passed them, and indeed all men of his time, in his admirable mildness and placidity of temper. "So cheerful was ever his mien, and so unruffled his composure, that it seemed scarcely an effort to him to wage the warfare of debate even against such adversaries. Indeed his great difficulty during the violent volleys of attacks that were often poured upon him as he sat upon the Treasury Bench, was to keep himself awake!"* Many a keen opponent, adds Earl Stanhope, charging him to his face with the heaviest crimes and misdemeanours, must have felt not a little disconcerted at seeing the object of all his vehemence dropping by degrees into a gentle doze, and only roused by his neighbours' elbows into starts of watchfulness. If ever there were member of that House, not filling the chair, who could have appreciated Mackworth Praed's witty" Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!" the Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon was the man. He might have been taken for Thomson's "comely, full-spread porter, swoln with sleep," whose -calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose;

And in sweet torpor he was plungèd deep,

Ne could himself from ceaseless yawning keep,t

when some heavy squire or blatant faction-monger was upon his legs. Nudged by a colleague, stirred up by some acute-angled elbow, the Minister would enliven the House with his hilarious demolition of the last speaker, and then, like the master porter aforesaid,

-this done, right fain

He sat him down, and turned to sleep again.‡

He reminds one of Saint-Simon's description of La Fare, " d'une grosseur démesurée, à demi apoplectique, dormant partout, et (ce qui était surprenant) se réveillant net de manière à reprendre le propos là où il le fallait."§ Walpole proposed this motto for Lord North, in consideration of his facile principate in the domains of joking and napping, Aut dormitabo aut ridebo. Possibly it was Walpole himself that penned the profane epigram (in 1780) on St. Stephen's Chapel:

To Stephen sacred was this House of yore,

And still its inmates the same Saint adore;
By throwing dirt his festival they keep,
And pelted North, like Stephen, falls asleep.

Not so offensively profane, nevertheless, and very much wittier, than Burke's celebrated "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." Burke's wit at its worst, always seems to us the very worst of bad wit.

Out of office, Lord North could breathe freely again, and sleep a little more than ever. It is pleasant to see how Horace Walpole gradually tones down his diatribes, and finds out the good there is in the ex-Minister after all. True, he came to see him more closely than before, and through quite another medium than the atmosphere of St. Stephen's, for they became neighbours, and visited, and who could withstand Lord North in social life? "He is very good company," writes Horace, the very month of the resignation (March, 1782): "I cannot be suspected of paying

* Mahon, ch. xlviii.

Ibid. 26.

† Castle of Indolence, canto i. st. 24. § See Sainte-Beuve's essay on l'Abbé de Chaulieu.

|_ Public Advertiser, Feb. 10th, 1780. Jan.-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXIX.

F

court," &c., so that Strawberry Hill can go to Bushy, and enjoy its amenities, with a clear conscience. The Parliamentary allusions to his lordship are now innocent enough: "The late Premier consoles himself with bon-mots. On Tuesday in the House of Commons he sat opposite to the Treasury bench: somebody said, 'I see, my Lord, you have taken your place;' he replied, 'Yes, a place for life." " At that time, April, 1782, he could have thought as little as any man of his return to the Treasury bench, within twelve months, with Charles Fox for his righthand man. This coalition, indeed, reawakens all the latent animosity in Walpole's bosom, and makes him write to Mann (March, 1783) that "Lord North has lately shown himself a dexterous politician for his own interests, though a most fatal Minister to us, and uncreditable to himself, and not very grateful to his master. Still, such was our blindness, he was the most popular man in England, even after his fall; but that vision is dispelled, and he will be seen hereafter in his true colours, as a bad Minister and a solfish man, who had abilities enough to have made a very different figure." An English statesman, it has been said by Lord Macaulay, ought to pay assiduous worship to Nemesis, to be most apprehensive of ruin when he is at the height of power and popularity, and to dread his enemy most when most completely prostrated. "The fate of the Coalition Ministry in 1784 is perhaps the strongest instance in our history of the operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and most extended Ministry that ever existed into a feeble Opposition, and raised a King who was talking of retiring to Hanover to a height of power which none of his predecessors had enjoyed since the Revolution."‡ Lord John Russell traces not only the rout of the Whig Party, and the Pitt administration, but the Wars of the French Revolution, to this "fatal event," the North-and-Fox Coalition. Rightly enough he pronounces Fox "not justified" in joining a man he had branded not merely with incapacity, but with duplicity, treachery, and falsehood-a man whom he had wished to see punished as the author of huge national calamities, and whom he now aided to return to power.§ Fox had even given utterance to a monstrous insinuation as to the repugnant aversion with which he would shrink from being in a room alone with this detestable Minister!-It is Mr. Prior's just remark, that Lord North readily forgave the uttering of these invectives, but that the public never forgave their being retracted.

What Coalition shall be pronounced impossible after one like this? What amount of bitterness and antipathy between two parties shall be called extreme enough to forbid their loving conjunction, their elective affinities, realising the fraternal ideal of Dan Chaucer's lines,

To stynten al rancour and al envye,
The gre as wel on o syde as on other,
And every side lik, as otheres brother.T

*Walpole's Letters, vol. viii. pp. 191, 210.

† Ibid. 346-7.

Macaulay's essay on Hallam's Constitutional History.-Similar remarks, with the same illustration, occur also in his lordship's essay on Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden.

Memorials of C. J. Fox, vol. ii.

Canterbury Tales: The Knightes Tale.

Life of Burke.

"I smile when I am told of love and hatred in politicians and ministers," says Mr. Mathias. "These are passions which are never felt; for circumstances alone unite and separate them."* Whoever wishes to see an emblem of political unions and enmities, should walk, said the late Archdeacon Hare, when the sun shines, in a shrubbery. So long as the air is quite still, the shadows combine to form a pretty trellis-work, which looks as if it would be lasting. "But the wind is perverse enough to blow; and then to pieces goes the trellis-work in an instant; and the shadows, which before were so quiet and distinct, cross and intermingle confusedly. It seems impossible they should ever reunite: yet the moment the wind subsides, they dovetail into each other as closely as before."+ Hastily got up, however, the Coalition hastily fell to pieces, and the "ablest and most extended Ministry that ever existed," as we have seen Lord Macaulay describe it, subsided into a "feeble Opposition," that could do nothing but talk, and had, for a time, in the person of its representative man, to refrain from even that.

In Opposition, as in office, Lord North, for his part, was always goodhumoured, sportive, and personally winsome. A few only of his sayings, on either side of the House, remain on record, and these, as Lord Brougham remarks, and as might be expected, are rather things which he had chanced to coat over with some sarcasm or epigram that tended to preserve them, and consequently are far from giving an idea of his habitual pleasantry and the gaiety of thought which generally pervaded his speeches. "Thus, when a vehement declaimer, calling aloud for his head, turned round and perceived his victim unconsciously indulging in a soft slumber, and, becoming still more exasperated, denounced the Minister as capable of sleeping while he ruined his country-the latter only complained how cruel it was to be denied a solace which other criminals so often enjoyed, that of having a night's rest before their fate." So again, when Mr. Martin proposed, Hotspur-like, to have a starling placed near the chair, and taught to repeat the cry of "Infamous Coalition," Lord North suggested that this importation would be quite superfluous, while a Martin was in the House doing the proposed Starling's work. Lord Brougham's version of this story misses the punning point.

Dark days were in store for the light-hearted Minister-the darkness of the blind. The Coalition had cost him his master's favour, too, as well as the favour of the public. It was in the year 1787 that his sight began rapidly to fail him, and in the course of a few months, by his daughter's account, he became totally blind, in consequence of a palsy on the optic nerve. His nerves had always been very excitable, the same authority informs us, and it is considered probable that the anxiety of mind which he suffered during the contest with America, still more than his necessary application to writing, brought on this calamity, which he bore with the most admirable patience and resignation; nor did it affect his general cheerfulness in society.§ In the October of 1787 we have a glimpse of

* Pursuits of Literature, Introductory Letter.
† Guesses of Truth. First Series.
Statesmen of Time of George III.
Lady Charlotte Lindsay's Letter.

him, that goes to the heart, in Walpole's now septuagenarian correspondence. "Lord North's spirits, good humour, wit, sense, drollery," writes Horace to Lady Ossory, "are as perfect as ever the unremitting attention of Lady North and his children, most touching. Mr. North leads him about, Miss North sits constantly by him, carves meat, watches his every motion, scarce puts a bit into her own lips; and if one cannot help commending her, she colours with modesty and sorrow till the tears gush into her eyes. If ever loss of sight could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family." A few weeks later the same writer tells his fair and noble correspondent: "You shall not lose a very good-humoured story of Lord North. Colonel Barrét made him a visit lately: Lord North said, Colonel Barré, nobody will suspect us of insincerity, if we that we should always be overjoyed to see each other.'"+

say

Lady Charlotte Lindsay manifests no exaggerating partiality when she describes her father's wit as of the most genuine and playful kind: he related (narroit, she says) remarkably well, and liked conversing upon literary subjects; yet so completely were all these ingredients mixed and amalgamated by good taste, that you would never have described him as a sayer of bons-mots, or a teller of good stories, or as a man of literature, but as a most agreeable member of society and truly delightful companion. Hannah More, in her account of a "small party" she was at, one February night in 1786, with Burke present, "very low in health and spirits," includes this record: "We had several other opposition wits that evening; among others, Lord North, who was delightfully entertaining, and told some excellent stories, at which he has a very good talent; possessing in perfection the art of grave humour."§ He was in his true element at his own table, when surrounded by distinguished visitors, home and foreign. Yet still more in his element, perhaps, when at home with his own family only, or an intimate friend or two besides. "He then entered into all the jokes and fun of his children, was the companion and intimate friend of his elder sons and daughters, and the merry, entertaining playfellow of his little girl, who was five years younger than any the others. To his servants he was a most kind and indulgent master: if provoked by stupidity or impertinence, a few hasty, impatient words might escape him; but I never saw him really out of humour. He had a drunken, stupid groom, who used to provoke him; and who, from this uncommon circumstance, was called by the children 'the man that puts papa in a passion;' and I think he continued all his life putting papa in a passion, and being forgiven, for I believe he died in his service." His house in Grosvenor-square was the resort of London's choicest spiritsBurke, Fox, Sheridan, occasionally; Lords Stormont and John Townshend, Mr. Windham and Lord Loughborough, habitually. It was always, however, beside young ladies that the blind, benignant master of the mansion took and kept his seat, if he could. His own daughters led him in his walks, wrote his letters for him, and tended him with the sedulous piety of devoted love.

*Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. ix. p. 114.

†The colonel was blind of one eye, and could see but dimly with the other. Walpole's Letters, vol. ix. p. 121.

Memoirs of Hannah More, sub anno 1786.

Lady C. Lindsay.

of

In 1792 his health broke down. Water on the chest was suddenly discovered, and might, his physician was constrained to tell him, within a few hours put an end to his life, which could not, at the best, last many days. Serenely and cheerfully the doomed man listened to his doom, and bided his time. He sent for two political friends, whose desertion had "hurt and offended him," begging to shake hands with them before he died. They came, and the reconciliation was completed. Ten days he survived the physician's announcement, during which he had no return of that depression of spirits which had, at intervals, distressed him, since total blindness and disordered nerves had been his lot. As Sir Walter Scott took pleasure at the last in having Crabbe read to him, so did Lord North in listening to a diviner poet. We pause not to inquire whether something "diviner" still, might have better befitted the occasion-for this was the hour and the power of darkness. We copy, without cavil or comment, a daughter's touching record. "My father had always delighted in hearing his eldest daughter, Lady Glenbervie, read Shakspeare, which she did with much understanding and effect. He was desirous of still enjoying this amusement. In the existing circumstances, this task was a hard one; but a strong affection, the best source of a woman's strength, enabled her to go through it. She read to him great part of every day with her usual spirit, though her heart was dying within her. No doubt she was supported by the Almighty in the pious work of solacing the last hours of her almost idolised parent. He also desired to have the French newspapers read to him. At that time they were filled with alarming symptoms of the horrors that shortly after ensued. Upon hearing them, he said, 'I am going, and thankful I am that I shall not witness the anarchy and bloodshed which will soon overwhelm that unhappy country.'"* The Minister of the great war with America was not to witness the beginning, even, of the greater war with France. He his worldly task had done, and home must go, and take his wages. He need fear not slander, censure rash, now or ever again: fear no more the frown of the great; wince never again under the penalties of power.

He expired on the 5th of August, 1792, in the sixtieth year of his age,-in no merely conventional, or stone-cutter's sense, beloved and lamented.

*See Lady Charlotte's letter in extenso, in Appendix No. I. to Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches, First Series, vol. i.