooped to gratify the master whom he served, the university which

he represented, and the great body of clergymen and country gentlemen on whose support he rested, by

talking, with little heartiness, indeed, and with no asperity, the language of a Tory. With this single exception,

his conduct from the end of 1783 to the middle of 1792 was that of an honest friend of civil and religious

Nor did anything, during that period, indicate that he loved war, or harboured any malevolent feeling against

any neighbouring nation. Those French writers who have represented him as a Hannibal sworn in childhood

by his father to bear eternal hatred to France, as having by mysterious intrigues and lavish bribes, instigated

the leading Jacobins to commit those excesses which dishonoured the Revolution, as having been the real

author of the first coalition, know nothing of his character or of his history. So far was he from being a deadly

enemy to France, that his laudable attempts to bring about a closer connection with that country by means of

a wise and liberal treaty of commerce brought on him the severe censure of the opposition. He was told in the

House of Commons that he was a degenerate son, and that his partiality for the hereditary foes of our island

was enough to make his great father's bones stir under the pavement of the Abbey.

And this man, whose name, if he had been so fortunate as to die in 1792, would now have been associated

with peace, with freedom, with philanthropy, with temperate reform, with mild and constitutional

administration, lived to associate his name with arbitrary government, with harsh laws harshly executed, with

alien bills, with gagging bills, with suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, with cruel punishments inflicted

on some political agitators, with unjustifiable prosecutions instituted against others, and with the most costly

and most sanguinary wars of modern times. He lived to be held up to obloquy as the stern oppressor of

England, and the indefatigable disturber of Europe. Poets, contrasting his earlier with his later years, likened

him sometimes to the apostle who kissed in order to betray, and sometimes to the evil angels who kept not

their first estate. A satirist of great genius introduced the fiends of Famine, Slaughter, and Fire, proclaiming

that they had received their commission from One whose name was formed of four letters, and promising to

give their employer ample proofs of gratitude. Famine would gnaw the multitude till they should rise up

against him in madness. The demon of slaughter would impel them to tear him from limb to limb. But Fire

boasted that she alone could reward him as he deserved, and that she would cling round him to all eternity.

By the French press and the French tribune every crime that disgraced and every calamity that afflicted

France was ascribed to the monster Pitt and his guineas. While the Jacobins were dominant, it was he who

had corrupted the Gironde, who had raised Lyons and Bordeaux against the Convention, who had suborned

Paris to assassinate Lepelletier, and Cecilia Regnault to assassinate Robespierre. When the Thermidorian

reaction came, all the atrocities of the Reign of Terror were imputed to him. Collet D'Herbois and Fouquier

Tinville had been his pensioners. It was he who had hired the murderers of September, who had dictated the

pamphlets of Marat and the Carmagnoles of Barere, who had paid Lebon to deluge Arras with blood, and

The truth is, that he liked neither war nor arbitrary government. He was a lover of peace and freedom, driven,

by a stress against which it was hardly possible for any will or any intellect to struggle, out of the course to

which his inclinations pointed, and for which his abilities and acquirements fitted him, and forced into a

The charge of apostasy is grossly unjust. A man ought no more to be called an apostate because his opinions

alter with the opinions of the great body of his contemporaries than he ought to be called an oriental traveller

because he is always going round from west to east with the globe and everything that is upon it. Between the

spring of 1789 and the close of 1792, the public mind of England underwent a great change. If the change of

Pitt's sentiments attracted peculiar notice, it was not because he changed more than his neighbours; for in fact

he changed less than most of them; but because his position was far more conspicuous than theirs, because he

was, till Bonaparte appeared, the individual who filled the greatest space in the eyes of the inhabitants of the

civilised world. During a short time the nation, and Pitt, as one of the nation, looked with interest and

approbation on the French Revolution. But soon vast confiscations, the violent sweeping away of ancient

institutions, the domination of clubs, the barbarities of mobs maddened by famine and hatred, produced a

reaction here. The court, the nobility, the gentry, the clergy, the manufacturers, the merchants, in short,

nineteentwentieths of those who had good roofs over their heads and good coats on their backs, became

eager and intolerant Antijacobins. This feeling was at least as strong among the minister's adversaries as

among his supporters. Fox in vain attempted to restrain his followers. All his genius, all his vast personal

influence, could not prevent them from rising up against him in general mutiny. Burke set the example of

revolt; and Burke was in no long time joined by Portland, Spencer, Fitzwilliam, Loughborough, Carlisle,

Malmesbury, Windham, Elliot. In the House of Commons, the followers of the great Whig statesman and

orator diminished from about a hundred and sixty to fifty. In the House of Lords he had but ten or twelve

adherents left. There can be no doubt that there would have been a similar mutiny on the ministerial benches

if Pitt had obstinately resisted the general wish. Pressed at once by his master and by his colleagues, by old

friends and by old opponents, he abandoned, slowly and reluctantly, the policy which was dear to his heart.

He laboured hard to avert the European war. When the European war broke out, he still flattered himself that

it would not be necessary for this country to take either side. In the spring of 1792 he congratulated the

Parliament on the prospect of long and profound peace, and proved his sincerity by proposing large

remissions of taxation. Down to the end of that year he continued to cherish the hope that England might be

able to preserve neutrality. But the passions which raged on both sides of the Channel were not to be

restrained. The republicans who ruled France were inflamed by a fanaticism resembling that of the

Mussulmans who, with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, went forth, conquering and

converting, eastward to the Bay of Bengal, and westward to the Pillars of Hercules. The higher and middle

classes of England were animated by zeal not less fiery than that of the Crusaders who raised the cry of Deus

vult at Clermont. The impulse which drove the two nations to a collision was not to be arrested by the

abilities or by the authority of any single man. As Pitt was in front of his fellows, and towered high above

them, he seemed to lead them. But in fact he was violently pushed on by them, and, had he held back but a

little more than he did, would have been thrust out of their way or trampled under their feet.

He yielded to the current: and from that day his misfortunes began. The truth is that there were only two

consistent courses before him. Since he did not choose to oppose himself, side by side with Fox, to the public

feeling, he should have taken the advice of Burke, and should have availed himself of that feeling to the full

extent. If it was impossible to preserve peace, he should have adopted the only policy which could lead to

victory. He should have proclaimed a Holy War for religion, morality, property, order, public law, and should

have thus opposed to the Jacobins an energy equal to their own. Unhappily he tried to find a middle path; and

he found one which united all that was worst in both extremes. He went to war: but he would not understand

the peculiar character of that war. He was obstinately blind to the plain fact, that he was contending against a

state which was also a sect, and that the new quarrel between England and France was of quite a different

kind from the old quarrels about colonies in America and fortresses in the Netherlands. He had to combat

frantic enthusiasm, boundless ambition, restless activity, the wildest and most audacious spirit of innovation;

and he acted as if he had to deal with the harlots and fops of the old Court of Versailles, with Madame de

Pompadour and the Abbe de Bernis. It was pitiable to hear him, year after year, proving to an admiring

audience that the wicked Republic was exhausted, that she could not hold out, that her credit was gone, and

her assignats were not worth more than the paper of which they were made; as if credit was necessary to a

government of which the principle was rapine, as if Alboin could not turn Italy into a desert till he had

negotiated a loan at five per cent., as if the exchequer bills of Attila had been at par. It was impossible that a

man who so completely mistook the nature of a contest could carry on that contest successfully. Great as

Pitt's abilities were, his military administration was that of a driveller. He was at the head of a nation engaged

in a struggle for life and death, of a nation eminently distinguished by all the physical and all the moral

qualities which make excellent soldiers. The resources at his command were unlimited. The Parliament was

even more ready to grant him men and money than he was to ask for them. In such an emergency, and with

such means, such a statesman as Richelieu, as Louvois, as Chatham, as Wellesley, would have created in a

few months one of the finest armies in the world, and would soon have discovered and brought forward

generals worthy to command such an army. Germany might have been saved by another Blenheim; Flanders

recovered by another Ramilies; another Poitiers might have delivered the Royalist and Catholic provinces of

France from a yoke which they abhorred, and might have spread terror even to the barriers of Paris. But the

fact is, that, after eight years of war, after a vast destruction of life, after an expenditure of wealth far

exceeding the expenditure of the American war, of the Seven Years' War, of the war of the Austrian

Succession, and of the war of the Spanish Succession, united, the English army, under Pitt, was the

laughingstock of all Europe. It could not boast of one single brilliant exploit. It had never shown itself on

the Continent but to be beaten, chased, forced to reembark, or forced to capitulate. To take some sugar

island in the West Indies, to scatter some mob of halfnaked Irish peasants, such were the most splendid

The English navy no mismanagement could ruin. But during a long period whatever mismanagement could

do was done. The Earl of Chatham, without a single qualification for high public trust, was made, by fraternal

partiality, First Lord of the Admiralty, and was kept in that great post during two years of a war in which the

very existence of the state depended on the efficiency of the fleet. He continued to doze away and trifle away

the time which ought to have been devoted to the public service, till the whole mercantile body, though

generally disposed to support the government, complained bitterly that our flag gave no protection to our

trade. Fortunately he was succeeded by George Earl Spencer, one of those chiefs of the Whig party who, in

the great schism caused by the French Revolution, had followed Burke. Lord Spencer, though inferior to

many of his colleagues as an orator, was decidedly the best administrator among them. To him it was owing

that a long and gloomy succession of days of fasting, and, most emphatically, of humiliation, was interrupted,

twice in the short space of eleven months, by days of thanksgiving for great victories.

It may seem paradoxical to say that the incapacity which Pitt showed in all that related to the conduct of the

war is, in some sense, the most decisive proof that he was a man of very extraordinary abilities. Yet this is the

simple truth. For assuredly onetenth part of his errors and disasters would have been fatal to the power and

influence of any minister who had not possessed, in the highest degree, the talents of a parliamentary leader.

While his schemes were confounded, while his predictions were falsified, while the coalitions which he had

laboured to form were falling to pieces, while the expeditions which he had sent forth at enormous cost were

ending in rout and disgrace, while the enemy against whom he was feebly contending was subjugating

Flanders and Brabant, the Electorate of Mentz, and the Electorate of Treves, Holland, Piedmont, Liguria,

Lombardy, his authority over the House of Commons was constantly becoming more and more absolute.

There was his empire. There were his victories, his Lodi and his Arcola, his Rivoli and his Marengo. If some

great misfortune, a pitched battle lost by the allies, the annexation of a new department to the French

Republic, a sanguinary insurrection in Ireland, a mutiny in the fleet, a panic in the city, a run on the bank, had

spread dismay through the ranks of his majority, that dismay lasted only till he rose from the Treasury bench,

drew up his haughty head, stretched his arm with commanding gesture, and poured forth, in deep and

sonorous tones, the lofty language of inextinguishable hope and inflexible resolution. Thus, through a long

and calamitous period, every disaster that happened without the walls of Parliament was regularly followed

by a triumph within them. At length he had no longer an opposition to encounter. Of the great party which

had contended against him during the first eight years of his administration more than one half now marched

under his standard, with his old competitor the Duke of Portland at their head; and the rest had, after many

vain struggles, quitted the field in despair. Fox had retired to the shades of St Anne's Hill, and had there

found, in the society of friends whom no vicissitude could estrange from him, of a woman whom he tenderly

loved, and of the illustrious dead of Athens, of Rome, and of Florence, ample compensation for all the

misfortunes of his public life. Session followed session with scarcely a single division. In the eventful year

1799, the largest minority that could be mustered against the government was twentyfive.

In Pitt's domestic policy there was at this time assuredly no want of vigour. While he offered to French

Jacobinism a resistance so feeble that it only encouraged the evil which he wished to suppress, he put down

English Jacobinism with a strong hand. The Habeas Corpus Act was repeatedly suspended. Public meetings

were placed under severe restraints. The government obtained from parliament power to send out of the

country aliens who were suspected of evil designs; and that power was not suffered to be idle. Writers who

propounded doctrines adverse to monarchy and aristocracy were proscribed and punished without mercy. It

was hardly safe for a republican to avow his political creed over his beefsteak and his bottle of port at a

chophouse. The old laws of Scotland against sedition, laws which were considered by Englishmen as

barbarous, and which a succession of governments had suffered to rust, were now furbished up and sharpened

anew. Men of cultivated minds and polished manners were, for offences which at Westminster would have

been treated as mere misdemeanours, sent to herd with felons at Botany Bay. Some reformers, whose

opinions were extravagant, and whose language was intemperate, but who had never dreamed of subverting

the government by physical force, were indicted for high treason, and were saved from the gallows only by

the righteous verdicts of juries. This severity was at the time loudly applauded by alarmists whom fear had

made cruel, but will be seen in a very different light by posterity. The truth is, that the Englishmen who

wished for a revolution were, even in number, not formidable, and in everything but number, a faction utterly

contemptible, without arms, or funds, or plans, or organisation, or leader. There can be no doubt that Pitt,

strong as he was in the support of the great body of the nation, might easily have repressed the turbulence of

the discontented minority by firmly yet temperately enforcing the ordinary law. Whatever vigour he showed

during this unfortunate part of his life was vigour out of place and season. He was all feebleness and langour

in his conflict with the foreign enemy who was really to be dreaded, and reserved all his energy and

One part only of Pitt's conduct during the last eight years of the eighteenth century deserves high praise. He

was the first English minister who formed great designs for the benefit of Ireland. The manner in which the

Roman Catholic population of that unfortunate country had been kept down during many generations seemed

to him unjust and cruel; and it was scarcely possible for a man of his abilities not to perceive that, in a contest

against the Jacobins, the Roman Catholics were his natural allies. Had he been able to do all that he wished, it

is probable that a wise and liberal policy would have averted the rebellion of 1798. But the difficulties which

he encountered were great, perhaps insurmountable; and the Roman Catholics were, rather by his misfortune

than by his fault, thrown into the hands of the Jacobins. There was a third great rising of the Irishry against

the Englishry, a rising not less formidable than the risings of 1641 and 1689. The Englishry remained

victorious, and it was necessary for Pitt, as it had been necessary for Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange

before him, to consider how the victory should be used. It is only just to his memory to say that he formed a

scheme of policy, so grand and so simple, so righteous and so humane, that it would alone entitle him to a

high place among statesmen. He determined to make Ireland one kingdom with England, and, at the same

time, to relieve the Roman Catholic laity from civil disabilities, and to grant a public maintenance to the

Roman Catholic clergy. Had he been able to carry these noble designs into effect, the Union would have been

an Union indeed. It would have been inseparably associated in the minds of the great majority of Irishmen

with civil and religious freedom; and the old Parliament in College Green would have been regretted only by

a small knot of discarded jobbers and oppressors, and would have been remembered by the body of the nation

with the loathing and contempt due to the most tyrannical and the most corrupt assembly that had ever sate in

Europe. But Pitt could execute only one half of what he had projected. He succeeded in obtaining the consent

of the Parliaments of both kingdoms to the Union; but that reconciliation of races and sects, without which

the Union could exist only in name, was not accomplished. He was well aware that he was likely to find

difficulties in the closet. But he flattered himself, that by cautious and dexterous management, those

difficulties might be overcome. Unhappily, there were traitors and sycophants in high place who did not

suffer him to take his own time, and his own way, but prematurely disclosed his scheme to the King, and

disclosed it in the manner most likely to irritate and alarm a weak and diseased mind. His Majesty absurdly

imagined that his Coronation oath bound him to refuse his assent to any bill for relieving Roman Catholics

from civil disabilities. To argue with him was impossible. Dundas tried to explain the matter, but was told to

keep his Scotch metaphysics to himself. Pitt, and Pitt's ablest colleagues, resigned their offices. It was

necessary that the King should make a new arrangement. But by this time his anger and distress had brought

back the malady which had, many years before, incapacitated him for the discharge of his functions. He

actually assembled his family, read the Coronation oath to them, and told them that, if he broke it, the Crown

would immediately pass to the House of Savoy. It was not until after an interregnum of several weeks that he

regained the full use of his small faculties, and that a ministry after his own heart was at length formed.

The materials out of which he had to construct a government were neither solid nor splendid. To that party,

weak in numbers, but strong in every kind of talent, which was hostile to the domestic and foreign policy of

his late advisers, he could not have recourse. For that party, while it differed from his late advisers on every

point on which they had been honoured with his approbation, cordially agreed with them as to the single

matter which had brought on them his displeasure. All that was left to him was to call up the rear ranks of the

old ministry to form the front rank of a new ministry. In an age preeminently fruitful of parliamentary

talents, a cabinet was formed containing hardly a single man who, in parliamentary talents, could be

considered as even of the second rate. The most important offices in the state were bestowed on decorous and

laborious mediocrity. Henry Addington was at the head of the Treasury. He had been an early, indeed a

hereditary, friend of Pitt, and had by Pitt's influence been placed, while still a young man, in the chair of the

House of Commons. He was universally admitted to have been the best speaker that had sate in that chair

since the retirement of Onslow. But nature had not bestowed on him very vigorous faculties; and the highly

respectable situation which he had long occupied with honour had rather unfitted than fitted him for the

discharge of his new duties. His business had been to bear himself evenly between contending factions. He

had taken no part in the war of words; and he had always been addressed with marked deference by the great

orators who thundered against each other from his right and from his left. It was not strange that, when, for

the first time, he had to encounter keen and vigorous antagonists, who dealt hard blows without the smallest

ceremony, he should have been awkward and unready, or that the air of dignity and authority which he had

acquired in his former post, and of which he had not divested himself, should have made his helplessness

laughable and pitiable. Nevertheless, during many months, his power seemed to stand firm. He was a

favourite with the King, whom he resembled in narrowness of mind, and to whom he was more obsequious

than Pitt had ever been. The nation was put into high good humour by a peace with France. The enthusiasm

with which the upper and middle classes had rushed into the war had spent itself. Jacobinism was no longer

formidable. Everywhere there was a strong reaction against what was called the atheistical and anarchical

philosophy of the eighteenth century. Bonaparte, now First Consul, was busied in constructing out of the

ruins of old institutions a new ecclesiastical establishment and a new order of knighthood. That nothing less

than the dominion of the whole civilised world would satisfy his selfish ambition was not yet suspected; nor

did even wise men see any reason to doubt that he might be as safe a neighbour as any prince of the House of

Bourbon had been. The treaty of Amiens was therefore hailed by the great body of the English people with

extravagant joy. The popularity of the minister was for the moment immense. His want of parliamentary

ability was, as yet, of little consequence: for he had scarcely any adversary to encounter. The old opposition,

delighted by the peace, regarded him with favour. A new opposition had indeed been formed by some of the

late ministers, and was led by Grenville in the House of Lords, and by Windham in the House of Commons.

But the new opposition could scarcely muster ten votes, and was regarded with no favour by the country. On

Pitt the ministers relied as on their firmest support. He had not, like some of his colleagues, retired in anger.

He had expressed the greatest respect for the conscientious scruple which had taken possession of the royal

mind; and he had promised his successors all the help in his power. In private his advice was at their service.

In Parliament he took his seat on the bench behind them; and, in more than one debate, defended them with

powers far superior to their own. The King perfectly understood the value of such assistance. On one

occasion, at the palace, he took the old minister and the new minister aside. "If we three," he said, "keep

But it was hardly possible, human nature being what it is, and, more especially, Pitt and Addington being

what they were, that this union should be durable. Pitt, conscious of superior powers, imagined that the place

which he had quitted was now occupied by a mere puppet which he had set up, which he was to govern while

he suffered it to remain, and which he was to fling aside as soon as he wished to resume his old position. Nor

was it long before he began to pine for the power which he had relinquished. He had been so early raised to

supreme authority in the state, and had enjoyed that authority so long, that it had become necessary to him. In

retirement his days passed heavily. He could not, like Fox, forget the pleasures and cares of ambition in the

company of Euripides or Herodotus. Pride restrained him from intimating, even to his dearest friends, that he

wished to be again minister. But he thought it strange, almost ungrateful, that his wish had not been divined,

Addington, on the other hand, was by no means inclined to descend from his high position. He was, indeed,

under a delusion much resembling that of Abon Hassan in the Arabian tale. His brain was turned by his short

and unreal Caliphate. He took his elevation quite seriously, attributed it to his own merit, and considered

himself as one of the great triumvirate of English statesmen, as worthy to make a third with Pitt and Fox.

Such being the feelings of the late minister and of the present minister, a rupture was inevitable; and there

was no want of persons bent on making that rupture speedy and violent. Some of these persons wounded

Addington's pride by representing him as a lacquey, sent to keep a place on the Treasury bench till his master

should find it convenient to come. Others took every opportunity of praising him at Pitt's expense. Pitt had

waged a long, a bloody, a costly, an unsuccessful war. Addington had made peace. Pitt had suspended the

constitutional liberties of Englishmen. Under Addington those liberties were again enjoyed. Pitt had wasted

the public resources. Addington was carefully nursing them. It was sometimes but too evident that these

compliments were not unpleasing to Addington. Pitt became cold and reserved. During many months he

remained at a distance from London. Meanwhile his most intimate friends, in spite of his declarations that he

made no complaint, and that he had no wish for office, exerted themselves to effect a change of ministry. His

favourite disciple, George Canning, young, ardent, ambitious, with great powers and great virtues, but with a

temper too restless and a wit too satirical for his own happiness, was indefatigable. He spoke; he wrote; he

intrigued; he tried to induce a large number of the supporters of the government to sign a round robin desiring

a change; he made game of Addington and of Addington's relations in a succession of lively pasquinades.

The minister's partisans retorted with equal acrimony, if not with equal vivacity. Pitt could keep out of the

affray only by keeping out of politics altogether; and this it soon became impossible for him to do. Had

Napoleon, content with the first place among the Sovereigns of the Continent, and with a military reputation

surpassing that of Marlborough or of Turenne, devoted himself to the noble task of making France happy by

mild administration and wise legislation, our country might have long continued to tolerate a government of

fair intentions and feeble abilities. Unhappily, the treaty of Amiens had scarcely been signed, when the

restless ambition and the insupportable insolence of the First Consul convinced the great body of the English

people that the peace, so eagerly welcomed, was only a precarious armistice. As it became clearer and clearer

that a war for the dignity, the independence, the very existence of the nation was at hand, men looked with

increasing uneasiness on the weak and languid cabinet which would have to contend against an enemy who

united more than the power of Louis the Great to more than the genius of Frederick the Great. It is true that

Addington might easily have been a better war minister than Pitt, and could not possibly have been a worse.

But Pitt had cast a spell on the public mind. The eloquence, the judgment, the calm and disdainful firmness,

which he had, during many years, displayed in Parliament, deluded the world into the belief that he must be

eminently qualified to superintend every department of politics, and they imagined, even after the miserable

failures of Dunkirk, of Quiberon, and of the Helder, that he was the only statesman who could cope with

Bonaparte. This feeling was nowhere stronger than among Addington's own colleagues. The pressure put on

him was so strong that he could not help yielding to it; yet, even in yielding, he showed how far he was from

knowing his own place. His first proposition was, that some insignificant nobleman should be First Lord of

the Treasury and nominal head of the administration, and that the real power should be divided between Pitt

and himself, who were to be secretaries of state. Pitt, as might have been expected, refused even to discuss

such a scheme, and talked of it with bitter mirth. "Which secretaryship was offered to you?" his friend

Wilberforce asked. "Really," said Pitt, "I had not the curiosity to inquire." Addington was frightened into

bidding higher. He offered to resign the Treasury to Pitt, on condition that there should be no extensive

change in the government. But Pitt would listen to no such terms. Then came a dispute such as often arises

after negotiations orally conducted, even when the negotiators are men of strict honour. Pitt gave one account

of what had passed; Addington gave another: and though the discrepancies were not such as necessarily

implied any intentional violation of truth on either side, both were greatly exasperated.

Meanwhile the quarrel with the First Consul had come to a crisis. On the 16th of May, 1803, the King sent a

message calling on the House of Commons to support him in withstanding the ambitious and encroaching

policy of France; and, on the 22d, the House took the message into consideration.

Pitt had now been living many months in retirement. There had been a general election since he had spoken

in Parliament; and there were two hundred members who had never heard him. It was known that on this

occasion he would be in his place; and curiosity was wound up to the highest point. Unfortunately the

shorthand writers were, in consequence of some mistake, shut out on that day from the gallery, so that the

newspapers contained only a very meagre report of the proceedings. But several accounts of what passed are

extant; and of those accounts the most interesting is contained in an unpublished letter, written by a very

young member, John William Ward, afterwards Earl of Dudley. When Pitt rose, he was received with loud

cheering. At every pause in his speech there was a burst of applause. The peroration is said to have been one

of the most animated and magnificent ever heard in Parliament. "Pitt's speech," Fox wrote a few days later,

"was admired very much, and very justly. I think it was the best he ever made in that style." The debate was

adjourned; and on the second night Fox replied in an oration which, as the most zealous Pittites were forced

to acknowledge, left the palm of eloquence doubtful. Addington made a pitiable appearance between the two

great rivals; and it was observed that Pitt, while exhorting the Commons to stand resolutely by the executive

government against France, said not a word indicating esteem or friendship for the Prime Minister.

War was speedily declared. The first consul threatened to invade England at the head of the conquerors of

Belgium and Italy, and formed a great camp near the Straits of Dover. On the other side of those Straits the

whole population of our island was ready to rise up as one man in defence of the soil. At this conjuncture, as

at some other great conjunctures in our history, the conjuncture of 1660, for example, and the conjuncture of

1688, there was a general disposition among honest and patriotic men to forget old quarrels, and to regard as

a friend every person who was ready, in the existing emergency, to do his part towards the saving of the state.

A coalition of all the first men in the country would, at that moment, have been as popular as the coalition of

1783 had been unpopular. Alone in the kingdom the King looked with perfect complacency on a cabinet in

which no man superior to himself in genius was to be found, and was so far from being willing to admit all

A few months passed before the different parties which agreed in regarding the government with dislike and

contempt came to an understanding with each other. But in the spring of 1804 it became evident that the

weakest of ministries would have to defend itself against the strongest of oppositions, an opposition made up

of three oppositions, each of which would, separately, have been formidable from ability, and which, when

united, were also formidable from number. The party which had opposed the peace, headed by Grenville and

Windham, and the party which had opposed the renewal of the war, headed by Fox, concurred in thinking

that the men now in power were incapable of either making a good peace or waging a vigorous war. Pitt had,

in 1802, spoken for peace against the party of Grenville, and had, in 1803, spoken for war against the party of

Fox. But of the capacity of the cabinet, and especially of its chief, for the conduct of great affairs, he thought

as meanly as either Fox or Grenville. Questions were easily found on which all the enemies of the

government could act cordially together. The unfortunate First Lord of the Treasury, who had, during the

earlier months of his administration, been supported by Pitt on one side, and by Fox on the other, now had to

answer Pitt, and to be answered by Fox. Two sharp debates, followed by close divisions, made him weary of

his post. It was known, too, that the Upper House was even more hostile to him than the Lower, that the

Scotch representative peers wavered, that there were signs of mutiny among the bishops. In the cabinet itself

there was discord, and, worse than discord, treachery. It was necessary to give way: the ministry was

Pitt was of opinion that there was now an opportunity, such as had never before offered itself, and such as

might never offer itself again, of uniting in the public service, on honourable terms, all the eminent talents of

the kingdom. The passions to which the French revolution had given birth were extinct. The madness of the

innovator and the madness of the alarmist had alike had their day. Jacobinism and antiJacobinism had gone

out of fashion together. The most liberal statesman did not think that season propitious for schemes of

parliamentary reform; and the most conservative statesman could not pretend that there was any occasion for

gagging bills and suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act. The great struggle for independence and national

honour occupied all minds; and those who were agreed as to the duty of maintaining that struggle with vigour

might well postpone to a more convenient time all disputes about matters comparatively unimportant.

Strongly impressed by these considerations, Pitt wished to form a ministry including all the first men in the

country. The Treasury he reserved for himself; and to Fox he proposed to assign a share of power little

The plan was excellent; but the King would not hear of it. Dull, obstinate, unforgiving, and, at that time half

mad, he positively refused to admit Fox into his service. Anybody else, even men who had gone as far as

Fox, or further than Fox, in what his Majesty considered as Jacobinism, Sheridan, Grey, Erskine, should be

graciously received; but Fox never. During several hours Pitt laboured in vain to reason down this senseless

antipathy. That he was perfectly sincere there can be no doubt: but it was not enough to be sincere; he should

have been resolute. Had he declared himself determined not to take office without Fox, the royal obstinacy

would have given way, as it gave way, a few months later, when opposed to the immutable resolution of Lord

Grenville. In an evil hour Pitt yielded. He flattered himself with the hope that, though he consented to forego

the aid of his illustrious rival, there would still remain ample materials for the formation of an efficient

ministry. That hope was cruelly disappointed. Fox entreated his friends to leave personal considerations out

of the question, and declared that he would support, with the utmost cordiality, an efficient and patriotic

ministry from which he should be himself excluded. Not only his friends, however, but Grenville, and

Grenville's adherents, answered, with one voice, that the question was not personal, that a great constitutional

principle was at stake, and that they would not take office while a man eminently qualified to render service

to the commonwealth was placed under a ban merely because he was disliked at Court. All that was left to

Pitt was to construct a government out of the wreck of Addington's feeble administration. The small circle of

his personal retainers furnished him with a very few useful assistants, particularly Dundas, who had been

Such was the inauspicious manner in which Pitt entered on his second administration. The whole history of

that administration was of a piece with the commencement. Almost every month brought some new disaster

or disgrace. To the war with France was soon added a war with Spain. The opponents of the minister were

numerous, able, and active. His most useful coadjutors he soon lost. Sickness deprived him of the help of

Lord Harrowby. It was discovered that Lord Melville had been guilty of highly culpable laxity in transactions

relating to public money. He was censured by the House of Commons, driven from office, ejected from the

Privy Council, and impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours. The blow fell heavy on Pitt. It gave him,

he said in Parliament, a deep pang; and, as he uttered the word pang, his lip quivered, his voice shook, he

paused, and his hearers thought that he was about to burst into tears. Such tears shed by Eldon would have

moved nothing but laughter. Shed by the warmhearted and openhearted Fox, they would have moved

sympathy, but would have caused no surprise. But a tear from Pitt would have been something portentous. He

suppressed his emotion, however, and proceeded with his usual majestic self possession.

His difficulties compelled him to resort to various expedients. At one time Addington was persuaded to

accept office with a peerage; but he brought no additional strength to the government. Though he went

through the form of reconciliation, it was impossible for him to forget the past. While he remained in place he

was jealous and punctilious; and he soon retired again. At another time Pitt renewed his efforts to overcome

his master's aversion to Fox; and it was rumoured that the King's obstinacy was gradually giving way. But,

meanwhile, it was impossible for the minister to conceal from the public eye the decay of his health, and the

constant anxiety which gnawed at his heart. His sleep was broken. His food ceased to nourish him. All who

passed him in the Park, all who had interviews with him in Downing Street, saw misery written in his face.

The peculiar look which he wore during the last months of his life was often pathetically described by

Still the vigour of Pitt's intellectual faculties, and the intrepid haughtiness of his spirit, remained unaltered.

He had staked everything on a great venture. He had succeeded in forming another mighty coalition against

the French ascendency. The united forces of Austria, Russia, and England might, he hoped, oppose an

insurmountable barrier to the ambition of the common enemy. But the genius and energy of Napoleon

prevailed. While the English troops were preparing to embark for Germany, while the Russian troops were

slowly coming up from Poland, he, with rapidity unprecedented in modern war, moved a hundred thousand

men from the shores of the Ocean to the Black Forest, and compelled a great Austrian army to surrender at

Ulm. To the first faint rumours of this calamity Pitt would give no credit. He was irritated by the alarms of

those around him. "Do not believe a word of it," he said: "It is all a fiction." The next day he received a Dutch

newspaper containing the capitulation. He knew no Dutch. It was Sunday; and the public offices were shut.

He carried the paper to Lord Malmesbury, who had been minister in Holland; and Lord Malmesbury

translated it. Pitt tried to bear up; but the shock was too great; and he went away with death in his face.

The news of the battle of Trafalgar arrived four days later, and seemed for a moment to revive him.

Fortyeight hours after that most glorious and most mournful of victories had been announced to the country

came the Lord Mayor's day; and Pitt dined at Guildhall. His popularity had declined. But on this occasion the

multitude, greatly excited by the recent tidings, welcomed him enthusiastically, took off his horses in

Cheapside, and drew his carriage up King Street. When his health was drunk, he returned thanks in two or

three of those stately sentences of which he had a boundless command. Several of those who heard him laid

up his words in their hearts; for they were the last words that he ever uttered in public: "Let us hope that

This was but a momentary rally. Austerlitz soon completed what Ulm had begun. Early in December Pitt had

retired to Bath, in the hope that he might there gather strength for the approaching session. While he was

languishing there on his sofa arrived the news that a decisive battle had been fought and lost in Moravia, that

the coalition was dissolved, that the Continent was at the feet of France. He sank down under the blow. Ten

days later he was so emaciated that his most intimate friends hardly knew him. He came up from Bath by

slow journeys, and, on the 11th of January 1806, reached his villa at Putney. Parliament was to meet on the

21st. On the 20th was to be the parliamentary dinner at the house of the First Lord of the Treasury in

Downing Street; and the cards were already issued. But the days of the great minister were numbered. The

only chance for his life, and that a very slight chance, was that he should resign his office, and pass some

months in profound repose. His colleagues paid him very short visits, and carefully avoided political

conversation. But his spirit, long accustomed to dominion, could not, even in that extremity, relinquish hopes

which everybody but himself perceived to be vain. On the day on which he was carried into his bedroom at

Putney, the Marquess Wellesley, whom he had long loved, whom he had sent to govern India, and whose

administration had been eminently able, energetic, and successful, arrived in London after an absence of eight

years. The friends saw each other once more. There was an affectionate meeting, and a last parting. That it

was a last parting Pitt did not seem to be aware. He fancied himself to be recovering, talked on various

subjects cheerfully, and with an unclouded mind, and pronounced a warm and discerning eulogium on the

Marquess's brother Arthur. "I never," he said, "met with any military man with whom it was so satisfactory to

converse." The excitement and exertion of this interview were too much for the sick man. He fainted away;

and Lord Wellesley left the house, convinced that the close was fast approaching.

And now members of Parliament were fast coming up to London. The chiefs of the opposition met for the

purpose of considering the course to be taken on the first day of the session. It was easy to guess what would

be the language of the King's speech, and of the address which would be moved in answer to that speech. An

amendment condemning the policy of the government had been prepared, and was to have been proposed in

the House of Commons by Lord Henry Petty, a young nobleman who had already won for himself that place

in the esteem of his country which, after the lapse of more than half a century, he still retains. He was

unwilling, however, to come forward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself. Lord

Grenville, who had been informed of Pitt's state by Lord Wellesley, and had been deeply affected by it,

earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, with characteristic generosity and good nature, gave his voice

against attacking his now helpless rival. "Sunt lacrymae rerum," he said, "et mentem mortalia tangunt." On

the first day, therefore, there was no debate. It was rumoured that evening that Pitt was better. But on the

following morning his physicians pronounced that there were no hopes. The commanding faculties of which

he had been too proud were beginning to fail. His old tutor and friend, the Bishop of Lincoln, informed him

of his danger, and gave such religious advice and consolation as a confused and obscured mind could receive.

Stories were told of devout sentiments fervently uttered by the dying man. But these stories found no credit

with anybody who knew him. Wilberforce pronounced it impossible that they could be true. "Pitt," he added,

"was a man who always said less than he thought on such topics." It was asserted in many afterdinner

speeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, that the great minister died

exclaiming, "Oh my country!" This is a fable; but it is true that the last words which he uttered, while he

knew what he said, were broken exclamations about the alarming state of public affairs. He ceased to breathe

on the morning of the 23rd of January, 1806, the twentyfifth anniversary of the day on which he first took

his seat in Parliament. He was in his fortyseventh year, and had been, during near nineteen years, First Lord

of the Treasury, and undisputed chief of the administration. Since parliamentary government was established

in England, no English statesman has held supreme power so long. Walpole, it is true, was First Lord of the

Treasury during more than twenty years: but it was not till Walpole had been some time First Lord of the

It was moved in the House of Commons that Pitt should be honoured with a public funeral and a monument.

The motion was opposed by Fox in a speech which deserves to be studied as a model of good taste and good

feeling. The task was the most invidious that ever an orator undertook: but it was performed with a humanity

and delicacy which were warmly acknowledged by the mourning friends of him who was gone. The motion

The 22d of February was fixed for the funeral. The corpse having lain in state during two days in the Painted

Chamber, was borne with great pomp to the northern transept of the Abbey. A splendid train of princes,

nobles, bishops, and privy councillors followed. The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his

great father lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie. The sadness of the assistants was

beyond that of ordinary mourners. For he whom they were committing to the dust had died of sorrows and

anxieties of which none of the survivors could be altogether without a share. Wilberforce, who carried the

banner before the hearse, described the awful ceremony with deep feeling. As the coffin descended into the

earth, he said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed to look down with consternation into the dark

All parties in the House of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousand pounds to satisfy the

demands of Pitt's creditors. Some of his admirers seemed to consider the magnitude of his embarrassments as

a circumstance highly honourable to him; but men of sense will probably be of a different opinion. It is far

better, no doubt, that a great minister should carry his contempt of money to excess than that he should

contaminate his hands with unlawful gain. But it is neither right nor becoming in a man to whom the public

has given an income more than sufficient for his comfort and dignity to bequeath to that public a great debt,

the effect of mere negligence and profusion. As first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer,

Pitt never had less than six thousand a year, besides an excellent house. In 1792 he was forced by his royal

master's friendly importunity to accept for life the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with near four

thousand a year more. He had neither wife nor child; he had no needy relations: he had no expensive tastes:

he had no long election bills. Had he given but a quarter of an hour a week to the regulation of his household,

he would have kept his expenditure within bounds. Or, if he could not spare even a quarter of an hour a week

for that purpose, he had numerous friends, excellent men of business, who would have been proud to act as

his stewards. One of those friends, the chief of a great commercial house in the city, made an attempt to put

the establishment in Downing Street to rights; but in vain. He found that the waste of the servants' hall was

almost fabulous. The quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills was nine hundredweight a week. The

consumption of poultry, of fish, and of tea was in proportion. The character of Pitt would have stood higher if

with the disinterestedness of Pericles and of De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality.

The memory of Pitt has been assailed, times innumerable, often justly, often unjustly; but it has suffered

much less from his assailants than from his eulogists. For, during many years, his name was the rallying cry

of a class of men with whom, at one of those terrible conjunctures which confound all ordinary distinctions,

he was accidentally and temporarily connected, but to whom, on almost all great questions of principle, he

was diametrically opposed. The haters of parliamentary reform called themselves Pittites, not choosing to

remember that Pitt made three motions for parliamentary reform, and that, though he thought that such a

reform could not safely be made while the passions excited by the French revolution were raging, he never

uttered a word indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient season to bring the question

forward a fourth time. The toast of Protestant ascendency was drunk on Pitt's birthday by a set of Pittites who

could not but be aware that Pitt had resigned his office because he could not carry Catholic emancipation.

The defenders of the Test Act called themselves Pittites, though they could not be ignorant that Pitt had laid

before George the Third unanswerable reasons for abolishing the Test Act. The enemies of free trade called

themselves Pittites, though Pitt was far more deeply imbued with the doctrines of Adam Smith than either

Fox or Grey. The very negrodrivers invoked the name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more

conspicuously displayed than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro. This mythical Pitt, who resembles

the genuine Pitt as little as Charlemagne of Ariosto resembles the Charlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day.

History will vindicate the real man from calumny disguised under the semblance of adulation, and will

exhibit him as what he was, a minister of great talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions, preeminently

qualified, intellectually and morally, for the part of a parliamentary leader, and capable of administering with

prudence and moderation the government of a prosperous and tranquil country, but unequal to surprising and

terrible emergencies, and liable, in such emergencies, to err grievously, both on the side of weakness and on

2. The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Volume III., page = 4

27. PARAPHRASE OF A PASSAGE IN THE CHRONICLE OF THE MONK OF ST GALL., page = 107