In this serene frame of mind he died | miration and terror. During the first on the 13th of December, 1784. He was year of his life, every month had its laid, a week later, in Westminster Ab-illuminations and bonfires, and every bey, among the eminent men of whom wind brought some messenger charged he had been the historian,-Cowley with joyful tidings and hostile stanand Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. Since his death the popularity of his works-the Lives of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, excepted-has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas has grown somewhat dim. But, though the celebrity of the writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has done for him more than the best of his own books could do. The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a good man. WILLIAM PITT. (JANUARY 1859.) dards. In Westphalia the English infantry won a great battle which arrested the armies of Louis the Fifteenth in the midst of a career of conquest; Boscawen defeated one French fleet on the coast of Portugal; Hawke put to flight another in the Bay of Biscay; Johnson took Niagara; Amherst took Ticonderoga; Wolfe died by the most enviable of deaths under the walls of Quebec; Clive destroyed a Dutch armament in the Hooghly, and established the English supremacy in Bengal ; Coote routed Lally at Wandewash, and established the English supremacy in the Carnatic. The nation, while loudly applauding the successful warriors, considered them all, on sea and on land, in Europe, in America, and in Asia, merely as instruments which received their direction from one superior mind. It was the great William Pitt, the great commoner, who had vanquished French marshals in Germany, and French admirals on the Atlantic; who had conquered for his country one great empire on the frozen shores of Ontario, and another under the tropical sun near the mouths of the Ganges. It was not in the nature of things that popularity such as he at this time enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity had lost its gloss before his children were old enough to understand that their father was a great man. He was at length placed in situations in which neither his talents for administration nor his talents for debate appeared to the best advantage. The energy and decision which had eminently fitted him for the direction of WILLIAM PITT, the second son of Wil-war were not needed in time of peace. liam Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of Lady Hester Grenville, daughter of Hester, Countess Temple, was born on the 28th of May, 1759. The child inherited a name which, at the time of his birth, was the most illustrious in the civilised world, and was pronounced by every Englishman with pride, and by every enemy of England with mingled ad The lofty and spirit-stirring eloquence which had made him supreme in the House of Commons often fell dead on the House of Lords. A cruel malady racked his joints, and left his joints only to fall on his nerves and on his brain. During the closing years of his life, he was odious to the court, and yet was not on cordial terms with the great body of the opposition. I served at Chevening, and is in some Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt, respects highly curious. There is no but an awful and majestic ruin, not to love. The whole plot is political; and be contemplated by any man of sense it is remarkable that the interest, such and feeling without emotions resem- as it is, turns on a contest about a rebling those which are excited by the gency. On one side is a faithful servant remains of the Parthenon and of the of the Crown, on the other an ambitious Coliseum. In one respect the old and unprincipled conspirator. At length statesman was eminently happy. What- the King, who had been missing, reapever might be the vicissitudes of his pub- pears, resumes his power, and rewards lic life, he never failed to find peace and the faithful defender of his rights. A love by his own hearth. He loved all reader who should judge only by interhis children, and was loved by them; nal evidence would have no hesitation and, of all his children, the one of in pronouncing that the play was writwhom he was fondest and proudest ten by some Pittite poetaster at the was his second son. time of the rejoicings for the recovery of George the Third in 1789. The child's genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rare and al- The pleasure with which William's most unnatural precocity. At seven, parents observed the rapid developthe interest which he took in grave ment of his intellectual powers was subjects, the ardour with which he pur- alloyed by apprehensions about his sued his studies, and the sense and vi- health. He shot up alarmingly fast; vacity of his remarks on books and on he was often ill, and always weak; and events, amazed his parents and instruc- it was feared that it would be imtors. One of his sayings of this date possible to rear a stripling so tall, so was reported to his mother by his tu- slender, and so feeble. Port wine was tor. In August, 1766, when the world prescribed by his medical advisers: was agitated by the news that Mr. Pitt and it is said that he was, at fourteen, had become Earl of Chatham, little accustomed to take this agreeable William exclaimed: "I am glad that I physic in quantities which would, in am not the eldest son. I want to speak our abstemious age, be thought much in the House of Commons like papa.' more than sufficient for any full-grown A letter is extant in which Lady Chat-man. This regimen, though it would ham, a woman of considerable abilities, probably have killed ninety-nine boys remarked to her lord, that their younger out of a hundred, seems to have been son at twelve had left far behind well suited to the peculiarities of him his elder brother, who was fifteen. William's constitution; for at fifteen "The fineness," she wrote, "of Wil-he ceased to be molested by disease, liam's mind makes him enjoy with the and, though never a strong man, congreatest pleasure what would be above tinued, during many years of labour the reach of any other creature of his and anxiety, of nights passed in debate small age." At fourteen the lad was and of summers passed in London, to in intellect a man. Hayley, who met be a tolerably healthy one. It was him at Lyme in the summer of 1773, probably on account of the delicacy of was astonished, delighted, and some- his frame that he was not educated what overawed, by hearing wit and like other boys of the same rank. wisdom from so young a mouth. The Almost all the eminent English statespoet, indeed, was afterwards sorry that men and orators to whom he was afterhis shyness had prevented him from wards opposed or allied, North, Fox, submitting the plan of an extensive Shelburne, Windham, Grey, Wellesley, literary work, which he was then medi- Grenville, Sheridan, Canning, went tating, to the judgment of this extra- through the training of great public ordinary boy. The boy, indeed, had schools. Lord Chatham had himself already written a tragedy, bad of been a distinguished Etonian; and it course, but not worse than the tragedies is seldom that a distinguished Etonian of his friend. This piece is still pre-forgets his obligations to Eton. But William's infirmities required a vigi- The stock of learning which Pitt lance and tenderness such as could be laid in during this part of his life was found only at home. He was there- certainly very extraordinary. In fact, fore bred under the paternal roof. His it was all that he ever possessed; for studies were superintended by a clergy- he very early became too busy to have man named Wilson; and those studies, any spare time for books. The work though often interrupted by illness, in which he took the greatest delight were prosecuted with extraordinary was Newton's Principia. His liking success. Before the lad had completed for mathematics, indeed, amounted to his fifteenth year, his knowledge both a passion, which, in the opinion of his of the ancient languages and of mathe-instructors, themselves distinguished matics was such as very few men of mathematicians, required to be checked eighteen then carried up to college. rather than encouraged. The acuteHe was therefore sent, towards the ness and readiness with which he close of the year 1773, to Pembroke solved problems was pronounced by Hall, in the university of Cambridge. one of the ablest of the moderators, So young a student required much who in those days presided over the more than the ordinary care which a disputations in the schools, and concollege tutor bestows on undergraduates. ducted the examinations of the SenThe governor, to whom the direction of ate House, to be unrivalled in the William's academical life was confided, university. Nor was the youth's prowas a bachelor of arts named Pretyman, ficiency in classical learning less rewho had been senior wrangler in the markable. In one respect, indeed, preceding year, and who, though not a he appeared to disadvantage when man of prepossessing appearance or compared with even second-rate and brilliant parts, was eminently acute third-rate men from public schools. and laborious, a sound scholar, and He had never, while under Wilson's an excellent geometrician. At Cam- care, been in the habit of composing in bridge, Pretyman was, during more the ancient languages; and he therethan two years, the inseparable com- fore never acquired that knack of panion, and indeed almost the only versification which is sometimes poscompanion, of his pupil. A close and sessed by clever boys whose knowledge lasting friendship sprang up between of the language and literature of the pair. The disciple was able, before Greece and Rome is very superficial. he completed his twenty-eighth year, It would have been utterly out of his to make his preceptor Bishop of Lin-power to produce such charming elegiac coln and Dean of St. Paul's; and the lines as those in which Wellesley bade preceptor showed his gratitude by farewell to Eton, or such Virgilian writing a life of the disciple, which enjoys the distinction of being the worst biographical work of its size in the world. Pitt, till he graduated, had scarcely one acquaintance, attended chapel regularly morning and evening, dined every day in hall, and never went to a single evening party. At seventeen, he was admitted, after the bad fashion of those times, by right of birth, without any examination, to the degree of Master of Arts. But he continued during some years to reside at college, and to apply himself vigorously, under Pretyman's direction, to the studies of the place, while mixing freely in the best academic society. hexameters as those in which Canning described the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it may be doubted whether any scholar has ever, at twenty, had a more solid and profound knowledge of the two great tongues of the old civilised world. The facility with which he penetrated the meaning of the most intricate sentences in the Attic writers astonished veteran critics. He had set his heart on being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry of Greece, and was not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron's Cassandra, the most obscure work in the whole range of ancient literature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties of which have perplexed and repelled many excellent scholars, he read," meaning, and then to read the passage says his preceptor, "with an ease at straightforward into his own language. first sight, which, if I had not witnessed it, I should have thought beyond the compass of human intellect." To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew no living language except French; and French he knew very imperfectly. With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly with Shakspeare and Milton. The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well deserved to be, one of his favourite passages; and his early friends used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial. He had indeed been carefully trained from infancy in the art of managing his voice, a voice naturally clear and deeptoned. His father, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to that art, had been a most skilful and judicious instructor. At a later period, the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing, night after night, how powerfully Pitt's sonorous elocution fascinated the rows of country gentlemen, reproached him with having been "taught by his dad This practice, begun under his first teacher Wilson, was continued under Pretyman. It is not strange that a young man of great abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during ten years, should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of putting his thoughts, without premeditation, into words well selected and well arranged. Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on which he bestowed the most minute examination. His favourite employment was to compare harangues on opposite sides of the same question, to analyse them, and to observe which of the arguments of the first speaker were refuted by the second, which were evaded, and which were left untouched. Nor was it only in books that he at this time studied the art of parliamentary fencing. When he was at home, he had frequent opportunities of hearing important debates at Westminster; and he heard them, not only with interest and enjoyment, but with a close scientific attention resembling that with which a diligent pupil at Guy's Hospital watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeon through a difficult operation. On one of these His education, indeed, was well occasions, Pitt, a youth whose abilities adapted to form a great parliamentary were as yet known only to his own speaker. One argument often urged family and to a small knot of college against those classical studies which friends, was introduced on the steps of occupy so large a part of the early life the throne in the House of Lords to of every gentleman bred in the south of Fox, who was his senior by eleven our island is, that they prevent him years, and who was already the greatest from acquiring a command of his mother debater, and one of the greatest orators, tongue, and that it is not unusual to that had appeared in England. Fox meet with a youth of excellent parts, used afterwards to relate that, as the who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and discussion proceeded, Pitt repeatedly Horatian Latin Alcaics, but who would turned to him, and said, "But surely, find it impossible to express his thoughts Mr. Fox, that might be met thus ;" or, in pure, perspicuous, and forcible Eng-"Yes; but he lays himself open to this lish. There may perhaps be some truth in this observation. But the classical studies of Pitt were carried on in a peculiar manner, and had the effect of enriching his English vocabulary, and of making him wonderfully expert in the art of constructing correct English sentences. His practice was to look over a page or two of a Greek or Latin author, to make himself master of the on a stool." retort." What the particular criticisms were Fox had forgotten; but he said that he was much struck at the time by the precocity of a lad who, through the whole sitting, seemed to be thinking 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 in his life. He had not quite completed his nineteenth year, when, | into Parliament by Sir James Lowther on the 7th of April, 1778, he attended | for the borough of Appleby. his father to Westminster. A great The dangers of the country were at debate was expected. It was known that time such as might well have disthat France had recognised the inde- turbed even a constant mind. Army pendence of the United States. The after army had been sent in vain against Duke of Richmond was about to declare the rebellious colonists of North Amehis opinion that all thought of subju- rica. On pitched fields of battle the gating those states ought to be relin-advantage had been with the disciplined quished. Chatham had always main- troops of the mother country. But it tained that the resistance of the colonies was not on pitched fields of battle that to the mother country was justifiable. the event of such a contest could be deBut he conceived, very erroneously, that on the day on which their independence should be acknowledged the greatness of England would be at an end. Though sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, he determined, in spite of the entreaties of his family, to be in his place. His son supported him to a seat. The excitement and exertion were too much for the old man. In the very act of addressing the peers, he fell back in convulsions. A few weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomy pomp, from the Painted Chamber to the Abbey. The favourite child and namesake of the deceased statesman followed the coffin as chief mourner, and saw it deposited in the transept where his own was destined to lie. His elder brother, now Earl of Chatham, had means sufficient, and barely sufficient, to support the dignity of the peerage. The other members of the family were poorly provided for. William had little more than three hundred a year It was necessary for him to follow a profession. He had already begun to eat his terms. In the spring of 1780 he came of age. He then quitted Cambridge, was called to the bar, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and joined the western circuit. In the autumn of that year a general election took place; and he offered himself as a candidate for the university; but he was at the bottom of the poll. It is said that the grave doctors, who then sate, robed in scarlet, on the benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumption in so young a man to solicit so high a distinction. He was, however, at the request of a hereditary friend, the Duke of Rutland, brought cided. An armed nation, with hunger |