Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2

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Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, MiscellaneousWritings, Vol.2 [1830]

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The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 2, (London: Longman, Green,Longman, and Roberts, 1860).

Author: Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay

About This Title:

The second volume of a two volume collection of Macaulay’s essays. The firstvolume contains his essays from Knight’s Quarterly Magazine written during themid-1820s. The second volume contains essays published in the Edinburgh Review inthe 1830s and 1840s; in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the 1850s; and miscellaneouspoems and inscriptions.

Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2

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Table Of Contents

Contributions to the Edinburgh Review.Sadler’s Law of Population. (july 1830.)Sadler’s Refutation Refuted. (january 1831.)Mirabeau. (july 1832.)BarÈre. (april 1844.)Contributions to the EncyclopÆdia Britannica.Francis Atterbury. (december 1853.)John Bunyan. (may 1854.)Oliver Goldsmith. (february 1856.)Samuel Johnson. (december 1856.)William Pitt. (january 1859.)Miscellaneous Poems, Inscriptions, Etc.Translation From Plautus. (1850.)Paraphrase of a Passage In the Chronicle of the Monk of St. Gall. (1856.)Inscription On the Statue of Lord Wm. Bentinck. At Calcutta. (1835.)Epitaph On Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin. At Calcutta. 1837.Epitaph On Lord Metcalfe. (1847.)



[Back to Table of Contents]

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

SADLER’S LAW OF POPULATION. (July 1830.)

The Law of Population: a Treatise in Six Books, in Disproof of the Superfecundity ofHuman Beings, and developing the real Principle of their Increase. By MichaelThomas Sadler, M.P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830.

We did not expect a good book from Mr. Sadler: and it is well that we did not; for hehas given us a very bad one. The matter of his treatise is extraordinary; the mannermore extraordinary still. His arrangement is confused, his repetitions endless, his styleeverything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with theperspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper toscientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation,made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, whois not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions afterfive-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not made up ofstatistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similes,— all the worst of their respective kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabbyfinery with so much profusion and so little discrimination, that they remind us of acompany of wretched strolling players, who have huddled on suits of ragged andfaded tinsel, taken from a common wardrobe, and fitting neither their persons northeir parts; and who then exhibit themselves to the laughing and pitying spectators, ina state of strutting, ranting, painted, gilded beggary. “Oh, rare Daniels!” “Politicaleconomist, go and do thou likewise!” “Hear, ye political economists and anti-populationists!” “Population, if not proscribed and worried down by the Cerbereandogs of this wretched and cruel system, really does press against the level of themeans of subsistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to urge societythrough advancing stages, till at length the strong and resistless hand of necessitypresses the secret spring of human prosperity, and the portals of Providence fly open,and disclose to the enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and rewardedlabour.” These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr. Sadler’s eloquence. We couldeasily multiply them; but our readers, we fear, are already inclined to cry for mercy.

Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes,sometimes rightly quoted, sometimes wrongly,—sometimes good, sometimesinsufferable,—sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and sometimes, for aught we know,Mr. Sadler’s own. “Let man,” cries the philosopher, “take heed how he rashly violateshis trust;” and thereupon he breaks forth into singing as follows:

“What myriads wait in destiny’s dark womb,Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb!’Tis his to blot them from the book of fate,Or, like a second Deity, create;To dry the stream of being in its source,Or bid it, widening, win its restless course;



While, earth and heaven replenishing, the floodRolls to its Ocean fount, and rests in God.”

If these lines are not Mr. Sadler’s, we heartily beg his pardon for our suspicion — asuspicion which, we acknowledge, ought not to be lightly entertained of any humanbeing. We can only say that we never met with them before, and that we do not muchcare how long it may be before we meet with them, or with any others like them,again.

The spirit of this work is as bad as its style. We never met with a book which sostrongly indicated that the writer was in a good humour with himself, and in a badhumour with everybody else; which contained so much of that kind of reproach whichis vulgarly said to be no slander, and of that kind of praise which is vulgarly said to beno commendation. Mr. Malthus is attacked in language which it would be scarcelydecent to employ repecting Titus Oates. “Atrocious,” “execrable,” “blasphemous,”and other epithets of the same kind, are poured forth against that able, excellent, andhonourable man, with a profusion which in the early part of the work excitesindignation, but, after the first hundred pages, produces mere weariness and nausea. Inthe preface, Mr. Sadler excuses himself on the plea of haste. Two-thirds of his book,he tells us, were written in a few months. If any terms have escaped him which can beconstrued into personal disrespect, he shall deeply regret that he had not more time torevise them. We must inform him that the tone of his book required a very differentapology; and that a quarter of a year, though it is a short time for a man to be engagedin writing a book, is a very long time for a man to be in a passion.

The imputation of being in a passion Mr. Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, hetells us, on which “it were impious to be calm;” and he boasts that, “instead ofconforming to the candour of the present age, he has imitated the honesty ofpreceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedomthroughout.” If Mr. Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principleof population should be carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, wecan have no personal objections. We are quite as little afraid of a contest in whichquarter shall be neither given nor taken as he can be. But we would advise himseriously to consider, before he publishes the promised continuation of his work,whether he be not one of that class of writers who stand peculiarly in need of thecandour which he insults, and who would have most to fear from that unsparingseverity which he practises and recommends.

There is only one excuse for the extreme acrimony with which this book is written;and that excuse is but a bad one. Mr. Sadler imagines that the theory of Mr. Malthus isinconsistent with Christianity, and even with the purer forms of Deism. Now, evenhad this been the case, a greater degree of mildness and self-command than Mr.Sadler has shown would have been becoming in a writer who had undertaken todefend the religion of charity. But, in fact, the imputation which has been thrown onMr. Malthus and his followers is so absurd as scarcely to deserve an answer. As itappears, however, in almost every page of Mr. Sadler’s book, we will say a few wordsrespecting it.



Mr. Sadler describes Mr. Malthus’s principle in the following words:—

“It pronounces that there exists an evil in the principle of population; an evil, notaccidental, but inherent; not of occasional occurrence, but in perpetual operation; notlight, transient, or mitigated, but productive of miseries, compared with which allthose inflicted by human institutions, that is to say, by the weakness and wickednessof man, however instigated, are ‘light:’ an evil, finally, for which there is no remedysave one, which had been long overlooked, and which is now enunciated in termswhich evince anything rather than confidence. It is a principle, moreover, pre-eminently bold, as well as ‘clear.’ With a presumption, to call it by no fitter name, ofwhich it may be doubted whether literature, heathen or Christian, furnishes a parallel,it professes to trace this supposed evil to its source, ‘the laws of nature, which arethose of God;’ thereby implying, and indeed asserting, that the law by which the Deitymultiplies his offspring, and that by which he makes provision for their sustentation,are different, and, indeed, irreconcilable.”

“This theory,” he adds, “in the plain apprehension of the many, lowers the characterof the Deity in that attribute, which, as Rousseau has well observed, is the mostessential to him, his goodness; or otherwise, impugns his wisdom.”

Now nothing is more certain than that there is physical and moral evil in the world.Whoever, therefore, believes, as we do most firmly believe, in the goodness of Godmust believe that there is no incompatibility between the goodness of God and theexistence of physical and moral evil. If, then, the goodness of God be notincompatible with the existence of physical and moral evil, on what grounds does Mr.Sadler maintain that the goodness of God is incompatible with the law of populationlaid down by Mr. Malthus?

Is there any difference between the particular form of evil which would be producedby over-population, and other forms of evil which we know to exist in the world? It is,says Mr. Sadler, not a light or transient evil, but a great and permanent evil. Whatthen? The question of the origin of evil is a question of ay or no, — not a question ofmore or less. If any explanation can be found by which the slightest inconvenienceever sustained by any sentient being can be reconciled with the divine attribute ofbenevolence, that explanation will equally apply to the most dreadful and extensivecalamities that can ever afflict the human race. The difficulty arises from an apparentcontradiction in terms; and that difficulty is as complete in the case of a headachewhich lasts for an hour as in the case of a pestilence which unpeoples an empire,—inthe case of the gust which makes us shiver for a moment as in the case of thehurricane in which an Armada is cast away.

It is, according to Mr. Sadler, an instance of presumption unparalleled in literature,heathen or Christian, to trace an evil to “the laws of nature, which are those of God,”as its source. Is not hydrophobia an evil? And is it not a law of nature thathydrophobia should be communicated by the bite of a mad dog? Is not malaria anevil? And is it not a law of nature that in particular situations the human frame shouldbe liable to malaria? We know that there is evil in the world. If it is not to be traced tothe laws of nature, how did it come into the world? Is it supernatural? And, if we



suppose it to be supernatural, is not the difficulty of reconciling it with the divineattributes as great as if we suppose it to be natural? Or, rather, what do the wordsnatural and supernatural mean when applied to the operations of the Supreme Mind?

Mr. Sadler has attempted, in another part of his work, to meet these obviousarguments, by a distinction without a difference.

“The scourges of human existence, as necessary regulators of the numbers ofmankind, it is also agreed by some, are not inconsistent with the wisdom orbenevolence of the Governor of the universe; though such think that it is a mere after-concern to ‘reconcile the undeniable state of the fact to the attributes we assign to theDeity.’ ‘The purpose of the earthquake,’ say they, ‘the hurricane, the drought, or thefamine, by which thousands, and sometimes almost millions, of the human race, are atonce overwhelmed, or left the victims of lingering want, is certainly inscrutable.’How singular is it that a sophism like this, so false, as a mere illustration, should passfor an argument, as it has long done! The principle of population is declared to benaturally productive of evils to mankind, and as having that constant and manifesttendency to increase their numbers beyond the means of their subsistence, which hasproduced the unhappy and disgusting consequences so often enumerated. This is,then, its universal tendency or rule. But is there in Nature the same constant tendencyto these earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and famines, by which so many myriads, ifnot millions, are overwhelmed or reduced at once to ruin? No; these awful events arestrange exceptions to the ordinary course of things; their visitations are partial, andthey occur at distant intervals of time. While Religion has assigned to them a verysolemn office, Philosophy readily refers them to those great and benevolent principlesof Nature by which the universe is regulated. But were there a constantly operatingtendency to these calamitous occurrences; did we feel the earth beneath us tremulous,and giving ceaseless and certain tokens of the coming catastrophe of nature; were thehurricane heard mustering its devastating powers, and perpetually muttering aroundus; were the skies ‘like brass,’ without a cloud to produce one genial drop to refreshthe thirsty earth, and famine, consequently, visibly on the approach; I say, would sucha state of things, as resulting from the constant laws of Nature, be ‘reconcilable withthe attributes we assign to the Deity,’ or with any attributes which in these inventivedays could be assigned to him, so as to represent him as anything but the tormentor,rather than the kind benefactor, of his creatures? Life, in such a condition, would belike the unceasingly threatened and miserable existence of Damocles at the table ofDionysius, and the tyrant himself the worthy image of the Deity of the anti-populationists.”

Surely this is wretched trifling. Is it on the number of bad harvests, or of volcaniceruptions, that this great question depends? Mr. Sadler’s piety, it seems, would beproof against one rainy summer, but would be overcome by three or four insuccession. On the coasts of the Mediterranean, where earthquakes are rare, he wouldbe an optimist. South America would make him a sceptic, and Java a decidedManichean. To say that religion assigns a solemn office to these visitations is nothingto the purpose. Why was man so constituted as to need such warnings? It is equallyunmeaning to say that philosophy refers these events to benevolent general laws ofnature. In so far as the laws of nature produce evil, they are clearly not benevolent.



They may produce much good. But why is this good mixed with evil? The most subtleand powerful intellects have been labouring for centuries to solve these difficulties.The true solution, we are inclined to think, is that which has been rather suggested,than developed, by Paley and Butler. But there is not one solution which will notapply quite as well to the evils of over population as to any other evil. Many excellentpeople think that it is presumptuous to meddle with such high questions at all, andthat, though there doubtless is an explanation, our faculties are not sufficientlyenlarged to comprehend that explanation. This mode of getting rid of the difficulty,again, will apply quite as well to the evils of over-population as to any other evils. Weare sure that those who humbly confess their inability to expound the great enigma actmore rationally and more decorously than Mr. Sadler, who tells us, with the utmostconfidence, which are the means and which the ends,—which the exceptions andwhich the rules, in the government of the universe;—who consents to bear a little evilwithout denying the divine benevolence, but distinctly announces that a certainquantity of dry weather or stormy weather would force him to regard the Deity as thetyrant of his creatures.

The great discovery by which Mr. Sadler has, as he conceives, vindicated the ways ofProvidence is enounced with all the pomp of capital letters. We must particularly begthat our readers will peruse it with attention.

“No one fact relative to the human species is more clearly ascertained, whether bygeneral observation or actual proof, than that their fecundity varies in differentcommunities and countries. The principle which effects this variation, without thenecessity of those cruel and unnatural expedients so frequently adverted to, constituteswhat I presume to call The Law of Population; and that law may be thus brieflyenunciated:—

“The Prolificness of human beings, otherwise similarly circumstanced, variesinversely as their numbers.

“The preceding definition may be thus amplified and explained. Premising, as a meretruism, that marriages under precisely similar circumstances will, on the average, beequally fruitful everywhere, I proceed to state, first, that the prolificness of a givennumber of marriages will, all other circumstances being the same, vary in proportionto the condensation of the population, so that that prolificness shall be greatest wherethe numbers on an equal space are the fewest, and, on the contrary, the smallest wherethose numbers are the largest.”

Mr. Sadler, at setting out, abuses Mr. Malthus for enouncing his theory in terms takenfrom the exact sciences. “Applied to the mensuration of human fecundity,” he tells us,“the most fallacious of all things is geometrical demonstration;” and he again informsus that those “act an irrational and irreverent part who affect to measure the mightydepth of God’s mercies by their arithmetic, and to demonstrate, by their geometricalratios, that it is inadequate to receive and contain the efflux of that fountain of lifewhich is in Him.”



It appears, however, that it is not to the use of mathematical words, but only to the useof those words in their right senses that Mr. Sadler objects. The law of inversevariation, or inverse proportion, is as much a part of mathematical science as the lawof geometric progression. The only difference in this respect between Mr. Malthusand Mr. Sadler is, that Mr. Malthus knows what is meant by geometric progression,and that Mr. Sadler has not the faintest notion of what is meant by inverse variation.Had he understood the proposition which he has enounced with so much pomp, itsludicrous absurdity must at once have flashed on his mind.

Let it be supposed that there is a tract in the back settlements of America, or in NewSouth Wales, equal in size to London, with only a single couple, a man and his wife,living upon it. The population of London, with its immediate suburbs, is nowprobably about a million and a half. The average fecundity of a marriage in Londonis, as Mr. Sadler tells us, 2·35. How many children will the woman in the backsettlements bear according to Mr. Sadler’s theory? The solution of the problem iseasy. As the population in this tract in the back settlements is to the population ofLondon, so will be the number of children born from a marriage in London to thenumber of children born from the marriage of this couple in the back settlements.That is to say—

2 : 1,500,000 :: 2·35 : 1,762,500.

The lady will have 1,762,500 children: a large “efflux of the fountain of life,” toborrow Mr. Sadler’s sonorous rhetoric, as the most philoprogenitive parent couldpossibly desire.

But let us, instead of putting cases of our own, look at some of those which Mr. Sadlerhas brought forward in support of his theory. The following table, he tells us, exhibitsa striking proof of the truth of his main position. It seems to us to prove only that Mr.Sadler does not know what inverse proportion means.

Countries. Inhabitants on a square mile, about Children to a Marriage.Cape of Good Hope 1 5·48North America 4 5·22Russia in Europe 23 4·94Denmark 73 4·89Prussia 100 4·70France 140 4·22England 160 3·66

Is 1 to 160 as 3·66 to 5·48? If Mr. Sadler’s principle were just, the number of childrenproduced by a marriage at the Cape would be, not 5·48, but very near 600. Or takeAmerica and France. Is 4 to 140 as 4·22 to 5·22? The number of births to a marriagein North America ought, according to this proportion, to be about 150.

Mr. Sadler states the law of population in England thus:—

“Where the inhabitants are found to be on the square mile,



From 50 to 100 (2 counties) the births to 100 marriages are 420— 100 to 150 (9 counties) 396— 150 to 200 (16 counties) 390— 200 to 250 (4 counties) 388— 250 to 300 (5 counties) 378— 300 to 350 (3 counties) 353— 500 to 600 (2 counties) 331— 4000 and upwards (1 county) 246

“Now, I think it quite reasonable to conclude, that, were there not another documentin existence relative to this subject, the facts thus deduced from the census of Englandare fully sufficient to demonstrate the position, that the fecundity of human beingsvaries inversely as their numbers. How, I ask, can it be evaded?”

What, we ask, is there to evade? Is 246 to 420 as 50 to 4000? Is 331 to 396 as 100 to500? If the law propounded by Mr. Sadler were correct, the births to a hundredmarriages in the least populous part of England, would be graphic table that is19,680,—nearly two hundred children to every mother. But we will not carry on thesecalculations. The absurdity of Mr. Sadler’s proposition is so palpable that it isunnecessary to select particular instances. Let us see what are the extremes ofpopulation and fecundity in well-known countries. The space which Mr. Sadlergenerally takes is a square mile. The population at the Cape of Good Hope is,according to him, one to the square mile. That of London is two hundred thousand tothe square mile. The number of children at the Cape, Mr. Sadler informs us, is 5·48 toa marriage. In London, he states it at 2·35 to a marriage. Now how can that of whichall the variations lie between 2·35 and 5·48 vary, either directly or inversely, as thatwhich admits of all the variations between one and two hundred thousand? Mr. Sadlerevidently does not know the meaning of the word proportion. A million is a largerquantity than ten. A hundred is a larger quantity than five. Mr. Sadler thinks,therefore, that there is no impropriety in saying that a hundred is to five as a million isto ten, or in the inverse ratio of ten to a million. He proposes to prove that thefecundity of marriages varies in inverse proportion to the density of the population.But all that he attempts to prove is that, while the population increases from one to ahundred and sixty on the square mile, the fecundity will diminish from 5·48 to 3·66;and that again, while the population increases from one hundred and sixty to twohundred thousand on the square mile, the fecundity will diminish from 3·66 to 2·35.

The proposition which Mr. Sadler enounces, without understanding the words whichhe uses, would indeed, if it could be proved, set us at ease as to the dangers of over-population. But it is, as we have shown, a proposition so grossly absurd that it isdifficult for any man to keep his countenance while he repeats it. The utmost that Mr.Sadler has ever attempted to prove is this,—that the fecundity of the human racediminishes as population becomes more condensed,—but that the diminution offecundity bears a very small ratio to the increase of population,—so that, while thepopulation on a square mile is multiplied two hundred-thousand-fold, the fecunditydecreases by little more than one-half.



Does this principle vindicate the honour of God? Does it hold out any new hope orcomfort to man? Not at all. We pledge ourselves to show, with the utmost strictness ofreasoning, from Mr. Sadler’s own principles, and from facts of the most notoriousdescription, that every consequence which follows from the law of geometricalprogression, laid down by Mr. Malthus, will follow from the law, miscalled a law ofinverse variation, which has been laid down by Mr. Sadler.

London is the most thickly peopled spot of its size in the known world. Therefore thefecundity of the population of London must, according to Mr. Sadler, be less than thefecundity of human beings living on any other spot of equal size. Mr. Sadler tell us,that “the ratios of mortality are influenced by the different degrees in which thepopulation is condensated; and that, other circumstances being similar, the relativenumber of deaths in a thinly-populated, or country district, is less than that whichtakes place in towns, and in towns of a moderate size less again than that which existsin large and populous cities.” Therefore the mortality in London must, according tohim, be greater than in other places. But, though, according to Mr. Sadler, thefecundity is less in London than elsewhere, and though the mortality is greater therethan elsewhere, we find that even in London the number of births greatly exceeds thenumber of deaths. During the ten years which ended with 1820, there were fiftythousand more baptisms than burials within the bills of mortality. It follows,therefore, that, even within London itself, an increase of the population is taking placeby internal propagation.

Now, if the population of a place in which the fecundity is less and the mortalitygreater than in other places still goes on increasing by propagation, it follows that inother places the population will increase, and increase still faster. There is clearlynothing in Mr. Sadler’s boasted law of fecundity which will keep the population frommultiplying till the whole earth is as thick with human beings as St. Giles’s parish. IfMr. Sadler denies this, he must hold that, in places less thickly peopled than London,marriages may be less fruitful than in London, which is directly contrary to his ownprinciples; or that in places less thickly peopled than London, and similarly situated,people will die faster than in London, which is again directly contrary to his ownprinciples. Now, if it follows, as it clearly does follow, from Mr. Sadler’s owndoctrines, that the human race might be stowed together by three or four hundred tothe acre, and might still, as far as the principle of propagation is concerned, go onincreasing, what advantage, in a religious or moral point of view, has his theory overthat of Mr. Malthus? The principle of Mr. Malthus, says Mr. Sadler, leads toconsequences of the most frightful description. Be it so. But do not all theseconsequences spring equally from his own principle? Revealed religion condemnsMr. Malthus. Be it so. But Mr. Sadler must share in the reproach of heresy. Thetheory of Mr. Malthus represents the Deity as a Dionysius hanging the sword over theheads of his trembling slaves. Be it so. But under what rhetorical figure are we torepresent the Deity of Mr. Sadler?

A man who wishes to serve the cause of religion ought to hesitate long before hestakes the truth of religion on the event of a controversy respecting facts in thephysical world. For a time he may succeed in making a theory which he dislikesunpopular by persuading the public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is



inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity. But, if at last an overwhelming force ofevidence proves this maligned theory to be true, what is the effect of the arguments bywhich the objector has attempted to prove that it is irreconcilable with natural andrevealed religion? Merely this, to make men infidels. Like the Israelites, in their battlewith the Philistines, he has presumptuously and without warrant brought down the arkof God into the camp as a means of ensuring victory:—and the consequence of thisprofanation is that, when the battle is lost, the ark is taken.

In every age the Church has been cautioned against this fatal and impious rashness byits most illustrious members,—by the fervid Augustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by theall-accomplished Pascal. The warning has been given in vain. That close alliancewhich, under the disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always subsisted betweenfanaticism and atheism is still unbroken. At one time, the cry was,—“If you hold thatthe earth moves round the sun, you deny the truth of the Bible.” Popes, conclaves, andreligious orders, rose up against the Copernican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they couldnot prevent the earth from moving, or themselves from moving along with it. Onething, however, they could do, and they did. They could teach numbers to consider theBible as a collection of old women’s stories which the progress of civilisation andknowledge was refuting one by one. They had attempted to show that the Ptolemaicsystem was as much a part of Christianity as the resurrection of the dead. Was itstrange, then, that, when the Ptolemaic system became an object of ridicule to everyman of education in Catholic countries, the doctrine of the resurrection should be inperil? In the present generation, and in our own country, the prevailing system ofgeology has been, with equal folly, attacked on the ground that it is inconsistent withthe Mosaic dates. And here we have Mr. Sadler, out of his especial zeal for religion,first proving that the doctrine of superfecundity is irreconcilable with the goodness ofGod, and then laying down principles, and stating facts, from which the doctrine ofsuperfecundity necessarily follows. This blundering piety reminds us of theadventures of a certain missionary who went to convert the inhabitants ofMadagascar. The good father had an audience of the king, and began to instruct hismajesty in the history of the human race as given in the Scriptures. “Thus, sir,” saidhe, “was woman made out of the rib of man, and ever since that time a woman hashad one rib more than a man.” “Surely, father, you must be mistaken there,” said theking. “Mistaken!” said the missionary. “It is an indisputable fact. My faith upon it!My life upon it!” The good man had heard the fact asserted by his nurse when he wasa child,—had always considered it as a strong confirmation of the Scriptures, andfully believed it without having ever thought of verifying it. The king ordered a manand woman, the leanest that could be found, to be brought before him, and desired hisspiritual instructor to count their ribs. The father counted over and over, upward anddownward, and still found the same number in both. He then cleared his throat,stammered, stuttered, and began to assure the king that, though he had committed alittle error in saying that a woman had more ribs than a man, he was quite right insaying that the first woman was made out of the rib of the first man. “How can I tellthat?” said the king. “You come to me with a strange story, which you say is revealedto you from heaven. I have already made you confess that one half of it is a lie: andhow can you have the face to expect that I shall believe the other half?”



We have shown that Mr. Sadler’s theory, if it be true, is as much a theory ofsuperfecundity as that of Mr. Malthus. But it is not true. And from Mr. Sadler’s owntables we will prove that it is not true.

The fecundity of the human race in England Mr. Sadler rates as follows:—

“Where the inhabitants are found to be on the square mile—

From 50 to 100 (2 counties) the births to 100 marriages are 420— 100 to 150 (9 counties) 396— 150 to 200 (16 counties) 390— 200 to 250 (4 counties) 388— 250 to 300 (5 counties) 378— 300 to 350 (3 counties) 353— 500 to 600 (2 counties) 331— 4000 and upwards (1 county) 246

Having given this table, he begins, as usual, to boast and triumph. “Were there notanother document on the subject in existence,” says he, “the facts thus deduced fromthe census of England are sufficient to demonstrate the position, that the fecundity ofhuman beings varies inversely as their numbers.” In no case would these factsdemonstrate that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers inthe right sense of the words inverse variation. But certainly they would, “if there wereno other document in existence,” appear to indicate something like what Mr. Sadlermeans by inverse variation. Unhappily for him, however, there are other documents inexistence; and he has himself furnished us with them. We will extract another of histables:—

TABLE LXIV.Showing the Operation of the Law of Population in the different Hundreds of the

County of Lancaster.

Hundreds.

Populationon eachSquareMile.

SquareMiles.

Population in 1821,exclusive of Townsof separateJurisdiction.

Marriagesfrom1811 to1821.

Baptismsfrom1811 to1821.

Baptismsto 100Marriages.

Lonsdale 96 441 42,486 3651 16,129 442Almondness 267 228 60,930 3670 15,228 415Leyland 354 126 44,583 2858 11,182 391West Derby 409 377 154,040 24,182 86,407 357Blackburn 513 286 146,608 10,814 31,463 291Salford 869 373 322,592 40,143 114,941 286

Mr. Sadler rejoices much over this table. The results, he says, have surprised himself;and, indeed, as we shall show, they might well have done so.

The result of his inquiries with respect to France he presents in the following table:—



“The legitimate births are, in those departments where there are to each inhabitant—

From 4 to 5 hects. (2 departs.) to every 1000 marriages 51303 to 4 (3 do.) 43722 to 3 (30 do.) 42501 to 2 (44 do.) 4234·06 to 1 (5 do.) 4146and ·06 (1 do.) 2557

Then comes the shout of exultation as regularly as the Gloria Patri at the end of aPsalm. “Is there any possibility of gainsaying the conclusions these facts force uponus; namely that the fecundity of marriages is regulated by the density of thepopulation, and inversely to it?”

Certainly these tables, taken separately, look well for Mr. Sadler’s theory. He must bea bungling gamester who cannot win when he is suffered to pack the cards his ownway. We must beg leave to shuffle them a little; and we will venture to promise ourreaders that some curious results will follow from the operation. In nine counties ofEngland, says Mr. Sadler, in which the population is from 100 to 150 on the squaremile, the births to 100 marriages are 396. He afterwards expresses some doubt as tothe accuracy of the documents from which this estimate has been formed, and ratesthe number of births as high as 414. Let him take his choice. We will allow him everyadvantage.

In the table which we have quoted, numbered lxiv., he tells us that in Almondness,where the population is 267 to the square mile, there are 415 births to 100 marriages.The population of Almondness is twice as thick as the population of the nine countiesreferred to in the other table. Yet the number of births to a marriage is greater inAlmondness than in those counties.

Once more, he tells us that in three counties, in which the population was from 300 to350 on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages were 353. He afterwards ratesthem at 375. Again we say, let him take his choice. But from his table of thepopulation of Lancashire it appears that, in the hundred of Leyland, where thepopulation is 354 to the square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages is 391.Here again we have the marriages becoming more fruitful as the population becomesdenser.

Let us now shuffle the censuses of England and France together. In two Englishcounties which contain from fifty to 100 inhabitants on the square mile, the births to100 marriages are, according to Mr. Sadler, 420. But in forty-four departments ofFrance, in which there are from one to two hecatares to each inhabitant, that is to say,in which the population is from 125 to 250, or rather more, to the square mile, thenumber of births to 100 marriages is 423 and a fraction.

Again, in five departments of France in which there is less than one hecatare to eachinhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is more than 250 to the square mile,the number of births to 100 marriages is 414 and a fraction. But, in the four counties



of England in which the population is from 200 to 250 on the square mile, the numberof births to 100 marriages is, according to one of Mr. Sadler’s tables, only 388, and byhis very highest estimate no more than 402.

Mr. Sadler gives us a long table of all the towns of England and Ireland, which, hetells us, irrefragably demonstrates his principle. We assert, and will prove, that thesetables are alone sufficient to upset his whole theory.

It is very true that in the great towns the number of births to a marriage appears to besmaller than in the less populous towns. But we learn some other facts from thesetables which we should be glad to know how Mr. Sadler will explain. We find that thefecundity in towns of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants is actually much greater than theaverage fecundity of the kingdom, and that the fecundity in towns of between 3,000and 4,000 inhabitants is at least as great as the average fecundity of the kingdom. Theaverage fecundity of a marriage in towns of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants is aboutfour; in towns of between 3,000 and 4,000 inhabitants it is 3·60. Now the averagefecundity of England, when it contained only 160 inhabitants to a square mile, andwhen, therefore, according to the new law of population, the fecundity must havebeen greater than it now is, was only, according to Mr. Sadler, 3·66 to a marriage. Toproceed,—the fecundity of a marriage in the English towns of between 4,000 and5,000 inhabitants is stated at 3·56. But, when we turn to Mr. Sadler’s table of thecounties, we find the fecundity of a marriage in Warwickshire and Staffordshire ratedat only 3·48, and in Lancashire and Surrey at only 3·41.

These facts disprove Mr. Sadler’s principle; and the fact on which he lays so muchstress — that the fecundity is less in the great towns than in the small towns — doesnot tend in any degree to prove his principle. There is not the least reason to believethat the population is more dense, on a given space, in London or Manchester than ina town of 4000 inhabitants. But it is quite certain that the population is more dense ina town of 4000 inhabitants than in Warwickshire or Lancashire. That the fecundity ofManchester is less than the fecundity of Sandwich or Guildford is a circumstancewhich has nothing whatever to do with Mr. Sadler’s theory. But that the fecundity ofSandwich is greater than the average fecundity of Kent, — that the fecundity ofGuildford is greater than the average fecundity of Surrey, — as from his own tablesappears to be the case, — these are facts utterly inconsistent with his theory.

We need not here examine why it is that the human race is less fruitful in great citiesthan in small towns or in the open country. The fact has long been notorious. We areinclined to attribute it to the same causes which tend to abridge human life in greatcities, — to general sickliness and want of tone, produced by close air and sedentaryemployments. Thus far, and thus far only, we agree with Mr. Sadler, that, whenpopulation is crowded together in such masses that the general health and energy ofthe frame are impaired by the condensation, and by the habits attending on thecondensation, then the fecundity of the race diminishes. But this is evidently a checkof the same class with war, pestilence, and famine. It is a check for the operation ofwhich Mr. Malthus has allowed.



That any condensation which does not affect the general health will affect fecundity,is not only not proved — it is disproved — by Mr. Sadler’s own tables.

Mr. Sadler passes on to Prussia, and sums up his information respecting that countryas follows: —

Inhabitants on aSquare Mile,

German.

Number ofProvinces.

Births to 100Marriages,

1754.

Births to 100Marriages,

1784.

Births to 100Marriages,Busching.

Under 1000 2 434 472 5031000 to 2000 4 414 455 4542000 to 3000 6 384 424 4263000 to 4000 2 365 408 394

After the table comes the boast as usual:

“Thus is the law of population deduced from the registers of Prussia also; and werethe argument to pause here, it is conclusive. The results obtained from the registers ofthis and the preceding countries exhibiting, as they do most clearly, the principle ofhuman increase, it is utterly impossible should have been the work of chance; on thecontrary, the regularity with which the facts class themselves in conformity with thatprinciple, and the striking analogy which the whole of them bear to each other,demonstrate equally the design of Nature, and the certainty of its accomplishment.”

We are sorry to disturb Mr. Sadler’s complacency. But, in our opinion, this tablecompletely disproves his whole principle. If we read the columns perpendicularly,indeed, they seem to be in his favour. But how stands the case if we read horizontally?Does Mr. Sadler believe that, during the thirty years which elapsed between 1754 and1784, the population of Prussia had been diminishing? No fact in history is betterascertained than that, during the long peace which followed the seven years’ war, itincreased with great rapidity. Indeed, if the fecundity were what Mr. Sadler states it tohave been, it must have increased with great rapidity. Yet, the ratio of births tomarriages is greater in 1784 than in 1754, and that in every province. It is, therefore,perfectly clear that the fecundity does not diminish whenever the density of thepopulation increases.

We will try another of Mr. Sadler’s tables:



TABLE LXXXI.Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the close of the

Seventeenth Century.

Places. Number ofInhabitants.

One AnnualMarriage, to

Number ofMarriages.

Children toone Marriage.

TotalNumber ofBirths.

London 530,000 106 5000 4· 20,000Large Towns 870,000 128 6800 4·5 30,000Small Towns andCountry Places } 4,100,000 141 29,200 4·8 140,160

5,500,000 134 41,000 4·65 190,760

Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to support Mr. Sadler’stheory. But surely London, at the close of the seventeenth century, was far morethickly peopled than the kingdom of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London atthe close of the seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the wholekingdom now is not more, according to Mr. Sadler, than 3½. Then, again, the largetowns in 1700 were far more thickly peopled than Westmorland and the North Ridingof Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those large towns was then 4·5. And Mr.Sadler tells us that it is now only 4·2 in Westmorland and the North Riding.

It is scarcely necessary to say any thing about the censuses of the Netherlands, as Mr.Sadler himself confesses that there is some difficulty in reconciling them with histheory, and helps out his awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as itseems to us, that the official documents are inaccurate. The argument which he hasdrawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time. He has not toldus, — perhaps he had not the means of telling us, — what proportion the number ofbirths in the different parts of that country bears to the number of marriages. Heshows that in the thinly-peopled states the number of children bears a greaterproportion to the number of grown-up people than in the old states; and this, heconceives, is a sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourableto fecundity. We deny the inference altogether. Nothing can be more obvious than theexplanation of the phenomenon. The back settlements are for the most part peopled byemigration from the old states; and emigrants are almost always breeders. They arealmost always vigorous people in the prime of life. Mr. Sadler himself, in another partof his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the rapid multiplicationof the people of America is principally owing to emigration from Europe, states thisfact in the plainest manner:

“Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally supplied by‘single persons in the beginning of mature life;’ nor, secondly, that such persons, asDr. Franklin long ago asserted, ‘marry and raise families.’

“Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally speaking, consist ofindividuals in the prime of life, than that ‘they are the most active and vigorous’ ofthat age, as Dr. Seybert describes them to be. They are, as it respects the principle atissue, a select class, even compared with that of their own age generally considered.Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in life, a phrase that



needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal number of human beings, therefore,have ever given so large or rapid an increase to a community as ‘settlers’ haveinvariably done.”

It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back settlements ofAmerica than in the maritime states, not because unoccupied land makes peopleprolific, but because the most prolific people go to the unoccupied land.

Mr. Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of population bystatistical evidence, proceeds to prove, “that it is in unison, or rather required by theprinciples of physiology.” The difference between himself and his opponents he statesas follows: —

“In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the reader of thedifference between those who hold the superfecundity of mankind and myself, inregard to those principles which will form the basis of the present argument. Theycontend, that production precedes population; I, on the contrary, maintain thatpopulation precedes, and is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that manbreeds up to the capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses; Iassert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is wealthy, and that he breeds inproportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that poverty, a state of privationapproaching to actual starvation, any more than, I suppose, they would contend, thatextreme and culpable excess is the grand patron of population. In a word, they holdthat a state of ease and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness: I maintain that aconsiderable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more efficient cause of anincreased degree of human fecundity.”

To prove this point he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr. Short, Dr. Gregory, Dr.Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not dispute about it; for itseems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in establishing it he overturns his owntheory. If men breed in proportion to their poverty, as he tells us here, — and at thesame time breed in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,—itnecessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse proportion to theirnumbers. Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have shown, is not the phrase whichexpresses Mr. Sadler’s meaning. To speak more correctly, it follows, from his ownpositions, that, if one population be thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is thisthe fact? Mr. Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already quoted, thatin the United States the population is four to a square mile, and the fecundity 5·22 to amarriage, and that in Russia the population is twenty-three to a square mile, and thefecundity 4·94 to a marriage. Is the North American labourer poorer than the Russianboor? If not, what becomes of Mr. Sadler’s argument?

The most decisive proof of Mr. Sadler’s theory, according to him, is that which he haskept for the last. It is derived from the registers of the English Peerage. The Peers, hesays, and says truly, are the class with respect to whom we possess the most accuratestatistical information.



“Touching their number, this has been accurately known and recorded ever since theorder has existed in the country. For several centuries past, the addition to it of asingle individual has been a matter of public interest and notoriety: this hereditaryhonour conferring not personal dignity merely, but important privileges, and beingalmost always identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to it arekept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and expectants, but they areappealed to by more distant connections, as conferring distinction on all who canclaim such affinity. Hence there are few disputes concerning successions to this rank,but such as go back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages, births, anddeaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to thosepersonally interested, but have been published periodically, and, consequently, subjectto perpetual correction and revision; while many of the most powerful motives whichcan influence the human mind conspire to preserve these records from the slightestfalsification. Compared with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports, whether ofsworn searchers or others, are incorrectness itself.”

Mr. Sadler goes on to tell us that the Peers are a marrying class, and that their generallongevity proves them to be a healthy class. Still peerages often become extinct; —and from this fact he infers that they are a sterile class. So far, says he, fromincreasing in geometrical progression, they do not even keep up their numbers.“Nature interdicts their increase.”

“Thus,” says he, “in all ages of the world, and in every nation of it, have the highestranks of the community been the most sterile, and the lowest the most prolific. As itrespects our own country, from the lowest grade of society, the Irish peasant, to thehighest, the British peer, this remains a conspicuous truth; and the regulation of thedegree of fecundity conformably to this principle, through the intermediate gradationsof society, constitutes one of the features of the system developed in these pages.”

We take the issue which Mr. Sadler has himself offered. We agree with him, that theregisters of the English Peerage are of far higher authority than any other statisticaldocuments. We are content that by those registers his principle should be judged. Andwe meet him by positively denying his facts. We assert that the English nobles are notonly not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community. Mr. Sadlerconcludes that they are sterile, merely because peerages often become extinct. Is thisthe proper way of ascertaining the point? Is it thus that he avails himself of thoseregisters on the accuracy and fulness of which he descants so largely? Surely his rightcourse would have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in thePeerage. This he has not done; — but we have done it. And what is the result?

It appears from the last edition of Debrett’s Peerage, published in 1828, that therewere at that time 287 peers of the United Kingdom, who had been married once oroftener. The whole number of marriages contracted by these 287 peers was 333. Thenumber of children by these marriages was 1437, — more than five to a peer, — morethan 4·3 to a marriage, — more, that is to say, than the average number in thosecounties of England in which, according to Mr. Sadler’s own statement, the fecundityis the greatest.



But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced their full effect. Someof them had been very lately contracted. In a very large proportion of them there wasevery probability of additional issue. To allow for this probability, we may safely addone to the average which we have already obtained, and rate the fecundity of a noblemarriage in England at 5·3; — higher than the fecundity which Mr. Sadler assigns tothe people of the United States. Even if we do not make this allowance, the averagefecundity of the marriages of peers is higher by one-fifth than the average fecundity ofmarriages throughout the kingdom. And this is the sterile class! This is the classwhich “nature has interdicted from increasing!” The evidence to which Mr. Sadler hashimself appealed proves that his principle is false, — utterly false, — wildly andextravagantly false. It proves that a class, living during half of every year in the mostcrowded population in the world, breeds faster than those who live in the country; —that the class which enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and ease breeds faster thanthe class which undergoes labour and privation. To talk a little in Mr. Sadler’s style,we must own that we are ourselves surprised at the results which our examination ofthe peerage has brought out. We certainly should have thought that the habits offashionable life, and long residence even in the most airy parts of so great a city asLondon, would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the higher ordersthan they appear to be.

Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite clear, from what we havestated, that this is not because peeresses are barren. There is no difficulty indiscovering what the causes really are. In the first place, most of the titles of ournobles are limited to heirs male; so that, though the average fecundity of a noblemarriage is upwards of five, yet, for the purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot bereckoned at much more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers are, as Mr.Sadler says, a marrying class, the younger sons of peers are decidedly not a marryingclass; so that a peer, though he has at least as great a chance of having a son as hisneighbours, has less chance than they of having a collateral heir.

We have now disposed, we think, of Mr. Sadler’s principle of population. Our readersmust, by this time, be pretty well satisfied as to his qualifications for setting uptheories of his own. We will, therefore, present them with a few instances of the skilland fairness which he shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of othermen. The doctrine of Mr. Malthus, that population, if not checked by want, by vice,by excessive mortality, or by the prudent self-denial of individuals, would increase ina geometric progression, is, in Mr. Sadler’s opinion, at once false and atrocious.

“It may at once be denied,” says he, “that human increase proceeds geometrically; andfor this simple but decisive reason, that the existence of a geometrical ratio of increasein the works of nature, is neither true nor possible. It would fling into utter confusionall order, time, magnitude, and space.”

This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been offered to the worldsince the days when theories were founded on the principle that nature abhors avacuum. We proceed a few pages farther, however; and we then find that geometricprogression is unnatural only in those cases in which Mr. Malthus conceives that it



exists; and that, in all cases in which Mr. Malthus denies the existence of a geometricratio, nature changes sides, and adopts that ratio as the rule of increase.

Mr. Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical ratio. “As faras nature has to do with the question,” says Mr. Sadler, “men might, for instance,plant twice the number of peas, and breed from a double number of the same animals,with equal prospect of their multiplication.” Now, if Mr. Sadler thinks that, as far asnature is concerned, four sheep will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as four,how can he deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does exist in the works ofnature? Or has he a definition of his own for geometrical progression, as well as forinverse proportion?

Mr. Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred to the UnitedStates, as a country in which the human race increases in a geometrical ratio, and havefixed on twenty-five years as the term in which the population of that country doublesitself. Mr. Sadler contends that it is physically impossible for a people to double intwenty-five years; nay, that thirty-five years is far too short a period,—that theAmericans do not double by procreation in less than forty-seven years,—and that therapid increase of their numbers is produced by emigration from Europe.

Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the population of the UnitedStates. But so great has the rate of that increase been that, after making full allowancefor the effect of emigration, there will be a residue, attributable to procreation alone,amply sufficient to double the population in twenty-five years.

Mr. Sadler states the results of the four censuses as follows:—

“There were, of white inhabitants, in the whole of the United States in 1790,3,093,111; in 1800, 4,309,656; in 1810, 5,862,093; and in 1820, 7,861,710. Theincrease, in the first term, being 39 per cent; that in the second, 36 per cent; and thatin the third and last, 33 per cent. It is superfluous to say, that it is utterly impossible todeduce the geometric theory of human increase, whatever be the period ofduplication, from such terms as these.”

Mr. Sadler is a bad arithmetician. The increase in the last term is not, as he states it,33 per cent, but more than 34 per cent. Now, an increase of 32 per cent in ten years, ismore than sufficient to double the population in twenty-five years. And there is, wethink, very strong reason to believe that the white population of the United States doesincrease by 32 per cent every ten years.

Our reason is this. There is in the United States a class of persons whose numbers arenot increased by emigration,—the negro slaves. During the interval which elapsedbetween the census of 1810 and the census of 1820, the change in their numbers musthave been produced by procreation, and by procreation alone. Their situation, thoughmuch happier than that of the wretched beings who cultivate the sugar plantations ofTrinidad and Demerara, cannot be supposed to be more favourable to health andfecundity than that of free labourers. In 1810, the slave trade had been but recentlyabolished; and there were in consequence many more male than female slaves,—a



circumstance, of course, very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are perpetuallypassing into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into servitude; so thatthe census will not exhibit the whole effect of the procreation which really takesplace.

We find, by the census of 1810, that the number of slaves in the Union was then1,191,000. In 1820, they had increased to 1,538,000. That is to say, in ten years, theyhad increased 29 per cent—within three per cent of that rate of increase which woulddouble their numbers in twenty-five years. We may, we think, fairly calculate that, ifthe female slaves had been as numerous as the males, and if no manumissions hadtaken place, the census of the slave population would have exhibited an increase of 32per cent in ten years.

If we are right in fixing on 32 per cent as the rate at which the white population ofAmerica increases by procreation in ten years, it will follow that, during the last tenyears of the eighteenth century, nearly one-sixth of the increase was the effect ofemigration; from 1800 to 1810, about one-ninth; and from 1810 to 1820, about one-seventeenth. This is what we should have expected; for it is clear that, unless thenumber of emigrants be constantly increasing, it must, as compared with the residentpopulation, be relatively decreasing. The number of persons added to the populationof the United States by emigration, between 1810 and 1820, would be nearly 120,000.From the data furnished by Mr. Sadler himself, we should be inclined to think thatthis would be a fair estimate.

“Dr. Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal ports of the United States,in the year 1817, amounted to 22,235; of whom 11,977 were from Great Britain andIreland; 4164 from Germany and Holland; 1245 from France; 58 from Italy; 2901from the British possessions in North America; 1569 from the West Indies; and fromall other countries, 321. These, however, we may conclude, with the editor of Styles’sRegister, were far short of the number that arrived.”

We have not the honour of knowing either Dr. Seybert or the editor of Styles’sRegister. We cannot, therefore, decide on their respective claims to our confidence soperemptorily as Mr. Sadler thinks fit to do. Nor can we agree to what Mr. Sadler verygravely assigns as a reason for disbelieving Dr. Seybert’s testimony. “Such accounts,”he says, “if not wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth.” It would bea curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a case in whichhe cannot tell the truth except by being guilty of wilful exaggeration. We will,however, suppose, with Mr. Sadler, that Dr. Seybert, finding himself compelled tochoose between two sins, preferred telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that hehas consequently underrated the number of emigrants. We will take it at double of theDoctor’s estimate, and suppose that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed to the UnitedStates. Now, it must be remembered that the year 1817 was a year of the severest andmost general distress over all Europe,—a year of scarcity everywhere, and of cruelfamine in some places. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of 1817was very far above the average, probably more than three times that of an ordinaryyear. Till the year 1815, the war rendered it almost impossible to emigrate to theUnited States either from England or from the Continent. If we suppose the average



emigration of the remaining years to have been 16,000, we shall probably not bemuch mistaken. In 1818 and 1819, the number was certainly much beyond thataverage; in 1815 and 1816, probably much below it. But, even if we were to supposethat, in every year from the peace to 1820, the number of emigrants had been as highas we have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by procreation among the whiteinhabitants of the United States would still appear to be about 30 per cent. in tenyears.

Mr. Sadler acknowledges that Cobbett exaggerates the number of emigrants when hestates it at 150,000 a year. Yet even this estimate, absurdly great as it is, would not besufficient to explain the increase of the population of the United States on Mr.Sadler’s principles. He is, he tells us, “convinced that doubling in 35 years is a farmore rapid duplication than ever has taken place in that country from procreationonly.” An increase of 20 per cent. in ten years, by procreation, would therefore be thevery utmost that he would allow to be possible. We have already shown, by referenceto the census of the slave population, that this doctrine is quite absurd. And, if wesuppose it to be sound, we shall be driven to the conclusion that above eight hundredthousand people emigrated from Europe to the United States in a space of little morethan five years. The whole increase of the white population from 1810 to 1820 waswithin a few hundreds of 2,000,000. If we are to attribute to procreation only 20 percent. on the number returned by the census of 1810, we shall have about 830,000persons to account for in some other way;—and to suppose that the emigrants whowent to America between the peace of 1815 and the census of 1820, with the childrenwho were born to them there, would make up that number, would be the height ofabsurdity.

We could say much more; but we think it quite unnecessary at present. We haveshown that Mr. Sadler is careless in the collection of facts,—that he is incapable ofreasoning on facts when he has collected them,—that he does not understand thesimplest terms of science,—that he has enounced a proposition of which he does notknow the meaning,—that the proposition which he means to enounce, and which hetries to prove, leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impiousand immoral,—and that, from the very documents to which he has himself appealed,it may be demonstrated that his theory is false. We may, perhaps, resume the subjectwhen his next volume appears. Meanwhile, we hope that he will delay its publicationuntil he has learned a little arithmetic, and unlearned a great deal of eloquence.




SADLER’S REFUTATION REFUTED. (January 1831.)

A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No. CII.) entitled, “Sadler’s Lawof Population, and Disproof of Human Superfecundity;” containing also AdditionalProofs of the Principle enunciated in that Treatise, founded on the Censuses ofdifferent Countries recently published. By Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P. 8vo.London: 1830.

“Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare myself for astorm coming against it, it being resolved by some men that it was necessary thatbook of mine should, as it is phrased, be run down.”

—John Locke.

We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr. Sadler’s title-page fromtop to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied between the Essay on the HumanUnderstanding and the Essay on Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We canmatch it, however, with mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of adramatic piece, entitled “News from Camperdown,” written soon after Lord Duncan’svictory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr. Sadler is, and now asmuch forgotten as Mr. Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His piece was brought uponthe stage, and damned, “as it is phrased,” in the second act; but the author, thinkingthat it had been unfairly and unjustly “run down,” published it, in order to put hiscritics to shame, with this motto from Swift: “When a true genius appears in theworld, you may know him by this mark—that the dunces are all in confederacyagainst him.” We remember another anecdote, which may perhaps be acceptable to sozealous a churchman as Mr. Sadler. A certain Antinomian preacher, the oracle of abarn, in a county of which we do not think it proper to mention the name, finding thatdivinity was not by itself a sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine withit that of dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several offences of thisdescription, and was in consequence brought before two justices, who, in virtue of thepowers given them by an act of parliament, sentenced him to a whipping for eachtheft. The degrading punishment inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock;and the poor man was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth ahandbill, solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings, and appealingto the Christian charity of the public; and to his pathetic address he prefixed this mostappropriate text: “Thrice was I beaten with rods.—St. Paul’s Epistle to theCorinthians.” He did not perceive that, though St. Paul had been scourged, no numberof whippings, however severe, will of themselves entitle a man to be considered as anapostle. Mr. Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat similar error. Heshould remember that, though Locke may have been laughed at, so has Sir ClaudiusHunter; and that it takes something more than the laughter of all the world to make aLocke.

The body of this pamphlet by no means justifies the parallel so modestly insinuatedon the title-page. Yet we must own that, though Mr. Sadler has not risen to the level



of Locke, he has done what was almost as difficult, if not as honourable—he hasfallen below his own. He is at best a bad writer. His arrangement is an elaborateconfusion. His style has been constructed, with great care, in such a manner as toproduce the least possible effect by means of the greatest possible number of words.Aspiring to the exalted character of a Christian philosopher, he can never preservethrough a single paragraph either the calmness of a philosopher or the meekness of aChristian. His ill-nature would make a very little wit formidable. But, happily, hisefforts to wound resemble those of a juggler’s snake. The bags of poison are full, butthe fang is wanting. In this foolish pamphlet, all the unpleasant peculiarities of hisstyle and temper are brought out in the strongest manner. He is from the beginning tothe end in a paroxysm of rage, and would certainly do us some mischief if he knewhow. We will give a single instance for the present. Others will present themselves aswe proceed. We laughed at some doggerel verses which he cited, and which we, neverhaving seen them before, suspected to be his own. We are now sure that, if theprinciple on which Solomon decided a famous case of filiation were correct, there canbe no doubt as to the justice of our suspicion. Mr. Sadler, who, whatever elements ofthe poetical character he may lack, possesses the poetical irritability in an abundancewhich might have sufficed for Homer himself, resolved to retaliate on the person,who, as he supposed, had reviewed him. He has, accordingly, ransacked somecollection of college verses, in the hope of finding, among the performances of hissupposed antagonist, something as bad as his own. And we must in fairness admit thathe has succeeded pretty well. We must admit that the gentleman in questionsometimes put into his exercises, at seventeen, almost as great nonsense as Mr. Sadleris in the habit of putting into his books at sixty.

Mr. Sadler complains that we have devoted whole pages to mere abuse of him. Wedeny the charge. We have, indeed, characterised, in terms of just reprehension, thatspirit which shows itself in every part of his prolix work. Those terms of reprehensionwe are by no means inclined to retract; and we conceive that we might have usedmuch stronger expressions, without the least offence either to truth or to decorum.There is a limit prescribed to us by our sense of what is due to ourselves. But we thinkthat no indulgence is due to Mr. Sadler. A writer who distinctly announces that he hasnot conformed to the candour of the age — who makes it his boast that he expresseshimself throughout with the greatest plainness and freedom — and whose constantpractice proves that by plainness and freedom he means coarseness and rancour—hasno right to expect that others shall remember courtesies which he has forgotten, orshall respect one who has ceased to respect himself.

Mr. Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr. Malthus personally, and hasconfined himself to attacking the doctrines which that gentleman maintains. Weshould wish to leave that point to the decision of all who have read Mr. Sadler’s book,or any twenty pages of it. To quote particular instances of a temper which penetratesand inspires the whole work, is to weaken our charge. Yet, that we may not besuspected of flinching, we will give two specimens, — the two first which occur toour recollection. “Whose minister is it that speaks thus?” says Mr. Sadler, aftermisrepresenting in a most extraordinary manner, though, we are willing to believe,unintentionally, one of the positions of Mr. Malthus. “Whose minister is it that speaksthus? That of the lover and avenger of little children?” Again, Mr. Malthus



recommends, erroneously perhaps, but assuredly from humane motives, that alms,when given, should be given very sparingly. Mr. Sadler quotes the recommendation,and adds the following courteous comment:—“The tender mercies of the wicked arecruel.” We cannot think that a writer who indulges in these indecent and unjustattacks on professional and personal character has any right to complain of oursarcasms on his metaphors and rhymes.

We will now proceed to examine the reply which Mr. Sadler has thought fit to maketo our arguments. He begins by attacking our remarks on the origin of evil. They are,says he, too profound for common apprehension; and he hopes that they are tooprofound for our own. That they seem profound to him we can well believe.Profundity, in its secondary as in its primary sense, is a relative term. When Grildrigwas nearly drowned in the Brobdignagian cream-jug he doubtless thought it verydeep. But to common apprehension our reasoning would, we are persuaded, appearperfectly simple.

The theory of Mr. Malthus, says Mr. Sadler, cannot be true, because it asserts theexistence of a great and terrible evil, and is therefore inconsistent with the goodnessof God. We answer thus. We know that there are in the world great and terrible evils.In spite of these evils, we believe in the goodness of God. Why may we not thencontinue to believe in his goodness, though another evil should be added to the list?

How does Mr. Sadler answer this? Merely by telling us that we are too wicked to bereasoned with. He completely shrinks from the question; a question, be itremembered, not raised by us—a question which we should have felt strongobjections to raising unnecessarily—a question put forward by himself, as intimatelyconnected with the subject of his two ponderous volumes. He attempts to carp atdetached parts of our reasoning on the subject. With what success he carries on thisguerilla war after declining a general action with the main body of our argument ourreaders shall see.

“The reviewer sends me to Paley, who is, I confess, rather more intelligible on thesubject, and who, fortunately, has decided the very point in dispute. I will first givethe words of the reviewer, who, when speaking of my general argument regarding themagnitude of the evils, moral and physical, implied in the theory I oppose, sums uphis ideas thus: — ‘Mr. Sadler says, that it is not a light or transient evil, but a greatand permanent evil. What then? The question of the origin of evil is a question of ayor no, — not a question ofmoreorless.’ But what says Paley? His express rule is this,that ‘when we cannot resolve all appearances into benevolence of design, we makethefewgive place to themany,thelittleto thegreat;that we take our judgment from alarge and decidedpreponderancy.’ Now in weighing these two authorities, directly atissue on this point, I think there will be little trouble in determining which we shallmake ‘to give place;’ or, if we ‘look to a large and decided preponderancy’ of eithertalent, learning, or benevolence, from whom we shall ‘take our judgment.’ Theeffrontery, or, to speak more charitably, the ignorance of a reference to Paley on thissubject, and in this instance is really marvellous.”



Now, does not Mr. Sadler see that the very words which he quotes from Paley containin themselves a refutation of his whole argument? Paley says, indeed, as every man inhis senses would say, that in a certain case, which he has specified, the more and theless come into question. But in what case? “When we cannot resolve all appearancesinto the benevolence of design.” It is better that there should be a little evil than agreat deal of evil. This is self-evident. But it is also self-evident that no evil is betterthan a little evil. Why, then, is there any evil? It is a mystery which we cannot solve.It is a mystery which Paley, by the very words which Mr. Sadler has quoted,acknowledges himself unable to solve; and it is because he cannot solve that mysterythat he proceeds to take into consideration the more and the less. Believing in thedivine goodness, we must necessarily believe that the evils which exist are necessaryto avert greater evils. But what those greater evils are we do not know. How thehappiness of any part of the sentient creation would be in any respect diminished if,for example, children cut their teeth without pain, we cannot understand. The case isexactly the same with the principle of Mr. Malthus. If superfecundity exists, it exists,no doubt, because it is a less evil than some other evil which otherwise would exist.Can Mr. Sadler prove that this is an impossibility?

One single expression which Mr. Sadler employs on this subject is sufficient to showhow utterly incompetent he is to discuss it. “On the Christian hypothesis,” says he,“no doubt exists as to the origin of evil.” He does not, we think, understand what ismeant by the origin of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no solution of thatmystery. They relate facts; but they leave the metaphysical question undetermined.They tell us that man fell; but why he was not so constituted as to be incapable offalling, or why the Supreme Being has not mitigated the consequences of the Fallmore than they actually have been mitigated, the Scriptures did not tell us, and, it maywithout presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures differentfrom what we are. There is something, either in the nature of our faculties or in thenature of the machinery employed by us for the purpose of reasoning, whichcondemns us, on this and similar subjects, to hopeless ignorance. Man can understandthese high matters only by ceasing to be man, just as a fly can understand a lemma ofNewton only by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an objection to the Christian systemthat it gives us no solution of these difficulties, is to make it an objection to theChristian system that it is a system formed for human beings. Of the puzzles of theAcademy, there is not one which does not apply as strongly to Deism as toChristianity, and to Atheism as to Deism. There are difficulties in everything. Yet weare sure that something must be true.

If revelation speaks on the subject of the origin of evil it speaks only to discouragedogmatism and temerity. In the most ancient, the most beautiful, and the mostprofound of all works on the subject, the Book of Job, both the sufferer whocomplains of the divine government, and the injudicious advisers who attempt todefend it on wrong principles, are silenced by the voice of supreme wisdom, andreminded that the question is beyond the reach of the human intellect. St Paul silencesthe supposed objector, who strives to force him into controversy, in the same manner.The church has been, ever since the apostolic times, agitated by this question, and bya question which is inseparable from it, the question of fate and free-will. The greatesttheologians and philosophers have acknowledged that these things were too high for



them, and have contented themselves with hinting at what seemed to be the mostprobable solution. What says Johnson? “All our effort ends in belief that for the evilsof life there is some good reason, and in confession that the reason cannot be found.”What says Paley? “Of the origin of evil no universal solution has been discovered. Imean no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint.—The consideration ofgeneral laws, although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly,which I think it does, rests in views disproportionate to our faculties, and in aknowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account for the obscurity ofthe subject, than to supply us with distinct answers to our difficulties.” What sayspresumptuous ignorance? “No doubt whatever exists as to the origin of evil.” It isremarkable that Mr. Sadler does not tell us what his solution is. The world, wesuspect, will lose little by his silence.

He falls on the reviewer again.

“Though I have shown,” says he, “and on authorities from which none can lightlydiffer, not only the cruelty and immorality which this system necessarily involves, butits most revolting feature, its gross partiality, he has wholly suppressed this, the mostimportant part of my argument; as even the bare notice of it would have instantlyexposed the sophistry to which he has had recourse. If, however, he would fairly meetthe whole question, let him show me that ‘hydrophobia,’ which he gives as anexample of the laws of God and nature, is a calamity to which the poor alone areliable; or that ‘malaria,’ which, with singular infelicity, he has chosen as anillustration of the fancied evils of population, is a respecter of persons.”

We said nothing about this argument, as Mr. Sadler calls it, merely because we didnot think it worth while; and we are half ashamed to say anything about it now. But,since Mr. Sadler is so urgent for an answer, he shall have one. If there is evil, it mustbe either partial or universal. Which is the better of the two? Hydrophobia, says thisgreat philosopher, is no argument against the divine goodness, because mad dogs biterich and poor alike; but, if the rich were exempted, and only nine people suffered forten who suffer now, hydrophobia would forthwith, simply because it would produceless evil than at present, become an argument against the divine goodness! To statesuch a proposition, is to refute it, And is not the malaria a respecter of persons? Itinfests Rome. Does it infest London? There are complaints peculiar to the tropicalcountries. There are others which are found only in mountainous districts; otherswhich are confined to marshy regions; others again which run in particular families. Isnot this partiality? Why is it more inconsistent with the divine goodness that poor menshould suffer an evil from which rich men are exempt, than that a particular portion ofthe community should inherit gout, scrofula, insanity, and other maladies? And arethere no miseries under which, in fact, the poor alone are suffering? Mr. Sadlerhimself acknowledges, in this very paragraph, that there are such; but he tells us thatthese calamities are the effects of misgovernment, and that this misgovernment is theeffect of political economy. Be it so. But does he not see that he is only removing thedifficulty one step farther? Why does Providence suffer men, whose minds are filledwith false and pernicious notions, to have power in the state? For good ends, we doubtnot, if the fact be so; but for ends inscrutable to us, who see only a small part of thevast scheme, and who see that small part only for a short period. Does Mr. Sadler



doubt that the Supreme Being has power as absolute over the revolutions of politicalas over the organisation of natural bodies? Surely not: and, if not, we do not see thathe vindicates the ways of Providence by attributing the distresses, which the poor, ashe confesses, endure, to an error in legislation rather than to a law of physiology. Turnthe question as we may, disguise it as we may, we shall find that it at last resolvesitself into the same great enigma,—the origin of physical and moral evil: an enigmawhich the highest human intellects have given up in despair, but which Mr. Sadlerthinks himself perfectly able to solve.

He next accuses us of having paused long on verbal criticism. We certainly did objectto his improper use of the words, “inverse variation.” Mr. Sadler complains of thiswith his usual bitterness.

“Now what is the Reviewer’s quarrel with me on this occasion? That he does notunderstand the meaning of my terms? No. He acknowledges the contrary. That I havenot fully explained the sense in which I have used them? No. An explanation, heknows, is immediately subjoined, though he has carefully suppressed it. That I havevaried the sense in which I have applied them? No. I challenge him to show it. But henevertheless goes on for many pages together in arguing against what he knows, and,in fact, acknowledges, I did not mean; and then turns round and argues again, thoughmuch more feebly, indeed, against what he says I did mean! Now, even had I been inerror as to the use of a word, I appeal to the reader whether such an unworthy anddisingenuous course would not, if generally pursued, make controversy on allsubjects, however important, that into which, in such hands, it always degenerates —a dispute about words.”

The best way to avoid controversies about words is to use words in their propersenses. Mr. Sadler may think our objection captious; but how he can think itdisingenuous we do not well understand. If we had represented him as meaning whatwe knew that he did not mean, we should have acted in a disgraceful manner. But wedid not represent him, and he allows that we did not represent him, as meaning whathe did not mean. We blamed him, and with perfect justice and propriety, for sayingwhat he did not mean. Every man has in one sense a right to define his own terms;that is to say, if he chooses to call one two, and two seven, it would be absurd tocharge him with false arithmetic for saying that seven is the double of one. But itwould be perfectly fair to blame him for changing the established sense of words. Thewords, “inverse variation,” in matters not purely scientific, have often been used inthe loose way in which Mr. Sadler has used them. But we shall be surprised if he canfind a single instance of their having been so used in a matter of pure arithmetic.

We will illustrate our meaning thus. Lord Thurlow, in one of his speeches aboutIndian affairs, said that one Hastings was worth twenty Macartneys. He might, withequal propriety, have said ten Macartneys, or a hundred Macartneys. Nor would therehave been the least inconsistency in his using all the three expressions in one speech.But would this be an excuse for a financier who, in a matter of account, should reasonas if ten, twenty, and a hundred were the same number?



Mr. Sadler tells us that he purposely avoided the use of the word proportion in statinghis principle. He seems, therefore, to allow that the word proportion would have beenimproper. Yet he did in fact employ it in explaining his principle, accompanied withan awkward explanation intended to signify that, though he said proportion, he meantsomething quite different from proportion. We should not have said so much on thissubject, either in our former article, or at present, but that there is in all Mr. Sadler’swritings an air of scientific pedantry, which renders his errors fair game. We will nowlet the matter rest; and, instead of assailing Mr. Sadler with our verbal criticism,proceed to defend ourselves against his literal criticism.

“The Reviewer promised his readers that some curious results should follow from hisshuffling. We will enable him to keep his word.

“ ‘In two English counties,’ says he, ‘which contain from 50 to 100 inhabitants on thesquare mile, the births to 100 marriages are, according to Mr. Sadler, 420; but in 44departments of France, in which there are from one to two hecatares [hectares] toeach inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is from 125 to 250, or rathermore, to the square mile, the number of births to one hundred marriages is 423 and afraction.’

“The first curious result is, that our Reviewer is ignorant, not only of the name, but ofthe extent, of a French hectare; otherwise he is guilty of a practice which, even iftransferred to the gambling-table, would, I presume, prevent him from being allowedever to shuffle, even there, again. He was most ready to pronounce upon a mistake ofone per cent in a calculation of mine, the difference in no wise affecting the argumentin hand; but here I must inform him, that his error, whether wilfully or ignorantly putforth, involves his entire argument.

“The French hectare I had calculated to contain 107708 English square feet, or 2acres; Dr. Kelly takes it, on authority which he gives, at 107644 English square feet,or 2 acres. The last French Annuaires, however, state it, I perceive, as being equal to 2acres. The difference is very trifling, and will not in the slightest degree cover ourcritic’s error. The first calculation gives about 258 hectares to an English square mile;the second, 258; the last, or French calculation, 258. When, therefore, the Reviewercalculates the population of the departments of France thus: ‘from one to two hectaresto each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is from 125 to 250, or rathermore, to the square mile;’ his ‘that is to say’ is that which he ought not to havesaid—no rare case with him, as we shall show throughout.”

We must inform Mr. Sadler, in the first place, that we inserted the vowel whichamuses him so much, not from ignorance or from carelessness, but advisedly, and inconformity with the practice of several respectable writers. He will find the wordhecatare in Rees’s Cyclopædia. He will find it also in Dr. Young. We prefer the formwhich we have employed, because it is etymologically correct. Mr. Sadler seems notto know that a hecatare is so called, because it contains a hundred ares.

We were perfectly acquainted with the extent as well as with the name of a hecatare.Is it at all strange that we should use the words “250, or rather more,” in speaking of



258 and a fraction? Do not people constantly employ round numbers with still greaterlooseness, in translating foreign distances and foreign money? If indeed, as Mr. Sadlersays, the difference which he chooses to call an error involved the entire argument, orany part of the argument, we should have been guilty of gross unfairness. But it is notso. The difference between 258 and 250, as even Mr. Sadler would see if he were notblind with fury, was a difference to his advantage. Our point was this. The fecundityof a dense population in certain departments of France is greater than that of a thinlyscattered population in certain counties of England. The more dense, therefore, thepopulation in those departments of France, the stronger was our case. By putting 250,instead of 258, we understated our case. Mr. Sadler’s correction of our orthographyleads us to suspect that he knows very little of Greek; and his correction of ourcalculation quite satisfies us that he knows very little of logic.

But, to come to the gist of the controversy. Our argument, drawn from Mr. Sadler’sown Tables, remains absolutely untouched. He makes excuses indeed; for an excuse isthe last thing that Mr. Sadler will ever want. There is something half laughable andhalf provoking in the facility with which he asserts and retracts, says and unsays,exactly as suits his argument. Sometimes the register of baptisms is imperfect, andsometimes the register of burials. Then again these registers become all at once exactalmost to an unit. He brings forward a census of Prussia in proof of his theory. Weshow that it directly confutes his theory; and it forthwith becomes “notoriously andgrossly defective.” The census of the Netherlands is not to be easily dealt with; andthe census of the Netherlands is therefore pronounced inaccurate, In his book on theLaw of Population, he tells us that “in the slave-holding States of America, the maleslaves constitute a decided majority of that unfortunate class.” This fact we turnedagainst him; and, forgetting that he had himself stated it, he tells us that “it is aserroneous as many other ideas which we entertain,” and that “he will venture to assertthat the female slaves were, at the nubile age, as numerous as the males.” The increaseof the negroes in the United States puzzles him; and he creates a vast slave trade tosolve it. He confounds together things perfectly different; the slave-trade carried onunder the American flag, and the slave-trade carried on for the supply of theAmerican soil, — the slave-trade with Africa, and the internal slave-trade between thedifferent States. He exaggerates a few occasional acts of smuggling into an immenseand regular importation, and makes his escape as well as he can under cover of thishubbub of words. Documents are authentic and facts true precisely in proportion tothe support which they afford to his theory. This is one way, undoubtedly, of makingbooks: but we question much whether it be the way to make discoveries.

As to the inconsistencies which we pointed out between his theory and his own tables,he finds no difficulty in explaining them away or facing them out. In one case therewould have been no contradiction if, instead of taking one of his tables, we hadmultiplied the number of three tables together, and taken the average. Another wouldnever have existed if there had not been a great migration of people into Lancashire.Another is not to be got over by any device. But then it is very small, and of noconsequence to the argument.

Here, indeed, he is perhaps right. The inconsistencies which we noticed were, inthemselves, of little moment. We gave them as samples, — as mere hints, to caution



those of our readers who might also happen to be readers of Mr. Sadler against beingdeceived by his packing. He complains of the word packing. We repeat it; and, sincehe has defied us to the proof, we will go fully into the question which, in our lastarticle, we only glanced at, and prove, in such a manner as shall not leave even to Mr.Sadler any shadow of excuse, that his theory owes its speciousness to packing, and topacking alone.

That our readers may fully understand our reasoning, we will again state what Mr.Sadler’s proposition is. He asserts that, on a given space, the number of children to amarriage becomes less and less as the population becomes more and more numerous.

We will begin with the censuses of France given by Mr. Sadler. By joining thedepartments together in combinations which suit his purpose, he has contrived toproduce three tables, which he presents as decisive proofs of his theory.

The first is as follows:—

“The legitimate births are, in those departments where there are to each inhabitant—

From 4 to 5 hects. (2 departs.) to every 1000 marriages 51303 to 4 (3 do.) 43722 to 3 (30 do.) 42501 to 2 (44 do.) 4234·06 to 1 (5 do.) 4146and ·06 (1 do.) 2657

The two other computations he has given in one table. We subjoin it.

Hect. to eachInhabitant.

Number ofDepartments.

Legit. Births to 100Marriages.

Legit. Births to 100Mar. (1826).

4 to 5 2 497 3973 to 4 3 439 3892 to 3 30 424 3791 to 2 44 420 375under 1 5 415 372and ·06 1 263 253

These tables, as we said in our former article, certainly look well for Mr. Sadler’stheory. “Do they?” says he. “Assuredly they do; and in admitting this, the Reviewerhas admitted the theory to be proved.” We cannot absolutely agree to this. A theory isnot proved, we must tell Mr. Sadler, merely because the evidence in its favour lookswell at first sight. There is an old proverb, very homely in expression, but welldeserving to be had in constant remembrance by all men, engaged either in action orin speculation—“One story is good till another is told!”

We affirm, then, that the results which these tables present, and which seem sofavourable to Mr. Sadler’s theory, are produced by packing, and by packing alone.



In the first place, if we look at the departments singly, the whole is in disorder. Aboutthe department in which Paris is situated there is no dispute: Mr. Malthus distinctlyadmits that great cities prevent propagation. There remain eighty-four departments;and of these there is not, we believe, a single one in the place which, according to Mr.Sadler’s principle, it ought to occupy.

That which ought to be highest in fecundity is tenth in one table, fourteenth inanother, and only thirty-first according to the third. That which ought to be third istwenty-second by the table, which places it highest. That which ought to be fourth isfortieth by the table, which places it highest. That which ought to be eighth is fiftiethor sixtieth. That which ought to be tenth from the top is at about the same distancefrom the bottom. On the other hand, that which, according to Mr. Sadler’s principle,ought to be last but two of all the eighty-four is third in two of the tables, and seventhin that which places it lowest; and that which ought to be last is, in one of Mr.Sadler’s tables, above that which ought to be first, in two of them, above that whichought to be third, and, in all of them, above that which ought to be fourth.

By dividing the departments in a particular manner, Mr. Sadler has produced resultswhich he contemplates with great satisfaction. But, if we draw the lines a little higherup or a little lower down, we shall find that all his calculations are thrown into utterconfusion; and that the phenomena, if they indicate any thing, indicate a law the veryreverse of that which he has propounded.

Let us take, for example, the thirty-two departments, as they stand in Mr. Sadler’stable, from Lozére to Meuse inclusive, and divide them into two sets of sixteendepartments each. The set from Lozére and Loiret inclusive consists of thosedepartments in which the space to each inhabitant is from 3·8 hecatares to 2·42. Theset from Cantal to Meuse inclusive consists of those departments in which the spaceto each inhabitant is from 2·42 hecatares to 2·07. That is to say, in the former set theinhabitants are from 68 to 107 on the square mile, or thereabouts. In the latter they arefrom 107 to 125. Therefore, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, the fecundity ought to besmaller in the latter set than in the former. It is, however, greater, and that in everyone of Mr. Sadler’s three tables.

Let us now go a little lower down, and take another set of sixteen departments—thosewhich lie together in Mr. Sadler’s tables, from Hérault to Jura inclusive. Here thepopulation is still thicker than in the second of those sets which we before compared.The fecundity, therefore, ought, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, to be less than in that set.But it is again greater, and that in all Mr. Sadler’s three tables. We have a regularlyascending series, where, if his theory had any truth in it, we ought to have a regularlydescending series. We will give the results of our calculation.

The number of children to 1000 marriages is—



FirstTable.

SecondTable.

ThirdTable.

In the sixteen departments where there are from 68 to 107people on a square mile 4188 4226 3780

In the sixteen departments where there are from 107 to125 people on a square mile 4374 4332 3855

In the sixteen departments where there are from 134 to155 people on a square mile 4484 4416 3914

We will give another instance, if possible still more decisive. We will take the threedepartments of France which ought, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, to be the lowest infecundity of all the eighty-five, saving only that in which Paris stands; and we willcompare them with the three departments in which the fecundity ought, according tohim, to be greater than in any other department of France, two only excepted. We willcompare Bas Rhin, Rhone, and Nord, with Lozére, Landes, and Indre. In Lozére,Landes, and Indre, the population is from 68 to 84 on the square mile, or nearly so. InBas Rhin, Rhone, and Nord, it is from 300 to 417 on the square mile. There cannot bea more overwhelming answer to Mr. Sadler’s theory than the table which we subjoin:

The number of births to 1000 marriages is—

FirstTable.

SecondTable.

ThirdTable.

In the three departments in which there are from 68 to 84people on the square mile 4372 4390 3890

In the three departments in which there are from 300 to417 people on the square mile 4457 4510 4060

These are strong cases. But we have a still stronger case. Take the whole of the third,fourth, and fifth divisions into which Mr. Sadler had portioned out the Frenchdepartments. These three divisions make up almost the whole kingdom of France.They contain seventy-nine out of the eighty-five departments. Mr. Sadler hascontrived to divide them in such a manner that, to a person who looks merely at hisaverages, the fecundity seems to diminish as the population thickens. We will separatethem into two parts instead of three. We will draw the line between the department ofGironde and that of Hérault. On the one side are the thirty-two departments from Cherto Gironde inclusive. On the other side are the forty-six departments from Hérault toNord inclusive. In all the departments of the former set, the population is under 132on the square mile. In all the departments of the latter set, it is above 132 on thesquare mile. It is clear that, if there be one word of truth in Mr. Sadler’s theory, thefecundity in the latter of these divisions must be very decidedly smaller than in theformer. Is it so? It is, on the contrary, greater in all the three tables. We give the result.

The number of births to 1000 marriages is—



FirstTable.

SecondTable.

ThirdTable.

In the thirty-two departments in which there are from 86 to132 people on the square mile 4210 4199 3760

In the forty-seven departments in which there are from 132to 417 people on the square mile 4250 4224 3766

This fact is alone enough to decide the question. Yet it is only one of a crowd ofsimilar facts. If the line between Mr. Sadler’s second and third division be drawn sixdepartments lower down, the third and fourth divisions will, in all the tables, be abovethe second. If the line between the third and fourth divisions be drawn twodepartments lower down, the fourth division will be above the third in all the tables. Ifthe line between the fourth and fifth division be drawn two departments lower down,the fifth will, in all the tables, be above the fourth, above the third, and even above thesecond. How then has Mr. Sadler obtained his results? By packing solely. By placingin one compartment a district no larger than the the Isle of Wight; in another, a districtsomewhat less than Yorkshire; in a third, a territory much larger than the island ofGreat Britain.

By the same artifice it is that he has obtained from the census of England thosedelusive averages which he brings forward with the utmost ostentation in proof of hisprinciple. We will examine the facts relating to England, as we have examined thoserelating to France.

If we look at the counties one by one, Mr. Sadler’s principle utterly fails.Hertfordshire with 251 on the square mile; Worcestershire with 258; and Kent with282, exhibit a far greater fecundity than the East-Riding of York, which has 151 onthe square mile; Monmouthshire, which has 145; or Northumberland, which has 108.The fecundity of Staffordshire, which has more than 300 on the square mile, is as highas the average fecundity of the counties which have from 150 to 200 on the squaremile. But, instead of confining ourselves to particular instances, we will try masses.

Take the eight counties of England which stand together in Mr. Sadler’s list, fromCumberland to Dorset inclusive. In these the population is from 107 to 150 on thesquare mile. Compare with these the eight counties from Berks to Durham inclusive,in which the population is from 175 to 200 on the square mile. Is the fecundity in thelatter counties smaller than in the former? On the contrary, the result stands thus:


In the eight counties of England, in which there are from 107 to 146 people onthe square mile 388

In the eight counties of England, in which there are from 175 to 200 people onthe square mile 402

Take the six districts from the East-Riding of York to the County of Norfolkinclusive. Here the population is from 150 to 170 on the square mile. To these opposethe six counties from Derby to Worcester inclusive. The population is from 200 to



260. Here again we find that a law, directly the reverse of that which Mr. Sadler haslaid down, appears to regulate the fecundity of the inhabitants.


In the six counties in which there are from 150 to 170 people on the square mile 392In the six counties in which there are from 200 to 260 people on the square mile 399

But we will make another experiment on Mr. Sadler’s tables, if possible moredecisive than any of those which we have hitherto made. We will take the four largestdivisions into which he has distributed the English counties, and which follow eachother in regular order. That our readers may fully comprehend the nature of thatpacking by which his theory is supported, we will set before them this part of histable.



counties.

Populationon aSquareMile.

Populationin 1821.

SquareMiles ineachCounty.

Number ofMarriagesfrom 1810to 1820.

Number ofBaptismsfrom 1810to 1820.

Proportionof Bliths to100Marriages.

Lincoln 105 288,800 2748 20,892 87,620Cumberland 107 159,300 1478 10,299 45,085Northumberland 108 203,000 1871 12,997 45,871Hereford 122 105,300 860 6,202 27,909Rutland 127 18,900 149 1,286 5,125Huntingdon 134 49,800 370 3,766 13,633Cambridge 145 124,400 858 9,894 37,491Monmouth 145 72,300 498 4,586 13,411Dorset 146 147,400 1005 9,554 39,060From 100 to150. 79,476 315,205 396

York, EastRiding 151 194,300 1280 15,313 55,606

Salop 156 210,300 1341 13,613 58,542Sussex 162 237,700 1463 15,779 68,700Northampton 163 165,800 1017 12,346 42,336Wilts 164 226,600 1379 15,654 58,845Norfolk 168 351,300 2092 25,752 102,259Devon 173 447,900 2579 35,264 130,758Southampton 177 289,000 1628 24,561 88,170Berks 178 134,700 756 9,301 38,841Suffolk 182 276,000 1512 19,885 76,327Bedford 184 85,400 463 6,536 22,871Buckingham 185 136,800 740 9,505 37,518Oxford 186 139,800 752 9,131 39,633Essex 193 295,300 1532 19,726 79,792Cornwall 198 262,600 1327 17,363 74,611Durham 199 211,900 1061 14,787 58,222From 150 to200. 264,516 1,033,039 390

counties.

Populationon aSquareMile.

Populationin 1821.

SquareMiles ineachCounty.

Number ofMarriagesfrom 1810to 1820.

Number ofBaptismsfrom 1810to 1820.

Proportionof Births to100Marriages.

Derby 212 217,600 1026 14,226 58,804Somerset 220 362,500 1642 24,356 95,802Leicester 221 178,100 804 13,366 47,013Nottingham 228 190,700 837 14,296 55,517From 200 to250. 66,244 257,136 388



Hertford 251 132,400 528 7,386 35,741Worcester 258 188,200 729 13,178 53,838Chester 262 275,500 1052 20,305 75,012Gloucester 272 342,600 1256 28,884 90,671Kent 282 434,600 1537 33,502 135,060From 250 to300. 103,255 390,322 378

These averages look well, undoubtedly, for Mr. Sadler’s theory. The numbers 396,390, 388, 378, follow each other very speciously in a descending order. But let ourreaders divide these thirty-four counties into two equal sets of seventeen countieseach, and try whether the principle will then hold good. We have made thiscalculation, and we present them with the following result.


In the seventeen counties of England in which there are from 100 to 177 peopleon the square mile 387

In the seventeen counties in which there are from 177 to 282 people on thesquare mile 389

The difference is small, but not smaller than differences which Mr. Sadler has broughtforward as proofs of his theory. We say, that these English tables no more prove thatfecundity increases with the population than that it diminishes with the population.The thirty-four counties which we have taken make up, at least, four-fifths of thekingdom: and we see that, through those thirty-four counties, the phenomena aredirectly opposed to Mr. Sadler’s principle. That in the capital, and in greatmanufacturing towns, marriages are less prolific than in the open country, we admit,and Mr. Malthus admits. But that any condensation of the population, short of thatwhich injures all physical energies, will diminish the prolific powers of man, is, fromthese very tables of Mr. Sadler, completely disproved.

It is scarcely worth while to proceed with instances, after proofs so overwhelming asthose which we have given. Yet we will show that Mr. Sadler has formed his averageson the census of Prussia by an artifice exactly similar to that which we have alreadyexposed.



Demonstrating the Law of Population from the Censuses of Prussia, at two severalPeriods.

provinces.Inhabitants on aSquare League.

Births to eachMarriage. 1756. Average. Births to each

Marriage. 1784. Average.

West Prussia 832 } 4·75 }Pomerania 928 4·3 }

4·344·69 }

4·72

East Prussia 1175 5·07 } 5·10 }New Mark 1190 4·22 } 4·43 }Mark ofBrandenburg 1790 3·88 } 4·60 }

East Friesland 1909 3·39 }

4·14

3·66 }

4·45

Guelderland 2083 4·33 } 3·74 }Silesia andGlatz 2314 } 4·84 }

Cleves 2375 3·80 } 4·03 }Minden andRavensburg } 2549 3·67 } 4·31 }

Magdeburg 2692 4·03 } 4·57 }Neufchatel,&c. 2700 3·39 }

3·84

3·98 }

4·24

Halberstadt 3142 3·71 } 4·48 }Ticklingburgand } Lingen 3461 3·59 }

3·653·69 }

4·08

Of the census of 1756 we will say nothing, as Mr. Sadler, finding himself hardpressed by the argument which we drew from it, now declares it to be grosslydefective. We confine ourselves to the census of 1784: and we will draw our lines atpoints somewhat different from those at which Mr. Sadler has drawn his. Let the firstcompartment remain as it stands. Let East Prussia, which contains a much largerpopulation than his last compartment, stand alone in the second division. Let the thirdconsist of the New Mark, the Mark of Brandenburg, East Friesland and Guelderland,and the fourth of the remaining provinces. Our readers will find that, on thisarrangement, the division which, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, ought to be second infecundity stands higher than that which ought to be first; and that the division whichought to be fourth stands higher than that which ought to be third. We will give theresult in one view.

The number of births to a marriage is —

In those provinces of Prussia where there are fewer than 1000 people on thesquare league 4·72

In the province in which there are 1175 people on the square league 5·10In the provinces in which there are from 1190 to 2083 people on the squareleague 4·10

In the provinces in which there are from 2314 to 3461 people on the squareleague 4·27



We will go no farther with this examination. In fact, we have nothing more toexamine. The tables which we have scrutinised constitute the whole strength of Mr.Sadler’s case; and we confidently leave it to our readers to say, whether we have notshown that the strength of his case is weakness.

Be it remembered too that we are reasoning on data furnished by Mr. Sadler himself.We have not made collections of facts to set against his, as we easily might havedone. It is on his own showing, it is out of his own mouth, that his theory standscondemned.

That packing which we have exposed is not the only sort of packing which Mr. Sadlerhas practised. We mentioned in our review some facts relating to the towns ofEngland, which appear from Mr. Sadler’s tables, and which it seems impossible toexplain if his principles be sound. The average fecundity of a marriage in towns offewer than 3000 inhabitants is greater than the average fecundity of the kingdom. Theaverage fecundity in towns of from 4000 to 5000 inhabitants is greater than theaverage fecundity of Warwickshire, Lancashire, or Surrey. How is it, we asked, if Mr.Sadler’s principle be correct, that the fecundity of Guildford should be greater thanthe average fecundity of the county in which it stands?

Mr. Sadler, in reply, talks about “the absurdity of comparing the fecundity in thesmall towns alluded to with that in the counties of Warwick and Stafford, or in thoseof Lancaster and Surrey.” He proceeds thus—

“In Warwickshire, far above half the population is comprised in large towns,including, of course, the immense metropolis of one great branch of ourmanufactures, Birmingham. In the county of Stafford, besides the large and populoustowns in its iron districts, situated so close together as almost to form, forconsiderable distances, a continuous street; there is, in its potteries, a great population,recently accumulated, not included, indeed, in the towns distinctly enumerated in thecensuses, but vastly exceeding in its condensation that found in the places to whichthe Reviewer alludes. In Lancashire again, to which he also appeals, one-fourth of theentire population is made up of the inhabitants of two only of the towns of thatcounty; far above half of it is contained in towns, compared with which those herefers to are villages; even the hamlets of the manufacturing parts of Lancashire areoften far more populous than the places he mentions. But he presents us with a climaxof absurdity in appealing lastly to the population of Surrey as quite rural comparedwith that of the twelve towns, having less than 5000 inhabitants in their respectivejurisdictions, such as Saffron-Walden, Monmouth, &c., Now, in the last census,Surrey numbered 398,658 inhabitants, and, to say not a word about the other towns ofthe county, much above two hundred thousands of these are within the Bills ofMortality! ‘We should, therefore, be glad to know’ how it is utterly inconsistent withmy principle that the fecundity of Guildford, which numbers about 3000 inhabitants,should be greater than the average fecundity of Surrey, made up, as the bulk of thepopulation of Surrey is, of the inhabitants of some of the worst parts of themetropolis? Or why the fecundity of a given number of marriages in the eleven littlerural towns he alludes to, being somewhat higher than that of an equal number, half



taken for instance, from the heart of Birmingham or Manchester, and half from thepopulous districts by which they are surrounded, is inconsistent with my theory?

“Had the Reviewer’s object, in this instance, been to discover the truth, or had heknown how to pursue it, it is perfectly clear, at first sight, that he would not haveinstituted a comparison between the prolificness which exists in the small towns hehas alluded to, and that in certain districts, the population of which is made up, partlyof rural inhabitants and partly of accumulations of people in immense masses, theprolificness of which, if he will allow me still the use of the phrase, is inversely astheir magnitude; but he would have compared these small towns with the countryplaces properly so called, and then again the different classes of towns with eachother; this method would have led him to certain conclusions on the subject.”

Now, this reply shows that Mr. Sadler does not in the least understand the principlewhich he has himself laid down. What is that principle? It is this, that the fecundity ofhuman beings on given spaces, varies inversely as their numbers. We know what hemeans by inverse variation. But we must suppose that he uses the words, “givenspaces” in the proper sense. Given spaces are equal spaces. Is there any reason tobelieve, that in those parts of Surrey which lie within the bills of mortality there is anyspace, equal in area to the space on which Guildford stands, which is more thicklypeopled than the space on which Guildford stands? We do not know that there is anysuch. We are sure that there are not many. Why, therefore, on Mr. Sadler’s principle,should the people of Guildford be more prolific than the people who live within thebills of mortality? And, if the people of Guildford ought, as on Mr. Sadler’s principlethey unquestionably ought, to stand as low in the scale of fecundity as the people ofSouthwark itself, it follows, most clearly, that they ought to stand far lower than theaverage obtained by taking all the people of Surrey together.

The same remark applies to the case of Birmingham, and to all the other cases whichMr. Sadler mentions. Towns of 5000 inhabitants may be, and often are, as thicklypeopled, “on a given space,” as Birmingham. They are, in other words, as thicklypeopled as a portion of Birmingham, equal to them in area. If so, on Mr. Sadler’sprinciple, they ought to be as low in the scale of fecundity as Birmingham. But theyare not so. On the contrary, they stand higher than the average obtained by taking thefecundity of Birmingham in combination with the fecundity of the rural districts ofWarwickshire.

The plain fact is, that Mr. Sadler has confounded the population of a city with itspopulation “on a given space,”—a mistake which, in a gentleman who assures us thatmathematical science was one of his early and favourite studies, is somewhat curious.It is as absurd, on his principle, to say that the fecundity of London ought to be lessthan the fecundity of Edinburgh, because London has a greater population thanEdinburgh, as to say that the fecundity of Russia ought to be greater than that ofEngland, because Russia has a greater population than England. He cannot say thatthe spaces on which towns stand are too small to exemplify the truth of his principle.For he has himself brought forward the scale of fecundity in towns, as a proof of hisprinciple. And, in the very passage which we quoted above, he tells us that, if weknew how to pursue truth, or wished to find it, we “should have compared these small



towns with country places, and the different classes of towns with each other.” That isto say, we ought to compare together such unequal spaces as give results favourableto his theory, and never to compare such equal spaces as give results opposed to it.Does he mean anything by “a given space?” Or does he mean merely such a space assuits his argument? It is perfectly clear that, if he is allowed to take this course, hemay prove anything. No fact can come amiss to him. Suppose, for example, that thefecundity of New York should prove to be smaller than the fecundity of Liverpool.“That,” says Mr. Sadler, “makes for my theory. For there are more people within twomiles of the Broadway of New York, than within two miles of the Exchange ofLiverpool.” Suppose, on the other hand, that the fecundity of New York should begreater than the fecundity of Liverpool. “This,” says Mr. Sadler again, “is anunanswerable proof of my theory. For there are many more people within forty milesof Liverpool than within forty miles of New York.” In order to obtain his numbers, hetakes spaces in any combinations which may suit him. In order to obtain his averages,he takes numbers in any combinations which may suit him. And then he tells us that,because his tables, at the first glance, look well for his theory, his theory isirrefragably proved.

We will add a few words respecting the argument which we drew from the peerage.Mr. Sadler asserted that the Peers were a class condemned by nature to sterility. Wedenied this, and showed, from the last edition of Debrett, that the Peers of the UnitedKingdom have considerably more than the average number of children to a marriage.Mr. Sadler’s answer has amused us much. He denies the accuracy of our counting,and, by reckoning all the Scotch and Irish Peers as Peers of the United Kingdom,certainly makes very different numbers from those which we gave. A member of theParliament of the United Kingdom might have been expected, we think, to knowbetter what a Peer of the United Kingdom is.

By taking the Scotch and Irish Peers, Mr. Sadler has altered the average. But it isconsiderably higher than the average fecundity of England, and still, therefore,constitutes an unanswerable argument against his theory.

The shifts to which, in this difficulty, he has recourse, are exceedingly diverting. “Theaverage fecundity of the marriages of Peers,” said we, “is higher by one-fifth than theaverage fecundity of marriages throughout the kingdom.”

“Where, or by whom did the Reviewer find it supposed,” answers Mr. Sadler, “thatthe registered baptisms expressed the full fecundity of the marriages of England?”

Assuredly, if the registers of England are so defective as to explain the differencewhich, on our calculation, exists between the fecundity of the peers and the fecundityof the people, no argument against Mr. Sadler’s theory can be drawn from thatdifference. But what becomes of all the other arguments which Mr. Sadler hasfounded on these very registers? Above all, what becomes of his comparison betweenthe censuses of England and France? In the pamphlet before us, he dwells with greatcomplacency on a coincidence which seems to him to support his theory, and whichto us seems, of itself, sufficient to overthrow it.



“In my table of the population of France, in the forty-four departments in which thereare from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, the fecundity of 100 marriages,calculated on the average of the results of the three computations relating to differentperiods given in my table, is 406. In the twenty-two counties of England, in whichthere is from one to two hectars to each inhabitant, or from 129 to 259 on the squaremile, — beginning, therefore, with Huntingdonshire, and ending with Worcestershire,—the whole number of marriages during ten years will be found to amount to379,624, and the whole number of the births during the same term to 1,545,549 — or407 births to 100 marriages! A difference of one in one thousand only, compared withthe French proportion!”

Does not Mr. Sadler see that, if the registers of England, which are notoriously verydefective, give a result exactly corresponding almost to an unit with that obtainedfrom the registers of France, which are notoriously very full and accurate, this provesthe very reverse of what he employs it to prove? The correspondence of the registersproves that there is no correspondence in the facts. In order to raise the averagefecundity of England even to the level of the average fecundity of the peers of thethree kingdoms, which is 3·81 to a marriage, it is necessary to add nearly six per cent.to the number of births given in the English registers. But, if this addition be made,we shall have, in the counties of England, from Huntingdonshire to Worcestershireinclusive, 4·30 births to a marriage or thereabouts; and the boasted coincidencebetween the phenomena of propagation in France and England disappears at once.This is a curious specimen of Mr. Sadler’s proficiency in the art of making excuses. Inthe same pamphlet he reasons as if the same registers were accurate to one in athousand, and as if they were wrong at the very least by one in eighteen.

He tries to show that we have not taken a fair criterion of the fecundity of the peers.We are not quite sure that we understand his reasoning on this subject. The order ofhis observations is more than usually confused, and the cloud of words more thanusually thick. We will give the argument on which he seems to lay most stress in hisown words:

“But I shall first notice a far more obvious and important blunder into which theReviewer has fallen; or into which, I rather fear, he knowingly wishes to precipitatehis readers, since I have distinctly pointed out what ought to have preserved him fromit in the very chapter he is criticising and contradicting. It is this: — he has entirelyomitted “counting” the sterile marriages of all those peerages which have becomeextinct during the very period his counting embraces. He counts, for instance, EarlFitzwilliam, his marriages, and heir; but has he not omitted to enumerate themarriages of those branches of the same noble house, which have become extinctsince that venerable individual possessed his title? He talks of my having appealedmerely to the extinction of peerages in my argument; but, on his plan of computation,extinctions are perpetually and wholly lost sight of. In computing the averageprolificness of the marriages of the nobles, he positively counts from a select class ofthem only, one from which the unprolific are constantly weeded, and regularlydisappear; and he thus comes to the conclusion, that the peers are ‘an eminentlyprolific class!’ Just as though a farmer should compute the rate of increase, not fromthe quantity of seed sown, but from that part of it only which comes to perfection,



entirely omitting all which had failed to spring up or come to maturity. Upon thisprinciple the most scanty crop ever obtained, in which the husbandman should fail toreceive ‘seed again,’ as the phrase is, might be so ‘counted’ as to appear ‘eminentlyprolific’ indeed.”

If we understand this passage rightly, it decisively proves that Mr. Sadler isincompetent to perform even the lowest offices of statistical research. What shadowof reason is there to believe that the peers who were alive in the year 1828 differed asto their prolificness from any other equally numerous set of peers taken at random? Inwhat sense were the peers who were alive in 1828 analogous to that part of the seedwhich comes to perfection? Did we entirely omit all that failed? On the contrary, wecounted the sterile as well as the fruitful marriages of all the peers of the UnitedKingdom living at one time. In what way were the peers who were alive in 1828 aselect class? In what way were the sterile weeded from among them? Did every peerwho had been married without having issue die in 1827? What shadow of reason isthere to suppose that there was not the ordinary proportion of barren marriages amongthe marriages contracted by the noblemen whose names are in Debrett’s last edition?But we ought, says Mr. Sadler, to have counted all the sterile marriages of all thepeers “whose titles had become extinct during the period which our countingembraced;” that is to say, since the earliest marriage contracted by any peer living in1828. Was such a proposition ever heard of before? Surely we were bound to do nosuch thing, unless at the same time we had counted also the children born from all thefruitful marriages contracted by peers during the same period. Mr. Sadler would haveus divide the number of children born to peers living in 1828, not by the number ofmarriages which those peers contracted, but by the number of marriages which thosepeers contracted added to a crowd of marriages selected, on account of their sterility,from among the noble marriages which have taken place during the last fifty years. Isthis the way to obtain fair averages? We might as well require that all the noblemarriages which during the last fifty years have produced ten children apiece shouldbe added to those of the peers living in 1828. The proper way to ascertain whether aset of people be prolific or sterile is, not to take marriages selected from the masseither on account of their fruitfulness or on account of their sterility, but to take acollection of marriages which there is no reason to think either more or less fruitfulthan others. What reason is there to think that the marriages contracted by the peerswho were alive in 1828 were more fruitful than those contracted by the peers whowere alive in 1800 or in 1750?

We will add another passage from Mr. Sadler’s pamphlet on this subject. Weattributed the extinction of peerages partly to the fact that those honours are for themost part limited to heirs male.

“This is a discovery indeed! Peeresses, ‘eminently prolific,’ do not, as Macbethconjured his spouse, ‘bring forth men-children only;’ they actually produce daughtersas well as sons!! Why, does not the Reviewer see, that so long as the rule of nature,which proportions the sexes so accurately to each other, continues to exist, a tendencyto a diminution in one sex proves, as certainly as the demonstration of anymathematical problem, a tendency to a diminution in both; but to talk of ‘eminently



prolific’ peeresses, and still maintain that the rapid extinction in peerages is owing totheir not bearing male children exclusively, is arrant nonsense.”

Now, if there be any proposition on the face of the earth which we should not haveexpected to hear characterised as arrant nonsense, it is this,—that an honour limited tomales alone is more likely to become extinct than an honour which, like the crown ofEngland, descends indifferently to sons and daughters. We have heard, nay, weactually know families, in which, much as Mr. Sadler may marvel at it, there aredaughters and no sons. Nay, we know many such families. We are as much inclinedas Mr. Sadler to trace the benevolent and wise arrangements of Providence in thephysical world, when once we are satisfied as to the facts on which we proceed. Andwe have always considered it as an arrangement deserving of the highest admiration,that, though in families the number of males and females differs widely, yet in greatcollections of human beings the disparity almost disappears. The chance undoubtedlyis, that in a thousand marriages the number of daughters will not very much exceedthe number of sons. But the chance also is, that several of those marriages willproduce daughters, and daughters only. In every generation of the peerage there areseveral such cases. When a peer whose title is limited to male heirs dies, leaving onlydaughters, his peerage must expire, unless he have, not only a collateral heir, but acollateral heir descended through an uninterrupted line of males from the firstpossessor of the honour. If the deceased peer was the first nobleman of his family,then, by the supposition, his peerage will become extinct. If he was the second, it willbecome extinct, unless he leaves a brother or a brother’s son. If the second peer had abrother, the first peer must have had at least two sons; and this is more than theaverage number of sons to a marriage in England. When, therefore, it is consideredhow many peerages are in the first and second generation, it will not appear strangethat extinctions should frequently take place. There are peerages which descend tofemales as well as males. But, in such cases, if a peer dies, leaving only daughters, thevery fecundity of the marriage is a cause of the extinction of the peerage. If there wereonly one daughter, the honour would descend. If there are several, it falls intoabeyance.

But it is needless to multiply words in a case so clear; and indeed it is needless to sayanything more about Mr. Sadler’s book. We have, if we do not deceive ourselves,completely exposed the calculations on which his theory rests; and we do not thinkthat we should either amuse our readers or serve the cause of science if we were torebut in succession a series of futile charges brought in the most angry spirit againstourselves; ignorant imputations of ignorance, and unfair complaints ofunfairness,—conveyed in long, dreary, declamations, so prolix that we cannot findspace to quote them, and so confused that we cannot venture to abridge them.

There is much indeed in this foolish pamphlet to laugh at, from the motto in the firstpage down to some wisdom about cows in the last. One part of it indeed is solemnenough, we mean a certain jeu d’esprit of Mr. Sadler’s touching a tract of Dr.Arbuthnot’s. This is indeed “very tragical mirth,” as Peter Quince’s playbill has it;and we would not advise any person who reads for amusement to venture on it as longas he can procure a volume of the Statutes at Large. This, however, to do Mr. Sadlerjustice, is an exception. His witticisms, and his tables of figures, constitute the only



parts of his work which can be perused with perfect gravity. His blunders arediverting, his excuses exquisitely comic. But his anger is the most grotesqueexhibition that we ever saw. He foams at the mouth with the love of truth, andvindicates the Divine benevolence with a most edifying heartiness of hatred. On thissubject we will give him one word of parting advice. If he raves in this way to easehis mind, or because he thinks that he does himself credit by it, or from a sense ofreligious duty, far be it from us to interfere. His peace, his reputation, and his religionare his own concern; and he, like the nobleman to whom his treatise is dedicated, hasa right to do what he will with his own. But, if he has adopted his abusive style from anotion that it would hurt our feelings, we must inform him that he is altogethermistaken; and that he would do well in future to give us his arguments, if he has any,and to keep his anger for those who fear it.




MIRABEAU. (July 1832.)

Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premières Assemblées Législatives. ParEtienne Dumont, de Genève: ouvrage posthume publié par M. J. L. Duval, Membredu Conseil Représentatif du Canton du Genève. 8vo. Paris: 1832.

This is a very amusing and a very instructive book: but, even if it were less amusingand less instructive, it would still be interesting as a relic of a wise and virtuous man.M. Dumont was one of those persons, the care of whose fame belongs in an especialmanner to mankind. For he was one of those persons who have, for the sake ofmankind, neglected the care of their own fame. In his walk through life there was noobtrusiveness, no pushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts which bring forwardlittle men. With every right to the head of the board, he took the lowest room, andwell deserved to be greeted with — Friend, go up higher. Though no man was morecapable of achieving for himself a separate and independent renown, he attachedhimself to others; he laboured to raise their fame; he was content to receive as hisshare of the reward the mere overflowings which redounded from the full measure oftheir glory. Not that he was of a servile and idolatrous habit of mind: — not that hewas one of the tribe of Boswells, — those literary Gibeonites, born to be hewers ofwood and drawers of water to the higher intellectual castes. Possessed of talents andacquirements which made him great, he wished only to be useful. In the prime ofmanhood, at the very time of life at which ambitious men are most ambitious, he wasnot solicitous to proclaim that he furnished information, arguments, and eloquence toMirabeau. In his later years he was perfectly willing that his renown should merge inthat of Mr. Bentham.

The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully appreciated onlyby those who have studied Mr. Bentham’s works, both in their rude and in theirfinished state. The difference both for show and for use is as great as the differencebetween a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the mint. Of Mr.Bentham we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a greatoriginal thinker, and to a sincere and ardent friend of the human race. If a fewweaknesses were mingled with his eminent virtues, — if a few errors insinuatedthemselves among the many valuable truths which he taught, — this is assuredly notime for noticing those weaknesses or those errors in an unkind or sarcastic spirit. Agreat man has gone from among us, full of years, of good works, and of deservedhonours. In some of the highest departments in which the human intellect can exertitself he has not left his equal or his second behind him. From his contemporaries hehas had, according to the usual lot, more or less than justice. He has had blindflatterers and blind detractors — flatterers who could see nothing but perfection in hisstyle, detractors who could see nothing but nonsense in his matter. He will now havejudges. Posterity will pronounce its calm and impartial decision; and that decisionwill, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo, and with Locke, the manwho found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science. Never was there a literarypartnership so fortunate as that of Mr. Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw materialwhich Mr. Bentham furnished was most precious; but it was unmarketable. He was,



assuredly, at once a great logician and a great rhetorician. But the effect of his logicwas injured by a vicious arrangement, and the effect of his rhetoric by a vicious style.His mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtle, fertile of arguments, fertile ofillustrations. But he spoke in an unknown tongue; and, that the congregation might beedified, it was necessary that some brother having the gift of interpretation shouldexpound the invaluable jargon. His oracles were of high import; but they were tracedon leaves and flung loose to the wind. So negligent was he of the arts of selection,distribution, and compression, that to persons who formed their judgment of him fromhis works in their undigested state he seemed to be the least systematic of allphilosophers. The truth is, that his opinions formed a system, which, whether sound orunsound, is more exact, more entire, and more consistent with itself than any other.Yet to superficial readers of his works in their original form, and indeed to all readersof those works who did not bring great industry and great acuteness to the study, heseemed to be a man of a quick and ingenious but ill-regulated mind, — who saw truthonly by glimpses, — who threw out many striking hints, but who had never thoughtof combining his doctrines in one harmonious whole.

M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr. Bentham. Inthe qualities in which the French writers surpass those of all other nations, —neatness, clearness, precision, condensation, — he surpassed all French writers. If M.Dumont had never been born, Mr. Bentham would still have been a very great man.But he would have been great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would haveresembled the fertility of those vast American wildernesses in which blossoms anddecays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, “wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand,neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom.” It would have been with hisdiscoveries as it has been with the “Century of Inventions.” His speculations on lawswould have been of no more practical use than Lord Worcester’s speculations onsteam-engines. Some generations hence, perhaps, when legislation had found its Watt,an antiquarian might have published to the world the curious fact, that, in the reign ofGeorge the Third, there had been a man called Bentham, who had given hints of manydiscoveries made since his time, and who had really, for his age, taken a mostphilosophical view of the principles of jurisprudence.

Many persons have attempted to interpret between this powerful mind and the public.But, in our opinion, M. Dumont alone has succeeded. It is remarkable that, in foreigncountries, where Mr. Bentham’s works are known solely through the medium of theFrench version, his merit is almost universally acknowledged. Even those who aremost decidedly opposed to his political opinions — the very chiefs of the HolyAlliance — have publicly testified their respect for him. In England, on the contrary,many persons who certainly entertained no prejudice against him on political groundswere long in the habit of mentioning him contemptuously. Indeed, what was said ofBacon’s Philosophy may be said of Bentham’s. It was in little repute among us, tilljudgments in its favour came from beyond sea, and convinced us, to our shame, thatwe had been abusing and laughing at one of the greatest men of the age.

M. Dumont might easily have found employments more gratifying to personal vanitythan that of arranging works not his own. But he could have found no employmentmore useful or more truly honourable. The book before us, hastily written as it is,



contains abundant proof, if proof were needed, that he did not become an editorbecause he wanted the talents which would have made him eminent as a writer.

Persons who hold democratical opinions, and who have been accustomed to considerM. Dumont as one of their party, have been surprised and mortified to learn that hespeaks with very little respect of the French Revolution and of its authors. Somezealous Tories have naturally expressed great satisfaction at finding their doctrines, insome respects, confirmed by the testimony of an unwilling witness. The date of thework, we think, explains every thing. If it had been written ten years earlier, or twentyyears later, it would have been very different from what it is. It was written, neitherduring the first excitement of the revolution, nor at that later period when the practicalgood produced by the Revolution had become manifest to the most prejudicedobservers; but in those wretched times when the enthusiasm had abated, and the solidadvantages were not yet fully seen. It was written in the year 1799,—a year in whichthe most sanguine friend of liberty might well feel some misgivings as to the effectsof what the National Assembly had done. The evils which attend every great changehad been severely felt. The benefit was still to come. The price—a heavy price—hadbeen paid. The thing purchased had not yet been delivered. Europe was swarmingwith French exiles. The fleets and armies of the second coalition were victorious.Within France, the reign of terror was over; but the reign of law had not commenced.There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written Constitution, by whichrights were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedlyviolated; and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws which had beenframed to secure the distinct authority of the executive magistrates and of thelegislative assemblies—the freedom of election—the freedom of debate—the freedomof the press—the personal freedom of citizens—were a dead letter. The ordinarymode in which the Republic was governed was by coups d’état. On one occasion, thelegislative councils were placed under military restraint by the directors. Then, again,directors were deposed by the legislative councils. Elections were set aside by theexecutive authority. Ship-loads of writers and speakers were sent, without a legal trial,to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which revolutions,effected by violence, almost always leave a nation. The habit of obedience had beenlost. The spell of prescription had been broken. Those associations on which, far morethan on any arguments about property and order, the authority of magistrates rests hadcompletely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in thephysical force which it could bring to its support. Moral force it had none. It was itselfa government sprung from a recent convulsion. Its own fundamental maxim was, thatrebellion might be justifiable. Its own existence proved that rebellion might besuccessful. The people had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistanceto the constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the constitutedauthorities yield to that resistance. The whole political world was “without form andvoid”—an incessant whirl of hostile atoms, which, every moment, formed some newcombination. The only man who could fix the agitated elements of society in a stableform was following a wild vision of glory and empire through the Syrian deserts. Thetime was not yet come, when

“Confusion heard his voice; and wild uproarStood ruled:”



when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved, were to rise anew dynasty, a new peerage, a new church, and a new code.

The dying words of Madame Roland, “Oh Liberty! how many crimes are committedin thy name!” were at that time echoed by many of the most upright and benevolent ofmankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his admirable pamphlets, happily and justlydescribed M. Lainé as “an honest and liberal man, discouraged by the Revolution.”This description, at the time when M. Dumont’s Memoirs were written, would haveapplied to almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond alldoubt, have applied to M. Dumont himself. To that fanatical worship of the all-wiseand all-good people, which had been common a few years before, had succeeded anuneasy suspicion that the follies and vices of the people would frustrate all attempts toserve them. The wild and joyous exultation, with which the meeting of the States-General and the fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place wasdejection, and a gloomy distrust of specious appearances. The philosophers andphilanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign produced? Philosophy hadbrought with it mummeries as absurd as any which had been practised by the mostsuperstitious zealot of the darkest age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes ashorrible as the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of thehuman mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice.France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that acourtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedomagainst Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thoughtthat all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those hopesof great political and social ameliorations which had been cherished by Voltaire andCondorcet were utterly delusive.

Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as to say that thewritings of Mr. Burke on the French Revolution, though disfigured by exaggeration,and though containing doctrines subversive of all public liberty, had been, on thewhole, justified by events, and had probably saved Europe from great disasters. Thatsuch a man as the friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. Bentham should have expressedsuch an opinion is a circumstance which well deserves the consideration ofuncharitable politicians. These Memoirs have not convinced us that the FrenchRevolution was not a great blessing to mankind. But they have convinced us that verygreat indulgence is due to those who, while the Revolution was actually taking place,regarded it with unmixed aversion and horror. We can perceive where their error lay.We can perceive that the evil was temporary, and the good durable. But we cannot besure that, if our lot had been cast in their times, we should not, like them, have beendiscouraged and disgusted—that we should not, like them, have seen, in that greatvictory of the French people, only insanity and crime.

It is curious to observe how some men are applauded, and others reviled, for merelybeing what all their neighbours are, —for merely going passively down the stream ofevents,—for merely representing the opinions and passions of a whole generation.The friends of popular government ordinarily speak with extreme severity of Mr. Pitt,and with respect and tenderness of Mr. Canning. Yet the whole difference, wesuspect, consisted merely in this,—that Mr. Pitt died in 1806, and Mr. Canning in



1827. During the years which were common to the public life of both, Mr. Canningwas assuredly not a more liberal statesman than his patron. The truth is that Mr. Pittbegan his political life at the end of the American War, when the nation was sufferingfrom the effects of corruption. He closed it in the midst of the calamities produced bythe French Revolution, when the nation was still strongly impressed with the horrorsof anarchy. He changed, undoubtedly. In his youth he had brought in reform bills. Inhis manhood he brought in gagging bills. But the change, though lamentable, was, inour opinion, perfectly natural, and might have been perfectly honest. He changed withthe great body of his countrymen. Mr. Canning, on the other hand, entered into publiclife when Europe was in dread of the Jacobins. He closed his public life when Europewas suffering under the tyranny of the Holy Alliance. He, too, changed with thenation. As the crimes of the Jacobins had turned the master into something very like aTory, the events which followed the Congress of Vienna turned the pupil intosomething very like a Whig.

So much are men the creatures of circumstances. We see that, if M. Dumont had diedin 1799, he would have died, to use the new cant word, a decided “Conservative.” IfMr. Pitt had lived in 1832, it is our firm belief that he would have been a decidedReformer.

The judgment passed by M. Dumont in this work on the French Revolution must betaken with considerable allowances. It resembles a criticism on a play of which onlythe first act has been performed, or on a building from which the scaffolding has notyet been taken down. We have no doubt that, if the excellent author had revised thesememoirs thirty years after the time at which they were written, he would have seenreason to omit a few passages, and to add many qualifications and explanations.

He would not probably have been inclined to retract the censures, just, though severe,which he has passed on the ignorance, the presumption, and the pedantry, of theNational Assembly. But he would have admitted that, in spite of those faults, perhapseven by reason of those faults, that Assembly had conferred inestimable benefits onmankind. It is clear that, among the French of that day, political knowledge wasabsolutely in its infancy. It would indeed have been strange if it had attained maturityin the time of censors, of lettres-de-cachet, and of beds of justice. The electors did notknow how to elect. The representatives did not know how to deliberate. M. Dumonttaught the constituent body of Montreuil how to perform their functions, and foundthem apt to learn. He afterwards tried, in concert with Mirabeau, to instruct theNational Assembly in that admirable system of Parliamentary tactics which has beenlong established in the English House of Commons, and which has made the House ofCommons, in spite of all the defects in its composition, the best and fairest debatingsociety in the world. But these accomplished legislators, though quite as ignorant asthe mob of Montreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out that they did not want togo to school to the English. Their debates consisted of endless successions of trashypamphlets, all beginning with something about the original compact of society, manin the hunting state, and other such foolery. They sometimes diversified and enlivenedthese long readings by a little rioting. They bawled; they hooted; they shook theirfists. They kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by thecrowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn considerations to



trifles. They hurried through the most important resolutions with fearful expedition.They wasted months in quibbling about the words of that false and childishDeclaration of Rights on which they professed to found their new constitution, andwhich was at irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. Theyannihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the nature ofproperty, and ought therefore to have been most delicately handled.

They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less appropriate. Theywere not constituent, but the very reverse of constituent. They constituted nothing thatstood or that deserved to last. They had not, and they could not possibly have, theinformation or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of that mostexquisite of all machines—a government. The metaphysical cant with which theyprefaced their constitution has long been the scoff of all parties. Their constitutionitself,—that constitution which they described as absolutely perfect, and to which theypredicted immortality,—disappeared in a few months, and left no trace behind it.They were great only in the work of destruction.

The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth, what Mr. Burkecalled them in austere irony, the ablest architects of ruin that ever the world saw. Theywere utterly incompetent to perform any work which required a discriminating eyeand a skilful hand. But the work which was then to be done was a work ofdevastation. They had to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted that thehighest political wisdom could scarcely have produced greater good to mankind thanwas produced by their fierce and senseless temerity. Demolition is undoubtedly avulgar task; the highest glory of the statesman is to construct. But there is a time foreverything,—a time to set up, and a time to pull down. The talents of revolutionaryleaders and those of the legislator have equally their use and their season. It is thenatural, the almost universal, law, that the age of insurrections and proscriptions shallprecede the age of good government, of temperate liberty, and liberal order.

And how should it be otherwise? It is not in swaddling-bands that we learn to walk. Itis not in the dark that we learn to distinguish colours. It is not under eppression thatwe learn how to use freedom. The ordinary sophism by which misrule is defended is,when truly stated, this: — The people must continue in slavery, because slavery hasgenerated in them all the vices of slaves. Because they are ignorant, they must remainunder a power which has made and which keeps them ignorant. Because they havebeen made ferocious by misgovernment, they must be misgoverned for ever. If thesystem under which they live were so mild and liberal that under its operation theyhad become humane and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a change. But, asthis system has destroyed morality, and prevented the development of theintellect,—as it has turned men, who might under different training have formed avirtuous and happy community, into savage and stupid wild beasts,—therefore itought to last for ever. The English Revolution, it is said, was truly a gloriousRevolution. Practical evils were redressed; no excesses were committed; no sweepingconfiscations took place; the authority of the laws was scarcely for a momentsuspended; the fullest and freest discussion was tolerated in Parliament; the nationshowed, by the calm and temperate manner in which it asserted its liberty, that it wasfit to enjoy liberty. The French Revolution was, on the other hand, the most horrible



event recorded in history, — all madness and wickedness, — absurdity in theory, andatrocity in practice. What folly and injustice in the revolutionary laws! Whatgrotesque affectation in the revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! Whatlicentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat, — feasts of the SupremeBeing, and marriages of the Loire — trees of liberty, and heads dancing on pikes —the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made up of everything ridiculous, andeverything frightful. This it is to give freedom to those who have neither wisdom norvirtue.

It is not only by bad men interested in the defence of abuses that arguments like thesehave been urged against all schemes of political improvement. Some of the highestand purest of human beings conceived such scorn and aversion for the follies andcrimes of the French Revolution that they recanted, in the moment of triumph, thoseliberal opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution. And, if we inquirewhy it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a blessing, we shall find thatit was only because events had proved, in the clearest manner, that liberty is theparent of virtue and of order. They ceased to abhor tyranny merely because it hadbeen signally shown that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings ofmen is more demoralising and more stupifying than had ever been imagined by themost zealous friend of popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger argument againstthe old monarchy of France may be drawn from the noyades and the fusillades thanfrom the Bastile and the Parc-aux-cerfs. We believe it to be a rule without anexception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree ofmisgovernment which has produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolutionso bloody and destructive? Why was our revolution of 1641 comparatively mild?Why was our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American Revolution,considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an obvious andcomplete solution of the problem. The English under James the First and Charles theFirst were less oppressed than the French under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis theSixteenth. The English were less oppressed after the Restoration than before the greatRebellion. And America under George the Third was less oppressed than Englandunder the Stuarts. The re-action was exactly proportioned to the pressure, — thevengeance to the provocation.

When Mr. Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had displayed inthe cause of the Americans, he vindicated himself from the charge of inconsistency,by contrasting the wisdom and moderation of the Colonial insurgents of 1776 with thefanaticism and wickedness of the Jacobins of 1792. He was in fact bringing anargument a fortiori against himself. The circumstances on which he rested hisvindication fully proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of acomplete change than the old government of America. The difference betweenWashington and Robespierre, — the difference between Franklin and Barère, — thedifference between the destruction of a few barrels of tea and the confiscation ofthousands of square miles, — the difference between the tarring and feathering of atax-gatherer and the massacres of September, — measure the difference between thegovernment of America under the rule of England and the government of Franceunder the rule of the Bourbons.



Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people; and they sent himto the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the fundamental laws of the state,established a despotism, and butchered his subjects for not submitting quietly to thatdespotism. He failed in his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of those whom hehad injured. The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades; — thehospitals were still full of the wounded; — the dead were still unburied; — a thousandfamilies were in mourning; — a hundred thousand citizens were in arms. The crimewas recent; — the life of the criminal was in the hands of the sufferers; — and theytouched not one hair of his head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death byscores for the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the mostpartial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had signed theordinances, — those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the foulest kind, was provedby the clearest evidence, — were punished only with imprisonment. In the firstrevolution, property was attacked. In the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions,it is true, left the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions werefollowed by insurrectionary movements. But, after the first revolution, the insurgentswere almost always stronger than the law; and, since the second revolution, the lawhas invariably been found stronger than the insurgents. There is, indeed, much in thepresent state of France which may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire tosee her free, happy, powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state ofFrance with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a change for thebetter has taken place! How little effect, for example, during the first revolution,would the sentence of a judicial body have produced on an armed and victoriousparty! If, after the 10th of August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the9th of Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendémiaire, or after the arrests ofFructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of the conquered,with what contempt, with what derision, would its award have been received! Thejudges would have lost their heads, or would have been sent to die in someunwholesome colony. The fate of the victim whom they had endeavoured to savewould only have been made darker and more hopeless by their interference. We havelately seen a signal proof that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. Wehave seen a government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itselfto the authority of a court of law. A just and independent sentence has beenpronounced—a sentence worthy of the ancient renown of that magistracy to whichbelong the noblest recollections of French history—which, in an age of persecutors,produced L’Hôpital,—which, in an age of courtiers, produced D’Aguesseau—which,in an age of wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtuein the life and in the death of Malesherbes. The respectful manner in which thatsentence has been received is alone sufficient to show how widely the French of thisgeneration differ from their fathers. And how is the difference to be explained? Therace, the soil, the climate, are the same. If those dull, honest Englishmen, who explainthe events of 1793 and 1794 by saying that the French are naturally frivolous andcruel, were in the right, why is the guillotine now standing idle? Not surely for wantof Carlists, of aristocrats, of people guilty of incivism, of people suspected of beingsuspicious characters. Is not the true explanation this, that the Frenchman of 1832 hasbeen far better governed than the Frenchman of 1789,—that his soul has never beengalled by the oppressive privileges of a separate caste,—that he has been in somedegree accustomed to discuss political questions, and to perform political



functions,—that he has lived for seventeen or eighteen years under institutions which,however defective, have yet been far superior to any institutions that had beforeexisted in France?

As the second French Revolution has been far milder than the first, so that greatchange which has just been effected in England has been milder even than the secondFrench Revolution,—milder than any revolution recorded in history. Some oratorshave described the reform of the House of Commons as a revolution. Others, havedenied the propriety of the term. The question, though in seeming merely a questionof definition, suggests much curious and interesting matter for reflection. If we look atthe magnitude of the reform, it may well be called a revolution. If we look at themeans by which it has been effected, it is merely an act of Parliament, regularlybrought in, read, committed, and passed. In the whole history of England, there is noprouder circumstance than this,—that a change, which could not, in any other age, orin any other country, have been effected without physical violence, should here havebeen effected by the force of reason, and under the forms of law. The work of threecivil wars has been accomplished by three sessions of Parliament. An ancient anddeeply rooted system of abuses has been fiercely attacked and stubbornly defended. Ithas fallen; and not one sword has been drawn; not one estate has been confiscated; notone family has been forced to emigrate. The bank has kept its credit. The funds havekept their price. Every man has gone forth to his work and to his labour till theevening. During the fiercest excitement of the contest,—during the first fortnight ofthat immortal May,—there was not one moment at which any sanguinary actcommitted on the person of any of the most unpopular men in England would nothave filled the country with horror and indignation.

And, now that the victory is won, has it been abused? An immense mass of power hasbeen transferred from an oligarchy to the nation. Are the members of the vanquishedoligarchy insecure? Does the nation seem disposed to play the tyrant? Are not thosewho, in any other state of society, would have been visited with the severestvengeance of the triumphant party,—would have been pining in dungeons, or flyingto foreign countries,—still enjoying their possessions and their honours, still takingpart as freely as ever in public affairs? Two years ago they were dominant. They arenow vanquished. Yet the whole people would regard with horror any man who shoulddare to propose any vindictive measure. So common is this feeling,—so much is it amatter of course among us,—that many of our readers will scarcely understand whatwe see to admire in it.

To what are we to attribute the unparalleled moderation and humanity which theEnglish people have displayed at this great conjuncture? The answer is plain. Thismoderation, this humanity, are the fruits of a hundred and fifty years of liberty.During many generations we have had legislative assemblies which, howeverdefective their constitution might be, have always contained many members chosenby the people, and many others eager to obtain the approbation of thepeople;—assemblies in which perfect freedom of debate was allowed;—assemblies inwhich the smallest minority had a fair hearing;—assemblies in which abuses, evenwhen they were not redressed, were at least exposed. For many generations we havehad the trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, the freedom of the press, the right of



meeting to discuss public affairs, the right of petitioning the legislature. A vast portionof the population has long been accustomed to the exercise of political functions, andhas been thoroughly seasoned to political excitement. In most other countries there isno middle course between absolute submission and open rebellion. In England therehas always been for centuries a constitutional opposition. Thus our institutions hadbeen so good that they had educated us into a capacity for better institutions. There isnot a large town in the kingdom which does not contain better materials for alegislature than all France could furnish in 1789. There is not a spouting-club at anypot-house in London in which the rules of debate are not better understood, and morestrictly observed, than in the Constituent Assembly. There is scarcely a PoliticalUnion which could not frame in half an hour a declaration of rights superior to thatwhich occupied the collective wisdom of France for several months.

It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French Revolutionwithin the limits to which we must confine ourselves. One thing is clear. Thegovernment, the aristocracy, and the church, were rewarded after their works. Theyreaped that which they had sown. They found the nation such as they had made it.That the people had become possessed of irresistible power before they had attainedthe slightest knowledge of the art of government—that practical questions of vastmoment were left to be solved by men to whom politics had been only matter oftheory—that a legislature was composed of persons who were scarcely fit to composea debating society—that the whole nation was ready to lend an ear to any flattererwho appealed to its cupidity, to its fears, or to its thirst for vengeance—all this wasthe effect of misrule, obstinately continued in defiance of solemn warnings, and of thevisible signs of an approaching retribution.

Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy state, the causesof that great destruction had already begun to operate. They may be distinctly tracedeven under the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which theUltra-Royalists refer as the Golden Age of France. It was in truth one of those periodswhich shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly followedby gloom and decay.

Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have formed acorrect judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but hewas, in one sense of the words, a great king. Never was there so consummate a masterof what our James the First would have called king-craft,—of all those arts whichmost advantageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide hisdefects. Though his internal administration was bad,—though the military triumphswhich gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not achieved byhimself,—though his later years were crowded with defeats andhumiliations,—though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood the Latin of hismass-book,—though he fell under the control of a cunning Jesuit and of a morecunning old woman,—he succeeded in passing himself off on his people as a beingabove humanity. And this is the more extraordinary, because he did not secludehimself from the public gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen,and whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no manis a hero to his valet;—and all the world saw as much of Louis the Fourteenth as his



valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on hisbreeches in the morning. He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said hisprayer, while the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence,—theecclesiastics on their knees, and the laymen with their hats before their faces. Hewalked about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. AllVersailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in the midst of acrowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in the morning. He took his veryemetics in state, and vomited majestically in the presence of all the grandes andpetites entrées. Yet, though he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze insituations in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personaldignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe andreverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can be compared onlyto those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the season ofcourtship. It was an illusion which affected even the senses. The contemporaries ofLouis thought him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived withsome of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of hismajestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was rather below thanabove the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of walking,a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of themultitude. Eighty years after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by therevolutionists; his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared thatthe prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled, was in truth alittle man.* That fine expression of Juvenal is singularly applicable, both in its literaland in its metaphorical sense, to Louis the Fourteenth:

“Mors sola fateturQuantula sint hominum corpuscula.”

His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of making bothappear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence that both were below theordinary standard. Death and time have exposed both the deceptions. The body of thegreat king has been measured more justly than it was measured by the courtiers whowere afraid to look above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized bymen free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Molière. In the grave, the mostmajestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero and the politiciandwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant,—the slave of priests and women,—little inwar,—little in government,—little in everything but the art of simulating greatness.

He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a beaten and humbledarmy, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment and persecution, factionsdividing the court, a schism raging in the church, an immense debt, an empty treasury,immeasurable palaces, an innumerable household, inestimable jewels and furniture.All the sap and nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloatedand unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidlyflourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached the people tothe monarchy had lost strength during his reign. He had neglected or sacrificed theirdearest interests; but he had struck their imaginations. The very things which ought tohave made him most unpopular,—the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with



which his person was surrounded, while, beyond the inclosure of his parks, nothingwas to be seen but starvation and despair,—seemed to increase the respectfulattachment which his subjects felt for him. That governments exist only for the goodof the people, appears to be the most obvious and simple of all truths. Yet historyproves that it is one of the most recondite. We can scarcely wonder that it should beso seldom present to the minds of rulers, when we see how slowly, and through howmuch suffering, nations arrive at the knowledge of it.

There was indeed one Frenchman who had discovered those principles which it nowseems impossible to miss,—that the many are not made for the use of one, — that thetruly good government is not that which concentrates magnificence in a court, but thatwhich diffuses happiness among a people, — that a king who gains victory aftervictory, and adds province to province, may deserve, not the admiration, but theabhorrence and contempt of mankind. These were the doctrines which Fénélon taught.Considered as an epic poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above Glover’sLeonidas or Wilkie’s Epigoniad. Considered as a treatise on politics and morals, itabounds with errors of detail; and the truths which it inculcates seem trite to a modernreader. But, if we compare the spirit in which it is written with the spirit whichpervades the rest of the French literature of that age, we shall perceive that, though inappearance trite, it was in truth one of the most original works that have everappeared. The fundamental principles of Fénélon’s political morality, the tests bywhich he judged of institutions and of men, were absolutely new to his countrymen.He had taught them indeed, with the happiest effect, to his royal pupil. But howincomprehensible they were to most people, we learn from Saint Simon. Thatamusing writer tells us, as a thing almost incredible, that the Duke of Burgundydeclared it to be his opinion that kings existed for the good of the people, and not thepeople for the good of kings. Saint Simon is delighted with the benevolence of thissaying; but startled by its novelty, and terrified by its boldness. Indeed he distinctlysays that it was not safe to repeat the sentiment in the court of Louis. Saint Simonwas, of all the members of that court, the least courtly. He was as nearly anoppositionist as any man of his time. His disposition was proud, bitter, and cynical. Inreligion he was a Jansenist; in politics, a less hearty royalist than most of hisneighbours. His opinions and his temper had preserved him from the illusions whichthe demeanour of Louis produced on others. He neither loved nor respected the king.Yet even this man, — one of the most liberal men in France, — was struck dumb withastonishment at hearing the fundamental axiom of all government propounded,—anaxiom which, in our time, nobody in England or France would dispute, — which thestoutest Tory takes for granted as much as the fiercest Radical, and concerning whichthe Carlist would agree with the most republican deputy of the “extreme left.” Noperson will do justice to Fénélon, who does not constantly keep in mind thatTelemachus was written in an age and nation in which bold and independent thinkersstared to hear that twenty millions of human beings did not exist for the gratificationof one. That work is commonly considered as a school-book, very fit for children,because its style is easy and its morality blameless, but unworthy of the attention ofstatesmen and philosophers. We can distinguish in it, if we are not greatly mistaken,the first faint dawn of a long and splendid day of intellectual light, — the dim promiseof a great deliverance, — the undeveloped germ of the charter and of the code.



What mighty interests were staked on the life of the Duke of Burgundy! and howdifferent an aspect might the history of France have borne if he had attained the age ofhis grandfather or of his son; — if he had been permitted to show how much could bedone for humanity by the highest virtue in the highest fortune! There is scarcelyanything in history more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of thatextraordinary man. The fierce and impetuous temper which he showed in early youth,— the complete change which a judicious education produced in his character, — hisfervid piety,—his large benevolence, — the strictness with which he judged himself,— the liberality with which he judged others, — the fortitude with which alone, in thewhole court, he stood up against the commands of Louis, when a religious scruplewas concerned, — the charity with which alone, in the whole court, he defended theprofligate Orleans against calumniators, — his great projects for the good of thepeople, — his activity in business, — his taste for letters, — his strong domesticattachments,—even the ungraceful person and the shy and awkward manner whichconcealed from the eyes of the sneering courtiers of his grandfather so many rareendowments,—make his character the most interesting that is to be found in theannals of his house. He had resolved, if he came to the throne, to disperse thatostentatious court, which was supported at an expense ruinous to the nation, — topreserve peace, — to correct the abuses which were found in every part of the systemof revenue, — to abolish or modify oppressive privileges, — to reform theadministration of justice, — to revive the institution of the States General. If he hadruled over France during forty or fifty years, that great movement of the human mind,which no government could have arrested, which bad government only rendered moreviolent, would, we are inclined to think, have been conducted, by peaceable means, toa happy termination.

Disease and sorrow removed from the world that wisdom and virtue of which it wasnot worthy. During two generations France was ruled by men who, with all the vicesof Louis the Fourteenth, had none of the art by which that magnificent prince passedoff his vices for virtues. The people had now to see tyranny naked. That foul Duessawas stripped of her gorgeous ornaments. She had always been hideous; but a strangeenchantment had made her seem fair and glorious in the eyes of her willing slaves.The spell was now broken; the deformity was made manifest; and the lovers, lately sohappy and so proud, turned away loathing and horror-struck.

First came the Regency. The strictness, with which Louis had, towards the close of hislife, exacted from those around him an outward attention to religious duties, producedan effect similar to that which the rigour of the Puritans had produced in England. Itwas the boast of Madame de Maintenon, in the time of her greatness, that devotionhad become the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and, like a fashion, it passed away.The austerity of the tyrant’s old age had injured the morality of the higher orders morethan even the licentiousness of his youth. Not only had he not reformed their vices,but, by forcing them to be hypocrites, he had shaken their belief in virtue. They hadfound it so easy to perform the grimace of piety, that it was natural for them toconsider all piety as grimace. The times were changed. Pensions, regiments, andabbeys, were no longer to be obtained by regular confession and severe penance; andthe obsequious courtiers, who had kept Lent like monks of La Trappe, and who hadturned up the whites of their eyes at the edifying parts of sermons preached before the



king, aspired to the title of roué as ardently as they had aspired to that of dévot; andwent, during Passion Week, to the revels of the Palais Royal as readily as they hadformerly repaired to the sermons of Massillon.

The Regent was in many respects the fac-simile of our Charles the Second. LikeCharles, he was a good-natured man, utterly destitute of sensibility. Like Charles, hehad good natural talents, which a deplorable indolence rendered useless to the state.Like Charles, he thought all men corrupt and interested, and yet did not dislike themfor being so. His opinion of human nature was Gulliver’s; but he did not regardhuman nature with Gulliver’s horror. He thought that he and his fellow-creatures wereYahoos; and he thought a Yahoo a very agreeable kind of animal. No princes wereever more social than Charles and Philip of Orleans; yet no princes ever had lesscapacity for friendship. The tempers of these clever cynics were so easy, and theirminds so languid, that habit supplied in them the place of affection, and made themthe tools of people for whom they cared not one straw. In love, both were meresensualists without delicacy or tenderness. In politics, both were utterly careless offaith and of national honour. Charles shut up the Exchequer. Philip patronised theSystem. The councils of Charles were swayed by the gold of Barillon; the councils ofPhilip by the gold of Walpole. Charles for private objects made war on Holland, thenatural ally of England. Philip for private objects made war on the Spanish branch ofthe house of Bourbon, the natural ally, indeed the creature, of France. Even in triflingcircumstances the parallel might be carried on. Both these princes were fond ofexperimental philosophy, and passed in the laboratory much time which would havebeen more advantageously passed at the council-table. Both were more stronglyattached to their female relatives than to any other human being; and in both cases itwas suspected that this attachment was not perfectly innocent. In personal courage,and in all the virtues which are connected with personal courage, the Regent wasindisputably superior to Charles. Indeed Charles but narrowly escaped the stain ofcowardice. Philip was eminently brave, and, like most brave men, was generally openand sincere. Charles added dissimulation to his other vices.

The administration of the Regent was scarcely less pernicious, and infinitely morescandalous, than that of the deceased monarch. It was by magnificent public works,and by wars conducted on a gigantic scale, that Louis had brought distress on hispeople. The Regent aggravated that distress by frauds of which a lame duck on thestock-exchange would have been ashamed. France, even while suffering under themost severe calamities, had reverenced the conqueror. She despised the swindler.

When Orleans and the wretched Dubois had disappeared, the power passed to theDuke of Bourbon; a prince degraded in the public eye by the infamously lucrative partwhich he had taken in the juggles of the System, and by the humility with which hebore the caprices of a loose and imperious woman. It seemed to be decreed that everybranch of the royal family should successively incur the abhorrence and contempt ofthe nation.

Between the fall of the Duke of Bourbon and the death of Fleury, a few years offrugal and moderate government intervened. Then recommenced the downwardprogress of the monarchy. Profligacy in the court, extravagance in the finances,



schism in the church, faction in the Parliaments, unjust war terminated byignominious peace,—all that indicates and all that produces the ruin of great empires,make up the history of that miserable period. Abroad, the French were beaten andhumbled every where, by land and by sea, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia andin America. At home, they were turned over from vizier to vizier, and from sultana tosultana, till they had reached that point beneath which there was no lower abyss ofinfamy,—till the yoke of Maupeou had made them pine for Choiseul,—till Madamedu Barri had taught them to regret Madame de Pompadour.

But, unpopular as the monarchy had become, the aristocracy was more unpopularstill;—and not without reason. The tyranny of an individual is far more supportablethan the tyranny of a caste. The old privileges were galling and hateful to the newwealth and the new knowledge. Every thing indicated the approach of no commonrevolution,—of a revolution destined to change, not merely the form of government,but the distribution of property and the whole social system,—of a revolution theeffects of which were to be felt at every fireside in France,—of a new Jaquerie, inwhich the victory was to remain with Jaques bonhomme. In the van of the movementwere the moneyed men and the men of letters,—the wounded pride of wealth, and thewounded pride of intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel byoppression, was raging in the rear.

We greatly doubt whether any course which could have been pursued by Louis theSixteenth could have averted a great convulsion. But we are sure that, if there wassuch a course, it was the course recommended by M. Turgot. The church and thearistocracy, with that blindness to danger, that incapacity of believing that any thingcan be except what has been, which the long possession of power seldom fails togenerate, mocked at the counsel which might have saved them. They would not havereform; and they had revolution. They would not pay a small contribution in place ofthe odious corvées; and they lived to see their castles demolished, and their lands soldto strangers. They would not endure Turgot; and they were forced to endureRobespierre.

Then the rulers of France, as if smitten with judicial blindness, plunged headlong intothe American war. They thus committed at once two great errors. They encouragedthe spirit of revolution. They augmented at the same time those public burdens, thepressure of which is generally the immediate cause of revolutions. The event of thewar carried to the height the enthusiasm of speculative democrats. The financialdifficulties produced by the war carried to the height the discontent of that larger bodyof people who cared little about theories, and much about taxes.

The meeting of the States-General was the signal for the explosion of all the hoardedpassions of a century. In that assembly, there were undoubtedly very able men. Butthey had no practical knowledge of the art of government. All the great Englishrevolutions have been conducted by practical statesmen. The French Revolution wasconducted by mere speculators. Our constitution has never been so far behind the ageas to have become an object of aversion to the people. The English revolutions havetherefore been undertaken for the purpose of defending, correcting, andrestoring,—never for the mere purpose of destroying. Our countrymen have always,



even in times of the greatest excitement, spoken reverently of the form of governmentunder which they lived, and attacked only what they regarded as its corruptions. In thevery act of innovating they have constantly appealed to ancient preseription; theyhave seldom looked abroad for models; they have seldom troubled themselves withUtopian theories; they have not been anxious to prove that liberty is a natural right ofmen; they have been content to regard it as the lawful birthright of Englishmen. Theirsocial contract is no fiction. It is still extant on the original parchment, sealed withwax which was affixed at Runnymede, and attested by the lordly names of theMarischals and Fitzherberts. No general arguments about the original equality of men,no fine stories out of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, have ever affected them so muchas their own familiar words, — Magna Charta, — Habeas Corpus,—Trial byJury,—Bill of Rights. This part of our national character has undoubtedly itsdisadvantages. An Englishman too often reasons on politics in the spirit rather of alawyer than of a philosopher. There is too often something narrow, somethingexclusive, something Jewish, if we may use the word, in his love of freedom. He isdisposed to consider popular rights as the special heritage of the chosen race to whichhe belongs. He is inclined rather to repel than to encourage the alien proselyte whoaspires to a share of his privileges. Very different was the spirit of the ConstituentAssembly. They had none of our narrowness; but they had none of our practical skillin the management of affairs. They did not understand how to regulate the order oftheir own debates; and they thought themselves able to legislate for the whole world.All the past was loathsome to them. All their agreeable associations were connectedwith the future. Hopes were to them all that recollections are to us. In the institutionsof their country they found nothing to love or to admire. As far back as they couldlook, they saw only the tyranny of one class and the degradation of another,—Frankand Gaul, knight and villein, gentleman and roturier. They hated the monarchy, thechurch, the nobility. They cared nothing for the States or the Parliament. It was longthe fashion to ascribe all the follies which they committed to the writings of thephilosophers. We believe that it was misrule, and nothing but misrule, that put thesting into those writings. It is not true that the French abandoned experience fortheories. They took up with theories because they had no experience of goodgovernment. It was because they had no charter that they ranted about the originalcontract. As soon as tolerable institutions were given to them, they began to look tothose institutions. In 1830 their rallying cry was Vive la Charte. In 1789 they hadnothing but theories round which to rally. They had seen social distinctions only in abad form; and it was therefore natural that they should be deluded by sophisms aboutthe equality of men. They had experienced so much evil from the sovereignty of kingsthat they might be excused for lending a ready ear to those who preached, in anexaggerated form, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people.

The English, content with their own national recollections and names, have neversought for models in the institutions of Greece or Rome. The French, having nothingin their own history to which they could look back with pleasure, had recourse to thehistory of the great ancient commonwealths: they drew their notions of thosecommonwealths, not from contemporary writers, but from romances written bypedantic moralists long after the extinction of public liberty. They neglectedThucydides for Plutarch. Blind themselves, they took blind guides. They had noexperience of freedom; and they took their opinions concerning it from men who had



no more experience of it than themselves, and whose imaginations, inflamed bymystery and privation, exaggerated the unknown enjoyment; — from men who ravedabout patriotism without having ever had a country, and eulogised tyrannicide whilecrouching before tyrants. The maxim which the French legislators learned in thisschool was, that political liberty is an end, and not a means; that it is not merelyvaluable as the great safeguard of order, of property, and of morality, but that it is initself a high and exquisite happiness to which order, property, and morality oughtwithout one scruple to be sacrificed. The lessons which may be learned from ancienthistory are indeed most useful and important; but they were not likely to be learned bymen who, in all their rhapsodies about the Athenian democracy, seemed utterly toforget that in that democracy there were ten slaves to one citizen; and who constantlydecorated their invectives against the aristocrats with panegyrics on Brutus and Cato,— two aristocrats, fiercer, prouder, and more exclusive, than any that emigrated withthe Count of Artois.

We have never met with so vivid and interesting a picture of the National Assemblyas that which M. Dumont has set before us. His Mirabeau, in particular, isincomparable. All the former Mirabeaus were daubs in comparison. Some weremerely painted from the imagination — others were gross caricatures: this is the veryindividual, neither god nor demon, but a man — a Frenchman, — a Frenchman of theeighteenth century, with great talents, with strong passions, depraved by badeducation, surrounded by temptations of every kind, — made desperate at one time bydisgrace, and then again intoxicated by fame. All his opposite and seeminglyinconsistent qualities are in this representation so blended together as to make up aharmonious and natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau was to us, and, we believe, to mostreaders of history, not a man, but a string of antitheses. Henceforth he will be a realhuman being, a remarkable and eccentric being indeed, but perfectly conceivable.

He was fond, M. Dumont tells us, of giving odd compound nicknames. Thus, M. deLafayette was Grandison-Cromwell; the King of Prussia was Alaric-Cottin;D’Espremenil was Crispin-Catiline. We think that Mirabeau himself might bedescribed, after his own fashion, as a Wilkes-Chatham. He had Wilkes’s sensuality,Wilkes’s levity, Wilkes’s insensibility to shame. Like Wilkes, he had brought onhimself the censure even of men of pleasure by the peculiar grossness of hisimmorality, and by the obscenity of his writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, notonly of the laws of morality, but of the laws of honour. Yet he affected, like Wilkes,to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine gentleman. Like Wilkes, heconciliated, by his good-humour and his high spirits, the regard of many who despisedhis character. Like Wilkes, he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a jest of hisown ugliness; and, like Wilkes, he was, in spite of his ugliness, very attentive to hisdress, and very successful in affairs of gallantry.

Resembling Wilkes in the lower and grosser parts of his character, he had, in hishigher qualities, some affinity to Chatham. His eloquence, as far as we can judge of it,bore no inconsiderable resemblance to that of the great English minister. He was noteminently successful in long set speeches. He was not, on the other hand, a close andready debater. Sudden bursts, which seemed to be the effect of inspiration—shortsentences which came like lightning, dazzling, burning, striking down every thing



before them—sentences which, spoken at critical moments, decided the fate of greatquestions—sentences which at once became proverbs—sentences which everybodystill knows by heart—in these chiefly lay the oratorical power both of Chatham and ofMirabeau. There have been far greater speakers, and far greater statesmen, than eitherof them; but we doubt whether any men have, in modern times, exercised such vastpersonal influence over stormy and divided assemblies. The power of both was asmuch moral as intellectual. In true dignity of character, in private and public virtue, itmay seem absurd to institute any comparison between them; but they had the samehaughtiness and vehemence of temper. In their language and manner there was adisdainful self-confidence, an imperiousness, a fierceness of passion, before which allcommon minds quailed. Even Murray and Charles Townshend, though intellectuallynot inferior to Chatham, were always cowed by him. Barnave, in the same manner,though the best debater in the National Assembly, flinched before the energy ofMirabeau. Men, except in bad novels, are not all good or all evil. It can scarcely bedenied that the virtue of Lord Chatham was a little theatrical. On the other hand therewas in Mirabeau, not indeed any thing deserving the name of virtue, but thatimperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all superior minds,—asensibility to the beautiful and the good, which sometimes amounted to sincereenthusiasm; and which, mingled with the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to hischaracter a lustre resembling the lustre of true goodness,—as the “faded splendourwan” which lingered round the fallen arch-angel resembled the exceeding brightnessof those spirits who had kept their first estate.

There are several other admirable portraits of eminent men in these Memoirs. That ofSieyes in particular, and that of Talleyrand, are masterpieces, full of life andexpression. But nothing in the book has interested us more than the view which M.Dumont has presented to us, unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of hisown character. The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty,the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected indifference to moneyand to fame, make up a character which, while it has nothing unnatural, seems to us toapproach nearer to perfection than any of the Grandisons and Allworthys of fiction.The work is not indeed precisely such a work as we had anticipated—it is more lively,more picturesque, more amusing than we had promised ourselves; and it is, on theother hand, less profound and philosophic. But, if it is not, in all respects, such asmight have been expected from the intellect of M. Dumont, it is assuredly such asmight have been expected from his heart.




BARÈRE. (April 1844.)

Mémoires de Bertrand Barère; publiés par MM. Hippolyte Carnot, Membre de laChambre des Députés, et David d’Angers, Membre de l’Institut: précédés d’uneNotice Historique par H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843.

This book has more than one title to our serious attention. It is an appeal, solemnlymade to posterity by a man who played a conspicuous part in great events, and whorepresents himself as deeply aggrieved by the rash and malevolent censure of hiscontemporaries. To such an appeal we shall always give ready audience. We canperform no duty more useful to society, or more agreeable to our own feelings, thanthat of making, as far as our power extends, reparation to the slandered and persecutedbenefactors of mankind. We therefore promptly took into our consideration thiscopious apology for the life of Bertrand Barère. We have made up our minds; and wenow purpose to do him, by the blessing of God, full and signal justice.

It is to be observed that the appellant in this case does not come into court alone. He isattended to the bar of public opinion by two compurgators who occupy highlyhonourable stations. One of these is M. David of Angers, member of the Institute, aneminent sculptor, and, if we have been rightly informed, a favourite pupil, though nota kinsman, of the painter who bore the same name. The other, to whom we owe thebiographical preface, is M. Hippolyte Carnot, member of the Chamber of Deputies,and son of the celebrated Director. In the judgment of M. David and of M. HippolyteCarnot, Barère was a deserving and an ill-used man, a man who, though by no meansfaultless, must yet, when due allowance is made for the force of circumstances and theinfirmity of human nature, be considered as on the whole entitled to our esteem. Itwill be for the public to determine, after a full hearing, whether the editors have, bythus connecting their names with that of Barère, raised his character or lowered theirown.

We are not conscious that, when we opened this book, we were under the influence ofany feeling likely to pervert our judgment. Undoubtedly we had long entertained amost unfavourable opinion of Barère; but to this opinion we were not tied by anypassion or by any interest. Our dislike was a reasonable dislike, and might have beenremoved by reason. Indeed our expectation was, that these Memoirs would in somemeasure clear Barère’s fame. That he could vindicate himself from all the chargeswhich had been brought against him, we knew to be impossible; and his editors admitthat he has not done so. But we thought it highly probable that some grave accusationswould be refuted, and that many offences to which he would have been forced toplead guilty would be greatly extenuated. We were not disposed to be severe. Wewere fully aware that temptations such as those to which the members of theConvention and of the Committee of Public Safety were exposed must try severelythe strength of the firmest virtue. Indeed our inclination has always been to regardwith an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears excessive, those faults intowhich gentle and noble spirits are sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, bythe maddening influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal for a public cause.



With such feelings we read this book, and compared it with other accounts of theevents in which Barère bore a part. It is now our duty to express the opinion to whichthis investigation has led us.

Our opinion then is this: that Barère approached nearer than any person mentioned inhistory or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universaldepravity. In him the qualities which are the proper objects of hatred, and the qualitieswhich are the proper objects of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absoluteharmony. In almost every particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. Hissensuality was immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many greatand amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he, some as cruel, a fewas mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great liars, though we nevermet with them or read of them. But when we put every thing together, sensuality,poltroonery, baseness, effrontery, mendacity, barbarity, the result is something whichin a novel we should condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, noparallel can be found in history.

It would be grossly unjust, we acknowledge, to try a man situated as Barère was by asevere standard. Nor have we done so. We have formed our opinion of him bycomparing him, not with politicians of stainless character, not with ChancellorD’Aguesseau, or General Washington, or Mr. Wilberforce, or Earl Grey, but with hisown colleagues of the Mountain. That party included a considerable number of theworst men that ever lived; but we see in it nothing like Barère. Compared with him,Fouché seems honest; Billaud seems humane; Hébert seems to rise into dignity. Everyother chief of a party, says M. Hippolyte Carnot, has found apologists: one set of menexalts the Girondists; another set justifies Danton; a third deifies Robespierre: butBarère has remained without a defender. We venture to suggest a very simple solutionof this phenomenon. All the other chiefs of parties had some good qualities; andBarère had none. The genius, courage, patriotism, and humanity of the Girondiststatesmen more than atoned for what was culpable in their conduct, and should haveprotected them from the insult of being compared with such a thing as Barère. Dantonand Robespierre were indeed bad men; but in both of them some important parts ofthe mind remained sound. Danton was brave and resolute, fond of pleasure, of power,and of distinction, with vehement passions, with lax principles, but with some kindand manly feelings, capable of great crimes, but capable also of friendship and ofcompassion. He, therefore, naturally finds admirers among persons of bold andsanguine dispositions. Robespierre was a vain, envious, and suspicious man, with ahard heart, weak nerves, and a gloomy temper. But we cannot with truth deny that hewas, in the vulgar sense of the word, disinterested, that his private life was correct, orthat he was sincerely zealous for his own system of politics and morals. He, therefore,naturally finds admirers among honest but moody and bitter democrats. If no class hastaken the reputation of Barère under its patronage, the reason is plain: Barère had nota single virtue, nor even the semblance of one.

It is true that he was not, as far as we are able to judge, originally of a savagedisposition; but this circumstance seems to us only to aggravate his guilt. There aresome unhappy men constitutionally prone to the darker passions, men all whose bloodis gall, and to whom bitter words and harsh actions are as natural as snarling and



biting to a ferocious dog. To come into the world with this wretched mental disease isa greater calamity than to be born blind or deaf. A man who, having such a temper,keeps it in subjection, and constrains himself to behave habitually with justice andhumanity towards those who are in his power, seems to us worthy of the highestadmiration. There have been instances of this self-command; and they are among themost signal triumphs of philosophy and religion. On the other hand, a man who,having been blessed by nature with a bland disposition, gradually brings himself toinflict misery on his fellow-creatures with indifference, with satisfaction, and atlength with a hideous rapture, deserves to be regarded as a portent of wickedness; andsuch a man was Barère. The history of his downward progress is full of instruction.Weakness, cowardice, and fickleness were born with him; the best quality which hereceived from nature was a good temper. These, it is true, are not very promisingmaterials; yet, out of materials as unpromising, high sentiments of piety and of honourhave sometimes made martyrs and heroes. Rigid principles often do for feeble mindswhat stays do for feeble bodies. But Barère had no principles at all. His character wasequally destitute of natural and of acquired strength. Neither in the commerce of life,nor in books, did we ever become acquainted with any mind so unstable, so utterlydestitute of tone, so incapable of independent thought and earnest preference, so readyto take impressions and so ready to lose them. He resembled those creepers whichmust lean on something, and which, as soon as their prop is removed, fall down inutter helplessness. He could no more stand up, erect and selfsupported, in any cause,than the ivy can rear itself like the oak, or the wild vine shoot to heaven like the cedarof Lebanon. It is barely possible that, under good guidance and in favourablecircumstances, such a man might have slipped through life without discredit. But theunseaworthy craft, which even in still water would have been in danger of goingdown from its own rottenness, was launched on a raging ocean, amidst a storm inwhich a whole armada of gallant ships was cast away. The weakest and most servileof human beings found himself on a sudden an actor in a Revolution which convulsedthe whole civilised world. At first he fell under the influence of humane and moderatemen, and talked the language of humanity and moderation. But he soon found himselfsurrounded by fierce and resolute spirits, scared by no danger and restrained by noscruple. He had to choose whether he would be their victim or their accomplice. Hischoice was soon made. He tasted blood, and felt no loathing: he tasted it again, andliked it well. Cruelty became with him, first a habit, then a passion, at last a madness.So complete and rapid was the degeneracy of his nature, that, within a very fewmonths after the time when he had passed for a good-natured man, he had broughthimself to look on the despair and misery of his fellow-creatures with a gleeresembling that of the fiends whom Dante saw watching the pool of seething pitch inMalebolge. He had many associates in guilt; but he distinguished himself from themall by the Bacchanalian exultation which he seemed to feel in the work of death. Hewas drunk with innocent and noble blood, laughed and shouted as he butchered, andhowled strange songs and reeled in strange dances amidst the carnage. Then came asudden and violent turn of fortune. The miserable man was hurled down from theheight of power to hopeless ruin and infamy. The shock sobered him at once. Thefumes of his horrible intoxication passed away. But he was now so irrecoverablydepraved that the discipline of adversity only drove him further into wickedness.Ferocious vices, of which he had never been suspected, had been developed in him bypower. Another class of vices, less hateful perhaps, but more despicable, was now



developed in him by poverty and disgrace. Having appalled the whole world by greatcrimes perpetrated under the pretence of zeal for liberty, he became the meanest of allthe tools of despotism. It is not easy to settle the order of precedence among his vices;but we are inclined to think that his baseness was, on the whole, a rarer and moremarvellous thing than his cruelty.

This is the view which we have long taken of Barère’s character; but, till we readthese Memoirs, we held our opinion with the diffidence which becomes a judge whohas only heard one side. The case seemed strong, and in parts unanswerable: yet wedid not know what the accused party might have to say for himself; and, not beingmuch inclined to take our fellow-creatures either for angels of light or for angels ofdarkness, we could not but feel some suspicion that his offences had beenexaggerated. That suspicion is now at an end. The vindication is before us. It occupiesfour volumes. It was the work of forty years. It would be absurd to suppose that itdoes not refute every serious charge which admitted of refutation. How many seriouscharges, then, are here refuted? Not a single one. Most of the imputations which havebeen thrown on Barère he does not even notice. In such cases, of course, judgmentmust go against him by default. The fact is, that nothing can be more meagre anduninteresting than his account of the great public transactions in which he wasengaged. He gives us hardly a word of new information respecting the proceedings ofthe Committee of Public Safety; and, by way of compensation, tells us long storiesabout things which happened before he emerged from obscurity, and after he hadagain sunk into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to write trifles, he beginsto write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been within the tropics does notknow what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but afaint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barère’s Memoirs may be said not toknow what it is to lie. Among the numerous classes which make up the great genusMendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during some centuries,been highly esteemed as peculiarly circumstantial and peculiarly impudent; and,among the Mendacia Vasconica, the Mendacium Barerianum is, without doubt, thefinest species. It is indeed a superb variety, and quite throws into the shade someMendacia which we were used to regard with admiration. The MendaciumWraxallianum, for example, though by no means to be despised, will not sustain thecomparison for a moment. Seriously, we think that M. Hippolyte Carnot is much toblame in this matter. We can hardly suppose him to be worse read than ourselves inthe history of the Convention, a history which must interest him deeply, not only as aFrenchman, but also as a son. He must, therefore, be perfectly aware that many of themost important statements which these volumes contain are falsehoods, such asCorneille’s Dorante, or Molière’s Scapin, or Colin d’Harleville’s Monsieur de Cracwould have been ashamed to utter. We are far, indeed, from holding M. HippolyteCarnot answerable for Barère’s want of veracity; but M. Hippolyte Carnot hasarranged these Memoirs, has introduced them to the world by a laudatory preface, hasdescribed them as documents of great historical value, and has illustrated them bynotes. We cannot but think that, by acting thus, he contracted some obligations ofwhich he does not seem to have been at all aware; and that he ought not to havesuffered any monstrous fiction to go forth under the sanction of his name, withoutadding a line at the foot of the page for the purpose of cautioning the reader.



We will content ourselves at present with pointing out two instances of Barère’swilful and deliberate mendacity; namely, his account of the death of Marie Antoinette,and his account of the death of the Girondists. His account of the death of MarieAntoinette is as follows:—“Robespierre in his turn proposed that the members of theCapet family should be banished, and that Marie Antoinette should be brought to trialbefore the Revolutionary Tribunal. He would have been better employed in concertingmilitary measures which might have repaired our disasters in Belgium, and mighthave arrested the progress of the enemies of the Revolution in the west.”—(Vol. ii. p.312.)

Now, it is notorious that Marie Antoinette was sent before the RevolutionaryTribunal, not at Robespierre’s instance, but in direct opposition to Robespierre’swishes. We will cite a single authority, which is quite decisive. Bonaparte, who hadno conceivable motive to disguise the truth, who had the best opportunities ofknowing the truth, and who, after his marriage with the Archduchess, naturally felt aninterest in the fate of his wife’s kinswoman, distinctly affirmed that Robespierreopposed the trying of the Queen.* Who, then, was the person who really did proposethat the Capet family should be banished, and that Marie Antoinette should be tried?Full information will be found in the Moniteur.† From that valuable record it appearsthat, on the first of August 1793, an orator, deputed by the Committee of PublicSafety, addressed the Convention in a long and elaborate discourse. He asked, inpassionate language, how it happened that the enemies of the republic still continuedto hope for success. “Is it,” he cried, “because we have too long forgotten the crimesof the Austrian woman? Is it because we have shown so strange an indulgence to therace of our ancient tyrants? It is time that this unwise apathy should cease; it is time toextirpate from the soil of the Republic the last roots of royalty. As for the children ofLouis the conspirator, they are hostages for the Republic. The charge of theirmaintenance shall be reduced to what is necessary for the food and keep of twoindividuals. The public treasure shall no longer be lavished on creatures who have toolong been considered as privileged. But behind them lurks a woman who has been thecause of all the disasters of France, and whose share in every project adverse to therevolution has long been known. National justice claims its rights over her. It is to thetribunal appointed for the trial of conspirators that she ought to be sent. It is only bystriking the Austrian woman that you can make Francis and George, Charles andWilliam, sensible of the crimes which their ministers and their armies havecommitted.” The speaker concluded by moving that Marie Antoinette should bebrought to judgment, and should, for that end, be forthwith transferred to theConciergerie; and that all the members of the house of Capet, with the exception ofthose who were under the sword of the law, and of the two children of Louis, shouldbe banished from the French territory. The motion was carried without debate.

Now, who was the person who made this speech and this motion? It was Barèrehimself. It is clear, then, that Barère attributed his own mean insolence and barbarityto one who, whatever his crimes may have been, was in this matter innocent. The onlyquestion remaining is, whether Barère was misled by his memory, or wrote adeliberate falsehood.



We are convinced that he wrote a deliberate falsehood. His memory is described byhis editors as remarkably good, and must have been bad indeed if he could notremember such a fact as this. It is true that the number of murders in which hesubsequently bore a part was so great that he might well confound one with another,that he might well forget what part of the daily hecatomb was consigned to death byhimself, and what part by his colleagues. But two circumstances make it quiteincredible that the share which he took in the death of Marie Antoinette should haveescaped his recollection. She was one of his earliest victims. She was one of his mostillustrious victims. The most hardened assassin remembers the first time that he shedblood; and the widow of Louis was no ordinary sufferer. If the question had beenabout some milliner, butchered for hiding in her garret her brother who had let drop aword against the Jacobin club—if the question had been about some old nun, draggedto death for having mumbled what were called fanatical words over herbeads—Barère’s memory might well have deceived him. It would be as unreasonableto expect him to remember all the wretches whom he slew as all the pinches of snuffthat he took. But, though Barère murdered many hundreds of human beings, hemurdered only one Queen. That he, a small country lawyer, who, a few years before,would have thought himself honoured by a glance or a word from the daughter of somany Cæsars, should call her the Austrian woman, should send her from jail to jail,should deliver her over to the executioner, was surely a great event in his life.Whether he had reason to be proud of it or ashamed of it, is a question on which wemay perhaps differ from his editors; but they will admit, we think, that he could nothave forgotten it.

We, therefore, confidently charge Barère with having written a deliberate falsehood;and we have no hesitation in saying that we never, in the course of any historicalresearches that we have happened to make, fell in with a falsehood so audacious,except only the falsehood which we are about to expose.

Of the proceeding against the Girondists, Barère speaks with just severity. He calls itan atrocious injustice perpetrated against the legislators of the republic. He complainsthat distinguished deputies, who ought to have been readmitted to their seats in theConvention, were sent to the scaffold as conspirators. The day, he exclaims, was a dayof mourning for France. It mutilated the national representation; it weakened thesacred principle, that the delegates of the people were inviolable. He protests that hehad no share in the guilt. “I have had,” he says, “the patience to go through theMoniteur, extracting all the charges brought against deputies, and all the decrees forarresting and impeaching deputies. Nowhere will you find my name. I never brought acharge against any of my colleagues, or made a report against any, or drew up animpeachment against any.”*

Now, we affirm that this is a lie. We affirm that Barère himself took the lead in theproceedings of the Convention against the Girondists. We affirm that he, on thetwenty-eighth of July 1793, proposed a decree for bringing nine Girondist deputies totrial, and for putting to death sixteen other Girondist deputies without any trial at all.We affirm that, when the accused deputies had been brought to trial, and when someapprehension arose that their eloquence might produce an effect even on theRevolutionary Tribunal, Barère did, on the 8th of Brumaire, second a motion for a



decree authorising the tribunal to decide without hearing out the defence; and, for thetruth of every one of these things so affirmed by us, we appeal to that very Moniteurto which Barère has dared to appeal.*

What M. Hippolyte Carnot, knowing, as he must know, that this book contains suchfalsehoods as those which we have exposed, can have meant, when he described it asa valuable addition to our stock of historical information, passes our comprehension.When a man is not ashamed to tell lies about events which took place before hundredsof witnesses, and which are recorded in well-known and accessible books, what creditcan we give to his account of things done in corners? No historian who does not wishto be laughed at will ever cite the unsupported authority of Barère as sufficient toprove any fact whatever. The only thing, as far as we can see, on which these volumesthrow any light, is the exceeding baseness of the author.

So much for the veracity of the Memoirs. In a literary point of view, they are beneathcriticism. They are as shallow, flippant, and affected, as Barère’s oratory in theConvention. They are also, what his oratory in the Convention was not, utterlyinsipid. In fact, they are the mere dregs and rinsings of a bottle of which even the firstfroth was but of very questionable flavour.

We will now try to present our readers with a sketch of this man’s life. We shall, ofcourse, make very sparing use indeed of his own Memoirs; and never without distrust,except where they are confirmed by other evidence.

Bertrand Barère was born in the year 1755, at Tarbes in Gascony. His father was theproprietor of a small estate at Vieuzac, in the beautiful vale of Argelès. Bertrandalways loved to be called Barère de Vieuzac, and flattered himself with the hope that,by the help of this feudal addition to his name, he might pass for a gentleman. He waseducated for the bar at Toulouse, the seat of one of the most celebrated parliaments ofthe kingdom, practised as an advocate with considerable success, and wrote somesmall pieces, which he sent to the principal literary societies in the south of France.Among provincial towns, Toulouse seems to have been remarkably rich in indifferentversifiers and critics. It gloried especially in one venerable institution, called theAcademy of the Floral Games. This body held every year a grand meeting, which wasa subject of intense interest to the whole city, and at which flowers of gold and silverwere given as prizes for odes, for idyls, and for something that was called eloquence.These bounties produced of course the ordinary effect of bounties, and turned peoplewho might have been thriving attorneys and useful apothecaries into small wits andbad poets. Barère does not appear to have been so lucky as to obtain any of theseprecious flowers; but one of his performances was mentioned with honour. AtMontauban he was more fortunate. The Academy of that town bestowed on himseveral prizes, one for a panegyric on Louis the Twelfth, in which the blessings ofmonarchy and the loyalty of the French nation were set forth; and another for apanegyric on poor Franc de Pompignan, in which, as may easily be supposed, thephilosophy of the eighteenth century was sharply assailed. Then Barère found an oldstone inscribed with three Latin words, and wrote a dissertation upon it, whichprocured him a seat in a learned Assembly, called the Toulouse Academy of Sciences,Inscriptions, and Polite Literature. At length the doors of the Academy of the Floral



Games were opened to so much merit. Barère, in his thirty-third year, took his seat asone of that illustrious brotherhood, and made an inaugural oration which was greatlyadmired. He apologises for recounting these triumphs of his youthful genius. We ownthat we cannot blame him for dwelling long on the least disgraceful portion of hisexistence. To send in declamations for prizes offered by provincial academies isindeed no very useful or dignified employment for a bearded man; but it would havebeen well if Barère had always been so employed.

In 1785 he married a young lady of considerable fortune. Whether she was in otherrespects qualified to make a home happy, is a point respecting which we areimperfectly informed. In a little work, entitled Melancholy Pages, which was writtenin 1797, Barère avers that his marriage was one of mere convenience, that at the altarhis heart was heavy with sorrowful forebodings, that he turned pale as he pronouncedthe solemn “Yes,” that unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks, that his mother sharedhis presentiment, and that the evil omen was accomplished. “My marriage,” he says,“was one of the most unhappy of marriages.” So romantic a tale, told by so noted aliar, did not command our belief. We were, therefore, not much surprised to discoverthat, in his Memoirs, he calls his wife a most amiable woman, and declares that, afterhe had been united to her six years, he found her as amiable as ever. He complains,indeed, that she was too much attached to royalty and to the old superstition; but heassures us that his respect for her virtues induced him to tolerate her prejudices. NowBarère, at the time of his marriage, was himself a Royalist and a Catholic. He hadgained one prize by flattering the Throne, and another by defending the Church. It ishardly possible, therefore, that disputes about politics or religion should haveembittered his domestic life till some time after he became a husband. Our own guessis, that his wife was, as he says, a virtuous and amiable woman, and that she did herbest to make him happy during some years. It seems clear that, when circumstancesdeveloped the latent atrocity of his character, she could no longer endure him, refusedto see him, and sent back his letters unopened. Then it was, we imagine, that heinvented the fable about his distress on his wedding day.

In 1788 Barère paid his first visit to Paris, attended reviews, heard Laharpe at theLycæum, and Condorcet at the Academy of Sciences, stared at the envoys of TippooSaib, saw the Royal Family dine at Versailles, and kept a journal in which he noteddown adventures and speculations. Some parts of this journal are printed in the firstvolume of the work before us, and are certainly most characteristic. The worst vicesof the writer had not yet shown themselves; but the weakness which was the parent ofthose vices appears in every line. His levity, his inconsistency, his servility, werealready what they were to the last. All his opinions, all his feelings, spin round andround like a weathercock in a whirlwind. Nay, the very impressions which he receivesthrough his senses are not the same two days together. He sees Louis the Sixteenth,and is so much blinded by loyalty as to find his Majesty handsome. “I fixed my eyes,”he says, “with a lively curiosity on his fine countenance, which I thought open andnoble.” The next time that the king appears, all is altered. His Majesty’s eyes arewithout the smallest expression; he has a vulgar laugh which seems like idiocy, anignoble figure, an awkward gait, and the look of a big boy ill brought up. It is thesame with more important questions. Barère is for the parliaments on the Monday andagainst the parliaments on the Tuesday, for feudality in the morning and against



feudality in the afternoon. One day he admires the English constitution: then heshudders to think that, in the struggles by which that constitution had been obtained,the barbarous islanders had murdered a king, and gives the preference to theconstitution of Bearn. Bearn, he says, has a sublime constitution, a beautifulconstitution. There the nobility and clergy meet in one house and the Commons inanother. If the houses differ, the King has the casting vote. A few weeks later we findhim raving against the principles of this sublime and beautiful constitution. To admitdeputies of the nobility and clergy into the legislature is, he says, neither more norless than to admit enemies of the nation into the legislature.

In this state of mind, without one settled purpose or opinion, the slave of the lastword, royalist, aristocrat, democrat, according to the prevailing sentiment of thecoffee-house or drawing-room into which he had just looked, did Barère enter intopublic life. The States-General had been summoned. Barère went down to his ownprovince, was there elected one of the representatives of the Third Estate, andreturned to Paris in May 1789.

A great crisis, often predicted, had at last arrived. In no country, we conceive, haveintellectual freedom and political servitude existed together so long as in France,during the seventy or eighty years which preceded the last convocation of the Orders.Ancient abuses and new theories flourished in equal vigour side by side. The people,having no constitutional means of checking even the most flagitious misgovernment,were indemnified for oppression by being suffered to luxuriate in anarchicalspeculation, and to deny or ridicule every principle on which the institutions of thestate reposed. Neither those who attribute the downfall of the old French institutionsto the public grievances, nor those who attribute it to the doctrines of thephilosophers, appear to us to have taken into their view more than one half of thesubject. Grievances as heavy have often been endured without producing a revolution;doctrines as bold have often been propounded without producing a revolution. Thequestion, whether the French nation was alienated from its old polity by the folliesand vices of the Viziers and Sultanas who pillaged and disgraced it, or by the writingsof Voltaire and Rousseau, seems to us as idle as the question whether it was fire orgunpowder that blew up the mills at Hounslow. Neither cause would have sufficedalone. Tyranny may last through ages where discussion is suppressed. Discussion maysafely be left free by rulers who act on popular principles. But combine a press likethat of London with a government like that of St. Petersburg; and the inevitable effectwill be an explosion that will shake the world. So it was in France. Despotism andLicense, mingling in unblessed union, engendered that mighty Revolution in whichthe lineaments of both parents were strangely blended. The long gestation wasaccomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hope and terror, that agonising travail andthat portentous birth.

Among the crowd of legislators which at this conjuncture poured from all theprovinces of France into Paris, Barère made no contemptible figure. The opinionswhich he for the moment professed were popular, yet not extreme. His character wasfair; his personal advantages are said to have been considerable; and, from the portraitwhich is prefixed to these Memoirs, and which represents him as he appeared in theConvention, we should judge that his features must have been strikingly handsome,



though we think that we can read in them cowardice and meanness very legiblywritten by the hand of God. His conversation was lively and easy; his mannersremarkably good for a country lawyer. Women of rank and wit said that he was theonly man who, on his first arrival from a remote province, had that indescribable airwhich it was supposed that Paris alone could give. His eloquence, indeed, was by nomeans so much admired in the capital as it had been by the ingenious academicians ofMontauban and Toulouse. His style was thought very bad; and very bad, if a foreignermay venture to judge, it continued to the last. It would, however, be unjust to denythat he had some talents for speaking and writing. His rhetoric, though deformed byevery imaginable fault of taste, from bombast down to buffoonery, was not whollywithout force and vivacity. He had also one quality which, in active life, often givesfourth-rate men an advantage over first-rate men. Whatever he could do he could dowithout effort, at any moment, in any abundance, and on any side of any question.There was, indeed, a perfect harmony between his moral character and his intellectualcharacter. His temper was that of a slave; his abilities were exactly those whichqualified him to be a useful slave. Of thinking to purpose, he was utterly incapable;but he had wonderful readiness in arranging and expressing thoughts furnished byothers.

In the National Assembly he had no opportunity of displaying the full extent either ofhis talents or of his vices. He was indeed eclipsed by much abler men. He went, aswas his habit, with the stream, spoke occasionally with some success, and edited ajournal called the Point du Jour, in which the debates of the Assembly were reported.

He at first ranked by no means among the violent reformers. He was not friendly tothat new division of the French territory which was among the most importantchanges introduced by the Revolution, and was especially unwilling to see his nativeprovince dismembered. He was entrusted with the task of framing Reports on theWoods and Forests. Louis was exceedingly anxious about this matter; for his majestywas a keen sportsman, and would much rather have gone without the Veto, or theprerogative of making peace and war, than without his hunting and shooting.Gentlemen of the royal household were sent to Barère, in order to intercede for thedeer and pheasants. Nor was this intercession unsuccessful. The reports were sodrawn that Barère was afterwards accused of having dishonestly sacrificed theinterests of the public to the tastes of the court. To one of these reports he had theinconceivable folly and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from Virgil, fit only forsuch essays as he had been in the habit of composing for the Floral Games —

“Si canimus sylvas, sylvæ sint Consule dignæ.”

This literary foppery was one of the few things in which he was consistent. Royalistor Girondist, Jacobin or Imperialist, he was always a Trissotin.

As the monarchical party became weaker and weaker, Barère gradually estrangedhimself more and more from it, and drew closer and closer to the republicans. Itwould seem that, during this transition, he was for a time closely connected with thefamily of Orleans. It is certain that he was entrusted with the guardianship of thecelebrated Pamela, afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald; and it was asserted that he



received during some years a pension of twelve thousand francs from the PalaisRoyal.

At the end of September 1791, the labours of the National Assembly terminated, andthose of the first and last Legislative Assembly commenced.

It had been enacted that no member of the National Assembly should sit in theLegislative Assembly; a preposterous and mischievous regulation, to which thedisasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In England, what would be thoughtof a Parliament which did not contain one single person who had ever sat inparliament before? Yet it may safely be affirmed that the number of Englishmen who,never having taken any share in public affairs, are yet well qualified, by knowledgeand observation, to be members of the legislature is at least a hundred times as greatas the number of Frenchmen who were so qualified in 1791. How, indeed, should ithave been otherwise? In England, centuries of representative government have madeall educated people in some measure statesmen. In France the National Assembly hadprobably been composed of as good materials as were then to be found. It hadundoubtedly removed a vast mass of abuses; some of its members had read andthought much about theories of government; and others had shown great oratoricaltalents. But that kind of skill which is required for the constructing, launching, andsteering of a polity was lamentably wanting; for it is a kind of skill to which practicecontributes more than books. Books are indeed useful to the politician, as they areuseful to the navigator and to the surgeon. But the real navigator is formed on thewaves; the real surgeon is formed at bedsides; and the conflicts of free states are thereal school of constitutional statesmen. The National Assembly had, however, nowserved an apprenticeship of two laborious and eventful years. It had, indeed, by nomeans finished its education; but it was no longer, as on the day when it met,altogether rude to political functions. Its later proceedings contain abundant proof thatthe members had profited by their experience. Beyond all doubt, there was not inFrance any equal number of persons possessing in an equal degree the qualitiesnecessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and, just at this moment, theselegislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness, desertedthe duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, andleft their hall to a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudimentsof political business. When Barère wrote his Memoirs, the absurdity of this self-denying ordinance had been proved by events, and was, we believe, acknowledged byall parties. He accordingly, with his usual mendacity, speaks of it in terms implyingthat he had opposed it. There was, he tells us, no good citizen who did not regret thisfatal vote. Nay, all wise men, he says, wished the National Assembly to continue itssittings as the first Legislative Assembly. But no attention was paid to the wishes ofthe enlightened friends of liberty; and the generous but fatal suicide was perpetrated.Now the fact is, that Barère, far from opposing this ill-advised measure, was one ofthose who most eagerly supported it; tha he described it from the tribune as wise andmagnanimous; that he assigned, as his reasons for taking this view, some of thosephrases in which orators of his class delight, and which, on all men who have thesmallest insight into politics, produce an effect very similar to that of ipecacuanha.“Those,” he said, “who have framed a constitution for their country are, so to speak,



out of the pale of that social state of which they are the authors; for creative power isnot in the same sphere with that which it has created.”

M. Hippolyte Carnot has noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness.We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewheresays of the remarkable excellence of Barère’s memory.

Many members of the National Assembly were indemnified for the sacrifice oflegislative power, by appointments in various departments of the public service. Ofthese fortunate persons Barère was one. A high Court of Appeal had just beeninstituted. This court was to sit at Paris: but its jurisdiction was to extend over thewhole realm; and the departments were to choose the judges. Barère was nominatedby the department of the Upper Pyrenees, and took his seat in the Palace of Justice.He asserts, and our readers may, if they choose, believe, that it was about this time incontemplation to make him Minister of the Interior, and that, in order to avoid sograve a responsibility, he obtained permission to pay a visit to his native place. It iscertain that he left Paris early in the year 1792, and passed some months in the southof France.

In the mean time, it became clear that the constitution of 1791 would not work. It was,indeed, not to be expected that a constitution new both in its principles and its detailswould at first work easily. Had the chief magistrate enjoyed the entire confidence ofthe people, had he performed his part with the utmost zeal, fidelity, and ability, hadthe representative body included all the wisest statesmen of France, the difficultiesmight still have been found insuperable. But, in fact, the experiment was made underevery disadvantage. The King, very naturally, hated the constitution. In theLegislative Assembly were men of genius and men of good intentions, but not asingle man of experience. Nevertheless, if France had been suffered to settle her ownaffairs without foreign interference, it is possible that the calamities which followedmight have been averted. The King, who, with many good qualities, was sluggish andsensual, might have found compensation for his lost prerogatives in his immense civillist, in his palaces and hunting grounds, in soups, Perigord pies, and Champagne. Thepeople, finding themselves secure in the enjoyment of the valuable reforms which theNational Assembly had, in the midst of all its errors, effected, would not have beeneasily excited by demagogues to acts of atrocity; or, if acts of atrocity had beencommitted, those acts would probably have produced a speedy and violent reaction.Had tolerable quiet been preserved during a few years, the constitution of 1791 mightperhaps have taken root, might have gradually acquired the strength which time alonecan give, and might, with some modifications which were undoubtedly needed, havelasted down to the present time. The European coalition against the Revolutionextinguished all hope of such a result. The deposition of Louis was, in our opinion,the necessary consequence of that coalition. The question was now no longer, whetherthe King should have an absolute Veto or a suspensive Veto, whether there should beone chamber or two chambers, whether the members of the representative bodyshould be re-eligible or not; but whether France should belong to the French. Theindependence of the nation, the integrity of the territory, were at stake; and we mustsay plainly that we cordially approve of the conduct of those Frenchmen who, at that



conjuncture, resolved, like our own Blake, to play the men for their country, underwhatever form of government their country might fall.

It seems to us clear that the war with the Continental coalition was, on the side ofFrance, at first a defensive war, and therefore a just war. It was not a war for smallobjects, or against despicable enemies. On the event were staked all the dearestinterests of the French people. Foremost among the threatening powers appeared twogreat and martial monarchies, either of which, situated as France then was, might beregarded as a formidable assailant. It is evident that, under such circumstances, theFrench could not, without extreme imprudence, entrust the supreme administration oftheir affairs to any person whose attachment to the national cause admitted of doubt.Now, it is no reproach to the memory of Louis to say that he was not attached to thenational cause. Had he been so, he would have been something more than man. Hehad held absolute power, not by usurpation, but by the accident of birth and by theancient polity of the kingdom. That power he had, on the whole, used with lenity. Hehad meant well by his people. He had been willing to make to them, of his own meremotion, concessions such as scarcely any other sovereign has ever made except underduress. He had paid the penalty of faults not his own, of the haughtiness and ambitionof some of his predecessors, of the dissoluteness and baseness of others. He had beenvanquished, taken captive, led in triumph, put in ward. He had escaped; he had beencaught; he had been dragged back like a run-away galley-slave to the oar. He was stilla state prisoner. His quiet was broken by daily affronts and lampoons. Accustomedfrom the cradle to be treated with profound reverence, he was now forced tocommand his feelings, while men who, a few months before, had been hackneywriters or country attorneys sat in his presence with covered heads, and addressed himin the easy tone of equality. Conscious of fair intentions, sensible of hard usage, hedoubtless detested the Revolution; and, while charged with the conduct of the waragainst the confederates, pined in secret for the sight of the German eagles and thesound of the German drums. We do not blame him for this. But can we blame thosewho, being resolved to defend the work of the National Assembly against theinterference of strangers, were not disposed to have him at their head in the fearfulstruggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation ofthe insolence, injustice, and cruelty with which, after the victory of the republicans, heand his family were treated. But this we say, that the French had only one alternative,to deprive him of the powers of first magistrate, or to ground their arms and submitpatiently to foreign dictation. The events of the tenth of August sprang inevitablyfrom the league of Pilnitz. The King’s palace was stormed; his guards wereslaughtered. He was suspended from his regal functions; and the LegislativeAssembly invited the nation to elect an extraordinary Convention, with the fullpowers which the conjuncture required. To this Convention the members of theNational Assembly were eligible; and Barère was chosen by his own department.

The Convention met on the twenty-first of September 1792. The first proceedingswere unanimous. Royalty was abolished by acclamation. No objections were made tothis great change; and no reasons were assigned for it. For certainly we cannot honourwith the name of reasons such apothegms, as that kings are in the moral world whatmonsters are in the physical world; and that the history of kings is the martyrology ofnations. But, though the discussion was worthy only of a debating-club of schoolboys,



the resolution to which the Convention came seems to have been that which soundpolicy dictated. In saying this, we do not mean to express an opinion that a republic is,either in the abstract the best form of government, or is, under ordinary circumstances,the form of government best suited to the French people. Our own opinion is, that thebest governments which have ever existed in the world have been limited monarchies;and that France, in particular, has never enjoyed so much prosperity and freedom asunder a limited monarchy. Nevertheless, we approve of the vote of the Conventionwhich abolished kingly government. The interference of foreign powers had broughton a crisis which made extraordinary measures necessary. Hereditary monarchy maybe, and we believe that it is, a very useful institution in a country like France. Andmasts are very useful parts of a ship. But, if the ship is on her beam-ends, it may benecessary to cut the masts away. When once she has righted, she may come safe intoport under jury rigging, and there be completely repaired. But, in the mean time, shemust be hacked with unsparing hand, lest that which, under ordinary circumstances, isan essential part of her fabric should, in her extreme distress, sink her to the bottom.Even so there are political emergencies in which it is necessary that governmentsshould be mutilated of their fair proportions for a time, lest they be cast away for ever;and with such an emergency the Convention had to deal. The first object of a goodFrenchman should have been to save France from the fate of Poland. The firstrequisite of a government was entire devotion to the national cause. That requisite waswanting in Louis; and such a want, at such a moment, could not be supplied by anypublic or private virtues. If the King were set aside, the abolition of kingshipnecessarily followed. In the state in which the public mind then was, it would havebeen idle to think of doing what our ancestors did in 1688, and what the FrenchChamber of Deputies did in 1830. Such an attempt would have failed amidst universalderision and execration. It would have disgusted all zealous men of all opinions; andthere were then few men who were not zealous. Parties fatigued by long conflict, andinstructed by the severe discipline of that school in which alone mankind will learn,are disposed to listen to the voice of a mediator. But when they are in their first headyyouth, devoid of experience, fresh for exertion, flushed with hope, burning withanimosity, they agree only in spurning out of their way the daysman who strives totake his stand between them and to lay his hand upon them both. Such was in 1792the state of France. On one side was the great name of the heir of Hugh Capet, thethirty-third king of the third race; on the other side was the great name of the republic.There was no rallying point save these two. It was necessary to make a choice; andthose, in our opinion, judged well who, waving for the moment all subordinatequestions, preferred independence to subjugation, and the natal soil to the emigrantcamp.

As to the abolition of royalty, and as to the vigorous prosecution of the war, the wholeConvention seemed to be united as one man. But a deep and broad gulf separated therepresentative body into two great parties.

On one side were those statesmen who are called, from the name of the departmentwhich some of them represented, the Girondists, and, from the name of one of theirmost conspicuous leaders, the Brissotines. In activity and practical ability, Brissot andGensonné were the most conspicuous among them. In parliamentary eloquence, noFrenchman of that time can be considered as equal to Vergniaud. In a foreign country,



and after the lapse of half a century, some parts of his speeches are still read withmournful admiration. No man, we are inclined to believe, ever rose so rapidly to sucha height of oratorical excellence. His whole public life lasted barely two years. This isa circumstance which distinguishes him from our own greatest speakers, Fox, Burke,Pitt, Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which of these celebrated men would now beremembered as an orator, if he had died two years after he first took his seat in theHouse of Commons? Condorcet brought to the Girondist party a different kind ofstrength. The public regarded him with justice as an eminent mathematician, and, withless reason, as a great master of ethical and political science; the philosophersconsidered him as their chief, as the rightful heir, by intellectual descent and bysolemn adoption, of their deceased sovereign D’Alembert. In the same ranks werefound Gaudet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, too well known as the author of avery ingenious and very licentious romance, and more honourably distinguished bythe generosity with which he pleaded for the unfortunate, and by the intrepidity withwhich he defied the wicked and powerful. Two persons whose talents were notbrilliant, but who enjoyed a high reputation for probity and public spirit, Pétion andRoland, lent the whole weight of their names to the Girondist connection. The wife ofRoland brought to the deliberations of her husband’s friends masculine courage andforce of thought, tempered by womanly grace and vivacity. Nor was the splendour ofa great military reputation wanting to this celebrated party. Dumourier, thenvictorious over the foreign invaders, and at the height of popular favour, must bereckoned among the allies of the Gironde.

The errors of the Brissotines were undoubtedly neither few nor small; but, when wefairly compare their conduct with the conduct of any other party which acted orsuffered during the French Revolution, we are forced to admit their superiority inevery quality except that single quality which in such times prevails over every other,decision. They were zealous for the great social reform which had been effected bythe National Assembly; and they were right. For, though that reform was, in somerespects, carried too far, it was a blessing well worth even the fearful price which hasbeen paid for it. They were resolved to maintain the independence of their countryagainst foreign invaders; and they were right. For the heaviest of all yokes is the yokeof the stranger. They thought that, if Louis remained at their head, they could notcarry on with the requisite energy the conflict against the European coalition. Theytherefore concurred in establishing a republican government; and here, again, theywere right. For, in that struggle for life and death, it would have been madness to trusta hostile or even a half-hearted leader.

Thus far they went along with the revolutionary movement. At this point theystopped; and, in our judgment, they were right in stopping, as they had been right inmoving. For great ends, and under extraordinary circumstances, they had concurred inmeasures which, together with much good, had necessarily produced much evil;which had unsettled the public mind; which had taken away from government thesanction of prescription; which had loosened the very foundations of property andlaw. They thought that it was now their duty to prop what it had recently been theirduty to batter. They loved liberty, but liberty associated with order, with justice, withmercy, and with civilisation. They were republicans; but they were desirous to adorntheir republic with all that had given grace and dignity to the fallen monarchy. They



hoped that the humanity, the courtesy, the taste, which had done much in old times tomitigate the slavery of France, would now lend additional charms to her freedom.They saw with horror crimes, exceeding in atrocity those which had disgraced theinfuriated religious factions of the sixteenth century, perpetrated in the name of reasonand philanthropy. They demanded, with eloquent vehemence, that the authors of thelawless massacre, which, just before the meeting of the Convention, had beencommitted in the prisons of Paris, should be brought to condign punishment. Theytreated with just contempt the pleas which have been set up for that great crime. Theyadmitted that the public danger was pressing; but they denied that it justified aviolation of those principles of morality on which all society rests. The independenceand honour of France were indeed to be vindicated, but to be vindicated by triumphsand not by murders.

Opposed to the Girondists was a party which, having been long execrated throughoutthe civilised world, has of late—such is the ebb and flow of opinion—found not onlyapologists, but even eulogists. We are not disposed to deny that some members of theMountain were sincere and public-spirited men. But even the best of them, Carnot forexample and Cambon, were far too unscrupulous as to the means which theyemployed for the purpose of attaining great ends. In the train of these enthusiastsfollowed a crowd, composed of all who, from sensual, sordid, or malignant motives,wished for a period of boundless license.

When the Convention met, the majority was with the Girondists, and Barère was withthe majority. On the King’s trial, indeed, he quitted the party with which he ordinarilyacted, voted with the Mountain, and spoke against the prisoner with a violence such asfew members even of the Mountain showed.

The conduct of the leading Girondists on that occasion was little to their honour. Ofcruelty, indeed, we fully acquit them; but it is impossible to acquit them of criminalirresolution and disingenuousness. They were far, indeed, from thirsting for the bloodof Louis; on the contrary, they were most desirous to protect him. But they wereafraid that, if they went straight forward to their object, the sincerity of theirattachment to republican institutions would be suspected. They wished to save theKing’s life, and yet to obtain all the credit of having been regicides. Accordingly, theytraced out for themselves a crooked course, by which they hoped to attain both theirobjects. They first voted the King guilty. They then voted for referring the questionrespecting his fate to the whole body of the people. Defeated in this attempt to rescuehim, they reluctantly, and with ill suppressed shame and concern, voted for the capitalsentence. Then they made a last attempt in his favour, and voted for respiting theexecution. These zigzag politics produced the effect which any man conversant withpublic affairs might have foreseen. The Girondists, instead of attaining both theirends, failed of both. The Mountain justly charged them with having attempted to savethe King by underhand means. Their own consciences told them, with equal justice,that their hands had been dipped in the blood of the most inoffensive and mostunfortunate of men. The direct path was here, as usual, the path not only of honourbut of safety. The principle on which the Girondists stood as a party was, that theseason for revolutionary violence was over, and that the reign of law and order oughtnow to commence. But the proceeding against the King was clearly revolutionary in



its nature. It was not in conformity with the laws. The only plea for it was, that allordinary rules of jurisprudence and morality were suspended by the extreme publicdanger. This was the very plea which the Mountain urged in defence of the massacreof September, and to which, when so urged, the Girondists refused to listen. Theytherefore, by voting for the death of the King, conceded to the Mountain the chiefpoint at issue between the two parties. Had they given a manful vote against thecapital sentence, the regicides would have been in a minority. It is probable that therewould have been an immediate appeal to force. The Girondists might have beenvictorious. In the worst event, they would have fallen with unblemished honour. Thusmuch is certain, that their boldness and honesty could not possibly have produced aworse effect than was actually produced by their timidity and their stratagems.

Barère, as we have said, sided with the Mountain on this occasion. He voted againstthe appeal to the people and against the respite. His demeanour and his language alsowere widely different from those of the Girondists. Their hearts were heavy, and theirdeportment was that of men oppressed by sorrow. It was Vergniaud’s duty toproclaim the result of the roll-call. His face was pale, and he trembled with emotion,as in a low and broken voice he announced that Louis was condemned to death.Barère had not, it is true, yet attained to full perfection in the art of mingling jests andconceits with words of death; but he already gave promise of his future excellence inthis high department of Jacobin oratory. He concluded his speech with a sentenceworthy of his head and heart. “The tree of liberty,” he said, “as an ancient authorremarks, flourishes when it is watered with the blood of all classes of tyrants.” M.Hippolyte Carnot has quoted this passage in order, as we suppose, to do honour to hishero. We wish that a note had been added to inform us from what ancient authorBarère quoted. In the course of our own small reading among the Greek and Latinwriters, we have not happened to fall in with trees of liberty and watering-pots full ofblood; nor can we, such is our ignorance of classical antiquity, even imagine an Atticor Roman orator employing imagery of that sort. In plain words, when Barère talkedabout an ancient author, he was lying, as he generally was when he asserted any fact,great or small. Why he lied on this occasion we cannot guess, unless indeed it was tokeep his hand in.

It is not improbable that, but for one circumstance, Barère would, like most of thosewith whom he ordinarily acted, have voted for the appeal to the people and for therespite. But, just before the commencement of the trial, papers had been discoveredwhich proved that, while a member of the National Assembly, he had been incommunication with the Court respecting his Reports on the Woods and Forests. Hewas acquitted of all criminality by the Convention; but the fiercer Republicansconsidered him as a tool of the fallen monarch; and this reproach was long repeated inthe journal of Marat, and in the speeches at the Jacobin club. It was natural that a manlike Barère should, under such circumstances, try to distinguish himself among thecrowd of regicides by peculiar ferocity. It was because he had been a royalist that hewas one of the foremost in shedding blood.

The King was no more. The leading Girondists had, by their conduct towards him,lowered their character in the eyes both of friends and foes. They still, however,maintained the contest against the Mountain, called for vengeance on the assassins of



September, and protested against the anarchical and sanguinary doctrines of Marat.For a time they seemed likely to prevail. As publicists and orators they had no rivalsin the Convention. They had with them, beyond all doubt, the great majority both ofthe deputies and of the French nation. These advantages, it should seem, ought tohave decided the event of the struggle. But the opposite party had compensatingadvantages of a different kind. The chiefs of the Mountain, though not eminentlydistinguished by eloquence or knowledge, had great audacity, activity, anddetermination. The Convention and France were against them; but the mob of Paris,the clubs of Paris, and the municipal government of Paris, were on their side.

The policy of the Jacobins, in this situation, was to subject France to an aristocracyinfinitely worse than that aristocracy which had emigrated with the Count ofArtois—to an aristocracy not of birth, not of wealth, not of education, but of merelocality. They would not hear of privileged orders; but they wished to have aprivileged city. That twenty-five millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundredthousand gentlemen and clergymen was insufferable; but that twenty-five millions ofFrenchmen should be ruled by a hundred thousand Parisians was as it should be. Thequalification of a member of the new oligarchy was simply that he should live nearthe hall where the Convention met, and should be able to squeeze himself daily intothe gallery during a debate, and now and then to attend with a pike for the purpose ofblockading the doors. It was quite agreeable to the maxims of the Mountain that ascore of draymen from Santerre’s brewery, or of devils from Hébert’s printing-house,should be permitted to drown the voices of men commissioned to speak the sense ofsuch cities as Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Lyons; and that a rabble of half-naked portersfrom the Faubourg St. Antoine should have power to annul decrees for which therepresentatives of fifty or sixty departments had voted. It was necessary to find somepretext for so odious and absurd a tyranny. Such a pretext was found. To the oldphrases of liberty and equality were added the sonorous watchwords, unity andindivisibility. A new crime was invented, and called by the name of federalism. Theobject of the Girondists, it was asserted, was to break up the great nation into littleindependent commonwealths, bound together only by a league like that whichconnects the Swiss cantons or the United States of America. The great obstacle in theway of this pernicious design was the influence of Paris. To strengthen the influenceof Paris ought therefore to be the chief object of every patriot.

The accusation brought against the leaders of the Girondist party was a mere calumny.They were undoubtedly desirous to prevent the capital from domineering over therepublic, and would gladly have seen the Convention removed for a time to someprovincial town, or placed under the protection of a trusty guard, which might haveoverawed the Parisian mob; but there is not the slightest reason to suspect them of anydesign against the unity of the state. Barère, however, really was a federalist, and, weare inclined to believe, the only federalist in the Convention. As far as a man sounstable and servile can be said to have felt any preference for any form ofgovernment, he felt a preference for federal government. He was born under thePyrenees; he was a Gascon of the Gascons, one of a people strongly distinguished byintellectual and moral character, by manners, by modes of speech, by accent, and byphysiognomy, from the French of the Seine and of the Loire; and he had many of thepeculiarities of the race to which he belonged. When he first left his own province he



had attained his thirty-fourth year, and had acquired a high local reputation foreloquence and literature. He had then visited Paris for the first time. He had foundhimself in a new world. His feelings were those of a banished man. It is clear also thathe had been by no means without his share of the small disappointments andhumiliations so often experienced by men of letters who, elated by provincialapplause, venture to display their powers before the fastidious critics of a capital. Onthe other hand, whenever he revisited the mountains among which he had been born,he found himself an object of general admiration. His dislike of Paris, and hispartiality to his native district, were therefore as strong and durable as any sentimentsof a mind like his could be. He long continued to maintain that the ascendency of onegreat city was the bane of France; that the superiority of taste and intelligence which itwas the fashion to ascribe to the inhabitants of that city were wholly imaginary; andthat the nation would never enjoy a really good government till the Alsatian people,the Breton people, the people of Bearn, the people of Provence, should have each anindependent existence, and laws suited to its own tastes and habits. Thesecommunities he proposed to unite by a tie similar to that which binds together thegrave Puritans of Connecticut and the dissolute slave-drivers of New Orleans. ToParis he was unwilling to grant even the rank which Washington holds in the UnitedStates. He thought it desirable that the congress of the French federation should haveno fixed place of meeting, but should sit sometimes at Rouen, sometimes at Bordeaux,sometimes at his own Toulouse.

Animated by such feelings, he was, till the close of May 1793, a Girondist, if not anultra-Girondist. He exclaimed against those impure and bloodthirsty men who wishedto make the public danger a pretext for cruelty and rapine. “Peril,” he said, “could beno excuse for crime. It is when the wind blows hard, and the waves run high, that theanchor is most needed; it is when a revolution is raging, that the great laws ofmorality are most necessary to the safety of a state.” Of Marat he spoke withabhorrence and contempt; of the municipal authorities of Paris with just severity. Heloudly complained that there were Frenchmen who paid to the Mountain that homagewhich was due to the Convention alone. When the establishment of the RevolutionaryTribunal was first proposed, he joined himself to Vergniaud and Buzot, who stronglyobjected to that odious measure. “It cannot be,” exclaimed Barère, “that men reallyattached to liberty will imitate the most frightful excesses of despotism!” He provedto the Convention, after his fashion, out of Sallust, that such arbitrary courts mayindeed, for a time, be severe only on real criminals, but must inevitably degenerateinto instruments of private cupidity and revenge. When, on the tenth of March, theworst part of the population of Paris made the first unsuccessful attempt to destroy theGirondists, Barère eagerly called for vigorous measures of repression and punishment.On the second of April, another attempt of the Jacobins of Paris to usurp supremedominion over the republic was brought to the knowledge of the Convention; andagain Barère spoke with warmth against the new tyranny which afflicted France, anddeclared that the people of the departments would never crouch beneath the tyrannyof one ambitious city. He even proposed a resolution to the effect that the Conventionwould exert against the demagogues of the capital the same energy which had beenexerted against the tyrant Louis. We are assured that, in private as in public, he at thistime uniformly spoke with strong aversion of the Mountain.



His apparent zeal for the cause of humanity and order had its reward. Early in Aprilcame the tidings of Dumourier’s defection. This was a heavy blow to the Girondists.Dumourier was their general. His victories had thrown a lustre on the whole party; hisarmy, it had been hoped, would, in the worst event, protect the deputies of the nationagainst the ragged pikemen of the garrets of Paris. He was now a deserter and anexile; and those who had lately placed their chief reliance on his support werecompelled to join with their deadliest enemies in execrating his treason. At thisperilous conjuncture, it was resolved to appoint a Committee of Public Safety, and toarm that committee with powers, small indeed when compared with those which itafterwards drew to itself, but still great and formidable. The moderate party, regardingBarère as a representative of their feelings and opinions, elected him a member. In hisnew situation he soon began to make himself useful. He brought to the deliberationsof the Committee, not indeed the knowledge or the ability of a great statesman, but atongue and a pen which, if others would only supply ideas, never paused for want ofwords. His mind was a mere organ of communication between other minds. Itoriginated nothing; it retained nothing; but it transmitted everything. The postassigned to him by his colleagues was not really of the highest importance; but it wasprominent, and drew the attention of all Europe. When a great measure was to bebrought forward, when an account was to be rendered of an important event, he wasgenerally the mouthpiece of the administration. He was therefore not unnaturallyconsidered, by persons who lived at a distance from the seat of government, andabove all by foreigners who, while the war raged, knew France only from journals, asthe head of that administration of which, in truth, he was only the secretary and thespokesman. The author of the History of Europe, in our own Annual Registers,appears to have been completely under this delusion.

The conflict between the hostile parties was meanwhile fast approaching to a crisis.The temper of Paris grew daily fiercer and fiercer. Delegates appointed by thirty-fiveof the forty-eight wards of the city appeared at the bar of the Convention, anddemanded that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, Gensonné, Barbaroux, Buzot, Pétion,Louvet, and many other deputies, should be expelled. This demand was disapprovedby at least three-fourths of the Assembly, and, when known in the departments, calledforth a general cry of indignation. Bordeaux declared that it would stand by itsrepresentatives, and would, if necessary, defend them by the sword against thetyranny of Paris. Lyons and Marseilles were animated by a similar spirit. Thesemanifestations of public opinion gave courage to the majority of the Convention.Thanks were voted to the people of Bordeaux for their patriotic declaration; and acommission consisting of twelve members was appointed for the purpose ofinvestigating the conduct of the municipal authorities of Paris, and was empowered toplace under arrest such persons as should appear to have been concerned in any plotagainst the authority of the Convention. This measure was adopted on the motion ofBarère.

A few days of stormy excitement and profound anxiety followed; and then came thecrash. On the thirty-first of May the mob of Paris rose; the palace of the Tuileries wasbesieged by a vast array of pikes; the majority of the deputies, after vain struggles andremonstrances, yielded to violence, and suffered the Mountain to carry a decree forthe suspension and arrest of the deputies whom the wards of the capital had accused.



During this contest, Barère had been tossed backwards and forwards between the tworaging factions. His feelings, languid and unsteady as they always were, drew him tothe Girondists; but he was awed by the vigour and determination of the Mountain. Atone moment he he held high and firm language, complained that the Convention wasnot free, and protested against the validity of any vote passed under coercion. Atanother moment he proposed to conciliate the Parisians by abolishing thatcommission of twelve which he had himself proposed only a few days before; andhimself drew up a paper condemning the very measures which had been adopted athis own instance, and eulogising the public spirit of the insurgents. To do him justice,it was not without some symptoms of shame that he read this document from thetribune, where he had so often expressed very different sentiments. It is said that, atsome passages, he was even seen to blush. It may have been so; he was still in hisnovitiate of infamy.

Some days later he proposed that hostages for the personal safety of the accuseddeputies should be sent to the departments, and offered to be himself one of thosehostages. Nor do we in the least doubt that the offer was sincere. He would, we firmlybelieve, have thought himself far safer at Bordeaux or Marseilles than at Paris. Hisproposition, however, was not carried into effect; and he remained in the power of thevictorious Mountain

This was the great crisis of his life. Hitherto he had done nothing inexpiable, nothingwhich marked him out as a much worse man than most of his colleagues in theConvention. His voice had generally been on the side of moderate measures. Had hebravely cast in his lot with the Girondists, and suffered with them, he would, likethem, have had a not dishonourable place in history. Had he, like the great body ofdeputies who meant well, but who had not the courage to expose themselves tomartyrdom, crouched quietly under the dominion of the triumphant minority, andsuffered every motion of Robespierre and Billaud to pass unopposed, he would haveincurred no peculiar ignominy. But it is probable that this course was not open to him.He had been too prominent among the adversaries of the Mountain to be admitted toquarter without making some atonement. It was necessary that, if he hoped to findpardon from his new lords, he should not be merely a silent and passive slave. Whatpassed in private between him and them cannot be accurately related; but the resultwas soon apparent. The Committee of Public Safety was renewed. Several of thefiercest of the dominant faction, Couthon for example, and St. Just, were substitutedfor more moderate politicians; but Barère was suffered to retain his seat at the Board.

The indulgence with which he was treated excited the murmurs of some stern andardent zealots. Marat, in the very last words that he wrote, words not published till thedagger of Charlotte Corday had avenged France and mankind, complained that a manwho had no principles, who was always on the side of the strongest, who had been aroyalist, and who was ready, in case of a turn of fortune, to be a royalist again, shouldbe entrusted with an important share in the administration.* But the chiefs of theMountain judged more correctly. They knew indeed, as well as Marat, that Barère wasa man utterly without faith or steadiness; that, if he could be said to have any politicalleaning, his leaning was not towards them; that he felt for the Girondist party thatfaint and wavering sort of preference of which alone his nature was susceptible; and



that, if he had been at liberty to make his choice, he would rather have murderedRobespierre and Danton than Vergniaud and Gensonné. But they justly appreciatedthat levity which made him incapable alike of earnest love and of earnest hatred, andthat meanness which made it necessary to him to have a master. In truth, what theplanters of Carolina and Louisiana say of black men with flat noses and woolly hairwas strictly true of Barère. The curse of Canaan was upon him. He was born a slave.Baseness was an instinct in him. The impulse which drove him from a party inadversity to a party in prosperity was as irresistible as that which drives the cuckooand the swallow towards the sun when the dark and cold months are approaching. Thelaw which doomed him to be the humble attendant of stronger spirits resembled thelaw which binds the pilot-fish to the shark. “Ken ye,” said a shrewd Scotch lord, whowas asked his opinion of James the First, “Ken ye a John Ape? If I have Jacko by thecollar, I can make him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me.”Just such a creature was Barère. In the hands of the Girondists he would have beeneager to proscribe the Jacobins; he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, toproscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountaincould not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and notvery delicate lover in Congreve’s lively song valued the conquest of a prostitute of adifferent kind. Barère was, like Chloe, false and common; but he was, like Chloe,constant while possessed; and they asked no more. They needed a service which hewas perfectly competent to perform. Destitute as he was of all the talents both of anactive and of a speculative statesman, he could with great facility draw up a report, ormake a speech on any subject and on any side. If other people would furnish facts andthoughts, he could always furnish phrases; and this talent was absolutely at thecommand of his owners for the time being. Nor had he excited any angry passionamong those to whom he had hitherto been opposed. They felt no more hatred to himthan they felt to the horses which dragged the cannon of the Duke of Brunswick andof the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. The horses had only done according to their kind, andwould, if they fell into the hands of the French, drag with equal vigour and equaldocility the guns of the republic, and therefore ought not merely to be spared, but tobe well fed and curried. So was it with Barère. He was of a nature so low, that it mightbe doubted whether he could properly be an object of the hostility of reasonablebeings. He had not been an enemy; he was not now a friend. But he had been anannoyance; and he would now be a help.

But, though the heads of the Mountain pardoned this man, and admitted him intopartnership with themselves, it was not without exacting pledges such as made itimpossible for him, false and fickle as he was, ever again to find admission into theranks which he had deserted. That was truly a terrible sacrament by which theyadmitted the apostate into their communion. They demanded of him that he shouldhimself take the most prominent part in murdering his old friends. To refuse was asmuch as his life was worth. But what is life worth when it is only one long agony ofremorse and shame? These, however, are feelings of which it is idle to talk, when weare considering the conduct of such a man as Barère. He undertook the task, mountedthe tribune, and told the Convention that the time was come for taking the sternattitude of justice, and for striking at all conspirators without distinction. He thenmoved that Buzot, Barbaroux, Pétion, and thirteen other deputies, should be placedout of the pale of the law, or, in other words, beheaded without a trial; and that



Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonnè, and six others, should be impeached. The motion wascarried without debate.

We have already seen with what effrontery Barère has denied, in these Memoirs, thathe took any part against the Girondists. This denial, we think, was the only thingwanting to make his infamy complete. The most impudent of all lies was a fitcompanion for the foulest of all murders.

Barère, however, had not yet earned his pardon. The Jacobin party contained one gangwhich, even in that party, was pre-eminent in every mean and every savage vice, agang so low-minded and so inhuman that, compared with them, Robespierre might becalled magnanimous and merciful. Of these wretches Hébert was perhaps the bestrepresentative. His favourite amusement was to torment and insult the miserableremains of that great family which, having ruled France during eight hundred years,had now become an object of pity to the humblest artisan or peasant. The influence ofthis man, and of men like him, induced the Committee of Public Safety to determinethat Marie Antoinette should be sent to the scaffold. Barère was again summoned tohis duty. Only four days after he had proposed the decrees against the Girondistdeputies he again mounted the tribune, in order to move that the Queen should bebrought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was improving fast in the society ofhis new allies. When he asked for the heads of Vergniaud and Pétion he had spokenlike a man who had some slight sense of his own guilt and degradation: he had saidlittle; and that little had not been violent. The office of expatiating on the guilt of hisold friends he had left to Saint Just. Very different was Barère’s second appearance inthe character of an accuser. He now cried out for blood in the eager tones of the trueand burning thirst, and raved against the Austrian woman with the virulence natural toa coward who finds himself at liberty to outrage that which he has feared and envied.We have already exposed the shameless mendacity with which, in these Memoirs, heattempts to throw the blame of his own guilt on the guiltless.

On the day on which the fallen Queen was dragged, already more than half dead, toher doom Barère regaled Robespierre and some other Jacobins at a tavern.Robespierre’s acceptance of the invitation caused some surprise to those who knewhow long and how bitterly it was his nature to hate. “Robespierre of the party!”muttered Saint Just. “Barère is the only man whom Robespierre has forgiven.” Wehave an account of this singular repast from one of the guests. Robespierrecondemned the senseless brutality with which Hébert had conducted the proceedingsagainst the Austrian woman, and, in talking on that subject, became so much excitedthat he broke his plate in the violence of his gesticulation. Barère exclaimed that theguillotine had cut a diplomatic knot which it might have been difficult to untie. In theintervals between the Beaune and the Champagne, between the ragout of thrushes andthe partridge with truffles, he fervently preached his new political creed. “The vesselof the revolution,” he said, “can float into port only on waves of blood. We mustbegin with the members of the National Assembly and of the Legislative Assembly.That rubbish must be swept away.”

As he talked at table he talked in the Convention. His peculiar style of oratory wasnow formed. It was not altogether without ingenuity and liveliness. But in any other



age or country it would have been thought unfit for the deliberations of a graveassembly, and still more unfit for state papers. It might, perhaps, succeed at a meetingof a Protestant Association in Exeter Hall, at a Repeal dinner in Ireland, after men hadwell drunk, or in an American oration on the fourth of July. No legislative bodywould now endure it. But in France, during the reign of the Convention, the old lawsof composition were held in as much contempt as the old government or the old creed.Correct and noble diction belonged, like the etiquette of Versailles and the solemnitiesof Notre Dame, to an age which had passed away. Just as a swarm of ephemeralconstitutions, democratic, directorial, and consular, sprang from the decay of theancient monarchy; just as a swarm of new superstitions, the worship of the Goddessof Reason, and the fooleries of the Theo-philanthropists, sprang from the decay of theancient Church; even so, out of the decay of the ancient French eloquence sprang newfashions of eloquence, for the understanding of which new grammars and dictionarieswere necessary. The same innovating spirit which altered the common phrases ofsalutation, which turned hundreds of Johns and Peters into Scævolas and Aristogitons,and which expelled Sunday and Monday, January and February, Ladyday andChristmas, from the calendar, in order to substitute Decadi and Primidi, Nivose andPluviose, Feasts of Opinion and Feasts of the Supreme Being, changed all the formsof official correspondence. For the calm, guarded, and sternly courteous languagewhich governments had long been accustomed to employ, were substituted puns,interjections, Ossianic rants, rhetoric worthy only of a schoolboy, scurrility worthyonly of a fishwife. Of the phraseology which was now thought to be peculiarly wellsuited to a report or a manifesto Barère had a greater command than any man of histime, and, during the short and sharp paroxysm of the revolutionary delirium, passedfor a great orator. When the fit was over, he was considered as what he really was, aman of quick apprehension and fluent elocution, with no originality, with littleinformation, and with a taste as bad as his heart. His Reports were popularly calledCarmagnoles. A few months ago we should have had some difficulty in conveying toan English reader an exact notion of the state papers to which this appellation wasgiven. Fortunately a noble and distinguished person, whom her Majesty’s Ministershave thought qualified to fill the most important post in the empire, has made our taskeasy. Whoever has read Lord Ellenborough’s proclamations is able to form acomplete idea of a Carmagnole.

The effect which Barère’s discourses at one time produced is not to be whollyattributed to the perversion of the national taste. The occasions on which he rose werefrequently such as would have secured to the worst speaker a favourable hearing.When any military advantage had been gained, he was generally deputed by theCommittee of Public Safety to announce the good news. The hall resounded withapplause as he mounted the tribune, holding the despatches in his hand. Deputies andstrangers listened with delight while he told them that victory was the order of theday; that the guineas of Pitt had been vainly lavished to hire machines six feet high,carrying guns; that the flight of the English leopard deserved to be celebrated byTyrtæus; and that the saltpetre dug out of the cellars of Paris had been turned intothunder, which would crush the Titan brethren, George and Francis.

Meanwhile the trial of the accused Girondists, who were under arrest in Paris, cameon. They flattered themselves with a vain hope of escape. They placed some reliance



on their innocence, and some reliance on their eloquence. They thought that shamewould suffice to restrain any man, however violent and cruel, from publiclycommitting the flagrant iniquity of condemning them to death. The RevolutionaryTribunal was new to its functions. No member of the Convention had yet beenexecuted; and it was probable that the boldest Jacobin would shrink from being thefirst to violate the sanctity which was supposed to belong to the representatives of thepeople.

The proceedings lasted some days. Gensonnè and Brissot defended themselves withgreat ability and presence of mind against the vile Hébert and Chaumette, whoappeared as accusers. The eloquent voice of Vergniaud was heard for the last time. Hepleaded his own cause and that of his friends, with such force of reason and elevationof sentiment that a murmur of pity and admiration rose from the audience. Nay, thecourt itself, not yet accustomed to riot in daily carnage, showed signs of emotion. Thesitting was adjourned; and a rumour went forth that there would be an acquittal. TheJacobins met, breathing vengeance. Robespierre undertook to be their organ. He roseon the following day in the Convention, and proposed a decree of such atrocity thateven among the acts of that year it can hardly be paralleled. By this decree thetribunal was empowered to cut short the defence of the prisoners, to pronounce thecase clear, and to pass immediate judgment. One deputy made a faint opposition.Barère instantly sprang up to support Robespierre — Barère, the federalist; Barère,the author of that Commission of Twelve which was among the chief causes of thehatred borne by Paris to the Girondists; Barère, who in these Memoirs denies that heever took any part against the Girondists; Barère, who has the effrontery to declarethat he greatly loved and esteemed Vergniaud. The decree was passed; and thetribunal, without suffering the prisoners to conclude what they had to say, pronouncedthem guilty.

The following day was the saddest in the sad history of the Revolution. The suffererswere so innocent, so brave, so eloquent, so accomplished, so young. Some of themwere graceful and handsome youths of six or seven and twenty. Vergniaud andGensonné were little more than thirty. They had been only a few months engaged inpublic affairs. In a few months the fame of their genius had filled Europe; and theywere to die for no crime but this, that they had wished to combine order, justice, andmercy with freedom. Their great fault was want of courage. We mean want ofpolitical courage — of that courage which is proof to clamour and obloquy, andwhich meets great emergencies by daring and decisive measures. Alas! they had buttoo good an opportunity of proving that they did not want courage to endure withmanly cheerfulness the worst that could be inflicted by such tyrants as St. Just, andsuch slaves as Barère.

They were not the only victims of the noble cause. Madame Roland followed them tothe scaffold with a spirit as heroic as their own. Her husband was in a safe hiding-place, but could not bear to survive her. His body was found on the high-road nearRouen. He had fallen on his sword. Condorcet swallowed opium. At Bordeaux thesteel fell on the necks of the bold and quick-witted Guadet and of Barbaroux, the chiefof those enthusiasts from the Rhone whose valour, in the great crisis of the tenth ofAugust, had turned back the tide of battle from the Louvre to the Tuileries. In a field



near the Garonne was found all that the wolves had left of Pétion, once honoured,greatly indeed beyond his deserts, as the model of republican virtue. We are far fromregarding even the best of the Girondists with unmixed admiration; but history owesto them this honourable testimony, that, being free to choose whether they would beoppressors or victims, they deliberately and firmly resolved rather to suffer injusticethan to inflict it.

And now began that strange period known by the name of the Reign of Terror. TheJacobins had prevailed. This was their hour, and the power of darkness. TheConvention was subjugated and reduced to profound silence on the highest questionsof state. The sovereignty passed to the Committee of Public Safety. To the edictsframed by that Committee the representative assembly did not venture to offer eventhe species of opposition which the ancient parliament had frequently offered to themandates of the ancient kings. Six persons held the chief power in the small cabinetwhich now domineered over France — Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, Collot,Billaud, and Barère.

To some of these men, and of those who adhered to them, it is due to say that thefanaticism which had emancipated them from the restraints of justice and compassionhad emancipated them also from the dominion of vulgar cupidity and of vulgar fear;that, while hardly knowing where to find an assignat of a few francs to pay for adinner, they expended with strict integrity the immense revenue which they collectedby every art of rapine; and that they were ready, in support of their cause, to mountthe scaffold with as much indifference as they showed when they signed the death-warrants of aristocrats and priests. But no great party can be composed of suchmaterials as these. It is the inevitable law that such zealots as we have described shallcollect around them a multitude of slaves, of cowards, and of libertines, whose savagetempers and licentious appetites, withheld only by the dread of law and magistracyfrom the worst excesses, are called into full activity by the hope of impunity. Afaction which, from whatever motive, relaxes the great laws of morality is certain tobe joined by the most immoral part of the community. This has been repeatedlyproved in religious wars. The war of the Holy Sepulchre, the Albigensian war, theHuguenot war, the Thirty Years’ war, all originated in pious zeal. That zeal inflamedthe champions of the church to such a point that they regarded all generosity to thevanquished as a sinful weakness. The infidel, the heretic, was to be run down like amad dog. No outrage committed by the Catholic warrior on the miscreant enemycould deserve punishment. As soon as it was known that boundless license was thusgiven to barbarity and dissoluteness, thousands of wretches who cared nothing for thesacred cause, but who were eager to be exempted from the police of peaceful cities,and the discipline of well-governed camps, flocked to the standard of the faith. Themen who had set up that standard were sincere, chaste, regardless of lucre, and,perhaps, where only themselves were concerned, not unforgiving; but round thatstandard were assembled such gangs of rogues, ravishers, plunderers, and ferociousbravoes, as were scarcely ever found under the flag of any state engaged in a meretemporal quarrel. In a very similar way was the Jacobin party composed. There was asmall nucleus of enthusiasts; round that nucleus was gathered a vast mass of ignobledepravity; and in all that mass there was nothing so depraved and so ignoble asBarère.



Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was administered by themost barbarous of all tribunals; when no man could greet his neighbours, or say hisprayers, or dress his hair, without danger of committing a capital crime; when spieslurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning;when the jails were filled as close as the hold of a slave-ship; when the gutters ranfoaming with blood into the Seine; when it was death to be great-niece of a captain ofthe royal guards, or half-brother of a doctor of the Sorbonne, to express a doubtwhether assignats would not fall, to hint that the English had been victorious in theaction of the First of June, to have a copy of one of Burke’s pamphlets locked up in adesk, to laugh at a Jacobin for taking the name of Cassius or Timoleon, or to call theFifth Sans-culottide by its old superstitious name of St. Matthew’s Day. While thedaily waggon-loads of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris,the Proconsuls whom the sovereign Committee had sent forth to the departmentsrevelled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of thedeadly machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long rows ofcaptives were mowed down with grape shot. Holes were made in the bottom ofcrowded barges. Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of aspeedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to the sea,great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined together in hideousembraces. No mercy was shown to sex or age. The number of young lads and of girlsof seventeen who were murdered by that execrable government is to be reckoned byhundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike along the Jacobinranks. One champion of liberty had his pockets well stuffed with ears. Anotherswaggered about with the finger of a little child in his hat. A few months had sufficedto degrade France below the level of New Zealand.

It is absurd to say that any amount of public danger can justify a system like this, wedo not say on Christian principles, we do not say on the principles of a high morality,but even on principles of Machiavellian policy. It is true that great emergencies callfor activity and vigilance; it is true that they justify severity which, in ordinary times,would deserve the name of cruelty. But indiscriminate severity can never, under anycircumstances, be useful. It is plain that the whole efficacy of punishment depends onthe care with which the guilty are distinguished. Punishment which strikes the guiltyand the innocent promiscuously operates merely like a pestilence or a greatconvulsion of nature, and has no more tendency to prevent offences than the cholera,or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would have. The energy for which the Jacobinadministration is praised was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himselfwith opium, draws his knife, and runs a-muck through the streets, slashing right andleft at friends and foes. Such has never been the energy of truly great rulers; ofElizabeth, for example, of Oliver, or of Frederick. They were not, indeed, scrupulous.But, had they been less scrupulous than they were, the strength and amplitude of theirminds would have preserved them from crimes such as those which the small men ofthe Committee of Public Safety took for daring strokes of policy. The great Queenwho so long held her own against foreign and domestic enemies, against temporal andspiritual arms; the great Protector who governed with more than regal power, indespite both of royalists and republicans; the great King who, with a beaten army andan exhausted treasury, defended his little dominions to the last against the unitedefforts of Russia, Austria, and France; with what scorn would they have heard that it



was impossible for them to strike a salutary terror into the disaffected without sendingschool-boys and school-girls to death by cart-loads and boat-loads!

The popular notion is, we believe, that the leading Terrorists were wicked men, but, atthe same time, great men. We can see nothing great about them but their wickedness.That their policy was daringly original is a vulgar error. Their policy is as old as theoldest accounts which we have of human misgovernment. It seemed new in Franceand in the eighteenth century only because it had been long disused, for excellentreasons, by the enlightened part of mankind. But it has always prevailed, and stillprevails, in savage and half savage nations, and is the chief cause which prevents suchnations from making advances towards civilisation. Thousands of deys, of beys, ofpachas, of rajahs, of nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of statecraft asthe members of the Committee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we imagine, was superior toany of them in their new line. In fact, there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa sodull or so unlearned as not to be fully qualified for the business of Jacobin police andJacobin finance. To behead people by scores without caring whether they are guilty orinnocent; to wring money out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to robthe public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates; to take loaves by forceout of the bakers’ shops; to clothe and mount soldiers by seizing on one man’s wooland linen, and on another man’s horses and saddles, without compensation; is of allmodes of governing the simplest and most obvious. Of its morality we at present saynothing. But surely it requires no capacity beyond that of a barbarian or a child. Bymeans like those which we have described, the Committee of Public Safetyundoubtedly succeeded, for a short time, in enforcing profound submission, and inraising immense funds. But to enforce submission by butchery, and to raise funds byspoliation, is not statesmanship. The real statesman is he who, in troubled times,keeps down the turbulent without unnecessarily harassing the well-affected; and who,when great pecuniary resources are needed, provides for the public exigencies withoutviolating the security of property and drying up the sources of future prosperity. Sucha statesman, we are confident, might, in 1793, have preserved the independence ofFrance without shedding a drop of innocent blood, without plundering a singlewarehouse. Unhappily, the Republic was subject to men who were mere demagoguesand in no sense statesmen. They could declaim at a club. They could lead a rabble tomischief. But they had no skill to conduct the affairs of an empire. The want of skillthey supplied for a time by atrocity and blind violence. For legislative ability, fiscalability, military ability, diplomatic ability, they had one substitute, the guillotine.Indeed their exceeding ignorance, and the barrenness of their invention, are the bestexcuse for their murders and robberies. We really believe that they would not have cutso many throats, and picked so many pockets, if they had known how to govern in anyother way.

That under their administration the war against the European Coalition wassuccessfully conducted is true. But that war had been successfully conducted beforetheir elevation, and continued to be successfully conducted after their fall. Terror wasnot the order of the day when Brussels opened its gates to Dumourier. Terror hadceased to be the order of the day when Piedmont and Lombardy were conquered byBonaparte. The truth is, that France was saved, not by the Committee of PublicSafety, but by the energy, patriotism, and valour of the French people. Those high



qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers whose administration wasa tissue, not merely of crimes, but of blunders.

We have not time to tell how the leaders of the savage faction at length began toavenge mankind on each other; how the craven Hébert was dragged wailing andtrembling to his doom; how the nobler Danton, moved by a late repentance, strove invain to repair the evil which he had wrought, and half redeemed the great crime ofSeptember by manfully encountering death in the cause of mercy.

Our business is with Barère. In all those things he was not only consenting, buteagerly and joyously forward. Not merely was he one of the guilty administration. Hewas the man to whom was especially assigned the office of proposing and defendingoutrages on justice and humanity, and of furnishing to atrocious schemes anappropriate garb of atrocious rodomontade. Barère first proclaimed from the tribuneof the Convention that terror must be the order of the day. It was by Barère that theRevolutionary Tribunal of Paris was provided with the aid of a public accuser worthyof such a court, the infamous Fouquier Tinville. It was Barère who, when one of theold members of the National Assembly had been absolved by the RevolutionaryTribunal, gave orders that a fresh jury should be summoned. “Acquit one of theNational Assembly!” he cried. “The Tribunal is turning against the Revolution.” It isunnecessary to say that the prisoner’s head was soon in the basket. It was Barère whomoved that the city of Lyons should be destroyed. “Let the plough,” he cried from thetribune, “pass over her. Let her name cease to exist. The rebels are conquered; but arethey all exterminated? No weakness. No mercy. Let every one be smitten. Two wordswill suffice to tell the whole. Lyons made war on liberty; Lyons is no more.” WhenToulon was taken Barère came forward to announce the event. “The conquest,” saidthe apostate Brissotine, “won by the Mountain over the Brissotines must becommemorated by a mark set on the place where Toulon once stood. The nationalthunder must crush the house of every trader in the town.” When CamilleDesmoulins, long distinguished among the republicans by zeal and ability, dared toraise his eloquent voice against the Reign of Terror, and to point out the close analogybetween the government which then oppressed France and the government of theworst of the Cæsars, Barère rose to complain of the weak compassion which tried torevive the hopes of the aristocracy. “Whoever,” he said, “is nobly born is a man to besuspected. Every priest, every frequenter of the old court, every lawyer, every banker,is a man to be suspected. Every person who grumbles at the course which theRevolution takes is a man to be suspected. There are whole castes already tried andcondemned. There are callings which carry their doom with them. There are relationsof blood which the law regards with an evil eye. Republicans of France!” yelled therenegade Girondist, the old enemy of the Mountain—“Republicans of France! theBrissotines led you by gentle means to slavery. The Mountain leads you by strongmeasures to freedom. Oh! who can count the evils which a false compassion mayproduce?” When the friends of Danton mustered courage to express a wish that theConvention would at least hear him in his own defence before it sent him to certaindeath, the voice of Barère was the loudest in opposition to their prayer. When thecrimes of Lebon, one of the worst, if not the very worst, of the vicegerents of theCommittee of Public Safety, had so maddened the people of the Department of theNorth that they resorted to the desperate expedient of imploring the protection of the



Convention, Barère pleaded the cause of the accused tyrant, and threatened thepetitioners with the utmost vengeance of the government. “These charges,” he said,“have been suggested by wily aristocrats. The man who crushes the enemies of thepeople, though he may be hurried by his zeal into some excesses, can never be aproper object of censure. The proceedings of Lebon may have been a little harsh as toform.” One of the small irregularities thus gently censured was this: Lebon kept awretched man a quarter of an hour under the knife of the guillotine, in order totorment him, by reading to him, before he was despatched, a letter, the contents ofwhich were supposed to be such as would aggravate even the bitterness of death. “Butwhat,” proceeded Barère, “is not permitted to the hatred of a republican againstaristocracy? How many generous sentiments atone for what may perhaps seemacrimonious in the prosecution of public enemies? Revolutionary measures are alwaysto be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is not lawful to lift.”

After this, it would be idle to dwell on facts which would indeed, of themselves,suffice to render a name infamous, but which make no perceptible addition to thegreat infamy of Barère. It would be idle, for example, to relate how he, a man ofletters, a member of an Academy of Inscriptions, was foremost in that war againstlearning, art, and history which disgraced the Jacobin government; how herecommended a general conflagration of libraries; how he proclaimed that all recordsof events anterior to the Revolution ought to be destroyed; how he laid waste theAbbey of St. Denis, pulled down monuments consecrated by the veneration of ages,and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient kings. He was, in truth, seldom so wellemployed as when he turned for a moment from making war on the living to makewar on the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That in Barère, as in thewhole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians whom he resembled, voluptuousnesswas mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew, twice in every decade, from the work ofblood to the smiling gardens of Clichy, and there forgot public cares in the madness ofwine and in the arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnotdoes not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that Barère’sdissipation was not carried to such a point as to interfere with his industry. Nothingcan be more true. Barère was by no means so much addicted to debauchery as toneglect the work of murder. It was his boast that, even during his hours of recreation,he cut out work for the Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that hisexertions would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than theythought. “The guillotine,” he said, “does all; the guillotine governs.” For ourselves,we are much more disposed to look indulgently on the pleasures which he allowed tohimself than on the pain which he inflicted on his neighbours.

“Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedissetTempora sævitiæ, claras quibus abstulit urbiIllustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo.”

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a blemish on thefame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr. Fox. But the vices of honest menare the virtues of Barère.



And now Barère had become a really cruel man. It was from mere pusillanimity thathe had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the whole history of our race proves thatthe taste for the misery of others is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious maytoo easily acquire, and which, when once acquired, is as strong as any of thepropensities with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to bring thisman into a state of mind in which images of despair, wailing, and death had anexhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as wine and love inspire men of free andjoyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily freight of victims, ancient men andlads, and fair young girls, the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of thelittle national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath thescaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier — these things were to him whatLalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what Rosette and a bottle of icedchampagne are to De Béranger. As soon as he began to speak of slaughter his heartseemed to be enlarged, and his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits andgasconades. Robespierre, St. Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect ofearnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a pleasure.Cruelty was no such melancholy business, to be gone about with an austere brow anda whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly accompanied by singing and laughing. Intruth, Robespierre and Barère might be well compared to the two renowned hangmenof Louis the Eleventh. They were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havock. But,while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned and joked.For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure to Jean qui rit.

In the midst of the funeral gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety stranger and moreghastly than the horrors of the prison and the scaffold distinguished the dwelling ofBarère. Every morning a crowd of suitors assembled to implore his protection. Hecame forth in his rich dressing-gown, went round the antechamber, dispensed smilesand promises among the obsequious crowd, addressed himself with peculiaranimation to every handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimentedher in the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of hereyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants he dismissed them,and flung all their memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, heconceived, to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only animitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in the habit of clearing his table of papers in thesame way. Nor was this the only point in which we could point out a resemblancebetween the worst statesman of the monarchy and the worst statesman of the republic.

Of Barère’s peculiar vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed from an anecdotewhich one of his intimate associates, a juror of the revolutionary tribunal, has related.A courtesan who bore a conspicuous part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barère touse his power against a head-dress which did not suit her style of face, and which arival beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the capital wassummoned and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy, Barère said, was againrearing its front. These new wigs were counter-revolutionary. He had reason to knowthat they were made out of the long fair hair of handsome aristocrats who had died bythe national chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of criminalsmight justly be suspected of incivism. This ridiculous lie imposed on the authorities ofParis. Female citizens were solemnly warned against the obnoxious ringlets, and were



left to choose between their head-dresses and their heads. Barère’s delight at thesuccess of this facetious fiction was quite extravagant: he could not tell the storywithout going into such convulsions of laughter as made his hearers hope that he wasabout to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling and exhilarating to his mindin this grotesque combination of the frivolous with the horrible, of false locks andcurling-irons with spouting arteries and reeking hatchets.

But, though Barère succeeded in earning the honourable nicknames of the Witling ofTerror, and the Anacreon of the Guillotine, there was one place where it was longremembered to his disadvantage that he had, for a time, talked the language ofhumanity and moderation. That place was the Jacobin Club. Even after he had bornethe chief part in the massacre of the Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in thedestruction of Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At onemeeting of the society, a member complained that the committee to which thesupreme direction of affairs was entrusted, after all the changes which had been made,still contained one man who was not trustworthy. Robespierre, whose influence overthe Jacobins was boundless, undertook the defence of his colleague, owned there wassome ground for what had been said, but spoke highly of Barère’s industry andaptitude for business. This seasonable interposition silenced the accuser; but it waslong before the neophyte could venture to appear at the club.

At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even among Barère’s greatachievements, obtained his full pardon even from that rigid conclave. Theinsupportable tyranny of the Committee of Public Safety had at length brought theminds of men, and even of women, into a fierce and hard temper, which defied orwelcomed death. The life which might be any morning taken away, in consequence ofthe whisper of a private enemy, seemed of little value. It was something to die aftersmiting one of the oppressors; it was something to bequeath to the surviving tyrants aterror not inferior to that which they had themselves inspired. Human nature, huntedand worried to the utmost, now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville was afraidto walk the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot D’Herbois; a young girl, animatedapparently by the spirit of Charlotte Corday, attempted to obtain an interview withRobespierre. Suspicions arose; she was searched; and two knives were found abouther. She was questioned, and spoke of the Jacobin domination with resolute scorn andaversion. It is unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barère declaredfrom the tribune that the cause of these attempts was evident. Pitt and his guineas haddone the whole. The English Government had organised a vast system of murder, hadarmed the hand of Charlotte Corday, and had now, by similar means, attacked two ofthe most eminent friends of liberty in France. It is needless to say that theseimputations were, not only false, but destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they weredemonstrably absurd: for the assassins to whom Barère referred rushed on certaindeath, a sure proof that they were not hirelings. The whole wealth of England wouldnot have bribed any sane person to do what Charlotte Corday did. But, when weconsider her as an enthusiast, her conduct is perfectly natural. Even those Frenchwriters who are childish enough to believe that the English Government contrived theinfernal machine and strangled the Emperor Paul have fully acquitted Mr. Pitt of allshare in the death of Marat and in the attempt on Robespierre. Yet on calumnies sofutile as those which we have mentioned did Barère ground a motion at which all



Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a decree that no quarter should be given toany English or Hanoverian soldier.* His Carmagnole was worthy of the propositionwith which it concluded. “That one Englishman should be spared, that for the slavesof George, for the human machines of York, the vocabulary of our armies shouldcontain such a word as generosity, this is what the National Convention cannotendure. War to the death against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk, quarterhad been refused to them when they asked it on their knees, if our troops hadexterminated them all, instead of suffering them to infest our fortresses by theirpresence, the English Government would not have renewed its attack on our frontiersthis year. It is only the dead man who never comes back. What is this moral pestilencewhich has introduced into our armies false ideas of humanity? That the English wereto be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic notion of the Brissotines; it wasthe patriotic practice of Dumourier. But humanity consists in exterminating ourenemies. No mercy to the execrable Englishman. Such are the sentiments of the trueFrenchman; for he knows that he belongs to a nation revolutionary as nature, powerfulas freedom, ardent as the saltpetre which she has just torn from the entrails of theearth. Soldiers of liberty, when victory places Englishmen at your mercy, strike! Noneof them must return to the servile soil of Great Britain; none must pollute the free soilof France.”

The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in Barère’s motionwithout debate. And now at last the doors of the Jacobin Club were thrown open tothe disciple who had surpassed his masters. He was admitted a member byacclamation, and was soon selected to preside.

For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be carried into full effect.Intelligence arrived from the seat of war of a sharp contest between some French andEnglish troops, in which the Republicans had the advantage, and in which noprisoners had been made. Such things happen occasionally in all wars. Barère,however, attributed the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertainedthe Convention with another Carmagnole.

“The Republicans,” he said, “saw a division in red uniform at a distance. The red-coats are attacked with the bayonet. Not one of them escapes the blows of theRepublicans. All the red-coats have been killed. No mercy, no indulgence, has beenshown towards the villains. Not an Englishman whom the Republicans could reach isnow living. How many prisoners should you guess that we have made? One singleprisoner is the result of this great day.”

And now this bad man’s craving for blood had become insatiable. The more hequaffed, the more he thirsted. He had begun with the English; but soon he came downwith a proposition for new massacres. “All the troops,” he said, “of the coalescedtyrants in garrison at Condé, Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to beput to the sword unless they surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours. The English,of course, will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the English we have notreaty but death. As to the rest, surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours, or death,these are our conditions. If the slaves resist, let them feel the edge of the sword.” Andthen he waxed facetious. “On these terms the Republic is willing to give them a lesson



in the art of war.” At that jest, some hearers, worthy of such a speaker, set up a laugh.Then he became serious again. “Let the enemy perish,” he cried; “I have already saidit from this tribune. It is only the dead man who never comes back. Kings will notconspire against us in the grave. Armies will not fight against us when they areannihilated. Let our war with them be a war of extermination. What pity is due toslaves whom the Emperor leads to war under the cane; whom the King of Prussiabeats to the shambles with the flat of the sword; and whom the Duke of York makesdrunk with rum and gin?” And at the rum and gin the Mountain and the gallerieslaughed again.

If Barère had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to estimate the extent of thecalamity which he would have brought on the human race. No government, howeveraverse to cruelty, could, in justice to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemieswho gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty.It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French sailorwhom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread theintroduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation of Barère’s new law ofwar would have been more unfavourable to his countrymen than to ours; for webelieve that, from the beginning to the end of the war, there never was a time at whichthe number of French prisoners in England was not greater than the number ofEnglish prisoners in France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars whileEngland retains her maritime superiority. Had the murderous decree of theConvention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that, for everyEnglishman slain by the French, at least three Frenchmen would have been put to thesword by the English. It is, therefore, not as Englishmen, but as members of the greatsociety of mankind, that we speak with indignation and horror of the change whichBarère attempted to introduce. The mere slaughter would have been the smallest partof the evil. The butchering of a single unarmed man in cold blood, under an act of thelegislature, would have produced more evil than the carnage of ten such fields asAlbuera. Public law would have been subverted from the foundations; nationalenmities would have been inflamed to a degree of rage which happily it is not easy forus to conceive; cordial peace would have been impossible. The moral character of theEuropean nations would have been rapidly and deeply corrupted; for in all countriesthose men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of the publicweal enjoy high consideration, and are considered as the best arbitrators on points ofhonour and manly bearing. With the standard of morality established in the militaryprofession the general standard of morality must to a great extent sink or rise. It is,therefore, a fortunate circumstance that, during a long course of years, respect for theweak and clemency towards the vanquished have been considered as qualities not lessessential to the accomplished soldier than personal courage. How long would thiscontinue to be the case, if the slaying of prisoners were a part of the daily duty of thewarrior? What man of kind and generous nature would, under such a system,willingly bear arms? Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long continue kindand generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless became thecharacteristic of military men, the taint must rapidly spread to civil and to domesticlife, and must show itself in all the dealings of the strong with the weak, of husbandswith wives, of employers with workmen, of creditors with debtors?



But, thank God, Barère’s decree was a mere dead letter. It was to be executed by menvery different from those who, in the interior of France, were the instruments of theCommittee of Public Safety, who prated at Jacobin Clubs, and ran to FouquierTinville with charges of incivism against women whom they could not seduce, andbankers from whom they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche,had guarded the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kléber, had made good the defenceof the wood of Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more degrading than thatof the hangman. “The Convention,” said an officer to his men, “has sent orders that allthe English prisoners shall be shot.” “We will not shoot them,” answered a stout-hearted sergeant. “Send them to the Convention. If the deputies take pleasure inkilling a prisoner, they may kill him themselves, and eat him too, like savages as theyare.” This was the sentiment of the whole army. Bonaparte, who thoroughlyunderstood war, who at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof that he was notunwilling to strain the laws of war to their utmost rigour, and whose hatred ofEngland amounted to a folly, always spoke of Barère’s decree with loathing, andboasted that the army had refused to obey the Convention.

Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens would have been instantlypunished by wholesale massacre; but the Committee of Public Safety was aware thatthe discipline which had tamed the unwarlike population of the fields and cities mightnot answer in camps. To fling people by scores out of a boat, and, when they catchhold of it, to chop off their fingers with a hatchet, is undoubtedly a very agreeablepastime for a thoroughbred Jacobin, when the sufferers are, as at Nantes, oldconfessors, young girls, or women with child. But such sport might prove a littledangerous if tried upon grim ranks of grenadiers, marked with the scars ofHondschoote, and singed by the smoke of Fleurus.

Barère, however, found some consolation. If he could not succeed in murdering theEnglish and the Hanoverians, he was amply indemnified by a new and vast slaughterof his own countrymen and countrywomen. If the defence which has been set up forthe members of the Committee of Public Safety had been well founded, if it had beentrue that they governed with extreme severity only because the republic was inextreme peril, it is clear that the severity would have diminished as the perildiminished. But the fact is, that those cruelties for which the public danger is made aplea became more and more enormous as the danger became less and less, andreached the full height when there was no longer any danger at all. In the autumn of1793, there was undoubtedly reason to apprehend that France might be unable tomaintain the struggle against the European coalition. The enemy was triumphant onthe frontiers. More than half the departments disowned the authority of theConvention. But at that time eight or ten necks a day were thought an ampleallowance for the guillotine of the capital. In the summer of 1794, Bordeaux, Toulon,Caen, Lyons, Marseilles, had submitted to the ascendency of Paris. The French armswere victorious under the Pyrenees and on the Sambre. Brussels had fallen. Prussiahad announced her intention of withdrawing from the contest. The Republic, nolonger content with defending her own independence, was beginning to meditateconquest beyond the Alps and the Rhine. She was now more formidable to herneighbours than ever Louis the Fourteenth had been. And now the RevolutionaryTribunal of Paris was not content with forty, fifty, sixty heads in a morning. It was



just after a series of victories, which destroyed the whole force of the single argumentwhich has been urged in defence of the system of terror, that the Committee of PublicSafety resolved to infuse into that system an energy hitherto unknown. It wasproposed to reconstruct the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to collect in the space of twopages the whole revolutionary jurisprudence. Lists of twelve judges and fifty jurorswere made out from among the fiercest Jacobins. The substantive law was simplythis, that whatever the tribunal should think pernicious to the republic was a capitalcrime. The law of evidence was simply this, that whatever satisfied the jurors wassufficient proof. The law of procedure was of a piece with every thing else. There wasto be an advocate against the prisoner, and no advocate for him. It was expresslydeclared that, if the jurors were in any manner convinced of the guilt of the prisoner,they might convict him without hearing a single witness. The only punishment whichthe court could inflict was death.

Robespierre proposed this decree. When he had read it, a murmur rose from theConvention. The fear which had long restrained the deputies from opposing theCommittee was overcome by a stronger fear. Every man felt the knife at his throat.“The decree,” said one, “is of grave importance. I move that it be printed, and that thedebate be adjourned. If such a measure were adopted without time for consideration, Iwould blow my brains out at once.” The motion for adjournment was seconded. ThenBarère sprang up. “It is impossible,” he said, “that there can be any difference ofopinion among us as to a law like this, a law so favourable in all respects to patriots; alaw which insures the speedy punishment of conspirators. If there is to be anadjournment, I must insist that it shall not be for more than three days.” Theopposition was overawed; the decree was passed; and, during the six weeks whichfollowed, the havock was such as had never been known before.

And now the evil was beyond endurance. That timid majority which had for a timesupported the Girondists, and which had, after their fall, contented itself withregistering in silence the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety, at length drewcourage from despair. Leaders of bold and firm character were not wanting, men suchas Fouché and Tallien, who, having been long conspicuous among the chiefs of theMountain, now found that their own lives, or lives still dearer to them than their own,were in extreme peril. Nor could it be longer kept secret that there was a schism in thedespotic committee. On one side were Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon; on theother, Collot and Billaud. Barère leaned towards these last, but only leaned towardsthem. As was ever his fashion when a great crisis was at hand, he fawned alternatelyon both parties, struck alternately at both, and held himself in readiness to chant thepraises or to sign the death-warrant of either. In any event his Carmagnole was ready.The tree of liberty, the blood of traitors, the dagger of Brutus, the guineas ofperfidious Albion, would do equally well for Billaud and for Robespierre.

The first attack which was made on Robespierre was indirect. An old woman namedCatherine Théot, half maniac, half impostor, was protected by him, and exercised astrange influence over his mind; for he was naturally prone to superstition, and,having abjured the faith in which he had been brought up, was looking about forsomething to believe. Barère drew up a report against Catherine, which containedmany facetious conceits, and ended, as might be expected, with a motion for sending



her and some other wretched creatures of both sexes to the Revolutionary Tribunal,or, in other words, to death. This report, however, he did not dare to read to theConvention himself. Another member, less timid, was induced to father the cruelbuffoonery; and the real author enjoyed in security the dismay and vexation ofRobespierre.

Barère now thought that he had done enough on one side, and that it was time to makehis peace with the other. On the seventh of Thermidor, he pronounced in theConvention a panegyric on Robespierre. “That representative of the people,” he said,“enjoys a reputation for patriotism, earned by five years of exertion, and byunalterable fidelity to the principles of independence and liberty.” On the eighth ofThermidor, it became clear that a decisive struggle was at hand. Robespierre struckthe first blow. He mounted the tribune, and uttered a long invective on his opponents.It was moved that his discourse should be printed; and Barère spoke for the printing.The sense of the Convention soon appeared to be the other way; and Barèreapologised for his former speech, and implored his colleagues to abstain fromdisputes which could be agreeable only to Pitt and York. On the next day, the ever-memorable ninth of Thermidor, came the real tug of war. Tallien, bravely taking hislife in his hand, led the onset. Billaud followed; and then all that infinite hatred whichhad long been kept down by terror burst forth, and swept every barrier before it.When at length the voice of Robespierre, drowned by the president’s bell, and byshouts of “Down with the tyrant!” had died away in hoarse gasping, Barère rose. Hebegan with timid and doubtful phrases, watched the effect of every word he uttered,and, when the feeling of the Assembly had been unequivocally manifested, declaredagainst Robespierre. But it was not till the people out of doors, and especially thegunners of Paris, had espoused the cause of the Convention that Barère felt quite atease. Then he sprange to the tribune, poured forth a Carmagnole about Pisistratus andCatiline, and concluded by moving that the heads of Robespierre and Robespierre’saccomplices should be cut off without a trial. The motion was carried. On thefollowing morning the vanquished members of the Committee of Public Safety andtheir principal adherents suffered death. It was exactly one year since Barère hadcommenced his career of slaughter by moving the proscription of his old allies theGirondists. We greatly doubt whether any human being has ever succeeded in packingmore wickedness into the space of three hundred and sixty-five days.

The ninth of Thermidor is one of the great epochs in the history of Europe. It is truethat the three members of the Committee of Public Safety who triumphed were by nomeans better men than the three who fell. Indeed, we are inclined to think that of thesesix statesmen the least bad were Robespierre and Saint Just, whose cruelty was theeffect of sincere fanaticism operating on narrow understandings and acrimonioustempers. The worst of the six was, beyond all doubt, Barère, who had no faith in anypart of the system which he upheld by persecution; who, while he sent his fellow-creatures to death for being the third cousins of royalists, had not in the least made uphis mind that a republic was better than a monarchy; who, while he slew his oldfriends for federalism, was himself far more a federalist than any of them; who hadbecome a murderer merely for his safety, and who continued to be a murderer merelyfor his pleasure.



The tendency of the vulgar is to embody every thing. Some individual is selected, andoften selected very injudiciously, as the representative of every great movement of thepublic mind, of every great revolution in human affairs; and on this individual areconcentrated all the love and all the hatred, all the admiration and all the contempt,which he ought rightfully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, a whole nation, awhole generation. Perhaps no human being has suffered so much from this propensityof the multitude as Robespierre. He is regarded, not merely as what he was, anenvious, malevolent zealot, but as the incarnation of Terror, as Jacobinismpersonified. The truth is, that it was not by him that the system of terror was carried tothe last extreme. The most horrible days in the history of the revolutionary tribunal ofParis were those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierrehad then ceased to attend the meetings of the sovereign Committee; and the directionof affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and of Barère.

It had never occurred to those three tyrants that, in overthrowing Robespierre, theywere overthrowing that system of Terror to which they were more attached than hehad ever been. Their object was to go on slaying even more mercilessly than before.But they had misunderstood the nature of the great crisis which had at last arrived.The yoke of the Committee was broken for ever. The Convention had regained itsliberty, had tried its strength, had vanquished and punished its enemies. A greatreaction had commenced. Twenty-four hours after Robespierre had ceased to live, itwas moved and carried, amidst loud bursts of applause, that the sittings of theRevolutionary Tribunal should be suspended. Billaud was not at that moment present.He entered the hall soon after, learned with indignation what had passed, and movedthat the vote should be rescinded. But loud cries of “No, no!” rose from those bencheswhich had lately paid mute obedience to his commands. Barère came forward on thesame day, and adjured the Convention not to relax the system of terror. “Beware,above all things,” he cried, “of that fatal moderation which talks of peace and ofclemency. Let aristocracy know, that here she will find only enemies sternly bent onvengeance, and judges who have no pity.” But the day of the Carmagnoles was over:the restraint of fear had been relaxed; and the hatred with which the nation regardedthe Jacobin dominion broke forth with ungovernable violence. Not more strongly didthe tide of public opinion run against the old monarchy and aristocracy, at the time ofthe taking of the Bastile, than it now ran against the tyranny of the Mountain. Fromevery dungeon the prisoners came forth, as they had gone in, by hundreds. The decreewhich forbade the soldiers of the republic to give quarter to the English was repealedby an unanimous vote, amidst loud acclamations; nor, passed as it was, disobeyed asit was, and rescinded as it was, can it be with justice considered as a blemish on thefame of the French nation. The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressedwithout resistance. The surviving Girondist deputies, who had concealed themselvesfrom the vengeance of their enemies in caverns and garrets, were readmitted to theirseats in the Convention. No day passed without some signal reparation of injustice; nostreet in Paris was without some trace of the recent change. In the theatre, the bust ofMarat was pulled down from its pedestal and broken in pieces, amidst the applause ofthe audience. His carcass was ejected from the Pantheon. The celebrated picture of hisdeath, which had hung in the hall of the Convention, was removed. The savageinscriptions with which the walls of the city had been covered disappeared; and, inplace of death and terror, humanity, the watchword of the new rulers, was every



where to be seen. In the mean time, the gay spirit of France recently subdued byoppression, and now elated by the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned in a thousandforms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its empire—an empirestrengthened by the remembrance of all the tender and all the sublime virtues whichwomen, delicately bred and reputed frivolous, had displayed during the evil days.Refined manners, chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn ofthe Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing of the waters,the awakening of animal and vegetable life, the sudden softening of the air, thesudden blooming of the flowers, the sudden bursting of old forests into verdure, is buta feeble type of that happiest and most genial of revolutions, the revolution of theninth of Thermidor.

But, in the midst of the revival of all kind and generous sentiments, there was oneportion of the community against which mercy itself seemed to cry out for vengeance.The chiefs of the late government and their tools were now never named but as themen of blood, the drinkers of blood, the cannibals. In some parts of France, where thecreatures of the Mountain had acted with peculiar barbarity, the populace took the lawinto its own hands and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the true Jacobinmeasure; but at Paris the punishments were inflicted with order and decency, andwere few when compared with the number, and lenient when compared with theenormity, of the crimes. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest ofmankind, Fouquier Tinville, whom Barère had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal,and Lebon, whom Barère had defended in the Convention, were placed under arrest.A third miscreant soon shared their fate, Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes. The trials ofthese men brought to light horrors surpassing anything that Suetonius and Lampridiushave related of the worst Cæsars. But it was impossible to punish subordinate agentswho, bad as they were, had only acted in accordance with the spirit of the governmentwhich they served, and, at the same time, to grant impunity to the heads of the wickedadministration. A cry was raised, both within and without the Convention, for justiceon Collot, Billaud, and Barère.

Collot and Billaud, with all their vices, appear to have been men of resolute natures.They made no submission; but opposed to the hatred of mankind, at first a fierceresistance, and afterwards a dogged and sullen endurance. Barère, on the other hand,as soon as he began to understand the real nature of the revolution of Thermidor,attempted to abandon the Mountain, and to obtain admission among his old friends ofthe moderate party. He declared every where that he had never been in favour ofsevere measures; that he was a Girondist; that he had always condemned andlamented the manner in which the Brissotine deputies had been treated. He nowpreached mercy from that tribune from which he had recently preached extermination.“The time,” he said, “has come at which our clemency may be indulged withoutdanger. We may now safely consider temporary imprisonment as an adequatepunishment for political misdemeanours.” It was only a fortnight since, from the sameplace, he had declaimed against the moderation which dared even to talk of clemency;it was only a fortnight since he had ceased to send men and women to the guillotine ofParis, at the rate of three hundred a week. He now wished to make his peace with themoderate party at the expense of the Terrorists, as he had, a year before, made hispeace with the Terrorists at the expense of the moderate party. But he was



disappointed. He had left himself no retreat. His face, his voice, his rants, his jokes,had become hateful to the Convention. When he spoke he was interrupted bymurmurs. Bitter reflections were daily cast on his cowardice and perfidy. On oneoccasion Carnot rose to give an account of a victory, and so far forgot the gravity ofhis character as to indulge in the sort of oratory which Barère had affected on similaroccasions. He was interrupted by cries of “No more Carmagnoles!” “No more ofBarère’s puns!”

At length, five months after the revolution of Thermidor, the Convention resolved thata committee of twenty-one members should be appointed to examine into the conductof Billaud, Collot, and Barère. In some weeks the report was made. From that reportwe learn that a paper had been discovered, signed by Barère, and containing aproposition for adding the last improvement to the system of terror. France was to bedivided into circuits; itinerant revolutionary tribunals, composed of trusty Jacobins,were to move from department to department; and the guillotine was to travel in theirtrain.

Barère, in his defence, insisted that no speech or motion which he had made in theConvention could, without a violation of the freedom of debate, be treated as a crime.He was asked how he could resort to such a mode of defence, after putting to death somany deputies on account of opinions expressed in the Convention. He had nothing tosay, but that it was much to be regretted that the sound principle had ever beenviolated.

He arrogated to himself a large share of the merit of the revolution in Thermidor. Themen who had risked their lives to effect that revolution, and who knew that, if theyhad failed, Barère would, in all probability, have moved the decree for beheadingthem without a trial, and have drawn up a proclamation announcing their guilt andtheir punishment to all France, were by no means disposed to acquiesce in his claims.He was reminded that, only forty-eight hours before the decisive conflict, he had, inthe tribune, been profuse of adulation to Robespierre. His answer to this reproach isworthy of himself. “It was necessary,” he said, “to dissemble. It was necessary toflatter Robespierre’s vanity, and, by panegyric, to impel him to the attack. This wasthe motive which induced me to load him with those praises of which you complain.Who ever blamed Brutus for dissembling with Tarquin?”

The accused triumvirs had only one chance of escaping punishment. There was severedistress at that moment among the working people of the capital. This distress theJacobins attributed to the reaction of Thermidor, to the lenity with which thearistocrats were now treated, and to the measures which had been adopted against thechiefs of the late administration. Nothing is too absurd to be believed by a populacewhich has not breakfasted, and which does not know how it is to dine. The rabble ofthe Faubourg St. Antoine rose, menaced the deputies, and demanded with loud criesthe liberation of the persecuted patriots. But the Convention was no longer such as ithad been, when similar means were employed too successfully against the Girondists.Its spirit was roused. Its strength had been proved. Military means were at itscommand. The tumult was suppressed: and it was decreed that same evening that



Collot, Billaud, and Barère should instantly be removed to a distant place ofconfinement.

The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which Barèrehas given of his journey is the most interesting and the most trustworthy part of theseMemoirs. There is no witness so infamous that a court of justice will not take hisword against himself; and even Barère may be believed when he tells us how much hewas hated and despised.

The carriage in which he was to travel passed, surrounded by armed men, along thestreet of St. Honoré. A crowd soon gathered round it and increased every moment. Onthe long flight of steps before the church of St. Roch stood rows of eager spectators. Itwas with difficulty that the coach could make its way through those who hung upon it,hooting, cursing, and striving to burst the doors. Barère thought his life in danger, andwas conducted at his own request to a public office, where he hoped that he mightfind shelter till the crowd should disperse. In the meantime, another discussion on hisfate took place in the Convention. It was proposed to deal with him as he had dealtwith better men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver him at oncewithout any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since the ninth ofThermidor, had generally directed the public counsels restrained the deputies fromtaking this course.

It was now night; and the streets gradually became quiet. The clock struck twelve; andBarère, under a strong guard, again set forth on his journey. He was conducted overthe river to the place where the Orleans road branches off from the southernboulevard. Two travelling carriages stood there. In one of them was Billaud, attendedby two officers; in the other two more officers were waiting to receive Barère. Collotwas already on the road.

At Orleans, a city which had suffered cruelly from the Jacobin tyranny, the threedeputies were surrounded by a mob bent on tearing them to pieces. All the nationalguards of the neighbourhood were assembled; and this force was not greater then theemergency required; for the multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to Blois.

At Amboise the prisoners learned that Tours was ready to receive them. The statelybridge was occupied by a throng of people, who swore that the men under whose rulethe Loire had been choked with corpses should have full personal experience of thenature of a noyade. In consequence of this news, the officers who had charge of thecriminals made such arrangements that the carriages reached Tours at two in themorning, and drove straight to the post-house. Fresh horses were instantly ordered;and the travellers started again at full gallop. They had in truth not a moment to lose;for the alarm had been given; lights were seen in motion; and the yells of a greatmultitude, disappointed of its revenge, mingled with the sound of the departingwheels.

At Poitiers there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted the post-house,they saw the whole population pouring in fury down the steep declivity on which thecity is built. They passed near Niort, but could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants



came forth with threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the postillions to stop; butthe postillions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town behind. Throughsuch dangers the men of blood were brought in safety to Rochelle.

Oléron was the place of their destination, a dreary island beaten by the raging wavesof the Bay of Biscay. The prisoners were confined in the castle; each had a singlechamber, at the door of which a guard was placed; and each was allowed the ration ofa single soldier. They were not allowed to communicate either with the garrison orwith the population of the island; and soon after their arrival they were denied theindulgence of walking on the ramparts. The only place where they were suffered totake exercise was the esplanade where the troops were drilled.

They had not been long in this situation when news came that the Jacobins of Parishad made a last attempt to regain ascendency in the state, that the hall of theConvention had been forced by a furious crowd, that one of the deputies had beenmurdered and his head fixed on a pike, that the life of the President had been for atime in imminent danger, and that some members of the legislature had not beenashamed to join the rioters. But troops had arrived in time to prevent a massacre. Theinsurgents had been put to flight; the inhabitants of the disaffected quarters of thecapital had been disarmed; the guilty deputies had suffered the just punishment oftheir treason; and the power of the Mountain was broken for ever. These eventsstrengthened the aversion with which the system of Terror and the authors of thatsystem were regarded. One member of the Convention had moved that the threeprisoners of Oléron should be put to death; another, that they should be brought backto Paris, and tried by a council of war. These propositions were rejected. Butsomething was conceded to the party which called for severity. A vessel which hadbeen fitted out with great expedition at Rochefort touched at Oléron; and it wasannounced to Collot and Billaud that they must instantly go on board. They wereforthwith conveyed to Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy.Billaud lived many years, shunning his fellow-creatures and shunned by them; anddiverted his lonely hours by teaching parrots to talk. Why a distinction was madebetween Barère and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any other writer, as far aswe know, has explained. It does not appear that the distinction was meant to be at allin his favour; for orders soon arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial forhis crimes before the criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He wasaccordingly brought back to the continent, and confined during some months atSaintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into a jail.

While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis of Thermidormet with a temporary check. The friends of the house of Bourbon, presuming on theindulgence with which they had been treated after the fall of Robespierre, not onlyventured to avow their opinions with little disguise, but at length took arms againstthe Convention, and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets ofParis. The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now directed chieflyagainst the Royalists; and the rigour with which the Jacobins had lately been treatedwas somewhat relaxed. The Convention, indeed, again resolved that Barère should besent to Guiana. But this decree was not carried into effect. The prisoner, probablywith the connivance of some powerful persons, made his escape from Saintes and fled



to Bordeaux, where he remained in concealment during some years. There seems tohave been a kind of understanding between him and the government, that, as long ashe hid himself, he should not be found, but that, if he obtruded himself on the publiceye, he must take the consequences of his rashness.

While the constitution of 1795, with its Executive Directory, its Council of Elders,and its Council of Five Hundred, was in operation, he continued to live under the banof the law. It was in vain that he solicited, even at moments when the politics of theMountain seemed to be again in the ascendant, a remission of the sentencepronounced by the Convention. Even his fellow-regicides, even the authors of theslaughter of Vendémiaire and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him.

About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again broughtbefore the world. In his own province he still retained some of his early popularity.He had, indeed, never been in that province since the downfall of the monarchy. Themountaineers of Gascony were far removed from the seat of government, and werebut imperfectly informed of what passed there. They knew that their countryman hadplayed an important part, and that he had on some occasions promoted their localinterests; and they stood by him in his adversity and in his disgrace with a constancywhich presents a singular contrast to his own abject fickleness. All France wasamazed to learn that the department of the Upper Pyrenees had chosed the proscribedtyrant a member of the Council of Five Hundred. The council, which, like our Houseof Commons, was the judge of the election of its own members, refused to admit him.When his name was read from the roll, a cry of indignation rose from the benches.“Which of you,” exclaimed one of the members, “would sit by the side of such amonster?” “Not I, not I!” answered a crowd of voices. One deputy declared that hewould vacate his seat if the hall were polluted by the presence of such a wretch. Theelection was declared null on the ground that the person elected was a criminalskulking from justice; and many severe reflections were thrown on the lenity whichsuffered him to be still at large.

He tried to make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel on England,entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that thiswork would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and, in order todefray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousandfrancs. The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barère is to bebelieved, of the villainy of Mr. Pitt, who bribed the Directory to order the Reviewersnot to notice so formidable an attack on the maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.

Barère had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received intelligence that themob of the town designed him the honour of a visit on the ninth of Thermidor, andwould probably administer to him what he had, in his defence of his friend Lebon,described as substantial justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him todisguise himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In thisgarb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his escape into thevineyards which surround the city, lurked during some days in a peasant’s hut, and,when the dreaded anniversary was over, stole back into the city. A few months laterhe was again in danger. He now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the



neighbourhood of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through thosetowns where four years before his life had been in extreme danger, passed through thecapital in the morning twilight, when none were in the streets except shop-boys takingdown the shutters, and arrived safe at the pleasant village of St. Ouen on the Seine,Here he remained in seclusion during some months. In the mean time Bonapartereturned from Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented parties,covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the Five Hundred out oftheir hall at the point of the bayonet, and became absolute monarch of France underthe name of First Consul.

Barère assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he could not bear tosee France again subject to a master; and that, if the representatives had been worthyof that honourable name, they would have arrested the ambitious general who insultedthem. These feelings, however, did not prevent him from soliciting the protection ofthe new government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of theessay on The Liberty of the Seas.

The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general oblivion. Hebelonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction. He was an upstart and asovereign; and had therefore something in common with the Jacobin, and somethingin common with the Royalist. All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposedto support his government, were readily received — all, whether Jacobins orRoyalists, who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Menwho had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men who hadfought in the army of Condé, were to be found close together, both in hisantechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouché and Maury with the samecross. He sent Aréna and Georges Cadoudal to the same scaffold. From a governmentacting on such principles Barère easily obtained the indulgence which the Directoryhad constantly refused to grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted;and he was allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in themost honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the specialsupervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his court at the Luxemburgpalace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was honoured with a few dry and carelesswords by the master of France.

Here begins a new chapter of Barère’s history. What passed between him and theConsular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to us as the speechesand reports which he made in the Convention. It is, however, not difficult, fromnotorious facts, and from the admissions scattered over these lying Memoirs, to forma tolerably accurate notion of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barère:Barère wanted to sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; andthere was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.

Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance on his owngenius were not only great but extravagant, looked with scorn on the most effeminateand dependent of human minds. He was quite capable of perpetrating crimes underthe influence either of ambition or of revenge: but he had no touch of that accursedmonomania, that craving for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin



chiefs. To proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with hispolicy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system included, heliked them the least; and Barère was the worst of them. This wretch had been brandedwith infamy, first by the Convention, and then by the Council of Five Hundred. Theinhabitants of four or five great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Norwere his vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It wouldbe unwise to place in any honourable or important post a man so wicked, so odious,and so little qualified to discharge high political duties. At the same time, there was away in which it seemed likely that he might be of use to the government. The FirstConsul, as he afterwards acknowledged, greatly overrated Barère’s powers as a writer.The effect which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by thecamp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself, when a youngsoldier, had been delighted by those compositions, which had much in common withthe rhapsodies of his favourite poet, Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the greatwarrior and statesman was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and hisproclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too oftendetect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the Carmagnoles. It is notstrange, therefore, that he should have been desirous to secure the aid of Barère’s pen.Nor was this the only kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee ofPublic Safety might render to the Consular government. He was likely to findadmission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy was to beovercome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid themselvesfrom the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too atrocious for mindscrazed by fanaticism, and familiar with misery and death. The government wasanxious to have information of what passed in their secret councils; and no man wasbetter qualified to furnish such information than Barère.

For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barère as a writer and as aspy. But Barère—was it possible that he would submit to such a degradation? Bad ashe was, he had played a great part. He had belonged to that class of criminals whofilled the world with the renown of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet whichhad ruled France with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signalsuccess. Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the singleexception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet. His namehad been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at Edinburgh and atCadiz. The blood of the queen of France, the blood of the greatest orators andphilosophers of France, was on his hands. He had spoken; and it had been decreedthat the plough should pass over the great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and ithad been decreed that the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. Whendepravity is placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; notwith hireling scribblers and police runners.

“Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;But shall the dignity of vice be lost?”

So sang Pope; and so felt Barère. When it was proposed to him to publish a journal indefence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired him for the first and



last time with something like courage. He had filled as large a space in the eyes ofmankind as Mr. Pitt or General Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend atonce to the level of Mr. Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that awide distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the Revolutionwho were summoned to the aid of the government. Those statesmen were required,indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle; but they were not called on to sacrificewhat, in the opinion of the vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were madetribunes and legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators, andconsuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising fortunes of their master;and, in truth, many of them were destined to wear the badge of his Legion of Honourand of his order of the Iron Crown; to be arch-chancellors and arch-treasurers, counts,dukes, and princes. Barère, only six years before, had been far more powerful, farmore widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought worthyto represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they received crowds ofsuitors in gilded ante-chambers, he was to pass his life in measuring paragraphs, andscolding correctors of the press. It was too much. Those lips which had never beforebeen able to fashion themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. “Icould not”—these are his own words—“abase myself to such a point as to serve theFirst Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many insignificant, low,and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the Rœderers, the Lebruns, the Marets, andothers whom it is superfluous to name, held the first place in this government ofupstarts.”

This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable. It is saidindeed that he was, for a moment, half inclined to admit Barère into the Council ofState; but the members of that body remonstrated in the strongest terms, and declaredthat such a nomination would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was thereforerelinquished. Thenceforth Barère’s only chance of obtaining the patronage of thegovernment was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a time when, withthree words, he might have had the heads of the three consuls, and to betake himself,humbly and industriously, to the task of composing lampoons on England andpanegyrics on Bonaparte.

It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barère was employedby the government not only as a writer, but as a censor of the writings of other men.This imputation he vehemently denies in his Memoirs; but our readers will probablyagree with us in thinking that his denial leaves the question exactly where it was.

Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the office of censorby any scruple of conscience or honour; for he did accept an office, compared withwhich that of censor, odious as it is, may be called an august and beneficentmagistracy. He began to have what are delicately called relations with the police. Weare not sure that we have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the natureof Barère’s new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has indeed oftenhappened in England that a plot has been revealed to the government by one of theconspirators. The informer has sometimes been directed to carry it fair towards hisaccomplices, and to let the evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work isdone, he is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure village



or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent, is in the highestdegree unpopular in England; but a political spy by profession is a creature fromwhich our island is as free as it is from wolves. In France the race is well known, andwas never more numerous, more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than underthe government of Bonaparte.

Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial police mayperhaps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to convey it to our readers. We image toourselves a well-dressed person, with a soft voice and affable manners. His opinionsare those of the society in which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He oftencomplains, in the language of honest indignation, that what passes in privateconversation finds its way strangely to the government, and cautions his associates totake care what they say when they are not sure of their company. As for himself, heowns that he is indiscreet. He can never refrain from speaking his mind; and that isthe reason that he is not prefect of a department.

In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking earnestly about theking and the Count of Artois. He follows them into a coffee-house, sits at the tablenext to them, calls for his half-dish and his small glass of cognac, takes up a journal,and seems occupied with the news. His neighbours go on talking without restraint,and in the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart; and hefollows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them to their apartments,and learns their names from the porters. From that day every letter addressed to eitherof them is sent from the post-office to the police, and opened. Their correspondentsbecome known to the government, and are carefully watched. Six or eight honestfamilies, in different parts of France, find themselves at once under the frown ofpower without being able to guess what offence they have given. One person isdismissed from a public office; another learns with dismay that his promising son hasbeen turned out of the Polytechnic school.

Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old republican, who has notchanged with the times, who regrets the red cap and the tree of liberty, who has notunlearned the Thee and Thou, and who still subscribes his letters with “Health andFraternity.” Into the ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series ofcomplaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the Mountaingoverned France! What is the First Consul but a king under a new name? What is thisLegion of Honour but a new aristocracy? The old superstition is reviving with the oldtyranny. There is a treaty with the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrantnobles are returning in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men ofthe 10th of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What terrors hasdeath to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire, bestows and receives thefraternal hug, and hints that there will soon be great news, and that the breed ofHarmodius and Brutus is not quite extinct. The next day he is close prisoner, and allhis papers are in the hands of the government.

To this vocation, a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar, of apickpocket, of a pimp, is honourable, did Barère now descend. It was his constantpractice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the



heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement by wateringthe tree of liberty with the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he madeatonement by murdering Vergniaud and Gensonné. He fawned on Robespierre up tothe eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth, thatRobespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted in the service ofthe new monarchy; and he proceeded to atone for his republican heresies by sendingrepublican throats to the guillotine.

Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who had beenemployed in an office of high trust under the Committee of Public Safety. This manwas fanatically attached to the Jacobin system of politics, and, in conjunction withother enthusiasts of the same class, formed a design against the First Consul. A hint ofthis design escaped him in conversation with Barère. Barère carried the intelligence toLannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested, tried, andbeheaded; and among the witnesses who appeared against him was his friend Barère.

The account which Barère has given of these transactions is studiously confused andgrossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern, through much falsehoodand much artful obscurity, some truths which he labours to conceal. It is clear to usthat the government suspected him of what the Italians call a double treason. It wasnatural that such a suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote,zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant deserves higherpraise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible that the member of the Committeeof Public Safety, the king-killer, the queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver hisold confederates, his bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they hadplanned an act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in thehighest degree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he was reallyconcerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave was merely intended tolull or to mislead the police? Accordingly, spies were set on the spy. He was orderedto quit Paris, and not to come within twenty leagues till he received further orders.Nay, he ran no small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends, to Madagascar.

He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not onlypermitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed in the lowest sortof political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while he was preparing to visit the southof France, he received a letter which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, whois well known to have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon’s confidence and favour.

“The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barère is about to set out for thecountry, desires that he will stay at Paris.

“Citizen Barère will every week draw up a report on the state of public opinion on theproceedings of the government, and generally on everything which, in his judgment, itwill be interesting to the First Consul to learn.

“He may write with perfect freedom.



“He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc’s own hand, and GeneralDuroc will deliver them to the First Consul. But it is absolutely necessary that nobodyshould suspect that this species of communication takes place; and, should any suchsuspicion get abroad, the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of CitizenBarère.

“It will also be proper that Citizen Barère should frequently insert in the journalsarticles tending to animate the public mind, particularly against the English.”

During some years Barère continued to discharge the functions assigned to him by hismaster. Secret reports, filled with the talk of coffee-houses, were carried by him everyweek to the Tuileries. His friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all theharm in his power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was notapprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who had lost theirestates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices, uttered against the imperialsystem. M. Hippolyte Carnot, we grieve to say, is so much blinded by party spirit thathe seems to reckon this dirty wickedness among his hero’s titles to public esteem.

Barère was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and pamphleteer. He set up apaper directed against England, and called the Mémorial Antibritannique. He planneda work entitled, “France made great and illustrious by Napoleon.” When the Imperialgovernment was established, the old regicide made himself conspicuous even amongthe crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation. He translated intoFrench a contemptible volume of Italian verses, entitled, “The Poetic Crown,composed on the glorious accession of Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds ofArcadia.” He commenced a new series of Carmagnoles very different from thosewhich had charmed the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, wasmean; Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble anappellation; Napoleon’s style ought to be King of Kings.

But Barère laboured to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as a writer nor asa spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that his paper did not sell. While theJournal des Débats, then flourishing under the able management of Geoffroy, had acirculation of at least twenty thousand copies, the Mémorial Antibritannique never, inits most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and thesesubscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far from Paris,probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barère had not yet lost its influence.

A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect to any causerather than to the true one; and Barère was no exception to the general rule. His oldhatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That city, he says, has no sympathy with France.No Parisian cares to subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants andinterests of the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. Thehigher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England. A corporal fromLondon is better received among them than a French general. A journal, therefore,which attacks England has no chance of their support.



A much better explanation of the failure of the Mémorial was given by Bonaparte atSt. Helena. “Barère,” said he to Barry O’Meara, “had the reputation of being a man oftalent: but I did not find him so. I employed him to write; but he did not displayability. He used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing butcoglionerie wrapped up in high-sounding language.”

The truth is that, though Barère was a man of quick parts, and could do with easewhat he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In the day of his power hehad been in the habit of haranguing an excitable audience on exciting topics. Thefaults of his style passed uncensured; for it was a time of literary as well as of civillawlessness, and a patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition aswell as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But there had nowbeen a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was again a throne and a court, amagistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy, so was there a revival of classical taste.Honour was again paid to the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse ofRacine and La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of theConvention was not only as much out of date as the language of Villehardouin andJoinville, but was associated in the public mind with images of horror. All thepeculiarities of the Anacreon of the guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionaryof the Academy, his conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gasconhyperboles, had become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after theRestoration.

Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of the Reign of Terror, had now ceased tofear them. He was all-powerful and at the height of glory; they were weak anduniversally abhorred. He was a sovereign; and it is probable that he already meditateda matrimonial alliance with sovereigns. He was naturally unwilling, in his newposition, to hold any intercourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had Barère’sliterary assistance been important to the government, personal aversion might haveyielded to considerations of policy; but there was no motive for keeping terms with aworthless man who had also proved a worthless writer. Bonaparte, therefore, gaveloose to his feelings. Barère was not gently dropped, not sent into an honourableretirement, but spurned and scourged away like a troublesome dog. He had been in thehabit of sending six copies of his journal on fine paper daily to the Tuileries. Insteadof receiving the thanks and praises which he expected, he was dryly told that the greatman had ordered five copies to be sent back. Still he toiled on; still he cherished ahope that at last Napoleon would relent, and that at last some share in the honours ofthe state would reward so much assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He wasbitterly undeceived. Under the Imperial constitution the electoral colleges of thedepartments did not possess the right of choosing senators or deputies, but merely thatof presenting candidates. From among these candidates the Emperor named membersof the senate, and the senate named members of the legislative body. The inhabitantsof the Upper Pyrenees were still strangely partial to Barère. In the year 1805, theywere disposed to present him as a candidate for the senate. On this Napoleonexpressed the highest displeasure; and the president of the electoral college wasdirected to tell the voters, in plain terms, that such a choice would be disgraceful tothe department. All thought of naming Barère a candidate for the senate wasconsequently dropped. But the people of Argelès ventured to name him a candidate



for the legislative body. That body was altogether destitute of weight and dignity; itwas not permitted to debate; its only function was to vote in silence for whatever thegovernment proposed. It is not easy to understand how any man, who had sat in freeand powerful deliberative assemblies, could condescend to bear a part in such amummery. Barère, however, was desirous of a place even in this mock legislature;and a place even in this mock legislature was refused to him. In the whole senate hehad not a single vote.

Such treatment was sufficient, it might have been thought, to move the most abject ofmankind to resentment. Still, however, Barère cringed and fawned on. His Letterscame weekly to the Tuileries till the year 1807. At length, while he was actuallywriting the two hundred and twenty-third of the series, a note was put into his hands.It was from Duroc, and was much more perspicuous than polite. Barère was requestedto send no more of his Reports to the palace, as the Emperor was too busy to readthem.

Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces even the shell of the tortoise; and thecontempt of the Court was felt to the quick even by the callous heart of Barère. Hehad humbled himself to the dust; and he had humbled himself in vain. Having beeneminent among the rulers of a great and victorious state, he had stooped to serve amaster in the vilest capacities; and he had been told that, even in those capacities, hewas not worthy of the pittance which had been disdainfully flung to him. He was nowdegraded below the level even of the hirelings whom the government employed in themost infamous offices. He stood idle in the market-place, not because he thought anyoffice too infamous, but because none would hire him.

Yet he had reason to think himself fortunate; for, had all that is avowed in theseMemoirs been known, he would have received very different tokens of the Imperialdispleasure. We learn from himself that, while publishing daily columns of flattery onBonaparte, and while carrying weekly budgets of calumny to the Tuileries, he was inclose connection with the agents whom the Emperor Alexander, then by no meansfavourably disposed towards France, employed to watch all that passed at Paris; waspermitted to read their secret despatches; was consulted by them as to the temper ofthe public mind and the character of Napoleon; and did his best to persuade them thatthe government was in a tottering condition, and that the new sovereign was not, asthe world supposed, a great statesman and soldier. Next, Barère, still the flatterer andtalebearer of the Imperial Court, connected himself in the same manner with theSpanish envoy. He owns that with that envoy he had relations which he took thegreatest pains to conceal from his own government; that they met twice a day; andthat their conversation chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon, on his designs againstSpain, and on the best mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barère’sbaseness was unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps. Itis bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. But even among sycophants and spiesthere are degrees of meanness. The vilest sycophant is he who privily slanders themaster on whom he fawns; the vilest spy is he who serves foreigners against thegovernment of his native land.



From 1807 to 1814 Barère lived in obscurity, railing as bitterly as his cravencowardice would permit against the Imperial administration, and coming sometimesunpleasantly across the police. When the Bourbons returned, he, as might have beenexpected, became a royalist, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth the horrors of thesystem from which the Restoration had delivered France, and magnifying the wisdomand goodness which had dictated the charter. He who had voted for the death ofLouis, he who had moved the decree for the trial of Marie Antoinette, he whosehatred of monarchy had led him to make war even upon the sepulchres of ancientmonarchs, assures us, with great complacency, that “in this work monarchialprinciples and attachment to the House of Bourbon are nobly expressed.” By thisapostasy he got nothing, not even any additional infamy; for his character was alreadytoo black to be blackened.

During the hundred days he again emerged for a very short time into public life; hewas chosen by his native district a member of the Chamber of Representatives. But,though that assembly was composed in a great measure of men who regarded theexcesses of the Jacobins with indulgence, he found himself an object of generalaversion. When the President first informed the Chamber that M. Barère requested ahearing, a deep and indignant murmur ran round the benches. After the battle ofWaterloo, Barère proposed that the Chamber should save France from the victoriousenemy, by putting forth a proclamation about the pass of Thermopylæ and theLacedæmonian custom of wearing flowers in times of extreme danger. Whether thiscomposition, if it had then appeared, would have stopped the English and Prussianarmies, is a question respecting which we are left to conjecture. The Chamber refusedto adopt this last of the Carmagnoles.

The Emperor had abdicated. The Bourbons returned. The Chamber ofRepresentatives, after burlesquing during a few weeks the proceedings of the NationalConvention, retired with the well-earned character of having been the silliest politicalassembly that had met in France. Those dreaming pedants and praters never for amoment comprehended their position. They could never understand that Europe mustbe either conciliated or vanquished; that Europe could be conciliated only by therestoration of Louis, and vanquished only by means of a dictatorial power entrusted toNapoleon. They would not hear of Louis; yet they would not hear of the onlymeasures which could keep him out. They incurred the enmity of all foreign powersby putting Napoleon at their head; yet they shackled him, thwarted him, quarrelledwith him about every trifle, abandoned him on the first reverse. They then opposeddeclamations and disquisitions to eight hundred thousand bayonets; played at makinga constitution for their country, when it depended on the indulgence of the victorwhether they should have a country; and were at last interrupted, in the midst of theirbabble about the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers ofWellington and Blucher.

A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, so bitterly hostile to the Revolution thatthere was no small risk of a new Reign of Terror. It is just, however, to say that theking, his ministers, and his allies exerted themselves to restrain the violence of thefanatical royalists, and that the punishments inflicted, though in our opinionunjustiable, were few and lenient when compared with those which were demanded



by M. de Labourdonnaye and M. Hyde de Neuville. We have always heard, and areinclined to believe, that the government was not disposed to treat even the regicideswith severity. But on this point the feeling of the Chamber of Deputies was so strongthat it was thought necessary to make some concession. It was enacted, therefore, thatwhoever, having voted in January 1793 for the death of Louis the Sixteenth, had inany manner given in an adhesion to the government of Bonaparte during the hundreddays should be banished for life from France. Barère fell within this description. Hehad voted for the death of Louis; and he had sat in the Chamber of Representativesduring the hundred days.

He accordingly retired to Belgium, and resided there, forgotten by all mankind, till theyear 1830. After the revolution of July he was at liberty to return to France; and hefixed his residence in his native province. But he was soon involved in a succession oflawsuits with his nearest relations—“three fatal sisters and an ungrateful brother,” touse his own words. Who was in the right is a question about which we have no meansof judging, and certainly shall not take Barère’s word. The Courts appear to havedecided some points in his favour and some against him. The natural inference is, thatthere were faults on all sides. The result of this litigation was that the old man wasreduced to extreme poverty, and was forced to sell his paternal house.

As far as we can judge from the few facts which remain to be mentioned, Barèrecontinued Barère to the last. After his exile he turned Jacobin again, and, when hecame back to France, joined the party of the extreme left in railing at Louis Philippe,and at all Louis Philippe’s ministers. M. Casimir Périer, M. De Broglie, M. Guizot,and M. Thiers, in particular, are honoured with his abuse; and the King himself is heldup to execration as a hypocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Barère had no scruple aboutaccepting a charitable donation of a thousand francs a year from the privy purse of thesovereign whom he hated and reviled. This pension, together with some small sumsoccasionally doled out to him by the department of the Interior, on the ground that hewas a distressed man of letters, and by the department of Justice, on the ground thathe had formerly held a high judicial office, saved him from the necessity of begginghis bread. Having survived all his colleagues of the renowned Committee of PublicSafety, and almost all his colleagues of the Convention, he died in January 1841. Hehad attained his eighty-sixth year.

We have now laid before our readers what we believe to be a just account of thisman’s life. Can it be necessary for us to add any thing for the purpose of assistingtheir judgment of his character? If we were writing about any of his colleagues in theCommittee of Public Safety, about Carnot, about Robespierre, or St. Just, nay, evenabout Couthon, Collot, or Billaud, we might feel it necessary to go into a fullexamination of the arguments which have been employed to vindicate or to excuse thesystem of Terror. We could, we think, show that France was saved from her foreignenemies, not by the system of Terror, but in spite of it; and that the perils which weremade the plea of the violent policy of the Mountain were to a great extent created bythat very policy. We could, we think, also show that the evils produced by the Jacobinadministration did not terminate when it fell; that it bequeathed a long series ofcalamities to France and to Europe; that public opinion, which had during twogenerations been constantly becoming more and more favourable to civil and



religious freedom, underwent, during the days of Terror, a change of which the tracesare still to be distinctly perceived. It was natural that there should be such a change,when men saw that those who called themselves the champions of popular rights hadcompressed into the space of twelve months more crimes than the Kings of France,Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian, had perpetrated in twelve centuries.Freedom was regarded as a great delusion. Men were willing to submit to thegovernment of hereditary princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of priests; to anygovernment but that of philosophers and philanthropists. Hence the imperialdespotism, with its enslaved press and its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than theold Bastile, and its tribunals more obsequious than the old parliaments. Hence therestoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, the Chamber of 1815 with itscategories of proscription, the revival of the feudal spirit, the encroachments of theclergy, the persecution of the Protestants, the appearance of a new breed of DeMontforts and Dominics in the full light of the nineteenth century. Hence theadmission of France into the Holy Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers ofthe tricolor against the liberties of Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions with which,even at the present day, the most temperate plans for widening the narrow basis of theFrench representation are regarded by those who are especially interested in thesecurity of property and the maintenance of order. Half a century has not sufficed toobliterate the stain which one year of depravity and madness has left on the noblest ofcauses.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the manner in which writers like M. Hippolyte Carnotdefend or excuse the Jacobin administration, while they declaim against the reactionwhich followed. That the reaction has produced and is still producing much evil, isperfectly true. But what produced the reaction? The spring flies up with a forceproportioned to that with which it has been pressed down. The pendulum which isdrawn far in one direction swings as far in the other. The joyous madness ofintoxication in the evening is followed by languor and nausea on the morrow. And so,in politics, it is the sure law that every excess shall generate its opposite; nor does hedeserve the name of a statesman who strikes a great blow without fully calculating theeffect of the rebound. But such calculation was infinitely beyond the reach of theauthors of the Reign of Terror. Violence, and more violence, blood, and more blood,made up their whole policy. In a few months these poor creatures succeeded inbringing about a reaction, of which none of them saw, and of which none of us maysee, the close; and, having brought it about, they marvelled at it; they bewailed it; theyexecrated it; they ascribed it to everything but the real cause—their own immoralityand their own profound incapacity for the conduct of great affairs.

These, however, are considerations to which, on the present occasion, it is hardlynecessary for us to advert; for, be the defence which has been set up for the Jacobinpolicy good or bad, it is a defence which cannot avail Barère. From his own life, fromhis own pen, from his own mouth, we can prove that the part which he took in thework of blood is to be attributed, not even to sincere fanaticism, not even tomisdirected and ill-regulated patriotism, but either to cowardice, or to delight inhuman misery. Will it be pretended that it was from public spirit that he murdered theGirondists? In these very Memoirs he tells us that he always regarded their death asthe greatest calamity that could befall France. Will it be pretended that it was from



public spirit that he raved for the head of the Austrian woman? In these very memoirshe tells us that the time spent in attacking her was ill spent, and ought to have beenemployed in concerting measures of national defence. Will it be pretended that he wasinduced by sincere and earnest abhorrence of kingly government to butcher the livingand to outrage the dead; he who invited Napoleon to take the title of King of Kings,he who assures us that after the Restoration he expressed in noble language hisattachment to monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon? Had he been less mean,something might have been said in extenuation of his cruelty. Had he been less cruel,something might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicideand court-spy, for him who patronised Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him whowantoned alternately in gasconades of Jacobinism and gasconades of servility, whatexcuse has the largest charity to offer?

We cannot conclude without saying something about two parts of his character, whichhis biographer appears to consider as deserving of high admiration. Barère, it isadmitted, was somewhat fickle; but in two things he was consistent, in his love ofChristianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we must say that England ismuch more beholden to him than Christianity.

It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but we think that we do notflatter ourselves when we say that Barère’s aversion to our country was a sentiment asdeep and constant as his mind was capable of entertaining. The value of thiscompliment is indeed somewhat diminished by the circumstance that he knew verylittle about us. His ignorance of our institutions, manners, and history is the lessexcusable, because, according to his own account, he consorted much, during thepeace of Amiens, with Englishmen of note, such as that eminent nobleman LordGreaten, and that not less eminent philosopher Mr. Mackensie Cœfhis. In spite,however, of his connection with these well-known ornaments of our country, he wasso ill-informed about us as to fancy that our government was always laying plans totorment him. If he was hooted at Saintes, probably by people whose relations he hadmurdered, it was because the cabinet of St. James’s had hired the mob. If nobodywould read his bad books, it was because the cabinet of St. James’s had secured theReviewers. His accounts of Mr. Fox, of Mr. Pitt, of the Duke of Wellington, of Mr.Canning, swarm with blunders surpassing even the ordinary blunders committed byFrenchmen who write about England. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, he tells us, were ministersin two different reigns. Mr. Pitt’s sinking fund was instituted in order to enableEngland to pay subsidies to the powers allied against the French republic. The Dukeof Wellington’s house in Hyde Park was built by the nation, which twice voted thesum of 200,000l. for the purpose. This, however, is exclusive of the cost of thefrescoes, which were also paid for out of the public purse. Mr. Canning was the firstEnglishman whose death Europe had reason to lament; for the death of Lord Ward, arelation, we presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr. Cœfhis, had been an immense benefitto mankind.

Ignorant, however, as Barère was, he knew enough of us to hate us; and we persuadeourselves that, had he known us better, he would have hated us more. The nationwhich has combined, beyond all example and all hope, the blessings of liberty withthose of order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been false alike to



the cause of order and to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperatezeal for popular rights; we have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty. Butwe have never been shocked by such a spectacle as the Barère of 1794, or as theBarère of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest demagogues have been gentle;compared with him, our meanest courtiers have been manly. Mix togetherThistlewood and Bubb Dodington; and you are still far from having Barère. Theantipathy between him and us is such, that neither for the crimes of his earlier nor forthose of his later life does our language, rich as it is, furnish us with adequate names.We have found it difficult to relate his history without having perpetual recourse tothe French vocabulary of horror, and to the French vocabulary of baseness. It is noteasy to give a notion of his conduct in the Convention, without using those emphaticterms, guillotinade, noyade, fusillade, mitraillade. It is not easy to give a notion of hisconduct under the Consulate and the Empire without borrowing such words asmouchard and mouton.

We therefore like his invectives against us much better than any thing else that he haswritten; and dwell on them, not merely with complacency, but with a feeling akin togratitude. It was but little that he could do to promote the honour of our country; butthat little he did strenuously and constantly. Renegade, traitor, slave, coward, liar,slanderer, murderer, hack writer, police-spy—the one small service which he couldrender to England was to hate her: and such as he was may all who hate her be!

We cannot say that we contemplate with equal satisfaction that fervent and constantzeal for religion which, according to M. Hippolyte Carnot, distinguished Barère; for,as we think that whatever brings dishonour on religion is a serious evil, we had, weown, indulged a hope that Barère was an atheist. We now learn, however, that he wasat no time even a sceptic, that he adhered to his faith through the whole Revolution,and that he has left several manuscript works on divinity. One of these is a pioustreatise, entitled “Of Christianity, and of its Influence.” Another consists ofmeditations on the Psalms, which will doubtless greatly console and edify the Church.

This makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever thingsare dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoeverthings are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report, if there be any vice, and ifthere be any infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended in Barère. But one thingwas still wanting; and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such anassemblage of qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect becomesoverpowering. We sink under the contemplation of such exquisite and manifoldperfection; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous it was in us to think ofcomposing the legend of this beatified athlete of the faith, St. Bertrand of theCarmagnoles.

Something more we had to say about him. But let him go. We did not seek him out,and will not keep him longer. If those who call themselves his friends had not forcedhim on our notice we should never have vouchsafed to him more than a passing wordof scorn and abhorrence, such as we might fling at his brethren, Hébert and FouquierTinville, and Carrier and Lebon. We have no pleasure in seeing human nature thusdegraded. We turn with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of the fiction; and



the filthiest and most spiteful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble creature whencompared with the Barère of history. But what is no pleasure M. Hippolyte Carnot hasmade a duty. It is no light thing that a man in high and honourable public trust, a manwho, from his connections and position, may not unnaturally be supposed to speak thesentiments of a large class of his countrymen, should come forward to demandapprobation for a life black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by asingle virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to enshrine thisJacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it; and we venture to say that, from theeminence of infamy on which we have placed it, he will not easily take it down.




CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ENCYCLOPÆDIABRITANNICA.

FRANCIS ATTERBURY. (December 1853.)

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 Middletonin Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. Francis was educated atWestminster School, and carried thence to Christ Church a stock of learning which,though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation thatsuperficial observers believed his attainments to be immense. At Oxford, his parts, histaste, 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 ofAbsalom and Achitophel into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the versification of theyoung scholar was that of the Augustan age. In English composition he succeededmuch better. In 1687 he distinguished himself among many able men who wrote indefence of the Church of England, then persecuted by James II., and calumniated byapostates who had for lucre quitted her communion. Among these apostates none wasmore active or malignant than Obadiah Walker, who was master of UniversityCollege, and who had set up there, under the royal patronage, a press for printingtracts against the established religion. In one of these tracts, written apparently byWalker himself, many aspersions were thrown on Martin Luther. Atterbury undertookto defend the great Saxon Reformer, and performed that task in a manner singularlycharacteristic. Whoever examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the contrastbetween the feebleness of those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and thevigour of those parts which are rhetorical and aggressive. The Papists were so muchgalled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young polemic that they raised a cry oftreason, and accused him of having, by implication, called King James a Judas.

After the Revolution, Atterbury, though bred in the doctrines of non-resistance andpassive obedience, readily swore fealty to the new government. In no long time hetook holy orders. He occasionally preached in London with an eloquence which raisedhis 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 academicalbusiness, directed the classical studies of the under-graduates of his college, and wasthe chief adviser and assistant of Dean Aldrich, a divine now chiefly remembered byhis catches, but renowned among his contemporaries as a scholar, a Tory, and a high-churchman. It was the practice, not a very judicious practice, of Aldrich to employ themost promising youths of his college in editing Greek and Latin books. Among thestudious and well-disposed lads who were, unfortunately for themselves, induced tobecome teachers of philology when they should have been content to be learners, wasCharles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of Robert Boyle, the greatexperimental philosopher. The task assigned to Charles Boyle was to prepare a newedition of one of the most worthless books in existence. It was a fashion, among thoseGreeks and Romans who cultivated rhetoric as an art, to compose epistles and



harangues in the names of eminent men. Some of these counterfeits are fabricatedwith such exquisite taste and skill that it is the highest achievement of criticism todistinguish them from originals. Others are so feebly and rudely executed that theycan hardly impose on an intelligent school-boy. The best specimen which has comedown to us is perhaps the oration for Marcellus, such an imitation of Tully’seloquence as Tully would himself have read with wonder and delight. The worstspecimen is perhaps a collection of letters purporting to have been written by thatPhalaris who governed Agrigentum more than 500 years before the Christian era. Theevidence, both internal and external, against the genuineness of these letters isoverwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in company with muchthat was far more valuable, from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious byPolitian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar on our sideof the Alps. In truth, it would be as easy to persuade an educated Englishman that oneof Johnson’s Ramblers was the work of William Wallace as to persuade a man likeErasmus that a pedantic exercise, composed in the trim and artificial Attic of the timeof Julian, was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian, who roasted peoplealive many years before there existed a volume of prose in the Greek language. But,though Christ-Church could boast of many good Latinists, of many good Englishwriters, and of a greater number of clever and fashionable men of the world thanbelonged to any other academic body, there was not then in the college a single mancapable of distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek literature. Sosuperficial indeed was the learning of the rulers of this celebrated society that theywere charmed by an essay which Sir William Temple published in praise of theancient writers. It now seems strange that even the eminent public services, thedeserved popularity, and the graceful style of Temple should have saved so silly aperformance from universal contempt. Of the books which he most vehementlyeulogised his eulogies proved that he knew nothing. In fact, he could not read a line ofthe language in which they were written. Among many other foolish things, he saidthat 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 Epistlesof Phalaris began to inquire about them. Aldrich, who knew very little Greek, took theword of Temple who knew none, and desired Boyle to prepare a new edition of theseadmirable compositions which, having long slept in obscurity, had become on asudden objects of general interest.

The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who was Boyle’s tutor, and ofsome other members of the college. It was an edition such as might be expected frompeople who would stoop to edite such a book. The notes were worthy of the text; theLatin version worthy of the Greek original. The volume would have been forgotten ina month, had not a misunderstanding about a manuscript arisen between the youngeditor 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 becollated. A mischief-making bookseller informed him that Bentley had refused to lendit, which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the lettersattributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by such counterfeits, whichwas perfectly true. Boyle, much provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironicalcompliment 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 greathopes, whose love of learning was highly commendable, and who deserved to havehad better instructors.

Few things in literary history are more extraordinary than the storm which this littledissertation raised. Bentley had treated Boyle with forbearance; but he had treatedChrist-Church with contempt; and the Christ-Church-men, wherever dispersed, wereas much attached to their college as a Scotchman to his country, or a Jesuit to hisorder. Their influence was great. They were dominant at Oxford, powerful in the Innsof Court and in the College of Physicians, conspicuous in Parliament and in theliterary and fashionable circles of London. Their unanimous cry was, that the honourof the college must be vindicated, that the insolent Cambridge pedant must be putdown. Poor Boyle was unequal to the task, and disinclined to it. It was, therefore,assigned to his tutor Atterbury.

The answer to Bentley, which bears the name of Boyle, but which was, in truth, nomore the work of Boyle than the letters to which the controversy related were thework of Phalaris, is now read only by the curious, and will in all probability never bereprinted again. But it had its day of noisy popularity. It was to be found, not only inthe studies of men of letters, but on the tables of the most brilliant drawing-rooms ofSoho Square and Covent Garden. Even the beaus and coquettes of that age, theWildairs and the Lady Lurewells, the Mirabells and the Millamants, congratulatedeach other on the way in which the gay young gentleman, whose erudition sate soeasily upon him, and who wrote with so much pleasantry and good breeding about theAttic dialect and the anapæstic measure, Sicilian talents and Thericlean cups, hadbantered 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 powersthan any of those works to which he put his name. That he was altogether in thewrong on the main question, and on all the collateral questions springing out of it, thathis knowledge of the language, the literature, and the history of Greece was not equalto what many freshmen now bring up every year to Cambridge and Oxford, and thatsome of his blunders seem rather to deserve a flogging than a refutation, is true; andtherefore it is that his performance is, in the highest degree, interesting and valuable toa judicious reader. It is good by reason of its exceeding badness. It is the mostextraordinary instance that exists of the art of making much show with littlesubstance. There is no difficulty, says the steward of Molière’s miser, in giving a finedinner with plenty of money: the really great cook is he who can set out a banquetwith no money at all. That Bentley should have written excellently on ancientchronology and geography, on the development of the Greek language, and the originof the Greek drama, is not strange. But that Atterbury should, during some years, havebeen thought to have treated these subjects much better than Bentley is strangeindeed. It is true that the champion of Christ-Church had all the help which the mostcelebrated members of that society could give him. Smalridge contributed some verygood wit; Friend and others some very bad archæology and philology. But the greaterpart of the volume was entirely Atterbury’s: what was not his own was revised andretouched by him; and the whole bears the mark of his mind, a mind inexhaustiblyrich in all the resources of controversy, and familiar with all the artifices which makefalsehood 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 tothose who judged by a glance, and who did not resort to balances and tests, theglittering heap of worthless matter which he produced seemed to be an inestimabletreasure 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, generallyludicrous, always clever and cutting. But, whether he was grave or merry, whether hereasoned or sneered, his style was always pure, polished, and easy.

Party spirit then ran high; yet, though Bentley ranked among Whigs, and Christ-Church was a stronghold of Toryism, Whigs joined with Tories in applaudingAtterbury’s volume. Garth insulted Bentley, and extolled Boyle in lines which arenow 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, anddirected by Apollo in the form of a human friend, for whose name a blank is leftwhich may easily be filled up. The youth, so accoutred, and so assisted, gains an easyvictory over his uncourteous and boastful antagonist. Bentley, meanwhile, wassupported by the consciousness of an immeasurable superiority, and encouraged bythe voices of the few who were really competent to judge the combat. “No man,” hesaid, justly and nobly, “was ever written down but by himself.” He spent two years inpreparing a reply, which will never cease to be read and prized while the literature ofancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. This reply proved, not only that theletters ascribed to Phalaris were spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, hiseloquence, his skill in controversial fence, was the most audacious pretender that everwrote about what he did not understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter ofindifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about matters far more important andexciting than the laws of Zaleucus and the laws of Charondas. The rage of religiousfactions was extreme. High church and Low church divided the nation. The greatmajority of the clergy were on the high-church side; the majority of King William’sbishops were inclined to latitudinarianism. A dispute arose between the two partiestouching the extent of the powers of the Lower House of Convocation. Atterburythrust himself eagerly into the front rank of the high-churchmen. Those who take acomprehensive and impartial view of his whole career will not be disposed to givehim credit for religious zeal. But it was his nature to be vehement and pugnacious inthe cause of every fraternity of which he was a member. He had defended thegenuineness of a spurious book simply because Christ-Church had put forth an editionof that book; he now stood up for the clergy against the civil power, simply becausehe was a clergyman, and for the priests against the episcopal order, simply because hewas as yet only a priest. He asserted the pretensions of the class to which he belongedin 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 thesubject in dispute was far superior to his; but in this, as in his first controversy, heimposed on the multitude by bold assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, aboveall, by his peculiar knack of exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner as to make itlook like a great deal. Having passed himself off on the world as a greater master ofclassical learning than Bentley, he now passed himself off as a greater master ofecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson. By the great body of the clergy he wasregarded as the ablest and most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their rightsagainst 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 soonafter the accession of Anne, while the Tories still had the chief weight in thegovernment, he was promoted to the deanery of Carlisle.

Soon after he had obtained this preferment, the Whig party rose to ascendency in thestate. From that party he could expect no favour. Six years elapsed before a change offortune took place. At length, in the year 1710, the prosecution of Sacheverellproduced a formidable explosion of high-church fanaticism. At such a momentAtterbury could not fail to be conspicuous. His inordinate zeal for the body to whichhe belonged, his turbulent and aspiring temper, his rare talents for agitation and forcontroversy, were again signally displayed. He bore a chief part in framing that artfuland eloquent speech which the accused divine pronounced at the bar of the Lords, andwhich presents a singular contrast to the absurd and scurrilous sermon which had veryunwisely been honoured with impeachment. During the troubled and anxious monthswhich followed the trial, Atterbury was among the most active of those pamphleteerswho inflamed the nation against the Whig ministry and the Whig parliament. Whenthe ministry had been changed and the parliament dissolved, rewards were showeredupon him. The Lower House of Convocation elected him prolocutor. The Queenappointed him Dean of Christ-Church on the death of his old friend and patronAldrich. The college would have preferred a gentler ruler. Nevertheless, the new headwas received with every mark of honour. A congratulatory oration in Latin wasaddressed to him in the magnificent vestibule of the hall; and he in reply professed thewarmest attachment to the venerable house in which he had been educated, and paidmany gracious compliments to those over whom he was to preside. But it was not inhis nature to be a mild or an equitable governor. He had left the chapter of Carlisledistracted by quarrels. He found Christ-Church at peace; but in three months hisdespotic and contentious temper did at Christ-Church what it had done at Carlisle. Hewas succeeded in both his deaneries by the humane and accomplished Smalridge, whogently 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 byAtterbury’s enemies that he was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Underhis administration Christ-Church was in confusion, scandalous altercations took place,opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to fear that the great Torycollege would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soonremoved to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then always united with thedeanery of Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be before him. For, thoughthere were many able men on the episcopal bench, there was none who equalled orapproached him in parliamentary talents. Had his party continued in power, it is notimprobable that he would have been raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Themore splendid his prospects, the more reason he had to dread the accession of a familywhich was well known to be partial to the Whigs. There is every reason to believe thathe was one of those politicians who hoped that they might be able, during the life ofAnne, to prepare matters in such a way that at her decease there might be littledifficulty in setting aside the Act of Settlement and placing the Pretender on thethrone. Her sudden death confounded the projects of these conspirators. Atterbury,who wanted no kind of courage, implored his confederates to proclaim James III., andoffered to accompany the heralds in lawn sleeves. But he found even the bravestsoldiers 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 andthe most precious of all moments had been pusillanimously thrown away. Heacquiesced in what he could not prevent, took the oaths to the House of Hanover, andat the coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best toingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited with coldcontempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself invain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious of all the opponents of thegovernment. In the House of Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off withevery grace of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admirationeven of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which appear in thejournals of the peers were drawn up by him; and, in some of the bitterest of thosepamphlets which called on the English to stand up for their country against the alienswho had come from beyond the seas to oppress and plunder her, critics easily detectedhis style. When the rebellion of 1715 broke out, he refused to sign the paper in whichthe bishops of the province of Canterbury declared their attachment to the Protestantsuccession. He busied himself in electioneering, especially at Westminster, where, asdean, he possessed great influence; and was, indeed, strongly suspected of havingonce set on a riotous mob to prevent his Whig fellow-citizens from polling.

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 correspondenceis extant. In that letter Atterbury boasts of having, during many years past, neglectedno opportunity of serving the Jacobite cause. “My daily prayer,” he says, “is that youmay have success. May I live to see that day, and live no longer than I do what is inmy power to forward it.” It is to be remembered that he who wrote thus was a manbound to set to the church of which he was overseer an example of strict probity; thathe had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted inplacing 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, weariedwith faction and treason, now and then required repose, and found it in domesticendearments, 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 affectionsingularly close and tender. The gentleness of his manners when he was in thecompany of a few friends was such as seemed hardly credible to those who knew himonly by his writings and speeches. The charm of his “softer hour” has beencommemorated by one of those friends in imperishable verse. Though Atterbury’sclassical attainments were not great, his taste in English literature was excellent; andhis admiration of genius was so strong that it overpowered even his political andreligious antipathies. His fondness for Milton, the mortal enemy of the Stuarts and ofthe church, was such as to many Tories seemed a crime. On the sad night on whichAddison was laid in the chapel of Henry VII., the Westminster boys remarked thatAtterbury read the funeral service with a peculiar tenderness and solemnity. Thefavourite companions, however, of the great Tory prelate were, as might have beenexpected, men whose politics had at least a tinge of Toryism. He lived on friendlyterms with Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. With Prior he had a close intimacy, whichsome misunderstanding about public affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in



Atterbury, not only a warm admirer, but a most faithful, fearless, and judiciousadviser. The poet was a frequent guest at the episcopal palace among the elms ofBromley, and entertained not the slightest suspicion that his host, now declining inyears, confined to an easy chair by gout, and apparently devoted to literature, wasdeeply concerned in criminal and perilous designs against the government.

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 ofgreat 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 aninsurrection might be successful. An insurrection was planned. The streets of Londonwere to be barricaded; the Tower and the Bank were to be surprised; King George, hisfamily, and his chief captains and councillors, were to be arrested; and King Jameswas to be proclaimed. The design became known to the Duke of Orleans, regent ofFrance, who was on terms of friendship with the House of Hanover. He put theEnglish government on its guard. Some of the chief malcontents were committed toprison; and among them was Atterbury. No bishop of the Church of England had beentaken into custody since that memorable day when the applauses and prayers of allLondon had followed the seven bishops to the gate of the Tower. The Oppositionentertained some hope that it might be possible to excite among the people anenthusiasm resembling that of their fathers, who rushed into the waters of the Thamesto implore the blessing of Sancroft. Pictures of the heroic confessor in his cell wereexhibited at the shop windows. Verses in his praise were sung about the streets. Therestraints by which he was prevented from communicating with his accomplices wererepresented as cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the Inquisition. Strong appealswere made to the priesthood. Would they tamely permit so gross an insult to beoffered to their cloth? Would they suffer the ablest, the most eloquent member of theirprofession, 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 wasallayed by a temperate and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability, ofBishop Gibson, who stood high in the favour of Walpole, and shortly after becameminister for ecclesiastical affairs.

Atterbury remained in close confinement during some months. He had carried on hiscorrespondence with the exiled family so cautiously that the circumstantial proofs ofhis guilt, though sufficient to produce entire moral conviction, were not sufficient tojustify 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 quiteprepared to support. Many hot-headed members of that party were eager to follow theprecedent which had been set in the case of Sir John Fenwick, and to pass an act forcutting 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: “Flinghim to the lions in the Tower.” But the wiser and more humane Walpole was alwaysunwilling to shed blood; and his influence prevailed. When parliament met, theevidence against the bishop was laid before committees of both houses. Thosecommittees 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 thenintroduced 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 intercoursewith him except by the royal permission.

This bill passed the Commons with little difficulty. For the bishop, though invited todefend himself, chose to reserve his defence for the assembly of which he was amember. In the Lords the contest was sharp. The young Duke of Wharton,distinguished by his parts, his dissoluteness, and his versatility, spoke for Atterburywith great effect; and Atterbury’s own voice was heard for the last time by thatunfriendly audience which had so often listened to him with mingled aversion anddelight. He produced few witnesses; nor did those witnesses say much that could beof service to him. Among them was Pope. He was called to prove that, while he wasan inmate of the palace at Bromley, the bishop’s time was completely occupied byliterary and domestic matters, and that no leisure was left for plotting. But Pope, whowas quite unaccustomed to speak in public, lost his head, and, as he afterwardsowned, though he had only ten words to say, made two or three blunders.

The bill finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes to forty-three. The bishops,with a single exception, were in the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharptaunt from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of Atterbury and a zealous Tory. “The wildIndians,” he said, “give no quarter, because they believe that they shall inherit theskill and prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. Perhaps the animosity of theright reverend prelates to their brother may be explained in the same way.”

Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a dignity and tenderness worthy ofa better man. Three fine lines of his favourite poet were often in his mouth: —

“Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon:The world was all before him, where to chuseHis place of rest, and Providence his guide.”

At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with a disingenuousness of whichno man who had studied the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty: “If everyou learn that I have any dealings with the Pretender, I give you leave to say that mypunishment 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 hadsatisfied the two Houses of Parliament. Soon, however, the most partial friends of thebanished prelate ceased to assert his innocence, and contented themselves withlamenting and excusing what they could not defend. After a short stay at Brussels, hehad taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the leading man among the Jacobiterefugees who were assembled there. He was invited to Rome by the Pretender, whothen held his mock court under the immediate protection of the Pope. But Atterburyfelt that a bishop of the Church of England would be strangely out of place at theVatican, and declined the invitation. During some months, however, he might flatterhimself that he stood high in the good graces of James. The correspondence betweenthe master and the servant was constant. Atterbury’s merits were warmlyacknowledged; his advice was respectfully received; and he was, as Bolingbroke hadbeen 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 tokeep the shadow of power under a vagrant and mendicant prince as to keep the realityof power at Westminster. Though James had neither territories nor revenues, neitherarmy nor navy, there was more faction and more intrigue among his courtiers thanamong those of his successful rival. Atterbury soon perceived that his counsels weredisregarded, if not distrusted. His proud spirit was deeply wounded. He quitted Paris,fixed his residence at Montpellier, gave up politics, and devoted himself entirely toletters. 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 oncemore. Having obtained a license from the English Government, she went by sea toBordeaux, but landed there in such a state that she could travel only by boat or in alitter. Her father, in spite of his infirmities, set out from Montpellier to meet her; andshe, with the impatience which is often the sign of approaching death, hastenedtowards him. Those who were about her in vain implored her to travel slowly. Shesaid that every hour was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to die. Shemet him at Toulouse, embraced him, received from his hand the sacred bread andwine, and thanked God that they had passed one day in each other’s society beforethey parted for ever. She died that night.

It was some time before even the strong mind of Atterbury recovered from this cruelblow. As soon as he was himself again he became eager for action and conflict; forgrief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, onlymakes restless spirits more restless. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, hadfound 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 bishopwas courted back, and was without much difficulty induced to return to Paris and tobecome once more the phantom minister of a phantom monarchy. But his long andtroubled life was drawing to a close. To the last, however, his intellect retained all itskeenness and vigour. He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, that he had beenaccused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has beensaved from oblivion by the Dunciad, of having, in concert with other Christ-Churchmen, garbled Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion. The charge, as respectedAtterbury, had not the slightest foundation: for he was not one of the editors of theHistory, and never saw it till it was printed. He published a short vindication ofhimself, which is a model in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dignified. A copy ofthis 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 subjectwithout being reminded of the resemblance between his own fate and that ofClarendon. They were the only two English subjects that had ever been banished fromtheir country and debarred from all communication with their friends by act ofparliament. But here the resemblance ended. One of the exiles had been so happy asto bear a chief part in the restoration of the Royal house. All that the other could nowdo was to die asserting the rights of that house to the last. A few weeks after this letterwas written Atterbury died. He had just completed his seventieth year.

His body was brought to England, and laid, with great privacy, under the nave ofWestminster Abbey. Only three mourners followed the coffin. No inscription marksthe 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 of regret: fornothing worse was ever written by Colley Cibber.

Those who wish for more complete information about Atterbury may easily collect itfrom his sermons and his controversial writings, from the report of the parliamentaryproceedings against him, which will be found in the State Trials, from the fivevolumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr. Nichols, and from the first volume ofthe Stuart papers, edited by Mr. Glover. A very indulgent but a very interestingaccount of the bishop’s political career will be found in Lord Mahon’s valuableHistory of England.




JOHN BUNYAN. (May 1854.)

John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the English language, was born atElstow, about a mile from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said to have beenborn a tinker. The tinkers then formed an hereditary caste, which was held in no highestimation. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confoundedwith the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. Bunyan’s father was morerespectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was able to send hisson to a village school where reading and writing were taught.

The years of John’s boyhood were those during which the puritan spirit was in thehighest vigour all over England; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than inBedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to whom nature had given apowerful imagination, and sensibility which amounted to a disease, should have beenearly haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports were interrupted byfits of remorse and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying tofly 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 hisbiographers except Mr. Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with piouswriters to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace torescue the human soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called in one bookthe most notorious of profligates; in another, the brand plucked from the burning. Heis designated in Mr. Ivimey’s History of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan, thewicked 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 commonintegrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a worthless contemptibleinfidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common profligate, a soul-despising, asoul-murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as could exist on the face of theearth. Now be astonished, O heavens, to eternity! and wonder, O earth and hell! whiletime 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 theevidence will find that the good men who wrote this had been deceived by aphraseology which, as they had been hearing it and using it all their lives, they oughtto have understood better. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, from thestrong expressions in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding sinfulness, that hehas led a worse life than his neighbours. Many excellent persons, whose moralcharacter from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to theirfellow creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, anddoubtless 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 mostausterely puritanical circles, would have been considered as a young man of singulargravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many other penitentswho, in general terms, acknowledge themselves to have been the worst of mankind,fired up and stood vigorously on his defence, whenever any particular charge wasbrought against him by others. He declares, it is true, that he had let loose the reins onthe 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 Godand the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, or hell, couldcharge him with having ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had hebeen strictly faithful to his wife; but he had, even before his marriage, been perfectlyspotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of hisenemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad habit he contracted, that of usingprofane language; but he tells us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that henever 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 avillage Rochester, is that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless inthemselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and forwhose opinion he had a great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty weredancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat, and reading theHistory of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A rector of the school of Laud would have heldsuch a young man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan’s notions of goodand evil had been learned in a very different school; and he was made miserable bythe conflict between his tastes and his scruples.

When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his life was interrupted by anevent which gave a lasting colour to his thoughts. He enlisted in the parliamentaryarmy, and served during the decisive campaign of 1645. All that we know of hismilitary career is that, at the siege of Leicester, one of his comrades, who had takenhis post, was killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered himself ashaving been saved from death by the special interference of Providence. It may beobserved that his imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which he hadcaught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to draw his illustrations of sacredthings from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, andregiments arrayed, each under its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges,and his Captain Credence, are evidently portraits, of which the originals were amongthose martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax’s army.

In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. His wife had some piousrelations, and brought him as her only portion some pious books. And now his mind,excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, and exposed, withoutany protection, to the infectious virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemicin England, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became astrict Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His favouriteamusements were one after another relinquished, though not without many painfulstruggles. In the middle of a game at tipcat he paused, and stood staring wildlyupwards with his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him whether hewould leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seenan awful countenance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of bell-ringinghe renounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the church tower and look onwhile others pulled the ropes. But soon the thought struck him that, if he persisted insuch wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head; and he fled in terror from theaccursed place. To give up dancing on the village green was still harder; and somemonths 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 mindwas more unquiet than ever. Having nothing more to do in the way of visiblereformation, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenileamusements which he had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay under somespecial malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies which seemedlikely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam.

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 speedilydestroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew.

At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: “If I have not faith, I amlost; if I have faith, I can work miracles.” He was tempted to cry to the puddlesbetween Elstow and Bedford, “Be ye dry,” and to stake his eternal hopes on the event.

Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the neighbouringvillages was past; that all who were to be saved in that part of England were alreadyconverted; and that he had begun to pray and strive some months too late.

Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right, and theChristians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which promptedhim to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull. As yet, however, he wasonly 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. Hisway ran through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began tobe haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longingto commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which his disease took was apropensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits ofthe 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 thehobgoblins; he pushed them from him; but still they were ever at his side. He criedout 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 wordsto escape him, “Let him go, if he will.” Then his misery became more fearful thanever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He had forfeited his part of the greatsacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his birthright; and there was no longer any place forrepentance. “None,” he afterwards wrote, “knows the terrors of those days butmyself.” 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 thehouses. The sun seemed to withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, thoughcast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigour of youth, trembled wholedays together with the fear of death and judgment. He fancied that this trembling wasthe sign set on the worst reprobates, the sign which God had put on Cain. Theunhappy man’s emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He had such pains that heexpected to burst asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as his prototype.



Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers whom he consulted, werelikely to do much good in a case like his. His small library had received a mostunseasonable addition, the account of the lamentable end of Francis Spira. Oneancient man of high repute for piety, whom the sufferer consulted, gave an opinionwhich might well have produced fatal consequences. “I am afraid,” said Bunyan, “thatI have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost.” “Indeed,” said the old fanatic, “Iam 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, anddestined to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed peace and a cheerful confidence in themercy of God. Years elapsed, however, before his nerves, which had been soperilously overstrained, recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society atBedford, and was for the first time admitted to partake of the Eucharist, it was withdifficulty that he could refrain from imprecating destruction on his brethren while thecup was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some time a member of thecongregation, he began to preach; and his sermons produced a powerful effect. Hewas indeed illiterate; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through whichhe had passed had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes ofreligious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his vigorousgenius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him, not only to exercise agreat influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half contemptuous admiration ofscholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urgedhim to utter words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.

Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in physical diseases. It should seemthat Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered hislife by sharp persecution from without. He had been five years a preacher, when theRestoration put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over thecountry to oppress the Dissenters; and, of all the Dissenters whose history is known tous, he was perhaps the most hardly treated. In November 1660, he was flung intoBedford gaol; and there he remained, with some intervals of partial and precariousliberty, during twelve years. His persecutors tried to extort from him a promise that hewould abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that he was divinely set apartand commissioned to be a teacher of righteousness; and he was fully determined toobey 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 rightin thinking that he ought not to hide his gift; but that his real gift was skill in repairingold kettles. He was compared to Alexander the copper-smith. He was told that, if hewould give up preaching, he should be instantly liberated. He was warned that, if hepersisted in disobeying the law, he would be liable to banishment, and that, if he werefound in England after a certain time, his neck would be stretched. His answer was,“If you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow.” Year after year he laypatiently in a dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now to to be found inthe island is a palace. His fortitude is the more extraordinary, because his domesticfeelings were unusually strong. Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren assomewhat too fond and indulgent a parent. He had several small children, and amongthem 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 suffercold and hunger; she must beg; she must be beaen; “yet,” he added, “I must, I must doit.” While he lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his old trade for thesupport of his family. He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned tomake long tagged thread laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnishedby him to the hawkers. While his hands were thus busied, he had other employmentfor his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to his fellow-captives, andformed from among them a little flock, of which he was himself the pastor. Hestudied indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two chief companionswere the Bible and Fox’s Book of Martyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such thathe might have been called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of theBook of Martyrs are still legible the ill spelt lines of doggrel in which he expressed hisreverence 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 wherehis strength lay, his writings were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed; butthey showed a keen mother wit, a great command of the homely mother tongue, anintimate knowledge of the English Bible, and a vast and dearly bought spiritualexperience. They therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the syntaxand the spelling, were well received by the humbler class of Dissenters.

Much of Bunyan’s time was spent in controversy. He wrote sharply against theQuakers, whom he seems always to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, aremarkable fact that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions: his practice was towrite, not November or December, but eleventh month and twelfth month.

He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according tohim, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he saidwith much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in gaol; andthose 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 againstsome Arminian clergymen who had signed them. The most acrimonious of all hisworks is his answer to Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, an excellentman, 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 hedid not consider that tenet as one of high importance, and willingly joined incommunion with quiet Presbyterians and Independents. The sterner Baptists,therefore, loudly pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which longsurvived the original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan haddefended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded byRobert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical writer has eversurpassed.

During the years which immediately followed the Restoration, Bunyan’s confinementseems to have been strict. But, as the passions of 1660 cooled, as the hatred withwhich 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 thecage, he found protectors even among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The bishop of thediocese, Dr. Barlow, is said to have interceded for him. At length the prisoner wassuffered to pass most of his time beyond the walls of the gaol, on condition, as itshould seem, that he remained within the town of Bedford.

He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts of one of the worstgovernments 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 Catholicreligion in England. The first step which he took towards that end was to annul, by anunconstitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes against the RomanCatholics; and, in order to disguise his real design, he annulled at the same time thepenal statutes against Protestant nonconformists. Bunyan was consequently set atlarge. In the first warmth of his gratitude he published a tract in which he comparedCharles to that humane and generous Persian king who, though not himself blessedwith 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 considerhow much Bunyan had suffered, and how little he could guess the secret designs ofthe court, the unsuspicious thankfulness with which he accepted the precious boon offreedom will not appear to require any apology.

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 atreatise, in which he had occasion to speak of the stages of the Christian progress. Hecompared that progress, as many others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon hisquick wit discovered innumerable points of similarity which had escaped hispredecessors. Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them intowords, quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, sunnypastures, a gloomy castle of which the courtyard was strewn with the skulls and bonesof murdered prisoners, a town all bustle and splendour, like London on the LordMayor’s Day, and the narrow path, straight as a rule could make it, running on up hilland down hill, through city and through wilderness, to the Black River and theShining Gate. He had found out, as most people would have said, by accident, as hewould doubtless have said, by the guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. Hehad no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a masterpiece. He could not guesswhat place his allegory would occupy in English literature; for of English literature heknew nothing. Those who suppose him to have studied the Fairy Queen might easilybe confuted, if this were the proper place for a detailed examination of the passages inwhich the two allegories have been thought to resemble each other. The only work offiction, in all probability, with which he could compare his Pilgrim, was his oldfavourite, the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have thought it a sin toborrow any time from the serious business of his life, from his expositions, hiscontroversies, and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with what heconsidered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare moments that hereturned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains, and the EnchantedGround. He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw a line till the whole wascomplete. 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 ladiesin stately palaces. The loose atheistical wits at Will’s might write such stuff to divertthe painted Jezebels of the court: but did it become a minister of the gospel to copythe evil fashions of the world? There had been a time when the cant of such foolswould have made Bunyan miserable. But that time was passed; and his mind was nowin a firm and healthy state. He saw that, in employing fiction to make truth clear andgoodness attractive, he was only following the example which every Christian oughtto propose to himself; and he determined to print.

The Pilgrim’s Progress stole silently into the world. Not a single copy of the firstedition 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 poorand obscure sectaries. But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified theimagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, whichexercised his ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies,which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like himself, and struggling withtemptations from within and from without, which every moment drew a smile fromhim by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his minda sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy for man, began to produce itseffect. In puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, thateffect was such as no work of genius, though it were superior to the Iliad, to DonQuixote, or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulge in literaryluxury. In 1678 came forth a second edition with additions; and then the demandbecame immense. In the four following years the book was reprinted six times. Theeighth edition, which contains the last improvements made by the author, waspublished in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the engraver hadearly been called in; and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delighton execrable copper-plates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword intoApollyon, or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of thecolonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country. Bunyan hastold us, with very pardonable vanity, that in New England his dream was the dailysubject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in themost superb binding. He had numerous admirers in Holland, and among theHuguenots of France. With the pleasures, however, he experienced some of the painsof eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name; andenvious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker shouldreally be the author of the book which was called his.

He took the best way to confound both those who counterfeited him and those whoslandered him. He continued to work the gold-field which he had discovered, and todraw from it new treasures, not indeed with quite such ease and in quite suchabundance as when the precious soil was still virgin, but yet with success which leftall competition far behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of the “Pilgrim’sProgress.” It was soon followed by the “Holy War,” which, if the “Pilgrim’sProgress” did not exist, would be the best allegory that ever was written.



Bunyan’s place in society was now very different from what it had been. There hadbeen 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 exceededtheirs. He had so great an authority among the Baptists that he was popularly calledBishop Bunyan. His episcopal visitations were annual. From Bedford he rode everyyear to London, and preached there to large and attentive congregations. FromLondon he went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of his brethren,collecting and distributing alms, and making up quarrels. The magistrates seem ingeneral to have given him little trouble. But there is reason to believe that, in the year1685, he was in some danger of again occupying his old quarters in Bedford gaol. Inthat year the rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the Government a pretextfor prosecuting the Nonconformists; and scarcely one eminent divine of thePresbyterian, Independent, or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested. Baxter was inprison: Howe was driven into exile: Henry was arrested. Two eminent Baptists, withwhom 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 asa waggoner, and that he preached to his congregation at Bedford in a smock-frock,with a cart-whip in his hand. But soon a great change took place. James the Secondwas at open war with the church, and found it necessary to court the Dissenters. Someof the creatures of the government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. They probablyknew that he had written in praise of the indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped thathe 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 casesexactly parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant: James was a professed Papist.The object of Charles’s indulgence was disguised: the object of James’s indulgencewas patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to prepare themselvesby 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 corporationof Bedford, and who, as was supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipaldignity to the Bishop of the Baptists.

Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the summer of 1688 he undertook toplead the cause of a son with an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old mannot to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the benevolent intercessor hislife. He had to ride through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on SnowHill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. He was buried in BunhillFields; and the spot where he lies is still regarded by the Nonconformists with afeeling which seems scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of their theology. Manypuritans, to whom the respect paid by Roman Catholics to the reliques and tombs ofsaints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath thattheir coffins might be placed as near as possible to the coffin 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 middleand lower classes. Very seldom was he during that time mentioned with respect byany 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 rankedwith those of Jack the Giant-Killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praisethe great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It is a significant circumstancethat, till a recent period, all the numerous editions of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” wereevidently meant for the cottage and the servants’ hall. The paper, the printing, theplates, were all of the meanest description. In general, when the educated minorityand the common people differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the educatedminority finally prevails. The “Pilgrim’s Progress” is perhaps the only book aboutwhich, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has come over to theopinion of the common people.

The attempts which have been made to improve and to imitate this book are not to benumbered. It has been done into verse: it has been done into modern English. “ThePilgrimage of Tender Conscience,” the “Pilgrimage of Good Intent,” “The Pilgrimageof Seek Truth,” “The Pilgrimage of Theophilus,” “The Infant Pilgrim,” “The HindooPilgrim,” are among the many feeble copies of the great original. But the peculiarglory of Bunyan is that those who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow thehelp of his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be seen with the head of theVirgin in the title page. On the other hand, those Antinomians for whom hisCalvinism is not strong enough may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in whichnothing will be found which can be construed into an admission of free agency anduniversal redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism bywhich a fine work of art was ever defaced was committed so late as the year 1853. Itwas determined to transform the “Pilgrim’s Progress” into a Tractarian book. The taskwas not easy: for it was necessary to make the two sacraments the most prominentobjects 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 theEucharist. The effect of this change is such as assuredly the ingenious person whomade it never contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim passes through the WicketGate in infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, thelesson, which the fable in its altered shape teaches, is that none but adults ought to bebaptized, and that the Eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody would havediscovered from the original “Pilgrim’s Progress” that the author was not aPædobaptist. To turn his book into a book against Pædobaptism was an achievementreserved for an Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily be committedby every man who mutilates parts of a great work, without taking a comprehensiveview of the whole.




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. (February 1856.)

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, andwhich 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 attachedto the daughter of the schoolmaster, married her, took orders, and settled at a placecalled Pallas in the county of Longford. There he with difficulty supported his wifeand children on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer.

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. That spot was then, for allpractical purposes, almost as remote from the busy and splendid capital in which hislater years were passed, as any clearing in Upper Canada or any sheep-walk inAustralasia now is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture to make apilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to perform the latter part of theirjourney on foot. The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain which, inwet weather, is often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting car to pieces; andthere are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly built wheels cannot bedragged.

While Oliver was still a child, his father was presented to a living worth about 200l. ayear, in the county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in thewilderness for a spacious house on a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Herethe boy was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh year to avillage school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to teachnothing but reading, writing and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund ofstories about ghosts, banshees and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, BaldeargO’Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough andStanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. This manmust have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the aboriginal race, and notonly spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses.Oliver early became, and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of theIrish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes ofwhose harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of theEnglishry, and though connected by numerous ties with the Established Church, nevershowed the least sign of that contemptuous antipathy with which, in his days, theruling minority in Ireland too generally regarded the subject majority. So far indeedwas 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 whenGeorge the Third was on the throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of thebanished dynasty could save the country.

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Goldsmith was removed in hisninth year. He went to several grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of theancient 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 small-pox had set its mark on him with more than usual severity. His stature wassmall, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown topersonal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver’s appearance was heightenedby a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. Hebecame the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had risen to eminence,those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his earlyyears, 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, toindicate the powers which produced the “Vicar of Wakefield” and the “DesertedVillage.”

In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. Thesizars paid nothing for food and tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had toperform some menial services from which they have long been relieved. They sweptthe court: they carried up the dinner to the fellows’ table, and changed the plates andpoured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered, not alone, ina garret, on the window of which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read withinterest.* From such garrets many men of less parts than his have made their way tothe woolsack or to the episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all thehumiliations, threw away all the advantages, of his situation. He neglected the studiesof the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of hisclass for playing the buffoon in the lecture room, was severely reprimanded forpumping on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the atticstory of the college to some gay youths and damsels from the city.

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between squalid distress and squaliddissipation, his father died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor’sdegree, and left the university. During some time the humble dwelling to which hiswidowed mother had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year; itwas necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to have fittedhim to do nothing but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of which he was as fond as amagpie, 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 turnwithout success. He applied for ordination; but, as he applied in scarlet clothes, hewas speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulentfamily, but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a dispute about play. Then hedetermined to emigrate to America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him setout for Cork on a good horse, with thirty pounds in his pocket. But in six weeks hecame back on a miserable hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that theship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair wind while he was at a partyof pleasure, had sailed without him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generouskinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticedinto a gaming house, and lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A smallpurse was made up; and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edinburgh. AtEdinburgh he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and pickedup some superficial information about chemistry and natural history. Thence he went



to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He left that celebrated university, the thirduniversity at which he had resided, in his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, withthe merest smattering of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes andhis flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot throughFlanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantrydancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a bed. He wandered as far asItaly. His musical performances, indeed, were not to the taste of the Italians; but hecontrived to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates of convents. It should,however, be observed that the stories which he told about this part of his life ought tobe received with great caution; for strict veracity was never one of his virtues; and aman who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely to be more than ordinarilyinaccurate when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardlessof truth as to assert in print that he was present at a most interesting conversationbetween Voltaire and Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at Paris. Nowit is certain that Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues of Paris during thewhole time which Goldsmith passed on the Continent.

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, without a friend, andwithout 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 provedutterly 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 turnedstrolling player; but his face and figure were ill suited to the boards even of thehumblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for charitablechemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was fora time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation sokeenly that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as abookseller’s hack; but he soon found the new yoke more galling than the old one, andwas glad to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appointment in the serviceof the East India Company; but the appointment was speedily revoked. Why it wasrevoked we are not told. The subject was one on which he never liked to talk. It isprobable that he was incompetent to perform the duties of the place. Then hepresented himself at Surgeons’ Hall for examination, as mate to a naval hospital. Evento so humble a post he was found unequal. By this time the schoolmaster whom hehad served for a morsel of food and the third part of a bed was no more. Nothingremained but to return to the lowest drudgery of literature. Goldsmith took a garret ina miserable court, to which he had to climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a dizzyladder of flagstones called Breakneck Steps. The court and the ascent have longdisappeared; but old Londoners will remember both.* Here, at thirty, the unluckyadventurer sat down to toil like a galley slave.

In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some things which have survived andmany which have perished. He produced articles for reviews, magazines, andnewspapers; children’s books which, bound in gilt paper and adorned with hideouswoodcuts, appeared in the window of the once far-famed shop at the corner of SaintPaul’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* ; a superficial and incorrect,



but very readable, “History of England,” in a series of letters purporting to beaddressed by a nobleman to his son; and some very lively and amusing “Sketches ofLondon Society,” in a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinesetraveller 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 booksellersfor whom he drudged. He was, indeed, emphatically a popular writer. For accurateresearch or grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by education. Heknew nothing accurately: his reading had been desultory; nor had he meditated deeplyon what he had read. He had seen much of the world; but he had noticed and retainedlittle more of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters whichhad happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily stored withmaterials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderfuleffect. There have been many greater writers; but perhaps no writer was ever moreuniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and easy, and, on proper occasions,pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions alwayspicturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge ofamiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was acertain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part ofwhose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, street-walkers and merryandrews, in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals.

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his acquaintance widened. He wasintroduced 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 enteredparliament, but had distinguished himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquenceof his conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 hewas one of the nine original members of that celebrated fraternity which hassometimes been called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed thatepithet, and still glories in the simple name of The Club.

By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwelling at the top of BreakneckSteps, and had taken chambers in the more civilised region of the Inns of Court. Buthe was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close of 1764 his rent was solong 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, andpromised to follow speedily. He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed theguinea, and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the corkinto the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly how money was to beprocured. Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced atthe manuscript, saw that there were good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for60l., and soon returned with the money. The rent was paid; and the sheriff’s officerwithdrew. According to one story, Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand forher treatment of him; according to another, he insisted on her joining him in a bowl ofpunch. Both stories are probably true. The novel which was thus ushered into theworld was the “Vicar of Wakefield.”



But, before the “Vicar of Wakefield” appeared in print, came the great crisis ofGoldsmith’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 raisedhim to the rank of a legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most skilful criticswas, 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 generalhis 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 Englishwanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countriesmeet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls thevarieties 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 happinessdepends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of ourown minds.

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 lasteddown to our own time, and which is likely to last as long as our language. The fable isindeed one of the worst that ever was constructed. It wants, not merely thatprobability which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, but thatconsistency 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, togetherwith all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and hismonogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aristotle thatrelatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous task of converting arakish lover by studying the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, thegreat 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 everbeen caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. The latter part of thetale is unworthy of the beginning. As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities liethicker and thicker; and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer.

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to try hisfortune as a dramatist. He wrote the “Goodnatured Man,” a piece which had a worsefate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at Drury Lane. It was acted atCovent Garden in 1768, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by hisbenefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than 500l., five times as muchas he had made by the “Traveller” and the “Vicar of Wakefield” together. The plot ofthe “Goodnatured Man” is, like almost all Goldsmith’s plots, very ill constructed. Butsome passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more ludicrous, indeed, than suited thetaste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled “False Delicacy,” hadjust had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, moretears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved theaudience 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 MissRichland 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 thefirst night.

In 1770 appeared the “Deserted Village.” In mere diction and versification thiscelebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior, to the “Traveller;” and it is generallypreferred 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 discerningjudges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by oneunpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The fault we mean is not that theoryabout 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 notnecessarily the worse on that account. The finest poem in the Latin language, indeedthe finest didactic poem in any language, was written in defence of the silliest andmeanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet may easily bepardoned for reasoning ill; but he cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observingthe world in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no resemblance to theoriginals, for exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous combinations of thingswhich never were and never could be found together. What would be thought of apainter who should mix August and January in one landscape, who should introduce afrozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such a picture tosay that every part was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-treesloaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sun-burnedreapers wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the ice and the boys slidingwere also very fine? To such a picture the “Deserted Village” bears a greatresemblance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a trueEnglish village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the miserywhich Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and totwo different stages in the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in hisnative island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, ashis “Auburn.” He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such aparadise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body toAmerica. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probablyseen in Munster: but, by joining the two, he has produced something which never wasand never will be seen in any part of the world.

In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with a second play, “She Stoopsto Conquer.” The manager was not without great difficulty induced to bring this pieceout. The sentimental comedy still reigned; and Goldsmith’s comedies were notsentimental. The “Goodnatured Man” had been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth ofthe “Goodnatured Man” was sober when compared with the rich drollery of “SheStoops to Conquer,” which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts. On thisoccasion, however, genius triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries, were in a constant roarof laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and Cumberland ventured to hiss orgroan, he was speedily silenced by a general cry of “turn him out,” or “throw himover.” Two generations have since confirmed the verdict which was pronounced onthat 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 derivedlittle reputation but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools a “History ofRome,” by which he made 300l., a “History of England,” by which he made 600l., a“History of Greece,” for which he received 250l., a “Natural History,” for which thebooksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These works he produced withoutany elaborate research, by merely selecting, abridging, and translating into his ownclear, pure, and flowing language what he found in books well known to the world,but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He committed some strange blunders; forhe knew nothing with accuracy. Thus in his “History of England” he tells us thatNaseby 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 abattle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. In his “Animated Nature” herelates, with faith and with perfect gravity, all the most absurd lies which he couldfind 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,” saidJohnson, “that is the extent of his knowledge of zoology.” How little Goldsmith wasqualified 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 southernsigns. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. “Maupertuis!” he cried, “Iunderstand those matters better than Maupertuis.” On another occasion he, in defianceof the evidence of his own senses, maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that hechewed his dinner by moving his upper jaw.

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done more to make the first steps inthe laborious road to knowledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widelydistinguished from the compilations of ordinary bookmakers. He was a great, perhapsan unequalled, master of the arts of selection and condensation. In these respects hishistories of Rome and of England, and still more his own abridgments of thesehistories, well deserve to be studied. In general nothing is less attractive than anepitome: but the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are alwaysamusing; and to read them is considered by intelligent children, not as a task, but as apleasure.

Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. He had the means of livingin comfort, and even in what to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks musthave been luxury. His fame was great and was constantly rising. He lived in what wasintellectually far the best society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent oraccomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was cultivatedwith splendid success. There probably were never four talkers more admirable in fourdifferent ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick; and Goldsmith was onterms of intimacy with all the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial renown; butnever was ambition more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote withso much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a partin conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence isoverwhelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between Goldsmith’s publishedworks and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him as aninspired idiot. “Noll,” said Garrick, “wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Pol.”



Chamier declared that it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish achatterer could have really written the “Traveller.” Even Boswell could say, withcontemptuous 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 asrivers differ. There are transparent and sparkling rivers from which it is delightful todrink as they flow; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson maybe compared. But there are rivers of which the water when first drawn is turbid andnoisome, but becomes pellucid as crystal, and delicious to the taste, if it be suffered tostand till it has deposited a sediment; and such a river is a type of the mind ofGoldsmith. His first thoughts on every subject were confused even to absurdity; butthey required only a little time to work themselves clear. When he wrote they had thattime; and therefore his readers pronounced him a man of genius: but when he talkedhe talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hearers. He waspainfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation; he felt every failure keenly; yet hehad not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spiritsand vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could notdo. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shameand vexation; yet the next moment he began again.

His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, which, in spite of theiradmiration of his writings, was not unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in hischaracter 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 thathe might be said to invite them; and was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing leftfor 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 reasonto believe that this bad passion, though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretfulexclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation of any of hisrivals. 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 arebut too common among men of letters, but which a man of letters who is also a manof the world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of achild. When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, instead of damningwith faint praise, instead of doing injuries slily and in the dark, he told everybody thathe was envious. “Do not, pray, do not talk of Johnson in such terms,” he said toBoswell; “you harrow up my very soul.” George Steevens and Cumberland were menfar too cunning to say such a thing. They would have echoed the praises of the manwhom 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 associatesa perfect security that he would never commit such villany. He was neither ill-naturedenough, nor long-headed enough, to be guilty of any malicious act which requiredcontrivance and disguise.

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of genius, cruelly treated by theworld, and doomed to struggle with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But norepresentation can be more remote from the truth. He did, indeed, go through muchsharp misery before he had done anything considerable in literature. But, after hisname had appeared on the title-page 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 400l. a year; and 400l. a year ranked, among the incomes of thatday, at least as high as 800l. a year would rank at present. A single man living in theTemple with 400l. a year might then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the younggentlemen of good families who were studying the law there had so much. But all thewealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas fromGermany, joined together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice asmuch as he had. He wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court tovenal 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, inpromiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had beenfrom boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most unskilful ofgamblers. For a time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. Heobtained advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he neverbegan. But at length this source of supply failed. He owed more than 2000l.; and hesaw 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. Itwould have been happy for him if his medical skill had been appreciated as justly byhimself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree which he pretended to have receivedat Padua, he could procure no patients. “I do not practise,” he once said; “I make it arule to prescribe only for my friends.” “Pray, dear Doctor,” said Beauclerk, “alteryour rule; and prescribe only for your enemies.” Goldsmith now, in spite of thisexcellent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy aggravated the malady. The sickman was induced to call in real physicians; and they at one time imagined that theyhad cured the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness continued. He could get nosleep. 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 thirdof 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 wasfollowed 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. Reynoldshad been so much moved by the news that he had flung aside his brush and palette forthe day.

A short time after Goldsmith’s death, a little poem appeared, which will, as long asour language lasts, associate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. Ithas already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly the sarcasm which his wildblundering talk brought upon him. He was, not long before his last illness, provokedinto retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen; and at that weapon he provedhimself a match for all his assailants together. Within a small compass he drew with asingularly easy and vigorous pencil the characters of nine or ten of his intimateassociates. Though this little work did not receive his last touches, it must always beregarded as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish that four or fivelikenesses which have no interest for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery, andthat their places were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy andvivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick.



Some of Goldsmith’s friends and admirers honoured him with a cenotaph inWestminster Abbey. Nollekens was the sculptor; and Johnson wrote the inscription. Itis much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more durable and amore valuable memorial of his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been aninestimable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith’swritings more justly than Johnson: no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith’scharacter and habits; and no man was more competent to delineate with truth andspirit the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were found in company withgreat weaknesses. But the list of poets to whose works Johnson was requested by thebooksellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttleton, who died in 1773. The lineseems to have been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the person whoseportrait would have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has beenfortunate 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 deservesgreat praise; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always pleasing; but the highestplace must, in justice, be assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster.




SAMUEL JOHNSON. (December 1856.)

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, amagistrate 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 wellacquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that thecountry rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points oflearning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious andpolitical sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had qualifiedhimself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, wasto the last a Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to everytraveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of September 1709. In thechild, the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterwardsdistinguished the man were plainly discernible; great muscular strength accompaniedby much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbidpropensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy andirritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it wasbeyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believethat the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up toLondon, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, andstroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliestrecollections 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 notirregular, were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for atime the sight of one eye; and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But theforce of his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquiredknowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school to which he was sent hewas soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was leftto his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were withoutguidance and without plan. He ransacked his father’s shelves, dipped into a multitudeof books, read what was interesting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary ladwould have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way: but much that wasdull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek; for hisproficiency in that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in themasters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good Latinist; and hesoon acquired, in the large and miscellaneous library of which he now had thecommand, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan delicacy of tastewhich is the boast of the great public schools of England he never possessed. But hewas early familiar with some classical writers who were quite unknown to the bestscholars in the sixth form at Eton. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of thegreat restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a hugefolio volume of Petrarch’s works. The name excited his curiosity; and he eagerlydevoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own Latincompositions show that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies fromthe antique as to the original models.



While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking into hopelesspoverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to pore upon books, and totalk about them, than to trade in them. His business declined; his debts increased; itwas with difficulty that the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was outof his power to support his son at either university: but a wealthy neighbour offeredassistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value,Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presentedhimself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figureand eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious informationwhich 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; andone of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a freshman ofequal attainments.

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. He was poor, even toraggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which were equallyintolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ Churchby the sneering looks which the members of that aristocratical society cast at the holesin his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurnedthem away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungovernable.No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated theacademical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally tobe seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing acircle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit andaudacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the disciplineof the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth sohighly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made himself knownby turning Pope’s Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were notexactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read withpleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of things, havebecome a Bachelor of Arts: but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises ofsupport on which he had relied had not been kept. His family could do nothing forhim. 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 adegree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and ofthat pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of his widow. Theproperty to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

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 thesufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left theuniversity, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He hadbecome an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all hislife, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than hishave often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting asidewills. 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 drawing room bysuddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord’s Prayer. He would conceive anunintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than seethe hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets throughwhich he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundredyards and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses becamemorbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time he would standporing on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another, he woulddistinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. But thiswas not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tingeto all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as heendured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he wasunder no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid ofdeath; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitablehour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits ofdejection; for his religion partook of his own character. The light from heaven shoneon him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had tostruggle through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled anddiscoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul; and, though they mightbe sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during about five years in themidland counties. At Lichfield, his birth-place and his early home, he had inheritedsome friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gayofficer 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 youngadventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners and squalid garb movedmany of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. AtLichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He becameusher of a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in thehouse of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to hishaughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literarydrudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and longforgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishingby subscription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latinverse: but subscriptions did not come in; and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of hispassion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. Toordinary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half aninch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graceswhich were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however,whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse fromnatural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman ofreal 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; forshe 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, inspite of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. Thelover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in hersixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription extolling the charms ofher person and of her manners; and, when, long after her decease, he had occasion tomention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, “Prettycreature!”

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously than he hadhitherto done. He took a house in the neighbourhood of his native town, andadvertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away; and only three pupils came tohis academy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temper so violent, thathis schoolroom must have resembled an ogre’s den. Nor was the tawdry paintedgrandmother whom he called his Titty well qualified to make provision for thecomfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, manyyears later, to throw the best company of London into convulsions of laughter bymimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to seek his fortunein the capital as a literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of thetragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters of introduction from his friendWalmesley.

Never, since literature became a calling in England, had it been a less gainful callinghan at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London. In the precedinggeneration a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by thegovernment. The least that he could expect was a pension or a sinecure place; and, ifhe showed any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, alord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the otherhand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century of whom the least successfulhas received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on hisvocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages ofprosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and hadnot 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, andlived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of state. But this was asolitary exception. Even an author whose reputation was established, and whoseworks were popular, such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in everylibrary, such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater run than anydrama since The Beggar’s Opera, was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his bestcoat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could wipehis 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 novicewho had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied foremployment measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, andexclaimed, “You had better get a porter’s knot, and carry trunks.” Nor was the advice



bad; for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as apoet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any literaryconnection from which he could expect more than bread for the day which waspassing over him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who was nowresiding in London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. “Harry Hervey,” saidthe 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 sometimesenjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined,and thought that he dined well, on sixpenny worth of meat, and a pennyworth ofbread, at an alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time wasdiscernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His manners had never beencourtly. They now became almost savage. Being frequently under the necessity ofwearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being oftenvery hungry when he sat down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating withravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, thesight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste incookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beefshops, was far fromdelicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kepttoo long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violencethat his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts whichhis poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would havebroken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappilythe insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some senserespectable, accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy andkindness. He was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties withhim. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from talking about theirbeatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, whoproclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whom hehad hired to puff the Harleian Library.

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he was fortunate enough toobtain regular employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, whowas proprietor and editor of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” That journal, just enteringon the ninth year of its long existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdomwhich then had what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed, the chiefsource of parliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, topublish an account of the proceedings of either House without some disguise. Cave,however, ventured to entertain his readers with what he called “Reports of theDebates of the Senate of Lilliput.” France was Blefuscu; London was Mildendo:pounds were sprugs: the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of State: LordHardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad; and William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. Towrite the speeches was, during several years, the business of Johnson. He wasgenerally 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 conviction—for his seriousopinion was that one form of government was just as good or as bad as another—butfrom mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Bluesof the Roman circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talkabout the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that he had become afurious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted onbeing taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened to thesermon with as much respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as anyStaffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which had been begun in thenursery had been completed by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there,was the most Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of the mostJacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to London werescarcely 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 toweep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than that of “the zealot ofrebellion.” Even the ship money, condemned not less decidedly by Falkland andClarendon than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to havebeen an unconstitutional impost. Under a government, the mildest that had ever beenknown in the world—under a government which allowed to the people anunprecedented liberty of speech and action — he fancied that he was a slave; heassailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedomand happiness of those golden days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenthpart 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 hateddissenters and stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, andcontinental connections. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of whichhe could not remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had probablyoriginated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the Great Rebellion. Itis easy to guess in what manner debates on great party questions were likely to bereported by a man whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show offairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But Johnson longafterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he had taken care that theWhig 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 ofsome member of the opposition.

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he published a workwhich at once placed him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that whathe had suffered during his first year in London had often reminded him of some partsof that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of aneedy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons’ nests in the tottering garrets whichoverhung the streets of Rome. Pope’s admirable imitations of Horace’s Satires andEpistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readersthought superior to the originals. What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired todo 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 andHorace.

Johnson’s London appeared without his name in May 1738. He received only tenguineas for this stately and vigorous poem: but the sale was rapid, and the successcomplete. A second edition was required within a week. Those small critics who arealways desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that theanonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope’s own peculiar department ofliterature. It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily inthe applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He madeinquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long beconcealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope, with great kindness, exertedhimself to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar school forthe poor young poet. The attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller’s hack.

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the generationwhich was going out, and the most eminent writer of the generation which wascoming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, one surroundedby dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and indexmakers. AmongJohnson’s associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts werepledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in hisblanket; who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober; and whowas at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk: Hoole, surnamed themetaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to tracegeometrical diagrams on the board where he sate cross-legged: and the penitentimpostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on thefolios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with literaryand theological conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkable of thepersons 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 amongblue ribands in Saint James’s Square, and had lain with fifty pounds’ weight of ironson his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, after many vicissitudesof fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. Hispatrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion withwhich he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which herejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagnewhenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had beenunsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, andlay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in coldweather, as near as he could get to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, hewas still an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes aboutthat gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed thegreat men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders ofopposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar withlaughter and tell stories not over decent. During some months Savage lived in theclosest 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 andheart-broken, in Bristol gaol.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited about hisextraordinary character, and his not less extraordinary adventures, a life of himappeared widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which were thena staple article of manufacture in Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in easeand variety; and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of ourlanguage. But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimenof literary biography existed in any language, living or dead; and a discerning criticmight have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the founder of anew school of English eloquence.

The Life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known in literary circles thatJohnson was the writer. During the three years which followed, he produced noimportant work; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame of hisabilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of partsand genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson’sreputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in thearduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the English Language, in two foliovolumes. 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 thehumbler parts of his task.

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfieldhad 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 theHouse of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, witheminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become Secretary ofState. He received Johnson’s homage with the most winning affability, and requited itwith a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by nomeans desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soupsand wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats offine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and utteredstrange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During sometime Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after being repeatedly told by theporter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himselfat the inhospitable door.

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his Dictionary by the endof 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 andmarking quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labour of amore agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellentimitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say whether the palmbelongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolseyis described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with the wonderfullines 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 statuesrolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running tosee him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcasebefore it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the concluding passagethe Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallendecidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal’sHannibal must yield to Johnson’s Charles; and Johnson’s vigorous and patheticenumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior toJuvenal’s lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson received only fifteenguineas.

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 hisappearance on a humble stage in Goodman’s Fields, had at once risen to the first placeamong actors, and was now, after several years of almost uninterrupted success,manager of Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his old preceptor wasof a very singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet attracted each otherstrongly. Nature had made them of very different clay; and circumstances had fullybrought out the natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick’shead. Continued adversity had soured Johnson’s temper. Johnson saw with more envythan became so great a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, whichthe little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticulations, what wisermen had written; and the exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by thethought that, while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain fromone morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, scarcely anycompliment not acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many earlyrecollections in common, and sympathised with each other on so many points onwhich they sympathised with nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that,though the master was often provoked by the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil,and the pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained friends till theywere parted by death. Garrick now brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient todisplease the author, yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. Thepublic, however, listened with little emotion, but with much civility, to five acts ofmonotonous declamation. After nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is,indeed, altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in the closet, will befound hardly worthy of the author. He had not the slightest notion of what blank verseshould be. A change in the last syllable of every other line would make theversification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble the versification ofIrene. The poet, however, cleared, by his benefit nights, and by the sale of thecopyright of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in hisestimation.

About a year after the representation of Irene, he began to publish a series of shortessays on morals, manners, and literature. This species of composition had beenbrought into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still more brilliantsuccess of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers had vainly attempted to rival



Addison. The Lay Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, theChampion, and other works of the same kind, had had their short day. None of themhad obtained a permanent place in our literature; and they are now to be found only inthe libraries of the curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in which somany aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of the lastnumber of the Spectator appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 1750to March 1752, this paper continued to come out every Tuesday and Saturday.

From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired by a few eminent men.Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if notsuperior, to the Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their approbation not lesswarmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many faults indifference to the claims ofgenius and learning cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. Inconsequence probably of the good offices of Dodington, who was then theconfidential adviser of Prince Frederic, two of his Royal Highness’s gentlemencarried a gracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven copies forLeicester House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly received. Johnsonhad had enough of the patronage of the great to last him all his life, and was notdisposed to haunt any other door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.

By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly received. Though the price of anumber was only twopence, the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits weretherefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were collected and reprintedthey became popular. The author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread overEngland alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. Alarge party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in some essays itwould 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 thepurity of the English tongue. The best critics admitted that his diction was toomonotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. Butthey did justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, to theconstant precision and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the weighty andmagnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasinghumour of some of the lighter papers. On the question of precedence betweenAddison and Johnson, a question which, seventy years ago, was much disputed,posterity has pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, hischaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, theJournal of the Retired Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves ofHilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the Abbey, are knownto everybody. But many men and women, even of highly cultivated minds, areunacquainted with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, theAllegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions of a Garret, and thesad fate of Aningait and Ajut.

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson had been givenover by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learningstooping to every drudgery, and denying himself almost every comfort, for the



purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which sheaccepted 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 beautifulas the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings was moreimportant to him than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment ofthe Monthly Review. The chief support which had sustained him through the mostarduous labour of his life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profitwhich he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast labyrinth ofstreets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet it wasnecessary for him to set himself, as he expressed it, doggedly to work. After threemore laborious years, the Dictionary was at length complete.

It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated to the eloquentand accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He wellknew the value of such a compliment; and therefore, when the day of publicationdrew near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time ofdelicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. Since theRamblers had ceased to appear, the town had been entertained by a journal called TheWorld, to which many men of high rank and fashion contributed. In two successivenumbers of The World the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed withwonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was proposed thathe should be invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over ourlanguage, and that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of words shouldbe received as final. His two folios, it was said, would of course be bought byeverybody who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers werewritten 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, herepelled the tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without adedication. 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 andpathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, HorneTooke, never could read that passage without tears.

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and something more thanjustice. The best lexicographer may well be content if his productions are received bythe world with cold esteem. But Johnson’s Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasmsuch as no similar work has ever excited. It was indeed the first dictionary whichcould be read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought andcommand of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines and philosophersare so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably spent inturning 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 ofany Teutonic language except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely aTeutonic 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 pecuniarymeans. The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers had agreed to pay him hadbeen 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 greatwork, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebtedfor his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still necessary for the manwho had been formally saluted by the highest authority as Dictator of the Englishlanguage to supply his wants by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. Heproposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription; and many subscriberssent in their names, and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so little tohis taste that he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed many papersto a new monthly journal, which was called the Literary Magazine. Few of thesepapers 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 Jenyns’sInquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays, entitled TheIdler. During two years these essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerlyread, widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they were still in theoriginal form, and had a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may bedescribed as a second part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weakerthan the first part.

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had accomplished herninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since he had seen her; but he had notfailed to contribute largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order to defraythe charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a littlebook 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 greatcause to be pleased with their bargain; for the book was Rasselas.

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia Languish musthave been grievously disappointed when they found that the new volume from thecirculating 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, andthe Princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine downexactly where it had taken them up. The style was the subject of much eagercontroversy. The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different sides. Manyreaders pronounced the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of twosyllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not make awaiting woman relate her adventures without balancing every noun with anothernoun, and every epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, citedwith delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning was expressed withaccuracy and illustrated with splendour. And both the censure and the praise weremerited.

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; and yet the faults of the planmight seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare forneglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation themanners and opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way moregrievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently



meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the Europe which Imlacdescribes is the Europe of the eighteenth century; and the inmates of the HappyValley talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton discovered, and whichwas not fully received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. What a realcompany of Abyssinians would have been may be learned from Bruce’s Travels. ButJohnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorgedwith raw steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightenedas himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. Lennoxor Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into aland of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are married without everbeing seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball-rooms. In a landwhere there is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the indissolublecompact. “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 maystill be, in London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty of suchimproprieties had little right to blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, andrepresented Julio Romano as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson supported himself till the year1762. In that year a great change in his circumstances took place. He had from a childbeen an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices had been exhibitedwith little disguise both in his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy andelaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want to taste and judgment, inserted bitterand contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favouriteresource of Whig financiers, he had designated as a hateful tax. He had railed againstthe commissioners of excise in language so coarse that they had seriously thought ofprosecuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the LordPrivy Seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word “renegade.” A pensionhe had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his country; a pensioner as aslave of state hired by a stipend to obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author ofthese definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. Georgethe Third had ascended the throne; and had, in the course of a few months, disgustedmany of the old friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of his house. Thecity was becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentinckswere murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The headof the treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection toJohnson’s Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and Johnsonwas one of the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. Apension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very little hesitationaccepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson’s whole way of life. For the first time sincehis boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was atliberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his constitutionalindolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in themorning, 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 largesubscriptions for his promised edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on thosesubscriptions during some years; and he could not without disgrace omit to performhis part of the contract. His friends repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort; and herepeatedly resolved to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and hisresolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. Heprayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he received thesacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but the spellunder which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private notes at this time aremade up of self-reproaches. “My indolence,” he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, “hassunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has overspread me, so that Iknow not what has become of the last year.” Easter 1765 came, and found him still inthe same state, “My time,” he wrote, “has been unprofitably spent, and seems as adream that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and I know not howthe days pass over me.” Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captivewas at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak enough to payserious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, andhad 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 theperturbed spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remainedobstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusingherself by making fools of so many philosophers. Churchill, who, confident in hispowers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for someman of established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghostin three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which hadbeen so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the greatmoralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual; and in October 1765appeared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shakspeare.

This publication saved Johnson’s character for honesty, but added nothing to the fameof his abilities and learning. The preface, though it contains some good passages, isnot in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which he had anopportunity of showing how attentively he had during many years observed humanlife 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 ofHamlet. But here praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, amore worthless, edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play after playwithout finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactoryexplanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, inhis Prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which he hadundertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking awider view of the English language than any of his predecessors. That his knowledgeof our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had altogetherneglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that aneditor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yetlittle will be risked by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the EnglishDictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethanage, 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 playthat was extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessarypreparation for the work which he had undertaken. He would doubtless have admittedthat it would be the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the worksof Æschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured topublish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can bediscovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow,Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and scurrilous. Those who mostloved and honoured him had little to say in praise of the manner in which he haddischarged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debtwhich had long lain heavy on his conscience; and he sank back into the repose fromwhich the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to live upon the famewhich he had already won. He was honoured by the University of Oxford with aDoctor’s degree, by the Royal Academy with a professorship, and by the King with aninterview, in which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent awriter would not cease to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775Johnson published only two or three political tracts, the longest of which he couldhave produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the Life ofSavage and on Rasselas.

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence exercised byhis conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the wholeliterary world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed ofthe highest order. He had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, immenseknowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. Asrespected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped fromhis lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler.But in his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than a fair proportion ofwords 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 ofemphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than diminished by the rollings ofhis huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals of hiseloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sitdown to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. Todiscuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so exact and soforcible that it might have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to himno 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 wouldstart a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who sate at thesame table with him in an eating house. But his conversation was nowhere so brilliantand striking as when he was surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities andknowledge enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that hethrew. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which graduallybecame a formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronouncedby this conclave on new books were speedily known over all London, and weresufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the serviceof the trunk-maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when weconsider 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, thegreatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to themeetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and hisconsummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were twohigh-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but ofwidely different characters and habits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill inGreek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life; andTopham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge of the gay world, hisfastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was noteasy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. Burke might indeed havedisputed the supremacy to which others were under the necessity of submitting. ButBurke, though not generally a very patient listener, was content to take the second partwhen Johnson was present; and the club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, isto this day popularly designated as Johnson’s Club.

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it has owed the greaterpart of its celebrity, yet who was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and hadnot without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was James Boswell, a youngScotch 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 wereacquainted with him. That he could not reason, that he had no wit, no humour, noeloquence, is apparent from his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond theMississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be read as long as theEnglish exists, either as a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a slaveand an idolater. His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call parasites,and which can subsist only by clinging round the stems and imbibing the juices ofstronger plants. He must have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fastenedhimself 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 fieldpreacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself onJohnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For Johnson had early been prejudicedagainst Boswell’s country. To a man of Johnson’s strong understanding and irritabletemper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as theconstant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was eternallycatechising 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 wasa water-drinker; and Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than ahabitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect harmony between two suchcompanions. Indeed, the great-man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion inwhich he said things which the small man, during a few hours, seriously resented.Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During twenty years the disciplecontinued to worship the master: the master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer athim, and to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from eachother. Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could pay onlyoccasional visits to London. During those visits his chief business was to watchJohnson, to discover all Johnson’s habits, to turn the conversation to subjects aboutwhich 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 ofwhich was afterwards constructed the most interesting biographical work in the world.

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connection less important indeedto his fame, but much more important to his happiness, than his connection withBoswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the kingdom, a man ofsound and cultivated understanding, rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married toone of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who areperpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do or say what theymay, are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted with Johnson; andthe acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. They were astonished and delighted bythe brilliancy of his conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so widelycelebrated preferred their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities whichseemed 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 eagernesswith which he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, hisfrequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the interest which his newassociates took in him. For these things were the cruel marks left behind by a lifewhich had been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a vulgar hackwriter 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. Johnsonsoon had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasantapartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part of every yearhe passed in those abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and luxuriousindeed, when compared with the dens in which he had generally been lodged. But hischief 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 ampleamends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he wasdiseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort thatwealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work bywomanly compassion, could devise, was wanting to his sick room. He requited herkindness by an affection pure as the affection of a father, yet delicately tinged with agallantry, which, though awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentionsof a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, of Buck andMaccaroni. It should seem that a full half of Johnson’s life, during about sixteenyears, was passed under the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the familysometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and once to Paris. Buthe had at the same time a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the northof Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection ofbooks, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, butvery rarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb andspinage, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his longabsences. It was the home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that everwas brought together. At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an oldlady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and herpoverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to anotherlady 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, whobled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts ofbread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed thisstrange menagerie. All these poor creatures were at constant war with each other, andwith Johnson’s negro servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they transferred theirhostilities from the servant to the master, complained that a better table was not keptfor them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape toStreatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest andmost irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which lookedlike 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 theworkhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked downOsborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs. Williams and Mrs.Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, continued to torment him and to live upon him.

The course of life which has been described was interrupted in Johnson’s sixty-fourthyear by an important event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and hadbeen much interested by learning that there was so near him a land peopled by a racewhich was still as rude and simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimatelyacquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen frequentlycrossed his mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have overcome hishabitual 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 hissquire. At length, in August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plungedcourageously into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary andperilous wilderness. After wandering about two months through the Celtic region,sometimes in rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and sometimes onsmall shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he returned to his old hauntswith a mind full of new images and new theories. During the following year heemployed himself in recording his adventures. About the beginning of 1775, hisJourney to the Hebrides was published, and was, during some weeks, the chief subjectof conversation in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. The book isstill read with pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the speculations, whether soundor unsound, are always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pompous, issomewhat easier and more graceful than that of his early writings. His prejudiceagainst the Scotch had at length become little more than matter of jest; and whateverremained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by the kind and respectfulhospitality with which he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, ofcourse, not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian polityand ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks of England shouldnot be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in censureJohnson’s tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened Scotchmen, with LordMansfield at their head, were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmenwere moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which was mingled with mucheulogy, and assailed him whom they chose to consider as the enemy of their countrywith libels much more dishonourable to their country than anything that he had ever



said or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, articles in themagazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson forbeing blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed the world that one ofthe Doctor’s uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found thatthere 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 thatJohnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walkedabout, during some time, with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wiseto encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, to borrow the sublimelanguage 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 tobe drawn into controversy; and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastnesswhich is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually and morally, ofthe stuff of which controversialists are made. In conversation, he was a singularlyeager, acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he hadrecourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made unsparing use ofsarcasm and invective. But, when he took his pen in his hand, his whole characterseemed 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 arefutation, 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 byanswering them. But the reader will in vain search his works for any allusion toKenrick or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent onvindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a detestableLatin hexameter.

“Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum.”

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, both from his ownobservation and from literary history, in which he was deeply read, that the place ofbooks in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, but by whatis written in them; and that an author whose works are likely to live is very unwise ifhe stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He alwaysmaintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beatenback, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall if there were only onebattledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley,that no man was ever written down but by himself.

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the Journey to the Hebrides, Johnsondid what none of his envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extentsucceeded in writing himself down. The disputes between England and her Americancolonies had reached a point at which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil warwas evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought that the eloquenceof Johnson might with advantage be employed to inflame the nation against theopposition here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already writtentwo 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 ofpamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his Taxation NoTyranny was a pitiable failure. The very title was a silly phrase, which can have beenrecommended to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he ought tohave despised. The arguments were such as boys use in debating societies. Thepleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell wasforced to own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace of his master’spowers. The general opinion was that the strong faculties which had produced theDictionary 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 lessvigorous than when he wrote Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he hadfoolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a subject such as he would atno time have been competent to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He neverwillingly read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved biography, literaryhistory, 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 questionabout which he had really nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest menmust fail when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit; as Burke would havefailed if Burke had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds wouldhave failed if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. Happily,Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving most signally that his failure was not tobe ascribed to intellectual decay.

On Easter Eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting which consisted of forty ofthe first booksellers in London, called upon him. Though he had some scruples aboutdoing business at that season, he received his visitors with much civility. They cameto inform him that a new edition of the English poets, from Cowley downwards, wasin contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readilyundertook the task, a task for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge ofthe literary history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledgehe had derived partly from books, and partly from sources which had long beenclosed; from old Grub Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten poetasters andpamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from the recollections of suchmen as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, whohad mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had beenadmitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered services of no veryhonourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore sate down to his task with a mindfull 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 andcriticism overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant toconsist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes, small volumes, it is true, andnot 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 narrativesare as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature areeminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often excellent, and, even when



grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied. For, however erroneousthey may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled byprejudice and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute. They therefore generallycontain 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 much of what is calledcriticism in our time has no pretensions.

Savage’s Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744. Whoever, afterreading 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 hadtalked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, themannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elaboratecomposition was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had acolloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned bya skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets is soobvious that it cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader.

Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The veryworst is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray.

This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, much just and muchunjust censure: but even those who were loudest in blame were attracted by the bookin spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the publishers at five or sixthousand pounds. But the writer was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first towrite very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. Thebooksellers, when they saw how far his performance had surpassed his promise,added only another hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or affect todespise, money, and though his strong sense and long experience ought to havequalified him to protect his own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful andunlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally reputed the first English writer ofhis time. Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums such as henever ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson received four thousandfive hundred pounds for the History of Charles V.; and it is no disrespect to thememory of Robertson to say that the History of Charles V. is both a less valuable anda less amusing book than the Lives of the Poets.

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of age were coming fastupon him. That inevitable event of which he never thought without horror wasbrought near to him; and his whole life was darkened by the shadow of death. He hadoften to pay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he lost what could never bereplaced. The strange dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in spiteof their faults, he was strongly attached by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in thesilence of his home, he regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kindand generous Thrale was no more; and it would have been well if his wife had beenlaid beside him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of those who had enviedher, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond anything inthe world tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her grave. With someestimable 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 toher taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of his house, her worst offenceshad been impertinent jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending in sunnygood humour. But he was gone; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, withstrong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She soon fell in love with amusic-master from Brescia, in whom nobody but herself could discover anything toadmire. Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against thisdegrading passion. But the struggle irritated her nerves, soured her temper, and atlength endangered her health. Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson couldnot approve, she became desirous to escape from his inspection. Her manner towardshim changed. She was sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not concealher joy when he left Streatham; she never pressed him to return; and, if he cameunbidden, she received him in a manner which convinced him that he was no longer awelcome guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, for thelast time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the library which had been formed byhimself. In a solemn and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates to theDivine protection, and, with emotions which choked his voice and convulsed hispowerful frame, left for ever that beloved home for the gloomy and desolate housebehind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days which still remained to him were torun out. Here, in June 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, herecovered, 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 ofdiseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness ofsixteen years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was cryingshame upon her; and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions tothe Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that hewould try to forget her existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial of herwhich met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter andhisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown,hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry Christmas ofconcerts and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man with whose name hers isinseparably associated had ceased to exist.

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 hisIdlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew near. He fancied that heshould be able to draw his breath more easily in a southern climate, and wouldprobably have set out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense of thejourney. That expense, indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid upabout two thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of severalpublishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard; and he seems to havewished even to keep its existence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that thegovernment 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 watergathered 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 carewhich had mitigated his sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham waswithdrawn, 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 servantto watch a night by the bed. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cherished withfatherly kindness, stood weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety eminentlyqualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time, received the last pressureof his friend’s hand within. When at length the moment, dreaded through so manyyears, came close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson’s mind. His temperbecame unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to think with terror of death, and ofthat which lies beyond death; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of thepropitiation 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 ofwhom he had been the historian,—Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay,Prior, and Addison.

Since his death the popularity of his works—the Lives of the Poets, and, perhaps, theVanity of Human Wishes, excepted—has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has beenaltered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. An allusion to his Rambler or hisIdler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas hasgrown 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 donefor him more than the best of his own books could do. The memory of other authors iskept 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 theshirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming withhis fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No humanbeing who has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. Andit is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself havecalled the anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves only to strengthenour conviction that he was both a great and a good man.




WILLIAM PITT. (January 1859.)

William Pitt, the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of Lady HesterGrenville, 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 inthe civilised world, and was pronounced by every Englishman with pride, and byevery enemy of England with mingled admiration and terror. During the first year ofhis life, every month had its illuminations and bonfires, and every wind brought somemessenger charged with joyful tidings and hostile standards. In Westphalia theEnglish infantry won a great battle which arrested the armies of Louis the Fifteenth inthe midst of a career of conquest; Boscawen defeated one French fleet on the coast ofPortugal; 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 wallsof Quebec; Clive destroyed a Dutch armament in the Hooghly, and established theEnglish supremacy in Bengal; Coote routed Lally at Wandewash, and established theEnglish supremacy in the Carnatic. The nation, while loudly applauding thesuccessful 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 superiormind. It was the great William Pitt, the great commoner, who had vanquished Frenchmarshals in Germany, and French admirals on the Atlantic; who had conquered for hiscountry one great empire on the frozen shores of Ontario, and another under thetropical sun near the mouths of the Ganges. It was not in the nature of things thatpopularity such as he at this time enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity hadlost its gloss before his children were old enough to understand that their father was agreat man. He was at length placed in situations in which neither his talents foradministration nor his talents for debate appeared to the best advantage. The energyand decision which had eminently fitted him for the direction of war were not neededin time of peace. The lofty and spirit-stirring eloquence which had made him supremein the House of Commons often fell dead on the House of Lords. A cruel maladyracked his joints, and left his joints only to fall on his nerves and on his brain. Duringthe closing years of his life, he was odious to the court, and yet was not on cordialterms with the great body of the opposition. Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt, but anawful and majestic ruin, not to be contemplated by any man of sense and feelingwithout emotions resembling those which are excited by the remains of the Parthenonand of the Coliseum. In one respect the old statesman was eminently happy. Whatevermight be the vicissitudes of his public life, he never failed to find peace and love byhis own hearth. He loved all his children, and was loved by them; and, of all hischildren, the one of whom he was fondest and proudest was his second son.

The child’s genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rare and almostunnatural precocity. At seven, the interest which he took in grave subjects, the ardourwith which he pursued his studies, and the sense and vivacity of his remarks on booksand on events, amazed his parents and instructors. One of his sayings of this date wasreported to his mother by his tutor. In August, 1766, when the world was agitated bythe news that Mr. Pitt had become Earl of Chatham, little William exclaimed: “I amglad 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 elderbrother, who was fifteen. “The fineness,” she wrote, “of William’s mind makes himenjoy with the greatest pleasure what would be above the reach of any other creatureof his small age.” At fourteen the lad was in intellect a man. Hayley, who met him atLyme in the summer of 1773, was astonished, delighted, and somewhat overawed, byhearing wit and wisdom from so young a mouth. The poet, indeed, was afterwardssorry that his shyness had prevented him from submitting the plan of an extensiveliterary work, which he was then meditating, to the judgment of this extraordinaryboy. The boy, indeed, had already written a tragedy, bad of course, but not worse thanthe tragedies of his friend. This piece is still preserved at Chevening, and is in somerespects highly curious. There is no love. The whole plot is political; and it isremarkable that the interest, such as it is, turns on a contest about a regency. On oneside is a faithful servant of the Crown, on the other an ambitious and unprincipledconspirator. 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 byinternal evidence would have no hesitation in pronouncing that the play was writtenby some Pittite poetaster at the time of the rejoicings for the recovery of George theThird in 1789.

The pleasure with which William’s parents observed the rapid development of hisintellectual powers was alloyed by apprehensions about his health. He shot upalarmingly fast; he was often ill, and always weak; and it was feared that it would beimpossible to rear a stripling so tall, so slender, and so feeble. Port wine wasprescribed by his medical advisers: and it is said that he was, at fourteen, accustomedto take this agreeable physic in quantities which would, in our abstemious age, bethought much more than sufficient for any full-grown man. This regimen, though itwould probably have killed ninety-nine boys out of a hundred, seems to have beenwell suited to the peculiarities of William’s constitution; for at fifteen he ceased to bemolested by disease, and, though never a strong man, continued, during many years oflabour and anxiety, of nights passed in debate and of summers passed in London, tobe a tolerably healthy one. It was probably on account of the delicacy of his framethat he was not educated like other boys of the same rank. Almost all the eminentEnglish statesmen and orators to whom he was afterwards opposed or allied, North,Fox, Shelburne, Windham, Grey, Wellesley, Grenville, Sheridan, Canning, wentthrough the training of great public schools. Lord Chatham had himself been adistinguished Etonian; and it is seldom that a distinguished Etonian forgets hisobligations to Eton. But William’s infirmities required a vigilance and tendernesssuch 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 ancientlanguages and of mathematics was such as very few men of eighteen then carried upto college. He was therefore sent, towards the close of the year 1773, to PembrokeHall, in the university of Cambridge. So young a student required much more than theordinary care which a college tutor bestows on undergraduates. The governor, towhom the direction of William’s academical life was confided, was a bachelor of artsnamed Pretyman, who had been senior wrangler in the preceding year, and who,



though not a man of prepossessing appearance or brilliant parts, was eminently acuteand laborious, a sound scholar, and an excellent geometrician. At Cambridge,Pretyman was, during more than two years, the inseparable companion, and indeedalmost the only companion, of his pupil. A close and lasting friendship sprang upbetween the pair. The disciple was able, before he completed his twenty-eighth year,to make his preceptor Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of St. Paul’s; and the preceptorshowed his gratitude by writing a life of the disciple, which enjoys the distinction ofbeing the worst biographical work of its size in the world.

Pitt, till he graduated, had scarcely one acquaintance, attended chapel regularlymorning and evening, dined every day in hall, and never went to a single eveningparty. At seventeen, he was admitted, after the bad fashion of those times, by right ofbirth, without any examination, to the degree of Master of Arts. But he continuedduring some years to reside at college, and to apply himself vigorously, underPretyman’s direction, to the studies of the place, while mixing freely in the bestacademic society.

The stock of learning which Pitt laid in during this part of his life was certainly veryextraordinary. In fact, it was all that he ever possessed; for he very early became toobusy to have any spare time for books. The work in which he took the greatest delightwas 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 withwhich 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 theexaminations of the Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor was theyouth’s proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect, indeed, heappeared to disadvantage when compared with even second-rate and third-rate menfrom public schools. He had never, while under Wilson’s care, been in the habit ofcomposing in the ancient languages; and he therefore never acquired that knack ofversification which is sometimes possessed by clever boys whose knowledge of thelanguage and literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial. It would have beenutterly out of his power to produce such charming elegiac lines as those in whichWellesley bade farewell to Eton, or such Virgilian hexameters as those in whichCanning described the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it may be doubted whether anyscholar has ever, at twenty, had a more solid and profound knowledge of the two greattongues of the old civilised world. The facility with which he penetrated the meaningof the most intricate sentences in the Attic writers astonished veteran critics. He hadset his heart on being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry of Greece, andwas not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron’s Cassandra, the most obscure workin the whole range of ancient literature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties ofwhich have perplexed and repelled many excellent scholars, “he read,” says hispreceptor, “with an ease at first sight, which, if I had not witnessed it, I should havethought beyond the compass of human intellect.”

To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew no livinglanguage except French; and French he knew very imperfectly. With a few of the bestEnglish 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 hisearly friends used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the melodiouscadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial. Hehad indeed been carefully trained from infancy in the art of managing his voice, avoice naturally clear and deep-toned. His father, whose oratory owed no small part ofits 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’ssonorous elocution fascinated the rows of country gentlemen, reproached him withhaving been “taught by his dad on a stool.”

His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a great parliamentary speaker. Oneargument often urged against those classical studies which occupy so large a part ofthe early life of every gentleman bred in the south of our island is, that they preventhim from acquiring a command of his mother tongue, and that it is not unusual tomeet with a youth of excellent parts, who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and HoratianLatin Alcaics, but who would find it impossible to express his thoughts in pure,perspicuous, and forcible English. There may perhaps be some truth in thisobservation. But the classical studies of Pitt were carried on in a peculiar manner, andhad the effect of enriching his English vocabulary, and of making him wonderfullyexpert in the art of constructing correct English sentences. His practice was to lookover 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 strangethat a young man of great abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way duringten years, should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of putting his thoughts,without premeditation, into words well selected and well arranged.

Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on which he bestowed themost minute examination. His favourite employment was to compare harangues onopposite sides of the same question, to analyse them, and to observe which of thearguments of the first speaker were refuted by the second, which were evaded, andwhich were left untouched. Nor was it only in books that he at this time studied the artof parliamentary fencing. When he was at home, he had frequent opportunities ofhearing important debates at Westminster; and he heard them, not only with interestand enjoyment, but with a close scientific attention resembling that with which adiligent pupil at Guy’s Hospital watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeonthrough a difficult operation. On one of these occasions, Pitt, a youth whose abilitieswere as yet known only to his own family and to a small knot of college friends, wasintroduced on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords to Fox, who was his seniorby eleven years, and who was already the greatest debater, and one of the greatestorators, that had appeared in England. Fox used afterwards to relate that, as thediscussion 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 theparticular criticisms were Fox had forgotten; but he said that he was much struck atthe time by the precocity of a lad who, through the whole sitting, seemed to bethinking only how all the speeches on both sides could be answered.



One of the young man’s visits to the House of Lords was a sad and memorable era inhis 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 wasknown that France had recognised the independence of the United States. The Dukeof Richmond was about to declare his opinion that all thought of subjugating thosestates ought to be relinquished. Chatham had always maintained that the resistance ofthe colonies to the mother country was justifiable. But he conceived, veryerroneously, that on the day on which their independence should be acknowledged thegreatness of England would be at an end. Though sinking under the weight of yearsand infirmities, he determined, in spite of the entreaties of his family, to be in hisplace. His son supported him to a seat. The excitement and exertion were too muchfor the old man. In the very act of addressing the peers, he fell back in convulsions. Afew weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomy pomp, from the Painted Chamberto the Abbey. The favourite child and namesake of the deceased statesman followedthe coffin as chief mourner, and saw it deposited in the transept where his own wasdestined 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 poorlyprovided for. William had little more than three hundred a year. It was necessary forhim to follow a profession. He had already begun to eat his terms. In the spring of1780 he came of age. He then quitted Cambridge, was called to the bar, tookchambers in Lincoln’s Inn, and joined the western circuit. In the autumn of that year ageneral 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 younga man to solicit so high a distinction. He was, however, at the request of a hereditaryfriend, the Duke of Rutland, brought into Parliament by Sir James Lowther for theborough of Appleby.

The dangers of the country were at that time such as might well have disturbed even aconstant mind. Army after army had been sent in vain against the rebellious colonistsof North America. On pitched fields of battle the advantage had been with thedisciplined troops of the mother country. But it was not on pitched fields of battle thatthe event of such a contest could be decided. An armed nation, with hunger and theAtlantic 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, hadseized the opportunity of revenge. France and Spain were united against us, and hadrecently been joined by Holland. The command of the Mediterranean had been for atime lost. The British flag had been scarcely able to maintain itself in the BritishChannel. The northern powers professed neutrality; but their neutrality had amenacing aspect. In the East, Hyder had descended on the Carnatic, had destroyed thelittle 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 theauthority of the government had sunk to the lowest point. The King and the House ofCommons were alike unpopular. The cry for parliamentary reform was scarcely lessloud and vehement than in the autumn of 1830. Formidable associations, headed, notby 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 brokenloose from all restraint, besieged the chambers of the legislature, hustled peers, huntedbishops, attacked the residences of ambassadors, opened prisons, burned and pulleddown houses. London had presented during some days the aspect of a city taken bystorm; and it had been necessary to form a camp among the trees of Saint James’sPark.

In spite of dangers and difficulties abroad and at home, George the Third, with afirmness which had little affinity with virtue or with wisdom, persisted in hisdetermination to put down the American rebels by force of arms; and his ministerssubmitted their judgment to his. Some of them were probably actuated merely byselfish 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 longwished and had repeatedly tried to escape, only because he had not sufficient fortitudeto resist the entreaties and reproaches of the King, who silenced all arguments bypassionately asking whether any gentleman, any man of spirit, could have the heart todesert a kind master in the hour of extremity.

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 imperfectlyreconciled, but which at this conjuncture seemed to act together with cordiality. Thelarger of these parties consisted of the great body of the Whig aristocracy. Its headwas Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, a man of sense and virtue, and in wealth andparliamentary interest equalled by very few of the English nobles, but afflicted with anervous timidity which prevented him from taking a prominent part in debate. In theHouse of Commons, the adherents of Rockingham were led by Fox, whose dissipatedhabits and ruined fortunes were the talk of the whole town, but whose commandinggenius, and whose sweet, generous, and affectionate disposition, extorted theadmiration 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 insplendour of imagination, but less skilled in that kind of logic and in that kind ofrhetoric which convince and persuade great assemblies, was willing to be thelieutenant of a young chief who might have been his son.

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 andas a lover of science and letters. With him were leagued Lord Camden, who hadformerly held the Great Seal, and whose integrity, ability, and constitutionalknowledge commanded the public respect; Barré, an eloquent and acrimoniousdeclaimer; and Dunning, who had long held the first place at the English bar. It was tothis party that Pitt was naturally attracted.

On the 26th of February 1781 he made his first speech, in favour of Burke’s plan ofeconomical reform. Fox stood up at the same moment, but instantly gave way. Thelofty yet animated deportment of the young member, his perfect self-possession, thereadiness 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 anddelighted his hearers. Burke, moved even to tears, exclaimed, “It is not a chip of theold 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 whosenature envy had no place. It is a curious fact, well remembered by some who werevery recently living, that soon after this debate Pitt’s name was put up by Fox atBrookes’s.

On two subsequent occasions during that session Pitt addressed the House, and onboth fully sustained the reputation which he had acquired on his first appearance. Inthe summer, after the prorogation, he again went the western circuit, held severalbriefs, and acquitted himself in such a manner that he was highly complimented byBuller from the bench, and by Dunning at the bar.

On the 27th of November the Parliament reassembled. Only forty-eight hours beforehad arrived tidings of the surrender of Cornwallis and his army; and it hadconsequently 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 conqueringthe United States. In the debate on the report of the address, Pitt spoke with even moreenergy and brilliancy than on any former occasion. He was warmly applauded by hisallies; but it was remarked that no person on his own side of the house was so loud ineulogy as Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, who spoke from theministerial ranks. That able and versatile politician distinctly foresaw the approachingdownfall of the government with which he was connected, and was preparing to makehis own escape from the ruin. From that night dates his connection with Pitt, aconnection which soon became a close intimacy, and which lasted till it was dissolvedby death.

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 GeorgeGermaine, the Secretary of State who was especially charged with the direction of thewar in America, had held language not easily to be reconciled with declarations madeby the First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt noticed the discrepancy with much force andkeenness. 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 daysof Henry Pelham, bent down between them to put in a word. Such interruptionssometimes discompose veteran speakers. Pitt stopped, and, looking at the group, said,with admirable readiness, “I shall wait till Nestor has composed the dispute betweenAgamemnon and Achilles.”

After several defeats, or victories hardly to be distinguished from defeats, the ministryresigned. The King, reluctantly and ungraciously, consented to accept Rockingham asfirst minister. Fox and Shelburne became Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish,one of the most upright and honourable of men, was made Chancellor of theExchequer. Thurlow, whose abilities and force of character had made him the dictatorof the House of Lords, continued to hold the great seal.



To Pitt was offered, through Shelburne, the Vice-Treasurership of Ireland, one of theeasiest and most highly paid places in the gift of the Crown; but the offer was, withouthesitation, declined. The young statesman had resolved to accept no post which didnot entitle him to a seat in the cabinet: and, a few days later, he announced thatresolution in the House of Commons. It must be remembered that the cabinet wasthen a much smaller and more select body than at present. We have seen cabinets ofsixteen. In the time of our grandfathers a cabinet of ten or eleven was thoughtinconveniently large. Seven was an usual number. Even Burke, who had taken thelucrative office of paymaster, was not in the cabinet. Many therefore thought Pitt’sdeclaration indecent. He himself was sorry that he had made it. The words, he said inprivate, had escaped him in the heat of speaking; and he had no sooner uttered themthan he would have given the world to recall them. They, however, did him no harmwith the public. The second William Pitt, it was said, had shown that he had inheritedthe spirit, as well as the genius, of the first. In the son, as in the father, there mightperhaps be too much pride; but there was nothing low or sordid. It might be calledarrogance in a young barrister, living in chambers on three hundred a year, to refuse asalary of five thousand a year, merely because he did not choose to bind himself tospeak or vote for plans which he had no share in framing; but surely such arrogancewas not very far removed from virtue.

Pitt gave a general support to the administration of Rockingham, but omitted, in themeantime, no opportunity of courting that Ultra-Whig party which the persecution ofWilkes and the Middlesex election had called into existence, and which the disastrousevents of the war, and the triumph of republican principles in America, had madeformidable both in numbers and in temper. He supported a motion for shortening theduration of Parliaments. He made a motion for a committee to examine into the stateof the representation, and, in the speech by which that motion was introduced, avowedhimself the enemy of the close boroughs, the strongholds of that corruption to whichhe attributed all the calamities of the nation, and which, as he phrased it in one ofthose exact and sonorous sentences of which he had a boundless command, hadgrown with the growth of England and strengthened with her strength, but had notdiminished with her diminution or decayed with her decay. On this occasion he wassupported by Fox. The motion was lost by only twenty votes in a house of more thanthree hundred members. The reformers never again had so good a division till the year1831.

The new administration was strong in abilities, and was more popular than anyadministration which had held office since the first year of George the Third, but washated by the King, hesitatingly supported by the Parliament, and torn by internaldissensions. The Chancellor was disliked and distrusted by almost all his colleagues.The two Secretaries of State regarded each other with no friendly feeling. The linebetween their departments had not been traced with precision; and there wereconsequently jealousies, encroachments, and complaints. It was all that Rockinghamcould do to keep the peace in his cabinet; and, before the cabinet had existed threemonths, Rockingham died.

In an instant all was confusion. The adherents of the deceased statesman looked onthe 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 defectivematerials. His own parliamentary talents were great; but he could not be in the placewhere parliamentary talents were most needed. It was necessary to find some memberof the House of Commons who could confront the great orators of the opposition; andPitt alone had the eloquence and the courage which were required. He was offered thegreat place of Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he accepted it. He had scarcelycompleted his twenty-third year.

The Parliament was speedily prorogued. During the recess, a negotiation for peacewhich had been commenced under Rockingham was brought to a successfultermination. England acknowledged the independence of her revolted colonies; andshe ceded to her European enemies some places in the Mediterranean and in the Gulfof Mexico. But the terms which she obtained were quite as advantageous andhonourable as the events of the war entitled her to expect, or as she was likely toobtain by persevering in a contest against immense odds. All her vital parts, all thereal sources of her power, remained uninjured. She preserved even her dignity; for sheceded to the House of Bourbon only part of what she had won from that House inprevious wars. She retained her Indian empire undiminished; and, in spite of themightiest efforts of two great monarchies, her flag still waved on the rock ofGibraltar. There is not the slightest reason to believe that Fox, if he had remained inoffice, would have hesitated one moment about concluding a treaty on suchconditions. Unhappily that great and most amiable man was, at this crisis, hurried byhis passions into an error which made his genius and his virtues, during a long courseof 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 waslarge enough to stand alone; that, therefore, unless two of them united, there must be amiserably feeble administration, or, more probably, a rapid succession of miserablyfeeble administrations, and this at a time when a strong government was essential tothe prosperity and respectability of the nation. It was then necessary and right thatthere should be a coalition. To every possible coalition there were objections. But, ofall possible coalitions, that to which there were the fewest objections was undoubtedlya coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would have been generally applauded bythe followers of both. It might have been made without any sacrifice of publicprinciple on the part of either. Unhappily, recent bickerings had left in the mind ofFox a profound dislike and distrust of Shelburne. Pitt attempted to mediate, and wasauthorised 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 isimpossible that I can act under him,” said Fox. “Then negotiation is at an end,” saidPitt; “for I cannot betray him.” Thus the two statesmen parted. They were never againin a private room together.

As Fox and his friends would not treat with Shelburne, nothing remained to them butto 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 hadthreatened North with impeachment, and had described him, night after night, as the



most arbitrary, the most corrupt, the most incapable of ministers. They now alliedthemselves with him for the purpose of driving from office a statesman with whomthey cannot be said to have differed as to any important question. Nor had they eventhe prudence and the patience to wait for some occasion on which they might, withoutinconsistency, have combined with their old enemies in opposition to the government.That nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators, who had, duringseven years, thundered against the war, determined to join with the authors of that warin passing a vote of censure on the peace.

The Parliament met before Christmas 1782. But it was not till January 1783 that thepreliminary treaties were signed. On the 17th of February they were taken intoconsideration by the House of Commons. There had been, during some days, floatingrumours that Fox and North had coalesced; and the debate indicated but too clearlythat those rumours were not unfounded. Pitt was suffering from indisposition: he didnot rise till his own strength and that of his hearers were exhausted; and he wasconsequently less successful than on any former occasion. His admirers owned thathis speech was feeble and petulant. He so far forgot himself as to advise Sheridan toconfine himself to amusing theatrical audiences. This ignoble sarcasm gave Sheridanan opportunity of retorting with great felicity. “After what I have seen and heard to-night,” he said, “I really feel strongly tempted to venture on a competition with sogreat an artist as Ben Jonson, and to bring on the stage a second Angry Boy.” On adivision, the address proposed by the supporters of the government was rejected by amajority of sixteen.

But Pitt was not a man to be disheartened by a single failure, or to be put down by themost lively repartee. When, a few days later, the opposition proposed a resolutiondirectly censuring the treaties, he spoke with an eloquence, energy, and dignity, whichraised his fame and popularity higher than ever. To the coalition of Fox and North healluded in language which drew forth tumultuous applause from his followers. “If,” hesaid, “this ill-omened and unnatural marriage be not yet consummated, I know of ajust and lawful impediment; and, in the name of the public weal, I forbid the banns.”

The ministers were again left in a minority; and Shelburne consequently tendered hisresignation. It was accepted; but the King struggled long and hard before he submittedto the terms dictated by Fox, whose faults he detested, and whose high spirit andpowerful intellect he detested still more. The first place at the board of Treasury wasrepeatedly offered to Pitt; but the offer, though tempting, was steadfastly declined.The young man, whose judgment was as precocious as his cloquence, saw that histime was coming, but was not come, and was deaf to royal importunities andreproaches. His Majesty, bitterly complaining of Pitt’s faintheartedness, tried to breakthe coalition. Every art of seduction was practised on North, but in vain. Duringseveral weeks the country remained without a government. It was not till all deviceshad failed, and till the aspect of the House of Commons became threatening, that theKing gave way. The Duke of Portland was declared First Lord of the Treasury.Thurlow was dismissed. Fox and North became Secretaries of State, with powerostensibly equal. But Fox was the real prime minister.



The year was far advanced before the new arrangements were completed; and nothingvery important was done during the remainder of the session. Pitt, now seated on theopposition bench, brought the question of parliamentary reform a second time underthe consideration of the Commons. He proposed to add to the House at once ahundred county members and several members for metropolitan districts, and to enactthat every borough of which an election committee should report that the majority ofvoters appeared to be corrupt should lose the franchise. The motion was rejected by293 votes to 149.

After the prorogation, Pitt visited the Continent for the first and last time. Histravelling companion was one of his most intimate friends, a young man of his ownage, who had already distinguished himself in Parliament by an engaging naturaleloquence, set off by the sweetest and most exquisitely modulated of human voices,and whose affectionate heart, caressing manners, and brilliant wit, made him the mostdelightful of companions, William Wilberforce. That was the time of Anglomania inFrance; and at Paris the son of the great Chatham was absolutely hunted by men ofletters and women of fashion, and forced, much against his will, into politicaldisputation. One remarkable saying which dropped from him during this tour has beenpreserved. A French gentleman expressed some surprise at the immense influencewhich Fox, a man of pleasure, ruined by the dice-box and the turf, exercised over theEnglish nation. “You have not,” said Pitt, “been under the wand of the magician.”

In November 1783 the Parliament met again. The government had irresistible strengthin the House of Commons, and seemed to be scarcely less strong in the House ofLords, but was, in truth, surrounded on every side by dangers. The King wasimpatiently waiting for the moment at which he could emancipate himself from ayoke which galled him so severely that he had more than once seriously thought ofretiring to Hanover; and the King was scarcely more eager for a change than thenation. Fox and North had committed a fatal error. They ought to have known thatcoalitions between parties which have long been hostile can succeed only when thewish for coalition pervades the lower ranks of both. If the leaders unite before there isany disposition to union among the followers, the probability is that there will be amutiny in both camps, and that the two revolted armies will make a truce with eachother, in order to be revenged on those by whom they think that they have beenbetrayed. Thus it was in 1783. At the beginning of that eventful year, North had beenthe recognised head of the old Tory party, which, though for a moment prostrated bythe disastrous issue of the American war, was still a great power in the state. To himthe clergy, the universities, and that large body of country gentlemen whose rallyingcry was “Church and King,” had long looked up with respect and confidence. Foxhad, on the other hand, been the idol of the Whigs, and of the whole body ofProtestant dissenters. The coalition at once alienated the most zealous Tories fromNorth, and the most zealous Whigs from Fox. The University of Oxford, which hadmarked its approbation of North’s orthodoxy by electing him chancellor, the city ofLondon, which had been during two and twenty years at war with the Court, wereequally disgusted. Squires and rectors, who had inherited the principles of thecavaliers of the preceding century, could not forgive their old leader for combiningwith disloyal subjects in order to put a force on the sovereign. The members of theBill 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 hisnoble friend. Two great multitudes were at once left without any head, and both atonce turned their eyes on Pitt. One party saw in him the only man who could rescuethe King; the other saw in him the only man who could purify the Parliament. He wassupported on one side by Archbishop Markham, the preacher of divine right, and byJenkinson, the captain of the Prætorian band of the King’s friends; on the other sideby Jebb and Priestley, Sawbridge and Cartwright, Jack Wilkes and Horne Tooke. Onthe benches of the House of Commons, however, the ranks of the ministerial majoritywere unbroken; and that any statesman would venture to brave such a majority wasthought impossible. No prince of the Hanoverian line had ever, under anyprovocation, ventured to appeal from the representative body to the constituent body.The ministers, therefore, notwithstanding the sullen looks and muttered words ofdispleasure with which their suggestions were received in the closet, notwithstandingthe roar of obloquy which was rising louder and louder every day from every cornerof the island, thought themselves secure.

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 theBritish territories in India. What was proposed was that the whole authority, which tillthat time had been exercised over those territories by the East India Company, shouldbe transferred to seven Commissioners who were to be named by Parliament, andwere not to be removable at the pleasure of the Crown. Earl Fitzwilliam, the mostintimate personal friend of Fox, was to be chairman of this board; and the eldest sonof North was to be one of the members.

As soon as the outlines of the scheme were known, all the hatred which the coalitionhad excited burst forth with an astounding explosion. The question which oughtundoubtedly to have been considered as paramount to every other was, whether theproposed change was likely to be beneficial or injurious to the thirty millions ofpeople who were subject to the Company. But that question cannot be said to havebeen even seriously discussed. Burke, who, whether right or wrong in the conclusionsto which he came, had at least the merit of looking at the subject in the right point ofview, vainly reminded his hearers of that mighty population whose daily rice mightdepend on a vote of the British Parliament. He spoke, with even more than his wontedpower of thought and language, about the desolation of Rohilcund, about thespoliation of Benares, about the evil policy which had suffered the tanks of theCarnatic 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 doorsthe cry against the ministry was almost universal. Town and country were united.Corporations exclaimed against the violation of the charter of the greatest corporationin the realm. Tories and democrats joined in pronouncing the proposed board anunconstitutional body. It was to consist of Fox’s nominees. The effect of his bill wasto give, not to the Crown, but to him personally, whether in office or in opposition, anenormous power, a patronage sufficient to counterbalance the patronage of theTreasury and of the Admiralty, and to decide the elections for fifty boroughs. Heknew, it was said, that he was hateful alike to King and people; and he had devised aplan 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 off-spring ofthe coalition, as marked with the features of both its parents, the corruption of one andthe violence of the other. In spite of all opposition, however, the bill was supported inevery stage by great majorities, was rapidly passed, and was sent up to the Lords. Tothe general astonishment, when the second reading was moved in the Upper House,the opposition proposed an adjournment, and carried it by eighty-seven votes toseventy-nine. 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 beknown that His Majesty would consider all who voted for the bill as his enemies. Theignominious commission was performed; and instantly a troop of Lords of theBedchamber, of Bishops who wished to be translated, and of Scotch peers whowished to be re-elected, made haste to change sides. On a later day, the Lords rejectedthe bill. Fox and North were immediately directed to send their seals to the palace bytheir Under Secretaries; and Pitt was appointed First Lord of the Treasury andChancellor of the Exchequer.

The general opinion was, that there would be an immediate dissolution. But Pittwisely determined to give the public feeling time to gather strength. On this point hediffered from his kinsman Temple. The consequence was, that Temple, who had beenappointed one of the Secretaries of State, resigned his office forty-eight hours after hehad accepted it, and thus relieved the new government from a great load ofunpopularity; for all men of sense and honour, however strong might be their dislikeof 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 newgovernment could not but lament. The fame of the young prime minister preserved itswhiteness. He could declare with perfect truth that, if unconstitutional machinationshad been employed, he had been no party to them.

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 beconsidered 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 Housethere 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 powerfulmajority, led by Fox, who was supported by Burke, North, and Sheridan. The heart ofthe young minister, stout as it was, almost died within him. He could not once closehis eyes on the night which followed Temple’s resignation. But, whatever his internalemotions might be, his language and deportment indicated nothing but unconquerablefirmness and haughty confidence in his own powers. His contest against the House ofCommons lasted from the 17th of December, 1783, to the 8th of March, 1784. Insixteen divisions the opposition triumphed. Again and again the King was requestedto 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 vehementand almost furious. Addresses assuring him of public support came up daily fromevery part of the kingdom. The freedom of the city of London was presented to him ina gold box. He went in state to receive this mark of distinction. He was sumptuouslyfeasted 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 effectwithin the walls of Parliament. The ranks of the majority began to waver; a fewpassed over to the enemy; some skulked away; many were for capitulating while itwas still possible to capitulate with the honours of war. Negotiations were openedwith the view of forming an administration on a wide basis; but they had scarcelybeen opened when they were closed. The opposition demanded, as a preliminaryarticle of the treaty, that Pitt should resign the Treasury; and with this demand Pittsteadfastly refused to comply. While the contest was raging, the Clerkship of thePells, a sinecure place for life, worth three thousand a year, and tenable with a seat inthe House of Commons, became vacant. The appointment was with the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer: nobody doubted that he would appoint himself; and nobody couldhave blamed him if he had done so: for such sinecure offices had always beendefended on the ground that they enabled a few men of eminent abilities and smallincomes to live without any profession, and to devote themselves to the service of thestate. Pitt, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, gave the Pells to his father’s oldadherent, Colonel Barré, a man distinguished by talent and eloquence, but poor andafflicted with blindness. By this arrangement a pension which the Rockinghamadministration had granted to Barré was saved to the public. Never was there ahappier stroke of policy. About treaties, wars, expeditions, tariffs, budgets, there willalways be room for dispute. The policy which is applauded by half the nation may becondemned by the other half. But pecuniary disinterestedness everybodycomprehends. It is a great thing for a man who has only three hundred a year to beable 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. Nominister was ever more rancorously libelled; but, even when he was known to beoverwhelmed with debt, when millions were passing through his hands, when thewealthiest magnates of the realm were soliciting him for marquisates and garters, hisbitterest 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 withadmirable skill, was carried on the 8th of March by a single vote in a full House. Hadthe experiment been repeated, the supporters of the coalition would probably havebeen in a minority. But the supplies had been voted; the Mutiny Bill had been passed;and the Parliament was dissolved.

The popular constituent bodies all over the country were in general enthusiastic on theside of the new government. A hundred and sixty of the supporters of the coalitionlost their seats. The First Lord of the Treasury himself came in at the head of the pollfor the University of Cambridge. His young friend, Wilberforce, was elected knight ofthe 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 histwenty-fifth year. He was now the greatest subject that England had seen during manygenerations. He domineered absolutely over the cabinet, and was the favourite at onceof the Sovereign, of the Parliament, and of the nation. His father had never been sopowerful, nor Walpole, nor Marlborough.

This narrative has now reached a point, beyond which a full history of the life of Pittwould 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 thatsketch prominence will be given to such points as may enable a reader who is alreadyacquainted with the general course of events to form a just notion of the character ofthe man on whom so much depended.

If we wish to arrive at a correct judgment of Pitt’s merits and defects, we must neverforget that he belonged to a peculiar class of statesmen, and that he must be tried by apeculiar standard. It is not easy to compare him fairly with such men as Ximenes andSully, Richelieu and Oxenstiern, John de Witt and Warren Hastings. The means bywhich those politicians governed great communities were of quite a different kindfrom those which Pitt was under the necessity of employing. Some talents, which theynever had any opportunity of showing that they possessed, were developed in him toan extraordinary degree. In some qualities, on the other hand, to which they owe alarge part of their fame, he was decidedly their inferior. They transacted business intheir closets, or at boards where a few confidential councillors sate. It was his lot to beborn in an age and in a country in which parliamentary government was completelyestablished; his whole training from infancy was such as fitted him to bear a part inparliamentary government; and, from the prime of his manhood to his death, all thepowers of his vigorous mind were almost constantly exerted in the work ofparliamentary government. He accordingly became the greatest master of the wholeart of parliamentary government that has ever existed, a greater than Montague orWalpole, a greater than his father Chatham or his rival Fox, a greater than either of hisillustrious successors Canning and Peel.

Parliamentary government, like every other contrivance of man, has its advantagesand its disadvantages. On the advantages there is no need to dilate. The history ofEngland during the hundred and seventy years which have elapsed since the House ofCommons became the most powerful body in the state, her immense and still growingprosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and inarms, her maritime ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her American, herAfrican, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently prove the excellence of herinstitutions. But those institutions, though excellent, are assuredly not perfect.Parliamentary government is government by speaking. In such a government, thepower of speaking is the most highly prized of all the qualities which a politician canpossess; and that power may exist, in the highest degree, without judgment, withoutfortitude, 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, andwithout any skill in diplomacy or in the administration of war. Nay, it may wellhappen that those very intellectual qualities which give a peculiar charm to thespeeches of a public man may be incompatible with the qualities which would fit himto meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and firmness. It was thus with CharlesTownshend. It was thus with Windham. It was a privilege to listen to thoseaccomplished and ingenious orators. But in a perilous crisis they would have beenfound far inferior in all the qualities of rulers to such a man as Oliver Cromwell, whotalked nonsense, or as William the Silent, who did not talk at all. When parliamentarygovernment is established, a Charles Townshend or a Windham will almost alwaysexercise much greater influence than such men as the great Protector of England, or asthe 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 ofDignities a curious list might be made out of Chancellors ignorant of the principles ofequity, and First Lords of the Admiralty ignorant of the principles of navigation, ofColonial ministers who could not repeat the names of the Colonies, of Lords of theTreasury who did not know the difference between funded and unfunded debt, and ofSecretaries of the India Board who did not know whether the Mahrattas wereMahometans or Hindoos. On these grounds, some persons, incapable of seeing morethan one side of a question, have pronounced parliamentary government a positiveevil, and have maintained that the administration would be greatly improved if thepower, now exercised by a large assembly, were transferred to a single person. Menof sense will probably think the remedy very much worse than the disease, and will beof opinion that there would be small gain in exchanging Charles Townshend andWindham for the Prince of the Peace, or the poor slave and dog Steenie.

Pitt was emphatically the man of parliamentary government, the type of his class, theminion, the child, the spoiled child, of the House of Commons. For the House ofCommons he had a hereditary, an infantine love. Through his whole boyhood, theHouse of Commons was never out of his thoughts, or out of the thoughts of hisinstructors. 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 wasconstantly in training for the conflicts of the House of Commons. He was adistinguished member of the House of Commons at twenty-one. The ability which hehad displayed in the House of Commons made him the most powerful subject inEurope before he was twenty-five. It would have been happy for himself and for hiscountry if his elevation had been deferred. Eight or ten years, during which he wouldhave had leisure and opportunity for reading and reflection, for foreign travel, forsocial intercourse and free exchange of thought on equal terms with a great variety ofcompanions, would have supplied what, without any fault on his part, was wanting tohis 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 atCambridge, and all the knowledge that a man can acquire when he is First Lord of theTreasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But the stock of general informationwhich he brought from college, extraordinary for a boy, was far inferior to what Foxpossessed, and beggarly when compared with the massy, the splendid, the varioustreasures laid up in the large mind of Burke. After Pitt became minister, he had noleisure to learn more than was necessary for the purposes of the day which waspassing over him. What was necessary for those purposes such a man could learn withlittle difficulty. He was surrounded by experienced and able public servants. He couldat any moment command their best assistance. From the stores which they producedhis vigorous mind rapidly collected the materials for a good parliamentary case: andthat was enough. Legislation and administration were with him secondary matters. Tothe 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 hisfine 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 persuaded that he putforth all his powers.



Of those powers we must form our estimate chiefly from tradition; for of all theeminent speakers of the last age Pitt has suffered most from the reporters. Even whilehe was still living, critics remarked that his eloquence could not be preserved, that hemust be heard to be appreciated. They more than once applied to him the sentence inwhich Tacitus describes the fate of a senator whose rhetoric was admired in theAugustan 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 agreat orator; and those talents had been developed in a very peculiar manner, first byhis education, and secondly by the high official position to which he rose early, and inwhich he passed the greater part of his public life.

At his first appearance in Parliament he showed himself superior to all hiscontemporaries in command of language. He could pour forth a long succession ofround 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 pronunciationso articulate that not a letter was slurred over. He had less amplitude of mind and lessrichness of imagination than Burke, less ingenuity than Windham, less wit thanSheridan, less perfect mastery of dialectical fence, and less of that highest sort ofeloquence which consists of reason and passion fused together, than Fox. Yet thealmost unanimous judgment of those who were in the habit of listening to thatremarkable race of men placed Pitt, as a speaker, above Burke, above Windham,above Sheridan, and not below Fox. His declamation was copious, polished, andsplendid. In power of sarcasm he was probably not surpassed by any speaker, ancientor modern; and of this formidable weapon he made merciless use. In two parts of theoratorical art which are of the highest value to a minister of state he was singularlyexpert. No man knew better how to be luminous or how to be obscure. When hewished to be understood, he never failed to make himself understood. He could withease 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 ofplace; nothing was forgotten; minute details, dates, sums of money, were all faithfullypreserved 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 didnot wish to be explicit, — and no man who is at the head of affairs always wishes tobe explicit, — he had a marvellous power of saying nothing in language which left onhis audience the impression that he had said a great deal. He was at once the only manwho could open a budget without notes, and the only man who, as Windham said,could speak that most elaborately evasive and unmeaning of human compositions, aKing’s speech, without premeditation.

The effect of oratory will always to a great extent depend on the character of theorator. There perhaps never were two speakers whose eloquence had more of whatmay be called the race, more of the flavour imparted by moral qualities, than Fox andPitt. The speeches of Fox owe a great part of their charm to that warmth and softnessof heart, that sympathy with human suffering, that admiration for everything great andbeautiful, and that hatred of cruelty and injustice, which interest and delight us even inthe most defective reports. No person, on the other hand, could hear Pitt withoutperceiving him to be a man of high, intrepid, and commanding spirit, proudlyconscious 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 markedby the way in which he walked, in which he sate, in which he stood, and, above all, inwhich he bowed. Such pride, of course, inflicted many wounds. It may confidently beaffirmed that there cannot be found, in all the ten thousand invectives written againstFox, a word indicating that his demeanour had ever made a single personal enemy. Onthe other hand, several men of note who had been partial to Pitt, and who to the lastcontinued to approve his public conduct and to support his administration,Cumberland, for example, Boswell, and Matthias, were so much irritated by thecontempt 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 greatbody of his followers in Parliament and throughout the country with respect andconfidence. They took him at his own valuation. They saw that his self-esteem wasnot that of an upstart, who was drunk with good luck and with applause, and who, iffortune turned, would sink from arrogance into abject humility. It was that of themagnanimous man so finely described by Aristotle in the Ethics, of the man whothinks himself worthy of great things, being in truth worthy. It sprang from aconsciousness of great powers and great virtues, and was never so conspicuouslydisplayed as in the midst of difficulties and dangers which would have unnerved andbowed down any ordinary mind. It was closely connected, too, with an ambitionwhich had no mixture of low cupidity. There was something noble in the cynicaldisdain with which the mighty minister scattered riches and titles to right and leftamong those who valued them, while he spurned them out of his own way. Poorhimself, he was surrounded by friends on whom he had bestowed three thousand, sixthousand, ten thousand a year. Plain Mister himself, he had made more lords than anythree ministers that had preceded him. The garter, for which the first dukes in thekingdom 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. Inthe relations of son, brother, uncle, master, friend, his conduct was exemplary. In thesmall circle of his intimate associates, he was amiable, affectionate, even playful.They loved him sincerely; they regretted him long; and they would hardly admit thathe who was so kind and gentle with them could be stern and haughty with others. Heindulged, indeed, somewhat too freely in wine, which he had early been directed totake as a medicine, and which use had made a necessary of life to him. But it was veryseldom 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. Hehad, when he was first introduced into the clubs of Saint James’s Street, shown astrong taste for play; but he had the prudence and the resolution to stop before thistaste had acquired the strength of habit. From the passion which generally exercisesthe most tyrannical dominion over the young he possessed an immunity, which isprobably to be ascribed partly to his temperament and partly to his situation. Hisconstitution was feeble; he was very shy; and he was very busy. The strictness of hismorals furnished such buffoons as Peter Pindar and Captain Morris with aninexhaustible theme for merriment of no very delicate kind. But the great body of themiddle class of Englishmen could not see the joke. They warmly praised the youngstatesman for commanding his passions, and for covering his frailties, if he hadfrailties, 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 takingunder his protection a Nancy Parsons or a Marianne Clark.

No part of the immense popularity which Pitt long enjoyed is to be attributed to theeulogies 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, therepresentative, too, of a great university, would have taken a peculiar pleasure inbefriending eminent writers, to whatever political party they might have belonged.The love of literature had induced Augustus to heap benefits on Pompeians, Somers tobe the protector of nonjurors, Harley to make the fortunes of Whigs. But it could notmove 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 lookhabitually 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 moneyin bounties for the purpose of inducing people who ought to be weighing out groceryor measuring out drapery to write bad or middling books. But, though the sound ruleis that authors should be left to be remunerated by their readers, there will, in everygeneration, be a few exceptions to this rule. To distinguish these special cases fromthe mass is an employment well worthy of the faculties of a great and accomplishedruler; and Pitt would assuredly have had little difficulty in finding such cases. Whilehe was in power, the greatest philologist of the age, his own contemporary atCambridge, was reduced to earn a livelihood by the lowest literary drudgery, and tospend in writing squibs for the Morning Chronicle years to which we might haveowed an all but perfect text of the whole tragic and comic drama of Athens. Thegreatest historian of the age, forced by poverty to leave his country, completed hisimmortal work on the shores of Lake Leman. The political heterodoxy of Porson, andthe religious heterodoxy of Gibbon, may perhaps be pleaded in defence of theminister by whom those eminent men were neglected. But there were other cases inwhich no such excuse could be set up. Scarcely had Pitt obtained possession ofunbounded power when an aged writer of the highest eminence, who had made verylittle by his writings, and who was sinking into the grave under a load of infirmitiesand sorrows, wanted five or six hundred pounds to enable him, during the winter ortwo which might still remain to him, to draw his breath more easily in the soft climateof Italy. Not a farthing was to be obtained; and before Christmas the author of theEnglish Dictionary and of the Lives of the Poets had gasped his last in the river fogand coal smoke of Fleet Street. A few months after the death of Johnson appeared theTask, incomparably the best poem that any Englishman then living had produced—apoem, too, which could hardly fail to excite in a well constituted mind a feeling ofesteem and compassion for the poet, a man of genius and virtue, whose means werescanty, and whom the most cruel of all the calamities incident to humanity had madeincapable of supporting himself by vigorous and sustained exertion. Nowhere hadChatham 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 andadmiring 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 contrastbetween 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 anddisease, was advised to try the effect of the Italian air! What a contrast between theway in which Pitt acted towards Cowper and the way in which Burke, a poor man andout of place, acted towards Crabbe! Even Dundas, who made no pretensions toliterary taste, and was content to be considered as a hard-headed and somewhat coarseman of business, was, when compared with his eloquent and classically educatedfriend, a Mæcenas or a Leo. Dundas made Burns an exciseman, with seventy poundsa year; and this was more than Pitt, during his long tenure of power, did for theencouragement of letters. Even those who may think that it is, in general, no part ofthe 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 thatpreferment, not to overlook divines whose writings have rendered great service to thecause of religion. But it seems never to have occurred to Pitt that he lay under anysuch obligation. All the theological works of all the numerous bishops whom he madeand translated are not, when put together, worth fifty pages of the Horæ Paulinæ, ofthe Natural Theology, or of the View of the Evidences of Christianity. But on Paleythe all-powerful minister never bestowed the smallest benefice. Artists Pitt treated ascontemptuously as writers. For painting he did simply nothing. Sculptors, who hadbeen selected to execute monuments voted by Parliament, had to haunt the ante-chambers of the Treasury during many years before they could obtain a farthing fromhim. One of them, after vainly soliciting the minister for payment during fourteenyears, had the courage to present a memorial to the King, and thus obtained tardy andungracious justice. Architects it was absolutely necessary to employ; and the worstthat could be found seem to have been employed. Not a single fine public building ofany kind or in any style was erected during his long administration. It may beconfidently affirmed that no ruler whose abilities and attainments would bear anycomparison with his has ever shown such cold disdain for what is excellent in arts andletters.

His first administration lasted seventeen years. That long period is divided by astrongly marked line into two almost exactly equal parts. The first part ended and thesecond began in the autumn of 1792. Throughout both parts Pitt displayed in thehighest degree the talents of a parliamentary leader. During the first part he was afortunate and, in many respects, a skilful administrator. With the difficulties which hehad 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 Commonsconcealed his incapacity from the multitude.

The eight years which followed the general election of 1784 were as tranquil andprosperous as any eight years in the whole history of England. Neighbouring nationswhich had lately been in arms against her, and which had flattered themselves that, inlosing her American colonies, she had lost a chief source of her wealth and of herpower, saw, with wonder and vexation, that she was more wealthy and more powerfulthan ever. Her trade increased. Her manufactures flourished. Her exchequer was fullto overflowing. Very idle apprehensions were generally entertained, that the publicdebt, though much less than a third of the debt which we now bear with ease, wouldbe found too heavy for the strength of the nation. Those apprehensions might notperhaps 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 opponentsincluded, that a new sinking fund, which, so far as it differed from former sinkingfunds, differed for the worse, would, by virtue of some mysterious power ofpropagation belonging to money, put into the pocket of the public creditor great sumsnot taken out of the pocket of the tax-payer. The country, terrified by a danger whichwas no danger, hailed with delight and boundless confidence a remedy which was noremedy. The minister was almost universally extolled as the greatest of financiers.Meanwhile both the branches of the House of Bourbon found that England was asformidable an antagonist as she had ever been. France had formed a plan for reducingHolland to vassalage. But England interposed; and France receded. Spain interruptedby violence the trade of our merchants with the regions near the Oregon. But Englandarmed; and Spain receded. Within the island there was profound tranquillity. TheKing was, for the first time, popular. During the twenty-three years which hadfollowed his accession he had not been loved by his subjects. His domestic virtueswere acknowledged. But it was generally thought that the good qualities by which hewas distinguished in private life were wanting to his political character. As aSovereign, he was resentful, unforgiving, stubborn, cunning. Under his rule thecountry had sustained cruel disgraces and disasters; and every one of those disgracesand disasters was imputed to his strong antipathies, and to his perverse obstinacy inthe wrong. One statesman after another complained that he had been induced by royalcaresses, entreaties, and promises, to undertake the direction of affairs at a difficultconjuncture, and that, as soon as he had, not without sullying his fame and alienatinghis best friends, served the turn for which he was wanted, his ungrateful master beganto intrigue against him, and to canvass against him. Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham,men of widely different characters, but all three upright and high-spirited, agreed inthinking that the Prince under whom they had successively held the highest place inthe government was one of the most insincere of mankind. His confidence wasreposed, they said, not in those known and responsible counsellors to whom he haddelivered the seals of office, but in secret advisers who stole up the back stairs into hiscloset. In Parliament, his ministers, while defending themselves against the attacks ofthe opposition in front, were perpetually, at his instigation, assailed on the flank or inthe rear by a vile band of mercenaries who called themselves his friends. These menconstantly, while in possession of lucrative places in his service, spoke and votedagainst bills which he had authorised the First Lord of the Treasury or the Secretary ofState to bring in. But from the day on which Pitt was placed at the head of affairsthere was an end of secret influence. His haughty and aspiring spirit was not to besatisfied with the mere show of power. Any attempt to undermine him at Court, anymutinous movement among his followers in the House of Commons, was certain to beat once put down. He had only to tender his resignation; and he could dictate his ownterms. For he, and he alone, stood between the King and the Coalition. He wastherefore little less than Mayor of the Palace. The nation loudly applauded the Kingfor having the wisdom to repose entire confidence in so excellent a minister. HisMajesty’s private virtues now began to produce their full effect. He was generallyregarded as the model of a respectable country gentleman, honest, good-natured,sober, religious. He rose early: he dined temperately: he was strictly faithful to hiswife: he never missed church; and at church he never missed a response. His peopleheartily 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 thePrince of Wales, who lived in close intimacy with the chiefs of the opposition.

How strong this feeling was in the public mind appeared signally on one greatoccasion. In the autumn of 1788 the King became insane. The opposition, eager foroffice, committed the great indiscretion of asserting that the heir apparent had, by thefundamental 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 aSovereign is, by reason of infancy, disease, or absence, incapable of exercising theregal functions, it belongs to the estates of the realm to determine who shall be thevicegerent, and with what portion of the executive authority such vicegerent shall beentrusted. A long and violent contest followed, in which Pitt was supported by thegreat body of the people with as much enthusiasm as during the first months of hisadministration. Tories with one voice applauded him for defending the sick-bed of avirtuous and unhappy Sovereign against a disloyal faction and an undutiful son. Not afew Whigs applauded him for asserting the authority of Parliaments and the principlesof the Revolution, in opposition to a doctrine which seemed to have too much affinitywith the servile theory of indefeasible hereditary right. The middle class, alwayszealous on the side of decency and the domestic virtues, looked forward with dismayto a reign resembling that of Charles II. The palace, which had now been, duringthirty years, the pattern of an English home, would be a public nuisance, a school ofprofligacy. To the good King’s repast of mutton and lemonade, despatched at threeo’clock, would succeed midnight banquets, from which the guests would be carriedhome speechless. To the backgammon board at which the good King played for alittle silver with his equerries, would succeed faro tables from which young patricianswho had sate down rich would rise up beggars. The drawing-room, from which thefrown of the Queen had repelled a whole generation of frail beauties, would now beagain 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 onevirtuous attachment was reprobated more severely still. Even in grave and piouscircles his Protestant mistresses gave less scandal than his Popish wife. That he mustbe Regent nobody ventured to deny. But he and his friends were so unpopular that Pittcould, with general approbation, propose to limit the powers of the Regent byrestrictions to which it would have been impossible to subject a Prince beloved andtrusted by the country. Some interested men, fully expecting a change ofadministration, went over to the opposition. But the majority, purified by thesedesertions, 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 ofthree 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 ofthe day on which His Majesty resumed his functions, a spontaneous illumination, themost general that had ever been seen in England, brightened the whole vast spacefrom Highgate to Tooting, and from Hammersmith to Greenwich. On the day onwhich he returned thanks in the cathedral of his capital, all the horses and carriageswithin a hundred miles of London were too few for the multitudes which flocked tosee him pass through the streets. A second illumination followed, which was evensuperior to the first in magnificence. Pitt with difficulty escaped from the tumultuouskindness 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 andfortune may be said to have reached the zenith. His influence in the closet was asgreat as that of Carr or Villiers had been. His dominion over the Parliament was moreabsolute than that of Walpole or Pelham had been. He was at the same time as high inthe favour of the populace as ever Wilkes or Sacheverell had been. Nothing did moreto raise his character than his noble poverty. It was well known that, if he had beendismissed from office after more than five years of boundless power, he would hardlyhave carried out with him a sum sufficient to furnish the set of chambers in which, ashe 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 hisdaily bread. The voluntary contributions which were awaiting his acceptance in thecity of London alone would have sufficed to make him a rich man. But it may bedoubted whether his haughty spirit would have stooped to accept a provision sohonourably earned and so honourably bestowed.

To such a height of power and glory had this extraordinary man risen at twenty-nineyears of age. And now the tide was on the turn. Only ten days after the triumphantprocession to Saint Paul’s, the States-General of France, after an interval of a hundredand seventy-four years, met at Versailles.

The nature of the great Revolution which followed was long very imperfectlyunderstood in this country. Burke saw much further than any of his contemporaries:but whatever his sagacity descried was refracted and discoloured by his passions andhis imagination. More than three years elapsed before the principles of the Englishadministration underwent any material change. Nothing could as yet be milder ormore strictly constitutional than the minister’s domestic policy. Not a single actindicating an arbitrary temper or a jealousy of the people could be imputed to him. Hehad never applied to Parliament for any extraordinary powers. He had never used withharshness the ordinary powers entrusted by the constitution to the executivegovernment. Not a single state prosecution which would even now be calledoppressive had been instituted by him. Indeed, the only oppressive state prosecutioninstituted 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. Inoffice, 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 ajudicious plan for the improvement of the representative system, and had prevailed onthe King, not only to refrain from talking against that plan, but to recommend it to theHouses in a speech from the throne.* This attempt failed; but there can be little doubtthat, 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 timeloosened the very foundations of the commonwealth. When the atrocities of the slavetrade were first brought under the consideration of Parliament, no abolitionist wasmore zealous than Pitt. When sickness prevented Wilberforce from appearing inpublic, his place was most efficiently supplied by his friend the minister. A humanebill, which mitigated the horrors of the middle passage, was, in 1788, carried by theeloquence and determined spirit of Pitt, in spite of the opposition of some of his owncolleagues; 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 businessof the government had been done, and the Appropriation Act passed. In 1791 hecordially concurred with Fox in maintaining the sound constitutional doctrine, that animpeachment is not terminated by a dissolution. In the course of the same year thetwo great rivals contended side by side in a far more important cause. They are fairlyentitled to divide the high honour of having added to our statute-book the inestimablelaw which places the liberty of the press under the protection of juries. On oneoccasion, and one alone, Pitt, during the first half of his long administration, acted in amanner unworthy of an enlightened Whig. In the debate on the Test Act, he stoopedto gratify the master whom he served, the university which he represented, and thegreat body of clergymen and country gentlemen on whose support he rested, bytalking, 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 1792was that of an honest friend of civil and religious liberty.

Nor did anything, during that period, indicate that he loved war, or harboured anymalevolent feeling against any neighbouring nation. Those French writers who haverepresented him as a Hannibal sworn in childhood by his father to bear eternal hatredto France, as having, by mysterious intrigues and lavish bribes, instigated the leadingJacobins to commit those excesses which dishonoured the Revolution, as having beenthe real author of the first coalition, know nothing of his character or of his history. Sofar was he from being a deadly enemy to France, that his laudable attempts to bringabout a closer connection with that country by means of a wise and liberal treaty ofcommerce brought on him the severe censure of the opposition. He was told in theHouse of Commons that he was a degenerate son, and that his partiality for thehereditary foes of our island was enough to make his great father’s bones stir underthe pavement of the Abbey.

And this man, whose name, if he had been so fortunate as to die in 1792, would nowhave been associated with peace, with freedom, with philanthropy, with temperatereform, with mild and constitutional administration, lived to associate his name witharbitrary government, with harsh laws harshly executed, with alien bills, with gaggingbills, with suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, with cruel punishments inflicted onsome political agitators, with unjustifiable prosecutions instituted against others, andwith the most costly and most sanguinary wars of modern times. He lived to be heldup to obloquy as the stern oppressor of England, and the indefatigable disturber ofEurope. Poets, contrasting his earlier with his later years, likened him sometimes tothe apostle who kissed in order to betray, and sometimes to the evil angels who keptnot their first estate. A satirist of great genius introduced the fiends of Famine,Slaughter, and Fire, proclaiming that they had received their commission from Onewhose name was formed of four letters, and promising to give their employer ampleproofs of gratitude. Famine would gnaw the multitude till they should rise up againsthim in madness. The demon of Slaughter would impel them to tear him from limb tolimb. But Fire boasted that she alone could reward him as he deserved, and that shewould cling round him to all eternity. By the French press and the French tribuneevery crime that disgraced and every calamity that afflicted France was ascribed tothe monster Pitt and his guineas. While the Jacobins were dominant, it was he whohad corrupted the Gironde, who had raised Lyons and Bordeaux against the



Convention, who had suborned Paris to assassinate Lepelletier, and Cecilia Regnaultto assassinate Robespierre. When the Thermidorian reaction came, all the atrocities ofthe Reign of Terror were imputed to him. Collot D’Herbois and Fouquier Tinville hadbeen his pensioners. It was he who had hired the murderers of September, who haddictated the pamphlets of Marat and the Carmagnoles of Barère, who had paid Lebonto deluge Arras with blood, and Carrier to choke the Loire with corpses.

The truth is, that he liked neither war nor arbitrary government. He was a lover ofpeace and freedom, driven, by a stress against which it was hardly possible for anywill 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 policyrepugnant to his feelings and unsuited to his talents.

The charge of apostasy is grossly unjust. A man ought no more to be called anapostate because his opinions alter with the opinions of the great body of hiscontemporaries than he ought to be called an oriental traveller because he is alwaysgoing round from west to east with the globe and everything that is upon it. Betweenthe spring of 1789 and the close of 1792, the public mind of England underwent agreat change. If the change of Pitt’s sentiments attracted peculiar notice, it was notbecause he changed more than his neighbours; for in fact he changed less than most ofthem; 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 theinhabitants of the civilised world. During a short time the nation, and Pitt, as one ofthe nation, looked with interest and approbation on the French Revolution. But soonvast confiscations, the violent sweeping away of ancient institutions, the dominationof clubs, the barbarities of mobs maddened by famine and hatred, produced a reactionhere. The court, the nobility, the gentry, the clergy, the manufacturers, the merchants,in short, nineteen twentieths of those who had good roofs over their heads and goodcoats on their backs, became eager and intolerant Antijacobins. This feeling was atleast as strong among the minister’s adversaries as among his supporters. Fox in vainattempted 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 theexample of revolt; and Burke was in no long time joined by Portland, Spencer,Fitzwilliam, Loughborough, Carlisle, Malmesbury, Windham, Elliot. In the House ofCommons, the followers of the great Whig statesman and orator diminished fromabout a hundred and sixty to fifty. In the House of Lords he had but ten or twelveadherents left. There can be no doubt that there would have been a similar mutiny onthe ministerial benches if Pitt had obstinately resisted the general wish. Pressed atonce by his master and by his colleagues, by old friends and by old opponents, heabandoned, slowly and reluctantly, the policy which was dear to his heart. Helaboured hard to avert the European war. When the European war broke out, he stillflattered himself that it would not be necessary for this country to take either side. Inthe spring of 1792 he congratulated the Parliament on the prospect of long andprofound 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 beable to preserve neutrality. But the passions which raged on both sides of the Channelwere not to be restrained. The republicans who ruled France were inflamed by afanaticism 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 ofBengal, and westward to the Pillars of Hercules. The higher and middle classes ofEngland were animated by zeal not less fiery than that of the Crusaders who raised thecry of Deus vult at Clermont. The impulse which drove the two nations to a collisionwas not to be arrested by the abilities or by the authority of any single man. As Pittwas 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 littlemore than he did, would have been thrust out of their way or trampled under theirfeet.

He yielded to the current: and from that day his misfortunes began. The truth is thatthere were only two consistent courses before him. Since he did not choose to opposehimself, side by side with Fox, to the public feeling, he should have taken the adviceof Burke, and should have availed himself of that feeling to the full extent. If it wasimpossible to preserve peace, he should have adopted the only policy which couldlead 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 energyequal to their own. Unhappily he tried to find a middle path; and he found one whichunited all that was worst in both extremes. He went to war: but he would notunderstand the peculiar character of that war. He was obstinately blind to the plainfact, that he was contending against a state which was also a sect, and that the newquarrel between England and France was of quite a different kind from the oldquarrels about colonies in America and fortresses in the Netherlands. He had tocombat frantic enthusiasm, boundless ambition, restless activity, the wildest and mostaudacious spirit of innovation; and he acted as if he had to deal with the harlots andfops of the old Court of Versailles, with Madame de Pompadour and the Abbé deBernis. It was pitiable to hear him, year after year, proving to an admiring audiencethat the wicked Republic was exhausted, that she could not hold out, that her creditwas gone, and her assignats were not worth more than the paper of which they weremade; as if credit was necessary to a government of which the principle was rapine, asif Alboin could not turn Italy into a desert till he had negotiated a loan at five percent., as if the exchequer bills of Attila had been at par. It was impossible that a manwho so completely mistook the nature of a contest could carry on that contestsuccessfully. Great as Pitt’s abilities were, his military administration was that of adriveller. He was at the head of a nation engaged in a struggle for life and death, of anation eminently distinguished by all the physical and all the moral qualities whichmake excellent soldiers. The resources at his command were unlimited. TheParliament was even more ready to grant him men and money than he was to ask forthem. In such an emergency, and with such means, such a statesman as Richelieu, asLouvois, as Chatham, as Wellesley, would have created in a few months one of thefinest armies in the world, and would soon have discovered and brought forwardgenerals worthy to command such an army. Germany might have been saved byanother Blenheim; Flanders recovered by another Ramilies; another Poitiers mighthave delivered the Royalist and Catholic provinces of France from a yoke which theyabhorred, 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 ofwealth 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 laughing-stock of all Europe. It could notboast of one single brilliant exploit. It had never shown itself on the Continent but tobe beaten, chased, forced to reembark, or forced to capitulate. To take some sugarisland in the West Indies, to scatter some mob of half-naked Irish peasants, such werethe most splendid victories won by the British troops under Pitt’s auspices.

The English navy no mismanagement could ruin. But during a long period whatevermismanagement could do was done. The Earl of Chatham, without a singlequalification for high public trust, was made, by fraternal partiality, First Lord of theAdmiralty, and was kept in that great post during two years of a war in which the veryexistence of the state depended on the efficiency of the fleet. He continued to dozeaway 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 wassucceeded by George Earl Spencer, one of those chiefs of the Whig party who, in thegreat schism caused by the French Revolution, had followed Burke. Lord Spencer,though inferior to many of his colleagues as an orator, was decidedly the bestadministrator among them. To him it was owing that a long and gloomy succession ofdays of fasting, and, most emphatically, of humiliation, was interrupted, twice in theshort 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 thatrelated to the conduct of the war is, in some sense, the most decisive proof that he wasa man of very extraordinary abilities. Yet this is the simple truth. For assuredly one-tenth part of his errors and disasters would have been fatal to the power and influenceof any minister who had not possessed, in the highest degree, the talents of aparliamentary leader. While his schemes were confounded, while his predictions werefalsified, 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 routand disgrace, while the enemy against whom he was feebly contending wassubjugating Flanders and Brabant, the Electorate of Mentz, and the Electorate ofTreves, Holland, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, his authority over the House ofCommons 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 somegreat misfortune, a pitched battle lost by the allies, the annexation of a newdepartment to the French Republic, a sanguinary insurrection in Ireland, a mutiny inthe fleet, a panic in the city, a run on the bank, had spread dismay through the ranks ofhis majority, that dismay lasted only till he rose from the Treasury bench, drew up hishaughty head, stretched his arm with commanding gesture, and poured forth, in deepand sonorous tones, the lofty language of inextinguishable hope and inflexibleresolution. Thus, through a long and calamitous period, every disaster that happenedwithout the walls of Parliament was regularly followed by a triumph within them. Atlength he had no longer an opposition to encounter. Of the great party which hadcontended against him during the first eight years of his administration more than onehalf now marched under his standard, with his old competitor the Duke of Portland attheir head; and the rest had, after many vain struggles, quitted the field in despair. Foxhad retired to the shades of St. Anne’s Hill, and had there found, in the society offriends 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, amplecompensation for all the misfortunes of his public life. Session followed session withscarcely a single division. In the eventful year 1799, the largest minority that could bemustered against the government was twenty-five.

In Pitt’s domestic policy there was at this time assuredly no want of vigour. While heoffered to French Jacobinism a resistance so feeble that it only encouraged the evilwhich he wished to suppress, he put down English Jacobinism with a strong hand.The Habeas Corpus Act was repeatedly suspended. Public meetings were placedunder severe restraints. The government obtained from Parliament power to send outof the country aliens who were suspected of evil designs; and that power was notsuffered to be idle. Writers who propounded doctrines adverse to monarchy andaristocracy were proscribed and punished without mercy. It was hardly safe for arepublican to avow his political creed over his beefsteak and his bottle of port at achop-house. The old laws of Scotland against sedition, laws which were consideredby Englishmen as barbarous, and which a succession of governments had suffered torust, were now furbished up and sharpened anew. Men of cultivated minds andpolished manners were, for offences which at Westminster would have been treated asmere misdemeanours, sent to herd with felons at Botany Bay. Some reformers, whoseopinions were extravagant, and whose language was intemperate, but who had neverdreamed of subverting the government by physical force, were indicted for hightreason, and were saved from the gallows only by the righteous verdicts of juries. Thisseverity was at the time loudly applauded by alarmists whom fear had made cruel, butwill be seen in a very different light by posterity. The truth is, that the Englishmenwho wished for a revolution were, even in number, not formidable, and, in every thingbut number, a faction utterly contemptible, without arms, or funds, or plans, ororganisation, or leader. There can be no doubt that Pitt, strong as he was in thesupport of the great body of the nation, might easily have repressed the turbulence ofthe discontented minority by firmly yet temperately enforcing the ordinary law.Whatever vigour he showed during this unfortunate part of his life was vigour out ofplace and season. He was all feebleness and languor in his conflict with the foreignenemy who was really to be dreaded, and reserved all his energy and resolution forthe domestic enemy who might safely have been despised.

One part only of Pitt’s conduct during the last eight years of the eighteenth centurydeserves high praise. He was the first English minister who formed great designs forthe benefit of Ireland. The manner in which the Roman Catholic population of thatunfortunate country had been kept down during many generations seemed to himunjust and cruel; and it was scarcely possible for a man of his abilities not to perceivethat, 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 policywould have averted the rebellion of 1798. But the difficulties which he encounteredwere great, perhaps insurmountable; and the Roman Catholics were, rather by hismisfortune than by his fault, thrown into the hands of the Jacobins. There was a thirdgreat rising of the Irishry against the Englishry, a rising not less formidable than therisings of 1641 and 1689. The Englishry remained victorious; and it was necessary forPitt, 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, thatit would alone entitle him to a high place among statesmen. He determined to makeIreland one kingdom with England, and, at the same time, to relieve the RomanCatholic laity from civil disabilities, and to grant a public maintenance to the RomanCatholic clergy. Had he been able to carry these noble designs into effect, the Unionwould have been an Union indeed. It would have been inseparably associated in theminds of the great majority of Irishmen with civil and religious freedom; and the oldParliament in College Green would have been regretted only by a small knot ofdiscarded jobbers and oppressors, and would have been remembered by the body ofthe nation with the loathing and contempt due to the most tyrannical and the mostcorrupt assembly that had ever sate in Europe. But Pitt could execute only one half ofwhat he had projected. He succeeded in obtaining the consent of the Parliaments ofboth kingdoms to the Union; but that reconciliation of races and sects, without whichthe Union could exist only in name, was not accomplished. He was well aware that hewas likely to find difficulties in the closet. But he flattered himself that, by cautiousand dexterous management, those difficulties might be overcome. Unhappily, therewere traitors and sycophants in high place who did not suffer him to take his own timeand his own way, but prematurely disclosed his scheme to the King, and disclosed itin the manner most likely to irritate and alarm a weak and diseased mind. His Majestyabsurdly imagined that his Coronation oath bound him to refuse his assent to any billfor relieving Roman Catholics from civil disabilities. To argue with him wasimpossible. Dundas tried to explain the matter, but was told to keep his Scotchmetaphysics to himself. Pitt, and Pitt’s ablest colleagues, resigned their offices. It wasnecessary that the King should make a new arrangement. But by this time his angerand distress had brought back the malady which had, many years before, incapacitatedhim for the discharge of his functions. He actually assembled his family, read theCoronation oath to them, and told them that, if he broke it, the Crown wouldimmediately pass to the House of Savoy. It was not until after an interregnum ofseveral weeks that he regained the full use of his small faculties, and that a ministryafter his own heart was at length formed.

The materials out of which he had to construct a government were neither solid norsplendid. To that party, weak in numbers, but strong in every kind of talent, whichwas hostile to the domestic and foreign policy of his late advisers, he could not haverecourse. For that party, while it differed from his late advisers on every point onwhich they had been honoured with his approbation, cordially agreed with them as tothe single matter which had brought on them his displeasure. All that was left to himwas to call up the rear ranks of the old ministry to form the front rank of a newministry. In an age pre-eminently fruitful of parliamentary talents, a cabinet wasformed containing hardly a single man who, in parliamentary talents, could beconsidered as even of the second rate. The most important offices in the state werebestowed on decorous and laborious mediocrity. Henry Addington was at the head ofthe Treasury. He had been an early, indeed a hereditary, friend of Pitt, and had byPitt’s influence been placed, while still a young man, in the chair of the House ofCommons. He was universally admitted to have been the best speaker that had sate inthat chair since the retirement of Onslow. But nature had not bestowed on him veryvigorous faculties; and the highly respectable situation which he had long occupiedwith 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 takenno part in the war of words; and he had always been addressed with marked deferenceby 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 vigorousantagonists, who dealt hard blows without the smallest ceremony, he should havebeen awkward and unready, or that the air of dignity and authority which he hadacquired in his former post, and of which he had not divested himself, should havemade his helplessness laughable and pitiable. Nevertheless, during many months, hispower seemed to stand firm. He was a favourite with the King, whom he resembled innarrowness 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 enthusiasmwith 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 againstwhat was called the atheistical and anarchical philosophy of the eighteenth century.Bonaparte, now First Consul, was busied in constructing out of the ruins of oldinstitutions a new ecclesiastical establishment and a new order of knighthood. Thatnothing less than the dominion of the whole civilised world would satisfy his selfishambition was not yet suspected; nor did even wise men see any reason to doubt thathe might be as safe a neighbour as any prince of the House of Bourbon had been. Thetreaty of Amiens was therefore hailed by the great body of the English people withextravagant joy. The popularity of the minister was for the moment immense. Hiswant of parliamentary ability was, as yet, of little consequence: for he had scarcelyany adversary to encounter. The old opposition, delighted by the peace, regarded himwith 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 ofCommons. But the new opposition could scarcely muster ten votes, and was regardedwith 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 thegreatest respect for the conscientious scruple which had taken possession of the royalmind; and he had promised his successors all the help in his power. In private hisadvice 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 thepalace, he took the old minister and the new minister aside. “If we three,” he said,“keep together, all will go well.”

But it was hardly possible, human nature being what it is, and, more especially, Pittand 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 nowoccupied by a mere puppet which he had set up, which he was to govern while hesuffered it to remain, and which he was to fling aside as soon as he wished to resumehis old position. Nor was it long before he began to pine for the power which he hadrelinquished. He had been so early raised to supreme authority in the state, and hadenjoyed that authority so long, that it had become necessary to him. In retirement hisdays passed heavily. He could not, like Fox, forget the pleasures and cares ofambition in the company of Euripides or Herodotus. Pride restrained him fromintimating, 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, that it hadnot been anticipated, by one whom he regarded as his deputy.

Addington, on the other hand, was by no means inclined to descend from his highposition. He was, indeed, under a delusion much resembling that of Abon Hassan inthe Arabian tale. His brain was turned by his short and unreal Caliphate. He took hiselevation quite seriously, attributed it to his own merit, and considered himself as oneof the great triumvirate of English statesmen, as worthy to make a third with Pitt andFox.

Such being the feelings of the late minister and of the present minister, a rupture wasinevitable; and there was no want of persons bent on making that rupture speedy andviolent. Some of these persons wounded Addington’s pride by representing him as alacquey, sent to keep a place on the Treasury bench till his master should find itconvenient 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 madepeace. Pitt had supended the constitutional liberties of Englishmen. Under Addingtonthose liberties were again enjoyed. Pitt had wasted the public resources. Addingtonwas carefully nursing them. It was sometimes but too evident that these complimentswere not unpleasing to Addington. Pitt became cold and reserved. During manymonths 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 foroffice, exerted themselves to effect a change of ministry. His favourite disciple,George Canning, young, ardent, ambitious, with great powers and great virtues, butwith a temper too restless and a wit too satirical for his own happiness, wasindefatigable. He spoke; he wrote; he intrigued; he tried to induce a large number ofthe supporters of the government to sign a round robin desiring a change; he madegame of Addington and of Addington’s relations in a succession of livelypasquinades. The minister’s partisans retorted with equal acrimony, if not with equalvivacity. 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 firstplace among the sovereigns of the Continent, and with a military reputationsurpassing that of Marlborough or of Turenne, devoted himself to the noble task ofmaking France happy by mild administration and wise legislation, our country mighthave long continued to tolerate a government of fair intentions and feeble abilities.Unhappily, the treaty of Amiens had scarcely been signed, when the restless ambitionand the insupportable insolence of the First Consul convinced the great body of theEnglish 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 veryexistence of the nation was at hand, men looked with increasing uneasiness on theweak and languid cabinet which would have to contend against an enemy who unitedmore than the power of Lewis the Great to more than the genius of Frederick theGreat. 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, duringmany years, displayed in Parliament, deluded the world into the belief that he must beeminently 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 nowherestronger than among Addington’s own colleagues. The pressure put on him was sostrong that he could not help yielding to it; yet, even in yielding, he showed how farhe was from knowing his own place. His first proposition was, that some insignificantnobleman should be First Lord of the Treasury and nominal head of theadministration, 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 todiscuss such a scheme, and talked of it with bitter mirth. “Which secretaryship wasoffered to you?” his friend Wilberforce asked. “Really,” said Pitt, “I had not thecuriosity to inquire.” Addington was frightened into bidding higher. He offered toresign the Treasury to Pitt, on condition that there should be no extensive change inthe government. But Pitt would listen to no such terms. Then came a dispute such asoften arises after negotiations orally conducted, even when the negotiators are men ofstrict honour. Pitt gave one account of what had passed; Addington gave another: and,though the discrepancies were not such as necessarily implied any intentionalviolation 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 inwithstanding the ambitious and encroaching policy of France; and, on the 22nd, theHouse took the message into consideration.

Pitt had now been living many months in retirement. There had been a generalelection since he had spoken in Parliament; and there were two hundred memberswho had never heard him. It was known that on this occasion he would be in hisplace; and curiosity was wound up to the highest point. Unfortunately, the short-handwriters 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. Butseveral accounts of what passed are extant; and of those accounts the most interestingis contained in an unpublished letter, written by a very young member, John WilliamWard, 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 tohave been one of the most animated and magnificent ever heard in Parliament. “Pitt’sspeech,” Fox wrote a few days later, “was admired very much, and very justly. I thinkit was the best he ever made in that style.” The debate was adjourned; and on thesecond night Fox replied in an oration which, as the most zealous Pittites were forcedto acknowledge, left the palm of eloquence doubtful. Addington made a pitiableappearance between the two great rivals; and it was observed that Pitt, whileexhorting the Commons to stand resolutely by the executive government againstFrance, 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 headof the conquerors of Belgium and Italy, and formed a great camp near the Straits ofDover. On the other side of those Straits the whole population of our island was readyto rise up as one man in defence of the soil. At this conjuncture, as at some other greatconjunctures in our history, the conjuncture of 1660, for example, and the conjunctureof 1688, there was a general disposition among honest and patriotic men to forget oldquarrels, 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 firstmen in the country would, at that moment, have been as popular as the coalition of1783 had been unpopular. Alone in the kingdom the King looked with perfectcomplacency on a cabinet in which no man superior to himself in genius was to befound, and was so far from being willing to admit all his ablest subjects to office thathe was bent on excluding them all.

A few months passed before the different parties which agreed in regarding thegovernment with dislike and contempt came to an understanding with each other. Butin the spring of 1804 it became evident that the weakest of ministries would have todefend itself against the strongest of oppositions, an opposition made up of threeoppositions, each of which would, separately, have been formidable from ability, andwhich, when united, were also formidable from number. The party which hadopposed the peace, headed by Grenville and Windham, and the party which hadopposed the renewal of the war, headed by Fox, concurred in thinking that the mennow in power were incapable of either making a good peace or waging a vigorouswar. Pitt had, in 1802, spoken for peace against the party of Grenville, and had, in1803, spoken for war against the party of Fox. But of the capacity of the cabinet, andespecially of its chief, for the conduct of great affairs, he thought as meanly as eitherFox or Grenville. Questions were easily found on which all the enemies of thegovernment could act cordially together. The unfortunate First Lord of the Treasury,who had, during the earlier months of his administration, been supported by Pitt onone 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 wasknown, too, that the Upper House was even more hostile to him than the Lower, thatthe Scotch representative peers wavered, that there were signs of mutiny among thebishops. In the cabinet itself there was discord, and, worse than discord, treachery. Itwas necessary to give way: the ministry was dissolved; and the task of forming agovernment was entrusted to Pitt.

Pitt was of opinion that there was now an opportunity, such as had never beforeoffered itself, and such as might never offer itself again, of uniting in the publicservice, on honourable terms, all the eminent talents of the kingdom. The passions towhich the French Revolution had given birth were extinct. The madness of theinnovator and the madness of the alarmist had alike had their day. Jacobinism andAnti-Jacobinism had gone out of fashion together. The most liberal statesman did notthink that season propitious for schemes of parliamentary reform; and the mostconservative statesman could not pretend that there was any occasion for gagging billsand suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act. The great struggle for independence andnational honour occupied all minds; and those who were agreed as to the duty ofmaintaining that struggle with vigour might well postpone to a more convenient timeall disputes about matters comparatively unimportant. Strongly impressed by theseconsiderations, Pitt wished to form a ministry including all the first men in thecountry. The Treasury he reserved for himself; and to Fox he proposed to assign ashare of power little inferior to his own.

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 hisMajesty considered as Jacobinism, Sheridan, Grey, Erskine, should be graciouslyreceived; but Fox never. During several hours Pitt laboured in vain to reason downthis senseless antipathy. That he was perfectly sincere there can be no doubt: but itwas not enough to be sincere; he should have been resolute. Had he declared himselfdetermined 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 LordGrenville. In an evil hour Pitt yielded. He flattered himself with the hope that, thoughhe consented to forego the aid of his illustrious rival, there would still remain amplematerials for the formation of an efficient ministry. That hope was cruellydisappointed. Fox entreated his friends to leave personal considerations out of thequestion, and declared that he would support, with the utmost cordiality, an efficientand patriotic ministry from which he should be himself excluded. Not only hisfriends, 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 serviceto the commonwealth was placed under a ban merely because he was disliked atCourt. All that was left to Pitt was to construct a government out of the wreck ofAddington’s feeble administration. The small circle of his personal retainers furnishedhim with a very few useful assistants, particularly Dundas, who had been createdViscount Melville, Lord Harrowby, and Canning.

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 Francewas 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 thehelp of Lord Harrowby. It was discovered that Lord Melville had been guilty ofhighly culpable laxity in transactions relating to public money. He was censured bythe House of Commons, driven from office, ejected from the Privy Council, andimpeached of high crimes and misdemeanours. The blow fell heavy on Pitt. It gavehim, he said in Parliament, a deep pang; and, as he uttered the word pang, his lipquivered, his voice shook, he paused, and his hearers thought that he was about toburst into tears. Such tears shed by Eldon would have moved nothing but laughter.Shed by the warm-hearted and open-hearted Fox, they would have moved sympathy,but would have caused no surprise. But a tear from Pitt would have been somethingportentous. He suppressed his emotion, however, and proceeded with his usualmajestic self-possession.

His difficulties compelled him to resort to various expedients. At one time Addingtonwas persuaded to accept office with a peerage; but he brought no additional strengthto the government. Though he went through the form of reconciliation, it wasimpossible for him to forget the past. While he remained in place he was jealous andpunctilious; and he soon retired again. At another time Pitt renewed his efforts toovercome his master’s aversion to Fox; and it was rumoured that the King’s obstinacywas gradually giving way. But, meanwhile, it was impossible for the minister toconceal from the public eye the decay of his health, and the constant anxiety whichgnawed 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, sawmisery written in his face. The peculiar look which he wore during the last months ofhis life was often pathetically described by Wilberforce, who used to call it theAusterlitz look.

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 informing another mighty coalition against the French ascendency. The united forces ofAustria, Russia and England might, he hoped, oppose an insurmountable barrier to theambition of the common enemy. But the genius and energy of Napoleon prevailed.While the English troops were preparing to embark for Germany, while the Russiantroops were slowly coming up from Poland, he, with rapidity unprecedented inmodern war, moved a hundred thousand men from the shores of the Ocean to theBlack Forest, and compelled a great Austrian army to surrender at Ulm. To the firstfaint rumours of this calamity Pitt would give no credit. He was irritated by the alarmsof those around him. “Do not believe a word of it,” he said: “it is all a fiction.” Thenext day he received a Dutch newspaper containing the capitulation. He knew noDutch. It was Sunday; and the public offices were shut. He carried the paper to LordMalmesbury, 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 hisface.

The news of the battle of Trafalgar arrived four days later, and seemed for a momentto revive him. Forty-eight hours after that most glorious and most mournful ofvictories had been announced to the country came the Lord Mayor’s day; and Pittdined at Guildhall. His popularity had declined. But on this occasion the multitude,greatly excited by the recent tidings, welcomed him enthusiastically, took off hishorses in Cheapside, and drew his carriage up King Street. When his health wasdrunk, he returned thanks in two or three of those stately sentences of which he had aboundless 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 England,having saved herself by her energy, may save Europe by her example.”

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 gatherstrength for the approaching session. While he was languishing there on his sofaarrived the news that a decisive battle had been fought and lost in Moravia, that thecoalition was dissolved, that the Continent was at the feet of France. He sank downunder the blow. Ten days later, he was so emaciated that his most intimate friendshardly knew him. He came up from Bath by slow journeys, and, on the 11th ofJanuary, 1806, reached his villa at Putney. Parliament was to meet on the 21st. On the20th was to be the parliamentary dinner at the house of the First Lord of the Treasuryin Downing Street; and the cards were already issued. But the days of the greatminister 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. Hiscolleagues 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 hehad long loved, whom he had sent to govern India, and whose administration hadbeen eminently able, energetic, and successful, arrived in London after an absence ofeight 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 fanciedhimself to be recovering, talked on various subjects cheerfully, and with an uncloudedmind, and pronounced a warm and discerning eulogium on the Marquess’s brotherArthur. “I never,” he said, “met with any military man with whom it was sosatisfactory to converse.” The excitement and exertion of this interview were toomuch 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 theopposition met for the purpose of considering the course to be taken on the first day ofthe 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 amendmentcondemning the policy of the government had been prepared, and was to have beenproposed in the House of Commons by Lord Henry Petty, a young nobleman who hadalready won for himself that place in the esteem of his country which, after the lapseof more than half a century, he still retains. He was unwilling, however, to comeforward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself. LordGrenville, who had been informed of Pitt’s state by Lord Wellesley, and had beendeeply affected by it, earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, withcharacteristic generosity and good nature, gave his voice against attacking his nowhelpless rival. “Sunt lacrymæ rerum,” he said, “et mentem mortalia tangunt.” On thefirst day, therefore, there was no debate. It was rumoured that evening that Pitt wasbetter. But on the following morning his physicians pronounced that there were nohopes. The commanding faculties of which he had been too proud were beginning tofail. His old tutor and friend, the Bishop of Lincoln, informed him of his danger, andgave such religious advice and consolation as a confused and obscured mind couldreceive. Stories were told of devout sentiments fervently uttered by the dying man.But these stories found no credit with anybody who knew him. Wilberforcepronounced it impossible that they could be true. “Pitt,” he added, “was a man whoalways said less than he thought on such topics.” It was asserted in many after-dinnerspeeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, thatthe great minister died exclaiming, “Oh my country!” This is a fable; but it is true thatthe last words which he uttered, while he knew what he said, were brokenexclamations about the alarming state of public affairs. He ceased to breathe on themorning of the 23rd of January, 1806, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day onwhich he first took his seat in Parliament. He was in his forty-seventh year, and hadbeen, during near nineteen years, First Lord of the Treasury, and undisputed chief ofthe administration. Since parliamentary government was established in England, noEnglish statesman has held supreme power so long. Walpole, it is true, was First Lordof the Treasury during more than twenty years: but it was not till Walpole had beensome time First Lord of the Treasury that he could be properly called Prime Minister.

It was moved in the House of Commons that Pitt should be honoured with a publicfuneral 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 mostinvidious that ever an orator undertook: but it was performed with a humanity anddelicacy which were warmly acknowledged by the mourning friends of him who wasgone. The motion was carried by 288 votes to 89.

The 22nd of February was fixed for the funeral. The corpse, having lain in stateduring two days in the Painted Chamber, was borne with great pomp to the northerntransept of the Abbey. A splendid train of princes, nobles, bishops, and privycouncillors followed. The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his greatfather lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie. The sadness ofthe assistants was beyond that of ordinary mourners. For he whom they werecommitting to the dust had died of sorrows and anxieties of which none of thesurvivors could be altogether without a share. Wilberforce, who carried the bannerbefore the hearse, described the awful ceremony with deep feeling. As the coffindescended into the earth, he said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed tolook down with consternation into the dark house which was receiving all thatremained of so much power and glory.

All parties in the House of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousandpounds to satisfy the demands of Pitt’s creditors. Some of his admirers seemed toconsider the magnitude of his embarrassments as a circumstance highly honourable tohim; 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 shouldcontaminate his hands with unlawful gain. But it is neither right nor becoming in aman to whom the public has given an income more than sufficient for his comfort anddignity to bequeath to that public a great debt, the effect of mere negligence andprofusion. As First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pitt neverhad less than six thousand a year, besides an excellent house. In 1792 he was forcedby his royal master’s friendly importunity to accept for life the office of Warden ofthe 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, hewould have kept his expenditure within bounds. Or, if he could not spare even aquarter of an hour a week for that purpose, he had numerous friends, excellent men ofbusiness, who would have been proud to act as his stewards. One of those friends, thechief of a great commercial house in the city, made an attempt to put theestablishment in Downing Street to rights; but in vain. He found that the waste of theservants’ hall was almost fabulous. The quantity of butcher’s meat charged in the billswas nine hundred-weight a week. The consumption of poultry, of fish, and of tea wasin proportion. The character of Pitt would have stood higher if, with thedisinterestedness 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, duringmany years, his name was the rallying cry of a class of men with whom, at one ofthose terrible conjunctures which confound all ordinary distinctions, he wasaccidentally and temporarily connected, but to whom, on almost all great questions ofprinciple, he was diametrically opposed. The haters of parliamentary reform called



themselves Pittites, not choosing to remember that Pitt made three motions forparliamentary reform, and that, though he thought that such a reform could not safelybe made while the passions excited by the French revolution were raging, he neveruttered a word indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient seasonto bring the question forward a fourth time. The toast of protestant ascendency wasdrunk on Pitt’s birthday by a set of Pittites who could not but be aware that Pitt hadresigned his office because he could not carry Catholic emancipation. The defendersof the Test Act called themselves Pittites, though they could not be ignorant that Pitthad 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 deeplyimbued with the doctrines of Adam Smith than either Fox or Grey. The very negro-drivers invoked the name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more conspicuouslydisplayed than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro. This mythical Pitt, whoresembles the genuine Pitt as little as the Charlemagne of Ariosto resembles theCharlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day. History will vindicate the real man fromcalumny disguised under the semblance of adulation, and will exhibit him as what hewas, a minister of great talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions, pre-eminentlyqualified, intellectually and morally, for the part of a parliamentary leader, andcapable of administering, with prudence and moderation, the government of aprosperous 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 onthe side of violence.




MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.

EPITAPH ON HENRY MARTYN. (1812.)

Here Martyn lies. In Manhood’s early bloomThe Christian Hero finds a Pagan tomb.Religion, sorrowing o’er her favourite son,Points to the glorious trophies that he won.Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,But trophies of the Cross! for that dear name,Through every form of danger, death, and shame,Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,Where danger, death, and shame assault no more.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF PITT. (1813.)

Oh Britain! dear Isle, when the annals of storyShall tell of the deeds that thy children have done,When the strains of each poet shall sing of their glory,And the triumphs their skill and their valour have won;When the olive and palm in thy chaplet are blended,When thy arts, and thy fame, and thy commerce increase,When thy arms through the uttermost coasts are extended,And thy war is triumphant, and happy thy peace;When the ocean, whose waves like a rampart flow round thee,Conveying thy mandates to every shore,And the empire of nature no longer can bound thee,And the world be the scene of thy conquests no more:Remember the man who in sorrow and danger,When thy glory was set, and thy spirit was low,When thy hopes were o’erturned by the arms of the stranger,And thy banners displayed in the halls of the foe,Stood forth in the tempest of doubt and disaster,Unaided, and single, the danger to brave,Asserted thy claims, and the rights of his master,Preserved thee to conquer, and saved thee to save.

A RADICAL WAR SONG. (1820.)

Awake, arise, the hour is come,For rows and revolutions;There’s no receipt like pike and drumFor crazy constitutions.Close, close the shop! Break, break the loom,



Desert your hearths and furrows,And throng in arms to seal the doomOf England’s rotten boroughs.We’ll stretch that tort’ring CastlereaghOn his own Dublin rack, sir;We’ll drown the King in Eau de vie,The Laureate in his sack, sir,Old Eldon and his sordid hagIn molten gold we’ll smother,And stifle in his own green bagThe Doctor and his brother.In chains we’ll hang in fair GuildhallThe City’s famed Recorder,And next on proud St. Stephen’s fall,Though Wynne should squeak to order.In vain our tyrants then shall tryTo ’scape our martial law, sir;In vain the trembling Speaker cryThat “Strangers must withdraw,” sir.Copley to hang offends no text;A rat is not a man, sir:With schedules and with tax bills nextWe’ll bury pious Van, sir.The slaves who loved the Income Tax,We’ll crush by scores, like mites, sir,And him, the wretch who freed the blacks,And more enslaved the whites, sir.The peer shall dangle from his gate,The bishop from his steeple,Till all recanting, own, the StateMeans nothing but the People.We’ll fix the church’s revenuesOn Apostolic basis,One coat, one scrip, one pair of shoesShall pay their strange grimaces.We’ll strap the bar’s deluding trainIn their own darling halter,And with his big church bible brainThe parson at the altar.Hail glorious hour, when fair ReformShall bless our longing nation,And Hunt receive commands to formA new administration.Carlisle shall sit enthroned, where satOur Cranmer and our Secker;And Watson show his snow-white hatIn England’s rich Exchequer.The breast of Thistlewood shall wear



Our Wellesley’s star and sash, man;And many a mausoleum fairShall rise to honest Cashman.Then, then beneath the nine-tailed catShall they who used it writhe, sir;And curates lean, and rectors fat,Shall dig the ground they tithe, sir.Down with your Bayleys, and your Bests,Your Giffords, and your Gurneys:We’ll clear the island of the pests,Which mortals name attorneys.Down with your sheriffs, and your mayors,Your registrars, and proctors,We’ll live without the lawyer’s cares,And die without the doctor’s.No discontented fair shall poutTo see her spouse so stupid;We’ll tread the torch of Hymen out,And live content with Cupid.Then, when the high-born and the greatAre humbled to our level,On all the wealth of Church and State,Like aldermen, we’ll revel.We’ll live when hushed the battle’s din,In smoking and in cards, sir,In drinking unexcised gin,And wooing fair Poissardes, sir.

THE BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. (1824.)

Oh, weep for Moncontour! Oh! weep for the hourWhen the children of darkness and evil had power,When the horsemen of Valois triumphantly trodOn the bosoms that bled for their rights and their God.Oh, weep for Moncontour! Oh! weep for the slain,Who for faith and for freedom lay slaughtered in vain;Oh, weep for the living, who linger to bearThe renegade’s shame, or the exile’s despair.One look, one last look, to our cots and our towers,To the rows of our vines, and the beds of our flowers,To the church where the bones of our fathers decayed,Where we fondly had deemed that our own would be laid.Alas! we must leave thee, dear desolate home,To the spearmen of Uri, the shavelings of Rome,To the serpent of Florence, the vulture of Spain,To the pride of Anjou, and the guile of Lorraine.Farewell to thy fountains, farewell to thy shades,To the song of thy youths, and the dance of thy maids,



To the breath of thy gardens, the hum of thy bees,And the long waving line of the blue Pyrenees.Farewell, and for ever. The priest and the slaveMay rule in the halls of the free and the brave.Our hearths we abandon; our lands we resign;But, Father, we kneel to no altar but thine.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY, BY OBADIAH BIND-THEIR-KINGS-IN-CHAINS-AND-THEIR-NOBLES-WITH-LINKS-OF-IRON, SERJEANT IN IRETON’S REGIMENT. (1824.)

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?Oh evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod;For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong,Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of God.It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine,And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair,And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine.Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword,The General rode along us to form us to the fight,When a murmuring sound broke out, and swell’d into a shout,Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant’s right.And hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,The cry of battle rises along their charging line!For God! for the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws!For Charles King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums,His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall;They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pikes, close your ranks;For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.They are here! They rush on! We are broken! We are gone!Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast.O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right!Stand back to back, in God’s name, and fight it to the last.Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground:Hark! hark! — What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear?Whose banner do I see, boys? ’Tis he, thank God, ’tis he, boys.Bear up another minute: brave Oliver is here.Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row,Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes,Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst,And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.



Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hideTheir coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar:And he — he turns, he flies: — shame on those cruel eyesThat bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain,First give another stab to make your search secure,Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad-pieces and lockets,The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor.Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay andbold,When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans today;And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks,Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey.Where be your tongues that late mocked at heaven and hell and fate,And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades,Your perfum’d satin clothes, your catches and your oaths,Your stage-plays and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades?Down, down, for ever down with the mitre and the crown,With the Belial of the Court, and the Mammon of the Pope;There is woe in Oxford Halls: there is wail in Durham’s Stalls:The Jesuit smites his bosom: the Bishop rends his cope.And She of the seven hills shall mourn her children’s ills,And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England’s, sword;And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hearWhat the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word.

SERMON IN A CHURCHYARD. (1825.)

Let pious Damon take his seat,With mincing step, and languid smile,And scatter from his ’kerchief sweet,Sabæan odours o’er the aisle;And spread his little jewelled hand,And smile round all the parish beauties,And pat his curls, and smooth his band,Meet prelude to his saintly duties.Let the thronged audience press and stare,Let stifled maidens ply the fan,Admire his doctrines, and his hair,And whisper “What a good young man!”While he explains what seems most clear,So clearly that it seems perplexed,I’ll stay, and read my sermon here;And skulls, and bones, shall be the text.Art thou the jilted dupe of fame?Dost thou with jealous anger pineWhene’er she sounds some other name,With fonder emphasis than thine?



To thee I preach; draw near; attend!Look on these bones, thou fool, and seeWhere all her scorns and favours end,What Byron is, and thou must be.Dost thou revere, or praise, or trustSome clod like those that here we spurn;Some thing that sprang like thee from dust,And shall like thee to dust return?Dost thou rate statesmen, heroes, wits,At one sear leaf, or wandering feather?Behold the black, damp, narrow pits,Where they and thou must lie together.Dost thou beneath the smile or frownOf some vain woman bend thy knee?Here take thy stand, and trample downThings that were once as fair as she.Here rave of her ten thousand graces,Bosom, and lip, and eye, and chin,While, as in scorn, the fleshless facesOf Hamiltons and Waldegraves grin.Whate’er thy losses or thy gains,Whate’er thy projects or thy fears,Whate’er the joys, whate’er the pains,That prompt thy baby smiles and tears;Come to my school, and thou shalt learn,In one short hour of placid thought,A stoicism, more deep, more stern,Than ever Zeno’s porch hath taught.The plots and feats of those that pressTo seize on titles, wealth, or power,Shall seem to thee a game of chess,Devised to pass a tedious hour.What matters it to him who fightsFor shows of unsubstantial good,Whether his Kings, and Queens, and Knights,Be things of flesh, or things of wood?We check, and take; exult, and fret;Our plans extend, our passions rise,Till in our ardour we forgetHow worthless is the victor’s prize.Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night:Say will it not be then the same,Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?Dost thou among these hillocks stray,O’er some dear idol’s tomb to moan?Know that thy foot is on the clayOf hearts once wretched as thy own.



How many a father’s anxious schemes,How many rapturous thoughts of lovers,How many a mother’s cherished dreams,The swelling turf before thee covers!Here for the living, and the dead,The weepers and the friends they weep,Hath been ordained the same cold bed,The same dark night, the same long sleep;Why shouldest thou writhe, and sob, and raveO’er those, with whom thou soon must be?Death his own sting shall cure — the graveShall vanquish its own victory.Here learn that all the griefs and joys,Which now torment, which now beguile,Are children’s hurts, and children’s toys,Scarce worthy of one bitter smile.Here learn that pulpit, throne, and press,Sword, sceptre, lyre, alike are frail,That science is a blind man’s guess,And History a nurse’s tale.Here learn that glory and disgrace,Wisdom and folly, pass away,That mirth hath its appointed space,That sorrow is but for a day;That all we love, and all we hate,That all we hope, and all we fear,Each mood of mind, each turn of fate,Must end in dust and silence here.

TRANSLATION FROM A. V. ARNAULT

Fables: Livre V., Fable 16. (1826.)

Thou poor leaf, so sear and frail,Sport of every wanton gale,Whence, and whither, dost thou fly,Through this bleak autumnal sky?On a noble oak I grew,Green, and broad, and fair to view;But the Monarch of the shadeBy the tempest low was laid.From that time, I wander o’erWood, and valley, hill, and moor,Wheresoe’er the wind is blowing,Nothing caring, nothing knowing:Thither go I, whither goes,Glory’s laurel, Beauty’s rose.



—De ta tige détachée,Pauvre feuille desséchéeOù vas-tu?—Je n’en sais rien.L’orage a frappé le chêneQui seul etait mon soutien.De son inconstante haleine,Le zéphyr ou l’aquilonDepuis ce jour me promèneDe la forêt à la plaine,De la montagne au vallon.Je vais où le vent me mène,Sans me plaindre ou m’effrayer,Je vais où va toute chose,Où va la feuille de roseEt la feuille de laurier.

DIES IRÆ. (1826.)

On that great, that awful day,This vain world shall pass away.Thus the sibyl sang of old,Thus hath Holy David told.There shall be a deadly fearWhen the Avenger shall appear,And unveiled before his eyeAll the works of man shall lie.Hark! to the great trumpet’s tonesPealing o’er the place of bones:Hark! it waketh from their bedAll the nations of the dead, —In a countless throng to meet,At the eternal judgment seat.Nature sickens with dismay,Death may not retain his prey;And before the Maker standAll the creatures of his hand.The great book shall be unfurled,Whereby God shall judge the world:What was distant shall be near,What was hidden shall be clear.To what shelter shall I fly?To what guardian shall I cry?Oh, in that destroying hour,Source of goodness, Source of power,Show thou, of thine own free grace,Help unto a helpless race.Though I plead not at thy throneAught that I for thee have done,



Do not thou unmindful be,Of what thou hast borne for me:Of the wandering, of the scorn,Of the scourge, and of the thorn.Jesus, hast thou borne the pain,And hath all been borne in vain?Shall thy vengeance smite the headFor whose ransom thou hast bled?Thou, whose dying blessing gaveGlory to a guilty slave:Thou, who from the crew uncleanDids’t release the Magdalene:Shall not mercy vast and free,Evermore be found in thee?Father, turn on me thine eyes,See my blushes, hear my cries;Faint though be the cries I make,Save me, for thy mercy’s sake,From the worm, and from the fire,From the torments of thine ire.Fold me with the sheep that standPure and safe at thy right hand.Hear thy guilty child implore thee,Rolling in the dust before thee.Oh the horrors of that day!When this frame of sinful clay,Starting from its burial place,Must behold thee face to face.Hear and pity, hear and aid,Spare the creatures thou hast made.Mercy, mercy, save, forgive,Oh, who shall look on thee and live?

THE MARRIAGE OF TIRZAH AND AHIRAD. (1827.)

GENESIS VI. 3.

It is the dead of night:Yet more than noonday lightBeams far and wide from many a gorgeous hall.Unnumbered harps are tinkling,Unnumbered lamps are twinkling,In the great city of the fourfold wall.By the brazen castle’s moat,The sentry hums a livelier note.The ship-boy chaunts a shriller layFrom the galleys in the bay.



Shout, and laugh, and hurrying feetSound from mart and square and street,From the breezy laurel shades,From the granite colonnades,From the golden statue’s base,From the stately market-place,Where, upreared by captive hands,The great Tower of Triumph stands,All its pillars in a blazeWith the many-coloured rays,Which lanthorns of ten thousand dyesShed on ten thousand panoplies.But closest is the throng,And loudest is the song,In that sweet garden by the river’s side,The abyss of myrtle bowers,The wilderness of flowers,Where Cain hath built the palace of his pride.Such palace ne’er shall be againAmong the dwindling race of men.From all its threescore gates the lightOf gold and steel afar was thrown;Two hundred cubits rose in heightThe outer wall of polished stone.On the top was ample spaceFor a gallant chariot race.Near either parapet a bedOf the richest mould was spread,Where amidst flowers of every scent and hueRich orange trees, and palms, and giant cedars grew.In the mansion’s public courtAll is revel, song, and sport;For there, till morn shall tint the east,Menials and guards prolong the feast.The boards with painted vessels shine;The marble cisterns foam with wine.A hundred dancing girls are thereWith zoneless waists and streaming hair;And countless eyes with ardour gaze,And countless hands the measure beat,As mix and part in amorous mazeThose floating arms and bounding feet.But none of all the race of Cain,Save those whom he hath deigned to graceWith yellow robe and sapphire chain,May pass beyond that outer space.For now within the painted hallThe Firstborn keeps high festival.



Before the glittering valves all nightTheir post the chosen captains hold.Above the portal’s stately heightThe legend flames in lamps of gold:“In life united and in death“May Tirzah and Ahirad be,“The bravest he of all the sons of Seth,“Of all the house of Cain the loveliest she.”Through all the climates of the earthThis night is given to festal mirth.The long continued war is ended.The long divided lines are blended.Ahirad’s bow shall now no moreMake fat the wolves with kindred gore.The vultures shall expect in vainTheir banquet from the sword of Cain.Without a guard the herds and flocksAlong the frontier moors and rocksFrom eve to morn may roam;Nor shriek, nor shout, nor reddened sky,Shall warn the startled hind to flyFrom his beloved home.Nor to the pier shall burghers crowdWith straining necks and faces pale,And think that in each flitting cloudThey see a hostile sail.The peasant without fear shall guideDown smooth canal or river wideHis painted bark of cane,Fraught, for some proud bazaar’s arcades,With chestnuts from his native shades,And wine, and milk, and grain.Search round the peopled globe to-night,Explore each continent and isle,There is no door without a light,No face without a smile.The noblest chiefs of either race,From north and south, from west and east,Crowd to the painted hall to graceThe pomp of that atoning feast.With widening eyes and labouring breathStand the fair-haired sons of Seth,As bursts upon their dazzled sightThe endless avenue of light,The bowers of tulip, rose, and palm,The thousand cressets fed with balm,The silken vests, the boards piled highWith amber, gold, and ivory,



The crystal founts whence sparkling flowThe richest wines o’er beds of snow,The walls where blaze in living dyesThe king’s three hundred victories.The heralds point the fitting seatTo every guest in order meet,And place the highest in degreeNearest th’ imperial canopy.Beneath its broad and gorgeous fold,With naked swords and shields of gold,Stood the seven princes of the tribes of Nod.Upon an ermine carpet layTwo tiger cubs in furious play,Beneath the emerald throne where sat the signed of God.Over that ample forehead whiteThe thousandth year returneth.Still, on its commanding height,With a fierce and blood-red light,The fiery token burneth.Wheresoe’er that mystic starBlazeth in the van of war,Back recoil before its rayShield and banner, bow and spear,Maddened horses break awayFrom the trembling charioteer.The fear of that stern king doth lieOn all that live beneath the sky;All shrink before the mark of his despair,The seal of that great curse which he alone can bear.Blazing in pearls and diamonds’ sheen,Tirzah, the young Ahirad’s bride,Of humankind the destined queen,Sits by her great forefather’s side.The jetty curls, the forehead high,The swanlike neck, the eagle face,The glowing cheek, the rich dark eye,Proclaim her of the elder race.With flowing locks of auburn hue,And features smooth, and eye of blue,Timid in love as brave in arms,The gentle heir of Seth askanceSnatches a bashful, ardent glanceAt her majestic charms;Blest when across that brow high musing flashesA deeper tint of rose,Thrice blest when from beneath the silken lashesOf her proud eye she throwsThe smile of blended fondness and disdain



Which marks the daughters of the house of Cain.All hearts are light around the hallSave his who is the lord of all.The painted roofs, the attendant train,The lights, the banquet, all are vain.He sees them not. His fancy straysTo other scenes and other days.A cot by a lone forest’s edge,A fountain murmuring through the trees,A garden with a wild flower hedge,Whence sounds the music of the bees,A little flock of sheep at restUpon a mountain’s swarthy breast.On his rude spade he seems to leanBeside the well remembered stone,Rejoicing o’er the promise greenOf the first harvest man hath sown.He sees his mother’s tears;His father’s voice he hears,Kind as when first it praised his youthful skill.And soon a seraph-child,In boyish rapture wild,With a light crook comes bounding from the hill,Kisses his hands, and strokes his face,And nestles close in his embrace.In his adamantine eyeNone might discern his agony;But they who had grown hoary next his side,And read his stern dark face with deepest skill,Could trace strange meanings in that lip of pride,Which for one moment quivered and was still.No time for them to mark or him to feelThose inward stings; for clarion, flute, and lyre,And the rich voices of a countless quire,Burst on the ear in one triumphant peal.In breathless transport sits the admiring throng,As sink and swell the notes of Jubal’s lofty song.“Sound the timbrel, strike the lyre,Wake the trumpet’s blast of fire,Till the gilded arches ring.Empire, victory, and fame,Be ascribed unto the nameOf our father and our king.Of the deeds which he hath done,Of the spoils which he hath won,Let his grateful children sing.“When the deadly fight was fought,When the great revenge was wrought,



When on the slaughtered victims layThe minion stiff and cold as they,Doomed to exile, sealed with flame,From the west the wanderer came.Six score years and six he strayedA hunter through the forest shade.The lion’s shaggy jaws he tore,To earth he smote the foaming boar,He crushed the dragon’s fiery crest,And scaled the condor’s dizzy nest;Till hardy sons and daughters fairIncreased around his woodland lair.Then his victorious bow unstrungOn the great bison’s horn he hung.Giraffe and elk he left to holdThe wilderness of boughs in peace,And trained his youth to pen the fold,To press the cream, and weave the fleece.As shrunk the streamlet in its bed,As black and scant the herbage grew,O’er endless plains his flocks he ledStill to new brooks and pastures new.So strayed he till the white pavilionsOf his camp were told by millions,Till his children’s households sevenWere numerous as the stars of heaven.Then he bade us rove no more;And in the place that pleased him best,On the great river’s fertile shore,He fixed the city of his rest.He taught us then to bind the sheaves,To strain the palm’s delicious milk,And from the dark green mulberry leavesTo cull the filmy silk.Then first from straw-built mansions roamedO’er flower-beds trim the skilful bees;Then first the purple wine vats foamedAround the laughing peasant’s knees;And olive-yards, and orchards green,O’er all the hills of Nod were seen.“Of our father and our kingLet his grateful children sing.From him our race its being draws,His are our arts, and his our laws.Like himself he bade us be,Proud, and brave, and fierce, and free.True, through every turn of fate,In our friendship and our hate.



Calm to watch, yet prompt to dare;Quick to feel, yet firm to bear;Only timid, only weak,Before sweet woman’s eye and cheek.We will not serve, we will not know,The God who is our father’s foe.In our proud cities to his nameNo temples rise, no altars flame.Our flocks of sheep, our groves of spice,To him afford no sacrifice.Enough that once the House of CainHath courted with oblation vainThe sullen power above.Henceforth we bear the yoke no more;The only gods whom we adoreAre glory, vengeance, love.“Of our father and our kingLet his grateful children sing.What eye of living thing may brookOn his blazing brow to look?What might of living thing may standAgainst the strength of his right hand?First he led his armies forthAgainst the Mammoths of the north,What time they wasted in their pridePasture and vineyard far and wide.Then the White River’s icy floodWas thawed with fire and dyed with blood.And heard for many a league the soundOf the pine forests blazing round,And the death-howl and trampling dinOf the gigantic herd within.From the surging sea of flameForth the tortured monsters came;As of breakers on the shoreWas their onset and their roar;As the cedar-trees of GodStood the stately ranks of Nod.One long night and one short dayThe sword was lifted up to slay.Then marched the firstborn and his sonsO’er the white ashes of the wood,And counted of that savage broodNine times nine thousand skeletons.“On the snow with carnage redThe wood is piled, the skins are spread.A thousand fires illume the sky;Round each a hundred warriors lie.



But, long ere half the night was spent,Forth thundered from the golden tentThe rousing voice of Cain.A thousand trumps in answer rang,And fast to arms the warriors sprangO’er all the frozen plain.A herald from the wealthy bayHath come with tidings of dismay.From the western ocean’s coastSeth hath led a countless host,And vows to slay with fire and swordAll who call not on the Lord.His archers hold the mountain forts;His light armed ships blockade the ports;His horsemen tread the harvest down.On twelve proud bridges he hath passedThe river dark with many a mast,And pitched his mighty camp at lastBefore the imperial town.“On the south and on the west,Closely was the city prest.Before us lay the hostile powers.The breach was wide between the towers.Pulse and meal within were soldFor a double weight of gold.Our mighty father had gone forthTwo hundred marches to the north.Yet in that extreme of illWe stoutly kept his city still;And swore beneath his royal wall,Like his true sons, to fight and fall.“Hark, hark, to gong and horn,Clarion, and fife, and drum,The morn, the fortieth morn,Fixed for the great assault is come.Between the camp and city spreadsA waving sea of helmed heads.From the royal car of SethWas hung the blood-red flag of death:At sight of that thrice-hallowed signWide flew at once each banner’s fold;The captains clashed their arms of gold;The war cry of Elohim rolledFar down their endless line.On the northern hills afarPealed an answering note of war.Soon the dust in whirlwinds driven,Rushed across the northern heaven.



Beneath its shroud came thick and loudThe tramp as of a countless crowd;And at intervals were seenLance and hauberk glancing sheen;And at intervals were heardCharger’s neigh and battle word.“Oh what a rapturous cryFrom all the city’s thousand spires arose,With what a look the hollow eyeOf the lean watchman glared upon the foes,With what a yell of joy the mother pressedThe moaning baby to her withered breast,When through the swarthy cloud that veiled the plainBurst on his children’s sight the flaming brow of Cain!”There paused perforce that noble song;For from all the joyous throng,Burst forth a rapturous shout which drownedSinger’s voice and trumpet’s sound.Thrice that stormy clamour fell,Thrice rose again with mightier swell.The last and loudest roar of allHad died along the painted wall.The crowd was hushed; the minstrel trainPrepared to strike the chords again;When on each ear distinctly smoteA low and wild and wailing note.It moans again. In mute amazeMenials, and guests, and harpers gaze.They look above, beneath, around,No shape doth own that mournful sound.It comes not from the tuneful quire;It comes not from the feasting peers;There is no tone of earthly lyreSo soft, so sad, so full of tears.Then a strange horror came on allWho sate at that high festival.The far famed harp, the harp of gold,Dropped from Jubal’s trembling hold.Frantic with dismay the brideClung to her Ahirad’s side.And the corpse-like hue of dreadAhirad’s haughty face o’erspread.Yet not even in that agony of aweDid the young leader of the fair-haired raceFrom Tirzah’s shuddering grasp his hand withdrawOr turn his eyes from Tirzah’s livid face.The tigers to their lord retreat,And crouch and whine beneath his feet.



Prone sink to earth the golden shielded seven.All hearts are cowed save his aloneWho sits upon the emerald throne;For he hath heard Elohim speak from heaven.Still thunders in his ear the peal;Still blazes on his front the seal:And on the soul of the proud kingNo terror of created thingFrom sky, or earth, or hell, hath powerSince that unutterable hour.He rose to speak, but paused, and listening stood,Not daunted, but in sad and curious mood,With knitted brow, and searching eye of fire.A deathlike silence sank on all around,And through the boundless space was heard no sound,Save the soft tones of that mysterious lyre.Broken, faint, and low,At first the numbers flow.Louder, deeper, quicker, stillInto one fierce peal they swell,And the echoing palace fillWith a strange funereal yell.A voice comes forth. But what, or where?On the earth, or in the air?Like the midnight winds that blowRound a lone cottage in the snow,With howling swell and sighing fall,It wails along the trophied hall.In such a wild and dreary moanThe watches of the SeraphimPoured out all night their plaintive hymnBefore the eternal throne.Then, when from many a heavenly eyeDrops as of earthly pity fellFor her who had aspired too high,For him who loved too well.When, stunned by grief, the gentle pairFrom the nuptial garden fair,Linked in a sorrowful caress,Strayed through the untrodden wilderness;And close behind their footsteps cameThe desolating sword of flame,And drooped the cedared alley’s pride,And fountains shrank, and roses died.“Rejoice, oh Son of God, rejoice,”Sang that melancholy voice,“Rejoice, the maid is fair to see;The bower is decked for her and thee;



The ivory lamps around it throwA soft and pure and mellow glow.Where’er the chastened lustre fallsOn roof or cornice, floor or walls,Woven of pink and rose appearSuch words as love delights to hear.The breath of myrrh, the lute’s soft sound,Float through the moonlight galleries round.O’er beds of violet and through groves of spice,Lead thy proud bride into the nuptial bower;For thou hast bought her with a fearful price,And she hath dowered thee with a fearful dower.The price is life. The dower is death.Accursed loss! Accursed gain!For her thou givest the blessedness of Seth,And to thine arms she brings the curse of Cain.Round the dark curtains of the fiery thronePauses awhile the voice of sacred song:From all the angelic ranks goes forth a groan,‘How long, O Lord, how long?’The still small voice makes answer, ‘Wait and see,Oh sons of glory, what the end shall be.’“But, in the outer darkness of the placeWhere God hath shown his power without his grace,Is laughter and the sound of glad acclaim,Loud as when, on wings of fire,Fulfilled of his malign desire,From Paradise the conquering serpent came.The giant ruler of the morning starFrom off his fiery bedLifts high his stately head,Which Michael’s sword hath marked with many a scar.At his voice the pit of hellAnswers with a joyous yell,And flings her dusky portals wideFor the bridegroom and the bride.“But louder still shall be the dinIn the halls of Death and Sin,When the full measure runneth o’er,When mercy can endure no more,When he who vainly proffers grace,Comes in his fury to defaceThe fair creation of his hand;When from the heaven streams down amainFor forty days the sheeted rain;And from his ancient barriers free,With a deafening roar the seaComes foaming up the land.



Mother, cast thy babe aside:Bridegroom, quit thy virgin bride:Brother, pass thy brother by:’Tis for life, for life, ye fly.Along the drear horizon ravesThe swift advancing line of waves.On: on: their frothy crests appearEach moment nearer and more near.Urge the dromedary’s speed;Spur to death the reeling steed;If perchance ye yet may gainThe mountains that o’erhang the plain.“Oh thou haughty land of Nod,Hear the sentence of thy God.Thou hast said ‘Of all the hillsWhence, after autumn rains, the rillsIn silver trickle down,The fairest is that mountain whiteWhich intercepts the morning lightFrom Cain’s imperial town.On its first and gentlest swellAre pleasant halls where nobles dwell;And marble porticoes are seenPeeping through terraced gardens green.Above are olives, palms, and vines;And higher yet the dark-blue pines;And highest on the summit shinesThe crest of everlasting ice.Here let the God of Abel ownThat human art hath wonders shownBeyond his boasted paradise.’“Therefore on that proud mountain’s crownThy few surviving sons and daughtersShall see their latest sun go downUpon a boundless waste of waters.None salutes and none replies;None heaves a groan or breathes a prayer;They crouch on earth with tearless eyes,And clenched hands, and bristling hair.The rain pours on: no star illumesThe blackness of the roaring sky.And each successive billow boomsNigher still and still more nigh.And now upon the howling blastThe wreaths of spray come thick and fast;And a great billow by the tempest curledFalls with a thundering crash; and all is o’er.And what is left of all this glorious world?



A sky without a beam, a sea without a shore.“Oh thou fair land, where from their starry homeCherub and seraph oft delight to roam,Thou city of the thousand towers,Thou palace of the golden stairs,Ye gardens of perennial flowers,Ye moated gates, ye breezy squares;Ye parks amidst whose branches highOft peers the squirrel’s sparkling eye;Ye vineyards, in whose trellised shadePipes many a youth to many a maid;Ye ports where rides the gallant ship;Ye marts where wealthy burghers meet;Ye dark green lanes which know the tripOf woman’s conscious feet;Ye grassy meads where, when the day is done,The shepherd pens his fold;Ye purple moors on which the setting sunLeaves a rich fringe of gold;Ye wintry deserts where the larches grow;Ye mountains on whose everlasting snowNo human foot hath trod;Many a fathom shall ye sleepBeneath the grey and endless deep,In the great day of the revenge of God.”

THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN’S TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE.

An Election Ballad. (1827.)

As I sate down to breakfast in state,At my living of Tithing-cum-Boring,With Betty beside me to wait,Came a rap that almost beat the door in.I laid down my basin of tea,And Betty ceased spreading the toast,“As sure as a gun, sir,” said she,“That must be the knock of the post.”A letter — and free — bring it here —I have no correspondent who franks.No! Yes! Can it be? Why, my dear,’Tis our glorious, our Protestant Bankes.“Dear sir, as I know you desireThat the Church should receive due protection,I humbly presume to requireYour aid at the Cambridge election.“It has lately been brought to my knowledge,



That the Ministers fully designTo suppress each cathedral and college,And eject every learned divine.To assist this detestable schemeThree nuncios from Rome are come over;They left Calais on Monday by steam,And landed to dinner at Dover.“An army of grim Cordeliers,Well furnished with relics and vermin,Will follow, Lord Westmoreland fears,To effect what their chiefs may determine.Lollard’s bower, good authorities say,Is again fitting up for a prison;And a wood-merchant told me to-day’Tis a wonder how faggots have risen.“The finance scheme of Canning containsA new Easter-offering tax;And he means to devote all the gainsTo a bounty on thumb-screws and racks.Your living, so neat and compact —Pray, don’t let the news give you pain!—Is promised, I know for a fact,To an olive-faced Padre from Spain.”I read, and I felt my heart bleed,Sore wounded with horror and pity;So I flew, with all possible speed,To our Protestant champion’s committee.True gentlemen, kind and well-bred!No fleering! no distance! no scorn!They asked after my wife who is dead,And my children who never were born.They then, like high-principled Tories,Called our Sovereign unjust and unsteady,And assailed him with scandalous stories,Till the coach for the voters was ready.That coach might be well called a casketOf learning and brotherly love:There were parsons in boot and in basket;There were parsons below and above.There were Sneaker and Griper, a pairWho stick to Lord Mulesby like leeches;A smug chaplain of plausible air,Who writes my Lord Goslingham’s speeches.Dr. Buzz, who alone is a host,Who, with arguments weighty as lead,Proves six times a week in the PostThat flesh somehow differs from bread.Dr. Nimrod, whose orthodox toes



Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup;Dr. Humdrum, whose eloquence flows,Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup;Dr. Rosygill puffing and fanning,And wiping away perspiration;Dr. Humbug, who proved Mr. CanningThe beast in St. John’s Revelation.A layman can scarce form a notionOf our wonderful talk on the road;Of the learning, the wit, and devotion,Which almost each syllable showed:Why divided allegiance agreesSo ill with our free constitution;How Catholics swear as they please,In hope of the priest’s absolution;How the Bishop of Norwich had barteredHis faith for a legate’s commission;How Lyndhurst, afraid to be martyr’d,Had stooped to a base coalition;How Papists are cased from compassionBy bigotry, stronger than steel;How burning would soon come in fashion,And how very bad it must feel.We were all so much touched and excitedBy a subject so direly sublime,That the rules of politeness were slighted,And we all of us talked at a time;And in tones, which each moment grew louder,Told how we should dress for the show,And where we should fasten the powder,And if we should bellow or no.Thus from subject to subject we ran,And the journey passed pleasantly o’er,Till at last Dr. Humdrum began;From that time I remember no more.At Ware he commenced his prelection,In the dullest of clerical drones;And when next I regained recollectionWe were rumbling o’er Trumpington stones.

SONG. (1827.)

O stay, Madonna! stay;’Tis not the dawn of dayThat marks the skies with yonder opal streak:The stars in silence shine;Then press thy lips to mine,And rest upon my neck thy fervid cheek.



O sleep, Madonna! sleep;Leave me to watch and weepO’er the sad memory of departed joys,O’er hope’s extinguished beam,O’er fancy’s vanished dream,O’er all that nature gives and man destroys.O wake, Madonna! wake;Even now the purple lakeIs dappled o’er with amber flakes of light;A glow is on the hill;And every trickling rillIn golden threads leaps down from yonder height.O fly, Madonna! fly,Lest day and envy spyWhat only love and night may safely know:Fly, and tread softly, dear!Lest those who hate us hearThe sounds of thy light footsteps as they go.

POLITICAL GEORGICS. (March 1828.)

“Quid faciat lætas segetes,” &c.

How cabinets are form’d, and how destroy’d,How Tories are confirm’d, and Whigs decoy’d,How in nice times a prudent man should vote,At what conjuncture he should turn his coat,The truths fallacious, and the candid lies,And all the lore of sleek majorities,I sing, great Premier. Oh, mysterious two,Lords of our fate, the Doctor and the Jew,If, by your care enriched, the aspiring clerkQuits the close alley for the breezy park,And Dolly’s chops and Reid’s entire resignsFor odorous fricassees and costly wines;And you, great pair, through Windsor’s shades who rove,The Faun and Dryad of the conscious grove;All, all inspire me, for of all I sing,Doctor and Jew, and M—s and K—g.Thou, to the maudlin muse of Rydal dear;Thou more than Neptune, Lowther, lend thine ear.At Neptune’s voice the horse, with flowing maneAnd pawing hoof, sprung from th’ obedient plain;But at thy word the yawning earth, in fright,Engulf’d the victor steed from mortal sight.Haste from thy woods, mine Arbuthnot, with speed,Rich woods, where lean Scotch cattle love to feed:Let Gaffer Gooch and Boodle’s patriot band,



Fat from the leanness of a plundered land,True Cincinnati, quit their patent ploughs,Their new steam-harrows, and their premium sows;Let all in bulky majesty appear,Roll the dull eye, and yawn th’ unmeaning cheer.Ye veteran Swiss, of senatorial wars,Who glory in your well-earned sticks and stars;Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons;Ye smug defaulters; ye obscene buffoons;Come all, of every race and size and form,Corruption’s children, brethren of the worm;From those gigantic monsters who devourThe pay of half a squadron in an hour,To those foul reptiles, doomed to night and scorn,Of filth and stench equivocally born;From royal tigers down to toads and lice;From Bathursts, Clintons, Fanes, to H— and P—;Thou last, by habit and by nature blestWith every gift which serves a courtier best,The lap-dog spittle, the hyæna bile,The maw of shark, the tear of crocodile,Whate’er high station, undetermined yet,Awaits thee in the longing Cabinet,—Whether thou seat thee in the room of Peel,Or from Lord Prig extort the Privy Seal,Or our Field-marshal-Treasurer fix on thee,A legal admiral, to rule the sea,Or Chancery-suits, beneath thy well-known reign,Turn to their nap of fifty years again;(Already L—, prescient of his fate,Yields half his woolsack to thy mightier weight;)Oh! Eldon, in whatever sphere thou shine,For opposition sure will ne’er be thine,Though scowls apart the lonely pride of Grey,Though Devonshire proudly flings his staff away,Though Lansdowne, trampling on his broken chain,Shine forth the Lansdowne of our hearts again,Assist me thou; for well I deem, I seeAn abstract of my ample theme in thee.Thou, as thy glorious self hath justly said,From earliest youth, wast pettifogger bred,And, raised to power by fortune’s fickle will,Art head and heart a pettifogger still.So, where once Fleet-ditch ran confessed, we viewA crowded mart and stately avenue;But the black stream beneath runs on the same,Still brawls in W—’s key,—still stinks like H—’s name.



THE DELIVERANCE OF VIENNA.

Translated From Vincenzio Da Filicaia.

(Published in the “Winter’s Wreath,” Liverpool, 1828.)

“Le corde d’oro elette,” &c.

The chords, the sacred chords of gold,Strike, oh Muse, in measure bold;And frame a sparkling wreath of joyous songsFor that great God to whom revenge belongs.Who shall resist his might,Who marshals for the fightEarthquake and thunder, hurricane and flame?He smote the haughty raceOf unbelieving Thrace,And turned their rage to fear, their pride to shame.He looked in wrath from high,Upon their vast array;And, in the twinkling of an eye,Tambour, and trump, and battle-cry,And steeds, and turbaned infantry,Passed like a dream away.Such power defends the mansions of the just:But, like a city without walls,The grandeur of the mortal fallsWho glories in his strength, and makes not God his trust.The proud blasphemers thought all earth their own;They deemed that soon the whirlwind of their ireWould sweep down tower and palace, dome and spire,The Christian altars and the Augustan throne.And soon, they cried, shall Austria bowTo the dust her lofty brow.The princedoms of AlmayneShall wear the Phrygian chain;In humbler waves shall vassal Tiber roll;And Rome, a slave forlorn,Her laurelled tresses shorn,Shall feel our iron in her inmost soul.Who shall bid the torrent stay?Who shall bar the lightning’s way?Who arrest the advancing vanOf the fiery Ottoman?As the curling smoke wreaths flyWhen fresh breezes clear the sky,Passed away each swelling boast



Of the misbelieving host.From the Hebrus rolling farCame the murky cloud of war,And in shower and tempest dreadBurst on Austria’s fenceless head.But not for vaunt or threatDidst Thou, oh Lord, forgetThe flock so dearly bought, and loved so well.Even in the very hourOf guilty pride and powerFull on the circumcised Thy vengeance fell.Then the fields were heaped with dead,Then the streams with gore were red,And every bird of prey, and every beast,From wood and cavern thronged to Thy great feast.What terror seized the fiends obscene of Nile!How wildly, in his place of doom beneath,Arabia’s lying prophet gnashed his teeth,And cursed his blighted hopes and wasted guile!When, at the bidding of Thy sovereign might,Flew on their destined pathThy messengers of wrath,Riding on storms and wrapped in deepest night.The Phthian mountains saw,And quaked with mystic awe:The proud Sultana of the Straights bowed downHer jewelled neck and her embattled crown.The miscreants, as they raised their eyesGlaring defiance on Thy skies,Saw adverse winds and clouds displayThe terrors of their black array; —Saw each portentous starWhose fiery aspect turned of yore to flightThe iron chariots of the CanaaniteGird its bright harness for a deadlier war.Beneath Thy withering lookTheir limbs with palsy shook;Scattered on earth the crescent banners lay;Trembled with panic fearSabre and targe and spear,Through the proud armies of the rising day.Faint was each heart, unnerved each hand;And, if they strove to charge or stand,Their efforts were as vainAs his who, scared in feverish sleepBy evil dreams, essays to leap,Then backward falls again.With a crash of wild dismay,



Their ten thousand ranks gave way;Fast they broke, and fast they fled;Trampled, mangled, dying, dead,Horse and horseman mingled lay;Till the mountains of the slainRaised the valleys to the plain.Be all the glory to Thy name divine!The swords were our’s; the arm, O Lord, was Thine.Therefore to Thee, beneath whose footstool waitThe powers which erring man calls Chance and Fate,To Thee who hast laid lowThe pride of Europe’s foe,And taught Byzantium’s sullen lords to fear,I pour my spirit outIn a triumphant shout,And call all ages and all lands to hear.Thou who evermore endurest,Loftiest, mightiest, wisest, purest,Thou whose will destroys or saves,Dread of tyrants, hope of slaves,The wreath of glory is from Thee,And the red sword of victory.There where exulting Danube’s floodRuns stained with Islam’s noblest bloodFrom that tremendous field,There where in mosque the tyrants met,And from the crier’s minaretUnholy summons pealed,Pure shrines and temples now shall beDecked for a worship worthy Thee.To Thee thy whole creation paysWith mystic sympathy its praise,The air, the earth, the seas:The day shines forth with livelier beam;There is a smile upon the stream,An anthem on the breeze.Glory, they cry, to Him whose mightHath turned the barbarous foe to flight,Whose arm protects with power divineThe city of his favoured line.The caves, the woods, the rocks, repeat the sound;The everlasting hills roll the long echoes round.But, if Thy rescued church may dareStill to besiege Thy throne with prayer,Sheathe not, we implore Thee, Lord,Sheathe not Thy victorious sword.Still Panonia pines away,Vassal of a double sway:



Still Thy servants groan in chains,Still the race which hates Thee reigns:Part the living from the dead:Join the members to the head:Snatch Thine own sheep from yon fell monster’s hold;Let one kind shepherd rule one undivided fold.He is the victor, only heWho reaps the fruits of victory.We conquered once in vain,When foamed the Ionian waves with gore,And heaped Lepanto’s stormy shoreWith wrecks and Moslem slain.Yet wretched Cyprus never brokeThe Syrian tyrant’s iron yoke.Shall the twice vanquished foeAgain repeat his blow?Shall Europe’s sword be hung to rust in peace?No—let the red-cross ranksOf the triumphant FranksBear swift deliverance to the shrines of GreeceAnd in her inmost heart let Asia feelThe avenging plagues of Western fire and steel.Oh God! for one short moment raiseThe veil which hides those glorious days.The flying foes I see Thee urgeEven to the river’s headlong verge.Close on their rear the loud uproarOf fierce pursuit from Ister’s shoreComes pealing on the wind;The Rab’s wild waters are before,The Christian sword behind.Sons of perdition, speed your flight.No earthly spear is in the rest;No earthly champion leads to fightThe warriors of the West.The Lord of Hosts asserts His old renown,Scatters, and smites, and slays, and tramples down.Fast, fast, beyond what mortal tongue can say,Or mortal fancy dream,He rushes on his prey:Till, with the terrors of the wondrous themeBewildered and appalled, I cease to sing,And close my dazzled eye, and rest my wearied wing.

THE LAST BUCCANEER. (1839.)

The winds were yelling, the waves were swelling,The sky was black and drear,



When the crew with eyes of flame brought the ship without a nameAlongside the last Buccaneer.“Whence flies your sloop full sail before so fierce a gale,When all others drive bare on the seas?Say, come ye from the shore of the holy Salvador,Or the gulf of the rich Caribbees?”“From a shore no search hath found, from a gulf no line can sound,Without rudder or needle we steer;Above, below, our bark, dies the sea fowl and the shark,As we fly by the last Buccaneer.“To night there shall be heard on the rocks of Cape de VerdeA loud crash, and a louder roar;And to-morrow shall the deep, with a heavy moaning, sweepThe corpses and wreck to the shore.”The stately ship of Clyde securely now may rideIn the breath of the citron shades;And Severn’s towering mast securely now flies fast,Through the sea of the balmy Trades.From St. Jago’s wealthy port, from Havannah’s royal fort,The seaman goes forth without fear;For since that stormy night not a mortal hath had sightOf the flag of the last Buccaneer.

EPITAPH ON A JACOBITE. (1845.)

To my true king I offered free from stainCourage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.For him, I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.For him I languished in a foreign clime,Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood’s prime;Heard on Lavernia Scargill’s whispering trees,And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,Each morning started from the dream to weep;Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gaveThe resting place I asked, an early grave.Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,From that proud country which was once mine own,By those white cliffs I never more must see,By that dear language which I spake like thee,Forget all feuds, and shed one English tearO’er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

LINES WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1847.

The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o’er;



Worn out with toil, and noise, and scorn, and spleen,I slumbered, and in slumber saw once moreA room in an old mansion, long unseen.That room, methought, was curtained from the light;Yet through the curtains shone the moon’s cold rayFull on a cradle, where, in linen white,Sleeping life’s first soft sleep, an infant lay.Pale flickered on the hearth the dying flame,And all was silent in that ancient hall,Save when by fits on the low night-wind cameThe murmur of the distant waterfall.And lo! the fairy queens who rule our birthDrew nigh to speak the new born baby’s doom:With noiseless step, which left no trace on earth,From gloom they came, and vanished into gloom.Not deigning on the boy a glance to castSwept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain;More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed,With mincing gait and sneer of cold disdain.The Queen of Power tossed high her jewelled head,And o’er her shoulder threw a wrathful frown:The Queen of Pleasure on the pillow shedScarce one stray rose-leaf from her fragrant crown.Still Fay in long procession followed Fay;And still the little couch remained unblest:But, when those wayward sprites had passed away,Came One, the last, the mightiest, and the best.Oh glorious lady, with the eyes of lightAnd laurels clustering round thy lofty brow,Who by the cradle’s side didst watch that night,Warbling a sweet strange music, who wast thou?“Yes, darling; let them go;” so ran the strain:“Yes; let them go, gain, fashion, pleasure, power,And all the busy elves to whose domainBelongs the nether sphere, the fleeting hour.“Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme,The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign.Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream,Mine all the past, and all the future mine.“Fortune, that lays in sport the mighty low,Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth,Shall leave untouched the gifts which I bestow,The sense of beauty and the thirst of truth.“Of the fair brotherhood who share my grace,I, from thy natal day, pronounce thee free;And, if for some I keep a nobler place,I keep for none a happier than for thee.“There are who, while to vulgar eyes they seem



Of all my bounties largely to partake,Of me as of some rival’s handmaid deem,And court me but for gain’s, power’s, fashion’s sake.“To such, though deep their lore, though wide their fame,Shall my great mysteries be all unknown:But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?“Yes; thou wilt love me with exceeding love;And I will tenfold all that love repay,Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.“For aye mine emblem was, and aye shall be,The ever-during plant whose bough I wear,Brightest and greenest then, when every treeThat blossoms in the light of Time is bare.“In the dark hour of shame, I deigned to standBefore the frowning peers at Bacon’s side:On a far shore I smoothed with tender hand,Through months of pain, the sleepless bed of Hyde:“I brought the wise and brave of ancient daysTo cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone:I lighted Milton’s darkness with the blazeOf the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne.“And even so, my child, it is my pleasureThat thou not then alone shouldst feel me nigh,When, in domestic bliss and studious leisure,Thy weeks uncounted come, uncounted fly;“Not then alone, when myriads, closely pressedAround thy car, the shout of triumph raise;Nor when, in gilded drawing rooms, thy breastSwells at the sweeter sound of woman’s praise.“No: when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow,When weary soul and wasting body pine,Thine am I still, in danger, sickness, sorrow,In conflict, obloquy, want, exile, thine;“Thine, where on mountain waves the snowbirds scream,Where more than Thule’s winter barbs the breeze,Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleamLights the drear May-day of Antarctic seas;“Thine, when around thy litter’s track all dayWhite sandhills shall reflect the blinding glare;Thine, when, through forests breathing death, thy wayAll night shall wind by many a tiger’s lair;“Thine most, when friends turn pale, when traitors fly,When, hard beset, thy spirit, justly proud,For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defyA sullen priesthood and a raving crowd.“Amidst the din of all things fell and vile,



Hate’s yell, and envy’s hiss, and folly’s bray,Remember me; and with an unforced smileSee riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away.“Yes: they will pass away; nor deem it strange:They come and go, as comes and goes the sea:And let them come and go: thou, through all change,Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me.”




TRANSLATION FROM PLAUTUS. (1850.)

[The author passed a part of the summer and autumn of 1850 at Ventnor, in the Isle ofWight. He usually, when walking alone, had with him a book. On one occasion, as hewas loitering in the landslip near Bonchurch, reading the Rudens of Plautus, it struckhim that it might be an interesting experiment to attempt to produce something whichmight be supposed to resemble passages in the lost Greek drama of Diphilus, fromwhich the Rudens appears to have been taken. He selected one passage in the Rudens,of which he then made the following version, which he afterwards copied out at therequest of a friend to whom he had repeated it.]

Act. IV. Sc. vii.Dæmones. O Gripe, Gripe, in ætate hominum plurimæFiunt transennæ, ubi decipiuntur dolis;Atque edepol in eas plerumque esca imponitur.Quam si quis avidus pascit escam avariter,Decipitur in transenna avaritia sua.Ille, qui consulte, docte, atque astute cavet,Diutine uti bene licet partum bene.Mi istæc videtur præda prædatum irier:Ut cum majore dote abeat, quam advenerit.Egone ut, quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam,Celem? Minime istuc faciet noster Dæmones.Semper cavere hoc sapientes æquissimum est,Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficiis suis.Ego, mihi quum lusi, nil moror ullum lucrum.Gripus. Spectavi ego pridem Comicos ad istum modumSapienter dicta dicere, atque iis plaudier,Quum illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo;Sed quum inde suam quisque ibant diversi domum,Nullus erat illo pacto, ut illi jusserant.

ΔΑΙΜ. ? Γρ?πε, Γρ?πε, πλε?στα παγίδων σχήματα?δοι τις ?ν πεπηγμέν’ ?ν θνητ?ν βί?,?α? πλε?στ’ ?π’ α?το?ς δελέαθ’, ω??ν ?πιθυμί??ρεγόμενός τις ?ν ?α?ο?ς ?λίσ?εται·?στις δ’ ?πιστε? ?α? σο??ς ?υλάττεται?αλ?ς ?πολαύει τ?ν ?αλ?ς πεπορισμένων.?ρπαγμα δ’ ο?χ ?ρπαγμ’ ? λάρναξ ο?τοσ?,?λλ’ α?τ?ς, ο?μαι, μ?λλον ?ρπάξει τινά.τόνδ’ ?νδρα ?λέπτειν τ?λλότρι’ — ε??ήμει, τάλαν·ταυτήν γε μ? μαίνοιτο μανίαν Δαιμον?ς.τόδε γ?ρ ?ε? σο?ο?σιν ε?λαβητέον,μή τί ποθ’ ?αυτ? τις ?δί?ημα συννο?·?έρδη δ’ ?μοιγε πάνθ’ ?σοις ε??ραίνομαι,?έρδος δ’ ??ερδ?ς ? το?μ?ν ?λγύνει ?έαρ.ΓΡΙΠ. ??γ? μ?ν ?δη ?ωμι??ν ??ή?οα



σεμν?ς λεγόντων τοιάδε, το?ς δ? θεωμένους?ροτε?ν, ματαίοις ?δομένους σο?ίσμασιν·ε?θ’, ?ς ?π?λθ’ ??αστος ο??αδ’, ο?δεν?ο?δ?ν παρέμεινε τ?ν ?αλ?ς ε?ρημένων.




PARAPHRASE OF A PASSAGE IN THE CHRONICLE OFTHE MONK OF ST. GALL. (1856.)

[In the summer of 1856, the author travelled with a friend through Lombardy. As theywere on the road between Novara and Milan, they were conversing on the subject ofthe legends relating to that country. The author remarked to his companion that Mr.Panizzi, in the Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians, prefixed to hisedition of Bojardo, had pointed out an instance of the conversion of ballad poetry intoprose narrative which strongly confirmed the theory of Perizonius and Niebuhr, uponwhich “The Lays of Ancient Rome” are founded; and, after repeating an extract whichMr. Panizzi has given from the chronicle of “The Monk of St. Gall,” he proceeded toframe a metrical paraphrase. The note in Mr. Panizzi’s work (vol. i. p. 123, note b) ishere copied verbatim.]

‘The monk says that Oger was with Desiderius, King of Lombardy, watching theadvance of Charlemagne’s army. The king often asked Oger where was Charlemagne.Quando videris, inquit, segetem campis inhorrescere, ferreum Padum et Ticinummarinis fluctibus ferro nigrantibus muros civitatis inundantes, tunc est spes Carolivenientis. His nedum expletis primum ad occasum Circino vel Borea cœpit apparere,quasi nubes tenebrosa, quæ diem clarissimam horrentes convertit in umbras. Sedpropiante Imperatore, ex armorum splendore, dies omni nocte tenebrosior oborta estinclusis. Tunc visus est ipse ferreus Carolus ferrea galea cristatus, ferreis manicisarmillatus, &c. &c. His igitur, quæ ego balbus et edentulus, non ut debui circuitutardiore diutius explicare tentavi, veridicus speculator Oggerus celerrimo visucontuitus dixit ad Desiderium: Ecce, habes quem tantopere perquisisti. Et hæc dicens,pene exanimis cecidit.—Monach. Sangal.de Reb. Bel. Caroli Magni. lib. ii. § xxvi. Isthis not evidently taken from poetical effusions?”

PARAPHRASE.To Oggier spake King Didier:“When cometh Charlemagne?We looked for him in harvest:We looked for him in rain.Crops are reaped; and floods are past;And still he is not here.Some token show, that we may knowThat Charlemagne is near.”Then to the King made answerOggier, the christened Dane:“When stands the iron harvest,Ripe on the Lombard plain,That stiff harvest which is reapedWith sword of knight and peer,Then by that sign ye may divineThat Charlemagne is near.



“When round the Lombard citiesThe iron flood shall flow,A swifter flood than Ticin,A broader flood than Po,Frothing white with many a plume,Dark blue with many a spear,Then by that sign ye may divineThat Charlemagne is near.”




INSCRIPTION ON THE STATUE OF LORD WM.BENTINCK. AT CALCUTTA. (1835.)

To William Cavendish Bentinck, Who, during seven years, ruled India with eminentPrudence, Integrity, and Benevolence: Who, placed at the head of a great Empire,never laid aside The simplicity and moderation of a private citizen: Who infused intoOriental despotism the spirit of British Freedom: Who never forgot that the end ofGovernment is The happiness of the Governed: Who abolished cruel rites: Whoeffaced humiliating distinctions: Who gave liberty to the expression of public opinion:Whose constant study it was, to elevate the intellectual And moral character of theNations committed to his charge: This Monument Was erected by men, Who,differing in Race, in Manners, in Language, And in Religion, Cherish, with equalveneration and gratitude, The memory of his wise, upright, And paternalAdministration.




EPITAPH ON SIR BENJAMIN HEATH MALKIN.

At Calcutta. 1837.

This monument Is sacred to the memory Of Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin, Knight, Oneof the Judges of The Supreme Court of Judicature: A man eminently distinguished Byhis literary and scientific attainments, By his professional learning and ability, By theclearness and accuracy of his intellect, By diligence, by patience, by firmness, by loveof truth, By public spirit, ardent and disinterested, Yet always under the guidance ofdiscretion, By rigid uprightness, by unostentatious piety, By the serenity of histemper, And by the benevolence of his heart.

He was born on the 29th September, 1797. He died on the 21st October, 1837.




EPITAPH ON LORD METCALFE. (1847.)

Near this stone is laid Charles Lord Metcalfe, A Statesman tried in many high officesAnd difficult conjunctures, And found equal to all. The three greatest Dependenciesof the British Crown Were successively entrusted to his care. In India, his fortitude,his wisdom, His probity, and his moderation, Are held in honourable remembranceBy men of many races, languages, and religions. In Jamaica, still convulsed by asocial revolution, His prudence calmed the evil passions Which long suffering hadengendered in one class And long domination in another. In Canada, not yetrecovered from the calamities of civilwar, He reconciled contending factions To eachother, and to the Mother Country. Costly monuments in Asiatic and American citiesAttest the gratitude of the nations which he ruled. This tablet records the sorrow andthe pride With which his memory is cherished by his family.

THE END.

london

printed by spottiswoode and co. new-street square

[* ]

Even M. de Chateaubriand, to whom we should have thought all the Bourbons wouldhave seemed at least six feet high, admits this fact. “C’est une erreur,” says he in hisstrange memoirs of the Duke of Berri, “de croire que Louis XIV. étoit d’une hautestature. Une cuirasse qui nous reste de lui, et les exhumations de St. Denys, n’ontlaissé sur ce point aucun doute.”

[* ]O’Meara’s Voice from St. Helena, ii. 170.

[† ]Moniteur, 2nd, 7th, and 9th of August, 1793.

[* ]Vol. ii. 407.

[* ]Moniteur, 31st of July, 1793, and Nonidi, first Decade of Brumaire, in the year 2.

[* ]See the Publiciste of the 14th July, 1793. Marat was stabbed on the evening of the13th.

[* ]M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to excuse this decree. His abuse of England ismerely laughable. England has managed to deal with enemies of a very different sortfrom either himself or his hero. One disgraceful blunder, however, we think it right tonotice.

M. Hippolyte Carnot asserts that a motion similar to that of Barère was made in theEnglish Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion is false. We defy M.



Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and terms of the motion of which he speaks. We donot accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him ofextreme ignorance and temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on whatauthority he has ventured to publish such a fable. He quotes, not the Journals of theLords, not the Parliamentary Debates, but a ranting message of the ExecutiveDirectory to the Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole meaning of which he hasutterly misunderstood.

[* ]

The glass on which the name is written has, as we are informed by a writer in Notesand Queries (2nd S. ix. p. 91), been inclosed in a frame and deposited in theManuscript Room of the College Library, where it is still to be seen.

[* ]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,thirty-two 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 houseat the head of the court, on the left hand, going from the Old Bailey. See Notes andQueries (2nd S. ix. 280).

[* ]Mr. Black has pointed out that this is inaccurate: the life of Nash has been twicereprinted; once in Mr. Prior’s edition (vol. iii. p. 249), and once in Mr. Cunningham’sedition (vol. iv. p. 35).

[* ]The speech with which the King opened the session of 1785, concluded with anassurance that His Majesty would heartily concur in every measure which could tendto secure the true principles of the constitution. These words were at the timeunderstood to refer to Pitt’s Reform Bill.



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