EARL STANHOPE, D.C.L., F.R.S.

Ir was said, with reference to the subject of our memoir, by a no less pointed observer than the late Lord Macaulay, that “ industry and a taste for intellectual pleasures are peculiarly respectable in those who can afford to be idle, and who have every temptation to be dissipated. It is impossible not to wish success to a man who, finding himself placed, without any exertion or any merit on his part, above the mass of society, voluntarily descends from his eminence in search of distinctions which he may justly call his own." Thirty years have transpired since these sentences were written; the allusion to the early youth of the writer is now no longer appropriate, and the wished-for success has since been amply attained, but the sentiment comprised in the above lines is still the most natural that occurs to the mind in contemplating the prosperous literary career of a noble author.

Lord Stanhope has had the somewhat rare distinction of conferring celebrity upon both his titles, having already taken rank as an historian before he succeeded to the peerage. The reader may be not unwilling to be reminded that the founder of the earldom was a grandson of the first and celebrated Lord Chesterfield, whose younger son, Alexander, was Minister successively at Madrid and the Hague. His letters during his residence in Spain were published by the present Lord Stanhope in 1840. The eldest son of the Hon. Alexander Stanhope, after serving as a volunteer in the wars of William III., and in the expedition against Vigo in 1702, was, a few years afterwards, appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Spain. It was whilst he was serving in this capacity that the island of Minorca, with its harbour of Port Mahon, fell into his hands, from which event the second title of the family is derived. The earldom was acquired some years later,

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after the successful Commander had filled various high offices of State under George I.

The third in descent from James, first Earl of Stanhope, the present Earl's grandfather, was the inventor of the Stanhope printingpress, and of improvements in navigation and many other of the arts. He married Hester, daughter of the great Earl of Chatham, and the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope was one of their children. He was remembered also for his political eccentricities, especially his adoption of republican sentiments, and his surrender of the outward distinctions of the peerage. Philip Henry, the fourth Earl, was remarkable for his attachment to the institutions and society of Germany, of which nation he was almost as much a member as of his native country. His son, the present Earl, was born at Walmer in 1805, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the ordinary degrees.

No one doubts that the actions, military and civil, of his great ancestor were the inducements which directed Earl Stanhope's historical studies in the course they have taken. The War of the Succession in Spain,' of which the first edition appeared in 1832, was compiled to no small extent from the manuscript papers of General Stanhope, still preserved at the family seat, Chevening, Kent. This work was dedicated, with warm expressions of public admiration and personal regard, to the Duke of Wellington; and after having been grimly approved by the then Mr. Macaulay, with a magisterial severity natural to an Edinburgh reviewer sitting in judgment on a young Tory lord, it passed into a second edition, and has since been republished in more than one form. This was followed, in the year 1839, by the appearance of the first volume of Lord Mahon's History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles,' continued, in seven volumes, at intervals down to the year 1854,—a work which has long taken its place as one of our standard English Classics. In this history, the merits, already pointed out by the Edinburgh reviewer, of "great diligence in examining authorities, great judgment in weighing testimony, and great impartiality in estimating characters," were again conspicuous. Lord Mahon was still engaged in the congenial field of describing events in which the first Earl Stanhope played a leading part; but he had also to describe the conduct of the Earl of Peterborough, and lays claim, with justice, to have placed the character of his ancestor's rival on a higher level

than it had previously occupied in history. The stores of knowledge acquired by the writer are never forced on the reader's attention; but those who are gratified with the flow of Lord Mahon's matured writings will be mistaken if they conclude that what appears to be unlaboured is therefore inaccurate. Ars celare artem. The author had also the decided advantage, which he has enjoyed in all his works of eminence, in being able to bring forward stores of original matter to enrich the details of history. Some peculiarities of style, such as a sententiousness pronounced by the Edinburgh reviewer to be " oracular," and a want of ease in composition, were so far corrected, that in 1836 another writer in the same Review is found to approve the unaffected diction of the author, "accompanied by an occasional mixture of familiar phrases which are by no means displeasing." The same (politically hostile) reviewer declares the reflections to be "benevolent and humane, and, when not biassed by party politics, to be generally liberal.”

In 1829, three years previous to this publication, Lord Mahon published a 'Life of Belisarius,' pointing out some errors into which Gibbon had fallen; and the success of this attempt was acknowledged at home and abroad, amongst others by Von Hammer, a critic of eminence at Vienna. In 1845 he edited Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters,' and at intervals from 1833 to 1846 he was the writer of articles, mainly historical, in the Quarterly Review.' Some of these, 'Joan of Arc' for example, have been published in a cheap and popular form; and the whole series was issued in the year 1849 collectively, as part of 'Murray's Home and Colonial Library.' In the same series appeared, in 1845, the admirable biography, the 'Life of Condé.' An extract from the History of England' made its appearance in 1838 under the title of 'The Rise of our Indian Empire;' and a similar excerpt, under the name of Lord Mahon's History of the American Revolution,' has been commented on in North American Reviews.

Shortly after his elevation to the peerage, in 1855, Lord Stanhope again took a conspicuous place in the public eye, as being one of the literary executors of Sir Robert Peel. Upon the death of that statesman, the world at large became aware that his papers had been bequeathed to Lord Mahon and Mr. Cardwell, upon trust for publication, in terms which left it entirely with them to decide on the period and on the mode of making them public, "and in full assurance that they would so exercise the discretion given to them

that no honourable confidence should be betrayed, no private feelings be unnecessarily wounded, and no public interests injuriously affected, in consequence of premature or indiscreet publication.” This codicil was dated in March, 1849; Sir R. Peel died in May, 1850; and in 1856 Lord Stanhope and Mr. Cardwell, in the exercise of their discretion, produced the first volume of the Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel,' containing letters and papers relating to the Roman Catholic Question in 1828 and 1829. In the following year appeared the second volume of the Memoirs,' comprising documents bearing in like manner on the New Government from 1834 to 1835, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws from 1845 to 1846. The title 'Memoirs' may be objected to as being ambiguous, the volumes containing no narrative, but simply a collection of papers; these, however, are of the very highest value, as being authentic materials for the history of the period.

This publication has since been surpassed as a literary effort by the Life of William Pitt,' which has recently appeared in four volumes. This work is now in the hands of every student of modern history, and of a wide circle of general readers. It has been truly described as filling up a niche in biography heretofore unoccupied; it is everywhere faithful, simple, exact, and unlaboured; and it is founded, to a great extent, upon new and valuable documents, such as the letters of Pitt to his mother, and to his brother, the Earl of Chatham, and the correspondence of King George III. with the minister; a series of letters which has placed in an unexpectedly favourable light the abilities of a Sovereign which it has been the fashion of late, in some quarters, to depreciate.

The above list is not an exhaustive catalogue of Lord Stanhope's published works; but it embraces the main particulars, and may be closed with a notice of the collection of Miscellanies,' chiefly in prose, which has been issued this year. This small volume contains some hitherto unpublished letters of Pitt, Burke, Windham, Sir R. Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and others, too important to be overlooked by the future historian, though of indirect bearing only on the events which he narrates.

Turning to the career of Lord Stanhope in public and political life, we find that he was first returned to Parliament as member for Wootton Bassett in October, 1830. When this borough was consigned, in the following year, to the limbo of Schedule A of the Reform Bill, notwithstanding a hopeless protest from its re

presentative, who both voted and spoke against the bill, Lord Mahon sat in the first Reformed Parliament for Hertford. Here he became a supporter of Sir R. Peel, as much from personal as political attachment; and during his short administration filled the office of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the leadership of the Duke. In this capacity, in March, 1835, he defended the then pending appointment of Lord Londonderry as ambassador to Russia. After 1835, Lord Mahon went into opposition on Foreign Affairs, devoting himself especially to the then engrossing topic of Spanish politics. He diverged also largely into other subjects. In the Copyright discussions he took a leading part, voting first of all against Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's proposal for an extension of copyright to sixty years; and subsequently, in 1842, obtaining leave to bring in the bill on this subject which is now the law. Serjeant Talfourd had in 1841 declined standing again for Reading, and was not now in the House; and Lord Mahon adopted his measure, with the important variation of cutting down the term of sixty years to twenty-five, suggesting also a power (not afterwards granted) to the Privy Council of preventing the suppression of valuable works by the representatives of the deceased author. In April, 1842, Lord Mahon delivered one of his most elaborate and best-remembered speeches on the whole question of copyright, illustrating his argument with literary recollections and memoranda in a manner which was equally novel and attractive to Parliament. He was followed by Mr. Macaulay, in a brilliant oration similar in style. By the law at that time, copyright was for life or for twenty-eight years. Lord Mahon's proposition was to extend the right to the limits of life and forty-two years. Mr. Macaulay's amendment was that it should be enjoyed for life or for forty-two years, and this regulation (with the additional proviso that, when the case arose, it should extend also for seven years after the author's death), after repeated divisions, was ultimately carried. In the same year we find Lord Mahon advocating the cause of dramatic authorship, and assailing the licensing system. International and colonial copyright were branches of the former subject, to which it was natural that the mover of the English Copyright Act should turn his attention.

From the 5th of August, 1845, to the close of the second Peel administration (July, 1846), Lord Stanhope occupied the post of Secretary to the Board of Control. As a necessary condition of