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right and the Whigs in the wrong. That question was, whether England ought to conclude peace without exacting from Philip a resignation of the Spanish crown.

might become heir by blood to the French crown, and that thus two great monarchies might be united under one sovereign.

The first danger appears to us altogether chimerical. Family affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes. The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than those of consanguinity. The Elector of Bavaria had been driven from his dominions by his father-inlaw; Victor Amadeus was in arms against his sons-in-law; Anne was seated on a throne from which she had assisted to push a most indulgent father. It is true that Philip had been accustomed from childhood to regard his grandfather with profound veneration. It was probable, therefore, that the influence of Louis at Madrid would be very great; but Louis was more than seventy years old; he could not live long; his heir was an infant in the cradle. There was surely no reason to think that the policy of the King of Spain would be swayed by his regard for a nephew whom he had never seen.

No parliamentary struggle from the time of the Exclusion Bill to the time of the Reform Bill, has been so violent as that which took place between the authors of the Treaty of Utrecht and the War Party. The Commons were for peace; the Lords were for vigorous hostilities. The queen was compelled to choose which of her two highest prerogatives she would exercise: whether she would create Peers or dissolve the Parliament. The ties of party superseded the ties of neighbourhood and of blood; the members of the hostile factions would scarcely speak to each other or bow to each other; the women appeared at the theatres bearing the badges of their political sect. The schism extended to the most remote counties of England. Talents such as had never before been displayed in political controvery were enlisted in the service of the hostile parties. On the one side was Steele, gay, lively, drunk with animal spirits and with factious animosity; and Addison, with his polished satire, his inexhaustible fertility of fancy, and his graceful simplicity of style. In the front of the opposite ranks appeared a darker and fiercer spirit-the apostate politician, the ribald priest, the perjured lover-a heart burning with hatred against the whole human race-a mind richly stored with images from the dunghill and the lazar-house. The ministers triumphed, and the peace was concluded. Then came the reaction. A new sovereign ascended the throne. The Whigs enjoyed the confidence of the king and of the Parliament. The unjust severity with which the Tories had treated Marlborough and Walpole was more than retaliated. Harley and Prior were thrown into prison; Bolingbroke and Ormond were compelled to take refuge in a foreign land. The wounds inflicted in this desperate conflict continued to rankle for many years. It was long before the mem- The second danger was, that Philip might bers of either party could discuss the question have succeeded to the crown of his native of the peace of Utrecht with calmness and im-country. This did not happen. But it might partiality. That the Whig ministers had sold us to the Dutch, and the Tory ministers had sold us to the French; that the war had been carried on only to fill the pockets of Marlborough; that the peace had been concluded only to facilitate the bringing over the Pretender; these imputations and many others, utterly un-tained possession of the Spanish crown had founded or grossly exaggerated, were hurled backward and forward by the political disputants of the last century. In our time the question may be discussed without irritation. We will state, as concisely as possible, the reasons which have led us to the conclusion at which we have arrived.

The dangers which were to be apprehended from the peace were two; first, the danger that Philip might be induced, by feelings of private affection, to act in strict concert with the elder branch of his house, to favour the French trade at the expense of England, and to side with the French government in future wars; secondly, the danger that the posterity of the Duke of Burgundy might become extinct, that Philip VOL. II-27

In fact, soon after the peace the two branches of the house of Bourbon began to quarrel. A close alliance was formed between Philip and Charles, lately competitors for the Castilian crown. A Spanish princess, betrothed to the King of France, was sent back in the most insulting manner to her native country, and a decree was put forth by the court of Madrid commanding every Frenchman to leave Spain. It is true that, fifty years after the peace of Utrecht, an alliance of peculiar strictness was formed between the French and Spanish governmes. But it is certain that both governments were actuated on that occasion, not by domestic affection, but by common interests and common enmities. Their compact, though called the Family Compact, was as purely a political compact as the league of Cambrai or the league of Pilnitz.

have happened; and at one time it seemed very likely to happen. A sickly child alone stood between the King of Spain and the heritage of Louis the Fourteenth. Philip, it is true, solemnly renounced his claims to the French crown. But the manner in which he had ob

lately proved the inefficacy of such ren ancia tions. The French lawyers declared the renunciation null, as being inconsistent with the fundamental law of the monarchy. The French people would probably have sided with him whom they would have considered as the rightful heir. Saint Simon, though much less the slave of prejudice than most of his coun trymen, and though strongly attached to the regent, declared, in the presence of that prince, that he never would support the claims of the house of Orleans against those of the King of Spain. "If such," he said, "be my feel ings, what must be the feelings of others?" Bolingbroke, it is certain, was fully convinced that the renunciation was worth no more than

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the paper on which it was written, and de- we think that an estimate approximating to manded it only for the purpose of blinding the English Parliament and people.

the truth, may, without much difficulty, be formed. The allies had been victorious in Germany, Italy, and Flanders. It was by no means improbable that they might fight their way into the very heart of France. But at no time since the commencement of the war had their prospects been so dark in that country which was the very object of the struggle. In Spain they held only a few square leagues. The temper of the great majority of the nation was decidedly hostile to them. If they had persisted, if they had obtained success equal to their highest expectations, if they had gained a series of victories as splendid as those of Blenheim and Ramilies, if Paris had fallen, if

Yet, though it was at one time probable that the posterity of the Duke of Burgundy would become extinct, and though it is almost certain that if the posterity of the Duke of Burgundy had become extinct, Philip would have successfully preferred his claim to the crown of France, we still defend the principle of the Treaty of Utrecht. In the first place, Charles had, soon after the battle of Villa Viciosa, inherited, by the death of his elder brother, all the dominions of the house of Austria. It might be argued, that if to these dominions he had added the whole monarchy of Spain, the balance of power would be seriously endan-Louis had been a prisoner, we still doubt gered. The union of the Austrian dominions and Spain would not, it is true, have been so alarming an event as the union of France and Spain. But Charles was actually emperor. Philip was not, and never might be, King of France. The certainty of the less evil might well be set against the chance of the greater evil.

But, in fact, we do not believe that Spain would long have remained under the government either of the emperor or of the King of France. The character of the Spanish people was a better security to the nations of Europe than any will, any instrument of renunciation, or any treaty. The same energy which the people of Castile had put forth when Madrid was occupied by the allied armies, they would have again put forth as soon as it appeared that their country was about to become a province of France. Though they were no longer masters abroad, they were by no means disposed to see foreigners set over them at home. If Philip had become King of France, and had attempted to govern Spain by mandates from Versailles, a second Grand Alliance would easily have effected what the first had failed to accomplish. The Spanish nation would have rallied against him as zealously as it had before rallied round him. And of this he seems to have been fully aware. For many years the favourite hope of his heart was that he might ascend the throne of his grandfather; but he seems never to have thought it possible that he could reign at once in the country of his adoption and in the country of his birth.

These were the dangers of the peace; and they seem to us to be of no very formidable kind. Against these dangers are to be set off the evils of war and the risk of failure. The evils of the war-the waste of life, the suspension of trade, the expenditure of wealth, the accumulation of debt-require no illustration. The chances of failure it is difficult at this disance of time to calculate with accuracy. But

whether they would have accomplished their object. They would still have had to carry on interminable hostilities against the whole population of a country which affords peculiar facilities to irregular warfare; and in which invading armies suffer more from famine than from the sword.

We are, therefore, for the peace of Utrecht. It is true, that we by no means admire the statesmen who concluded that peace. Hariey, we believe, was a solemn trifler. St. John a brilliant knave. The great body of their fol lowers consisted of the country clergy and the country gentry; two classes of men who were then immeasurably inferior in respectability and intelligence to decent shopkeepers or farmers of our time. Parson Barnabas, Par son Trulliber, Sir Wilful Witwould, Sir Francis Wronghead, Squire Western, Squire Sul len-such were the people who composed the main strength of the Tory party for sixty years after the Revolution. It is true, that the means by which the Tories came into power in 1710 were most disreputable. It is true, that the manner in which they used their power was often unjust and cruel. It is true, that in order to bring about their favourite project of peace, they resorted to slander and deception, without the slightest scruple. It is true, that they passed off on the British nation a renunciation which they knew to be invalid. It is true, that they gave up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip, in a manner inconsistent with humanity and national honour. But on the great question of Peace or War, we cannot but think that, though their motives may have been selfish and malevolent, their decision was beneficial to the state.

But we have already exceeded our limits. It remains only for us to bid Lord Mahon heartily farewell, and to assure him, that whatever dislike we may feel for his political opinions, we shall always meet him with pleasure on the neutral ground of literature.

WALPOLE'S LETTERS TO SIR HORACE MANN.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1833.]

WE cannot transcribe this title-page without strong feelings of regret. The editing of these volumes was the last of the useful and modest services rendered to literature by a nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the slightest ostentation. He had two merits, both of which are rarely found together in a commentator. He was content to be merely a commentator-to keep in the background, and to leave the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. Yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a slave; nor did he consider it as part of his editorial duty to see no faults in the writer to whom he faithfully and assiduously rendered the humblest literary offices.

The faults of Horace Walpole's head and heart are indeed sufficiently glaring. His writings, it is true, rank as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburgh pies among the dishes described in the Almanack des Gourmands. But, as the pâté-defoie-gras owes its excellence to the diseases of the wretched animal which furnishes it, and would be good for nothing if it were not made of livers preternaturally swollen, so none but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could have produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole.

He was, unless we have formed a very erroneous judgment of his character, the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious of men. His mind was a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations. His features were covered by mask within mask. When the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man. He played innumerable parts, and overacted them all. When he talked misanthropy, he out-Timoned Timon. When he talked philanthropy, he left Howard at an immeasurable distance. He scoffed at courts, and kept a chronicle of their most trifling scandal; at society, and was blown about by its slightest veerings of opinion; at literary fame, and left fair copies of his private letters, with copious notes, to be published after his decease; at rank, and never for a moment forgot that he was an honourable; at the practice of entail, and tasked the ingenuity of conveyancers to tie up his villa in the strictest settlement.

Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Ho. race Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany. Now first published from the Originals in the possession of the EARL of WALDGRAVE. Edited by LORD DOVER. 3 vols. Bvo. London. 1833.

The conformation of his mind was such, that whatever was little, seemed to him great, and whatever was great, seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business. To chat with bluestockings; to write little copies of complimentary verses on little occasions; to superintend a private press; to preserve from natural decay the perishable topics of Ranelagh and White's; to record divorces and bets, Miss Chudleigh's absurdities and George Selwyn's good sayings; to decorate a grotesque house with piecrust battlements; to procure rare engravings and antique chimney-boards; to match odd gauntlets; to lay out a maze of walks within five acres of ground-these were the grave employments of his long life. From these he turned to politics as to an amusement. After the labours of the print-shop and the auctionroom, he unbent his mind in the House of Commons. And, having indulged in the recreation of making laws and voting millions he returned to more important pursuits-to researches after Queen Mary's comb, Wolsey's red hat, the pipe which Van Tromp smoked during his last seafight, and the spur which King William struck into the flank of Sorrel.

In every thing in which he busied himself-in the fine arts, in literature, in public affairs he was drawn by some strange attraction from the great to the little, and from the useful to the odd. The politics in which he took the keenest interest were politics scarcely deserv ing of the name. The growlings of George the Second, the flirtations of Princess Emily with the Duke of Grafton, the amours of Prince Frederic with Lady Middlesex, the squabbles between Gold Stick and the Master of the Buck. hounds, the disagreements between the tutors of Prince George-these matters engaged almost all the attention which Walpole could spare from matters more important still;—from bidding for Zinckes and Petitots, from cheapening fragments of tapestry, and handles of old lances, from joining bits of painted glass, and from setting up memorials of departed cats and dogs. While he was fetching and carrying the gossip of Kensington Palace and Carlton House, he fancied that he was engaged in politics, and when he recorded that gossip, he fancied that he was writing history.

He was, as he has himself told us, fond of faction as an amusement. He loved mischief. but he loved quiet; and he was constantly on the watch for opportunities of gratifying both his tastes at once. He sometimes contrived, without showing himself, to disturb the course of ministerial negotiations, and to spread confusion through the political circles. He does not himself pretend that, on these occasions,

he was actuated by public spirit; nor does he appear to have had any private advantage in view. He thought it a good practical joke to set public men together by the ears; and he enjoyed their perplexities, their accusations, and their recriminations, as a malicious boy enjoys the embarrassment of a misdirected traveller.

About politics, in the high sense of the word, he knew nothing and cared nothing. He called himself a Whig. His father's son could searcely assume any other name. It pleased him also to affect a foolish aversion to kings as kings, and a foolish love and admiration of rebels as rebels; and, perhaps, while kings were not in danger, and while rebels were not in being, he really believed that he held the doctrines which he professed. To go no farther than the letters now before us, he is perpetually boasting to his friend Mann of his aversion to royalty and to royal persons. He calls the crime of Damien "that least bad of murders, the murder of a king." He hung up in his villa a fac-simile of the death-warrant of Charles, with the inscription, "Major Charta." Yet the most superficial knowledge of history might have taught him that the Restoration, and the crimes and follies of the twenty-eight years which followed the Restoration, were the effects of this "Greater Charter." Nor was there much in the means by which the instrument was obtained which could gratify a judicious lover of liberty. A man must hate kings very bitterly, before he can think it desirable that the representatives of the people should be turned out of doors by dragoons, in order to get at a king's head. Walpole's Whigism, however, was of a very harmless kind. He kept it, as he kept the old spears and helmets at Strawberry Hill, merely for show. He would just as soon have thought of taking down the arms of the ancient Templars and Hospitallers from the walls of his hall, and setting off on a crusade to the Holy Land, as of acting in the spirit of those daring warriors and statesmen, great even in their errors, whose names and seals were affixed to the warrant which he prized so highly. He liked revolution and regicide only when they were a hundred years old. His republicanism, like the courage of a bully or the love of a fribble, was strong and ardent when there was no occasion for it, and subsided when he had an opportunity of bringing it to the proof. As soon as the revolutionary spirit really began to stir in Europe, as soon as the hatred of kings became something more than a sonorous phrase, he was frightened into a fanatical royalist, and became one of the most extravagant alarmists of those wretched times. In truth, his talk about liberty, whether he knew it or not, was from the beginning a mere cant, the remains of a phraseology which had meant something in the mouths of those from whom he had learned it, but which, in his mouth, meant about as much as the oath by which the Knights of the Bath bind themselves to redress the wrongs of all injured ladies. He had been fed in his boyhood with Whig speculations on government. He must often have seen, at

Houghton or in Downing street, men who had been Whigs when it was as dangerous to be a Whig as to be a highwayman; men who had voted for the exclusion bill, who had been con cealed in garrets and cellars after the battle of Sedgmoor, and who had set their names to the declaration that they would live and die with the Prince of Orange. He had acquired the language of these men, and he repeated it by rote, though it was at variance with all his tastes and feelings; just as some old Jacobite families persisted in praying for the Pretender, and passing their glasses over the water-decanter when they drank the king's health, long after they had become zealous supporters of the government of George the Third. He was a Whig by the accident of hereditary connec tion; but he was essentially a courtier, and not the less a courtier because he pretended to sneer at the object which excited his admiration and envy. His real tastes perpetually show themselves through the thin disguise. While professing all the contempt of Bradshaw or Ludlow for crowned heads, he took the trouble to write a book concerning Royal Au thors. He pried with the utmost anxiety into the most minute particulars relating to the royal family. When he was a child, he was haunted with a longing to see George the First, and gave his mother no peace till she had found a way of gratifying his curiosity. The same feeling, covered with a thousand disguises, attended him to the grave. No observation that dropped from the lips of majesty seemed to him too trifling to be recorded. The French songs of Prince Frederic, compositions certainly not deserving of preservation on ac count of their intrinsic merit, have been carefully preserved for us by this contemner of royalty. In truth, every page of Walpole's works betrayed him. This Diogenes, who would be thought to prefer his tub to a palace, and who has nothing to ask of the masters of Windsor and Versailles but that they will stand out of his light, is a gentleman-usher at heart.

He had, it is plain, an uneasy consciousness of the frivolity of his favourite pursuits; and this consciousness produced one of the most diverting of his ten thousand affectations. His busy idleness, his indifference to matters which the world generally regards as important, his passion for trifles, he thought fit to dignify with the name of philosophy. He spoke of himself as of a man whose equanimity was proof to ambitious hopes and fears; who had learned to rate power, wealth, and fame at their true value, and whom the conflict of parties, the rise and fall of statesmen, the ebbs and flows of public opinion, moved only to a smile of mingled compassion and disdain. It was owing to the peculiar elevation of his character, that he cared about a lath and plaster pinnacle more than about the Middlesex election, and about a miniature of Grammont more than about the American Revolution. Pitt and Murray might talk themselves hoarse about trifles. But questions of government and wa: were too insignificant to detain a mind which was occupied in recording the scandal of club

oms and the whispers of the backstairs, and which was even capable of selecting and disposing chairs of ebony and shields of rhinoceros-skin.

affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton.

His judgment of literature, of contemporary literature especially, was altogether perverted One of his innumerable whims was an ex- by his aristocratical feelings. No writer surely treme dislike to be considered as a man of let- was ever guilty of so much false and absurd ters. Not that he was indifferent to literary criticism. He almost invariably speaks with fame. Far from it. Scarcely any writer has contempt of those books which are now univerever troubled himself so much about the ap- sally allowed to be the best that appeared in pearance which his works were to make before his time; and, on the other hand, he speaks of posterity. But he had set his heart on incom- writers of rank and fashion as if they were patible objects. He wished to be a celebrated entitled to the same precedence in literature author, and yet to be a mere idle gentleman- which would have been allowed to them in a one of those epicurean gods of the earth who drawing-room. In these letters, for example, do nothing at all, and who pass their existence he says, that he would rather have written the in the contemplation of their own perfections. most absurd lines in Lee than Thomson's He did not like to have any thing in common "Seasons." The periodical paper called "The with the wretches who lodged in the little World," on the other hand, was by "our first courts behind St. Martin's Church, and stole writers." Who, then, were the first writers of out on Sundays to dine with their bookseller. England in the year 1753? Walpole has told He avoided the society of authors. He spoke us in a note. Our readers will probably guess with lordly contempt of the most distinguished that Hume, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, among them. He tried to find out some way Johnson, Warburton, Collins, Akenside, Gray, of writing books, as M. Jourdain's father sold Dyer, Young, Warton, Mason, or some of cloth, without derogating from his character those distinguished men, were on the list. Not of gentilhomme. "Lui, marchand? C'est pure one of them. Our first writers, it seems, were médisance: il ne l'a jamais été. Tout ce qu'il Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. White faisait, c'est qu'il était fort obligeant, fort offi- head, Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyns, cieux; et comme il se connaissait, fort bien | Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry. Of these seven en étoffes, il en allait choisir de tous les côtés, gentlemen, Whitehead was the lowest in sta les faisait apporter chez lui, et en donnait à tion, but was the most accomplished tuft-hunter ses amis pour de l'argent." There are several of his time. Coventry was of a noble family. amusing instances of Lis feeling on this sub- The other five had among them two peerages, ject in the letters now before us. Mann had two seats in the House of Commons, three complimented him on the learning which ap-seats in the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue peared in the "Catalogue of Royal and Noble riband, a red riband, about a hundred thousand Authors" and it is curious to see how impa-pounds a year, and not ten pages that are worth tiently Walpole bore the imputation of having reading. The writings of Whitehead, Camattended to any thing so unfashionable as the bridge, Coventry, and Lord Bath are forgotten. improvement of his mind. "I know nothing. Soame Jenyns is remembered chiefly by John How should I? I who have always lived inson's review of the foolish Essay on the Origin the big busy world; who lie a-bed all the morning, calling it morning as long as you please; who sup in company; who have played at faro half my life, and now at loo till two and three in the morning; who have always loved pleasure, haunted auctions... How I have laughed when some of the Magazines have called me the learned gentleman. Pray don't be like the Magazines." This folly might be pardoned in a boy. But a man of forty-three, as Walpole then was, ought to be quite as much ashamed of playing at loo till three every morning, as of being so vulgar a thing as a learned gen-Gallicisms than that of any other English

tleman.

The literary character has undoubtedly its full share of faults, and of very serious and offensive faults. If Walpole had avoided those faults, we could have pardoned the fastidiousness with which he declined all fellowship with men of learning. But from those faults Walpole was not one jot more free than the garreteers from whose contact he shrank. Of literary meannesses and literary vices, his life and his works contain as many instances as the life and the works of any member of Johnson's club. The fact is, that Walpole had the faults of Grub street, with a large addition from St. James's street, the vanity, the jealousy, the irritability of a man of letters, the

of Evil. Lord Chesterfield stands much lower in the estimation of posterity than he wd have done if his letters had never been p lished. The lampoons of Sir Charles Williams are now read only by the curious; and, though not without occasional flashes of wit, have always seemed to us, we must own, very poor performances.

Walpole judged of French literature after the same fashion. He understood and loved the French language. Indeed, he loved it too well. His style is more deeply tainted with

writer with whom we are acquainted. His composition often reads, for a page together, like a rude translation from the French. We meet every minute with such sentences as these, "One knows what temperaments Annibal Caracci painted." "The impertinent person. age!" "She is dead rich." "Lord Dalkeith is dead of the small-pox in three days." "What was ridiculous, the man who seconded the motion happened to be shut out." "It wil. now be seen whether he or they are most pa triot."

His love of the French language was of a peculiar kind. He loved it as having been fo a century the vehicle of all the polite nothings of Europe: as the sign by which the freema

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