or his lordship was apprehensive I might not have seen that valuable and authentic book, which is extremely scarce. I thought myself happy to have contented his lordship even in the lowest degree: for he unders.ood the German and Swedish histories to the highest perfection."

With all this learning, Carteret was far from being a pedant. He was not one of those cold spirits, of which the fire is put out by the fuel. In council, in debate, in society, he was all life and energy. His measures were strong, prompt, and daring; his oratory animated and glowing. His spirits were constantly high. No misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He was at once the most unlucky and the happiest public man of his time.

He had been Secretary of State in Walpole's administration, and had acquired considerabie influence over the mind of George the First. The other ministers could speak no German. The king could speak no English. All the communication that Walpole held with his master was in very bad Latin. Carteret dismayed his colleagues by the volubility with which he addressed his majesty in German. They listened with envy and terror to the mysterious gutturals, which might possibly convey suggestions very little in unison with their wishes.

66

they were at the head of a decided majority in
the House of Commons. Their rival, mean
while, conscious of his powers, sanguine in
his hopes, and proud of the storm which he
had conjured up on the Continent, would brook
neither superior nor equal.
"His rants," says
Horace Walpole,
are amazing: so are his
parts and his spirits." He encountered the
opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce
haughtiness of the first Pitt, or the cold un
bending arrogance of the second, but with a
gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperious
ness that bore every thing down before it
The period of his ascendency was known by
the name of the "Drunken Administration;"
and the expression was not altogether figura.
tive. His habits were extremely convivial,
and champagne probably lent its aid to keep
him in that state of joyous excitement in
which his life was passed.

That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not have been able to maintain his ground in Parliament against the crafty and selfish Pelhams, is not strange. But it is less easy to understand why he should have been generally unpopular throughout the country. His brilliant talents, his bold and open temper, ought, it should seem, to have made him a favourite with the public. But the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had to face the first burst of their rage His close connection with Pulteney, now the most detested man in the nation, was an unfortunate circumstance. He had, indeed, only three partisans, Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales-a most singular assem blage.

He was driven from his office. He shortly after made a bold, indeed a desperate attempt to recover power. The attempt failed. From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes: and retired laughing to his books and his bot. tle. No statesman ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a zest, or submitted to a defeat with so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except thirst.

Walpole was not a man to endure such a colleague as Carteret. The king was induced to give up his favourite. Carteret joined the opposition, and signalized himself at the head of that party, till, after the retirement of his old rival, he again became Secretary of State. During some months he was chief minister, indeed sole minister. He gained the confidence and regard of George the Second. He was at the same time in high favour with the Prince of Wales. As a debater in the House of Lords, he had no equal among his colleagues. Among his opponents, Chesterfield alone could be considered as his match. Confident in his talents and in the royal favour, he neglected all those means by which the power of Walpole had been created and maintained. His head was full of treaties and expeditions, of schemes for supporting the Queen of Hungary, and humbling the house of Bourbon. He contemptuously abandoned to others all the drudgery, and with the drudgery, all the fruits of corruption. The patronage of the church and the bar he left to the Pelhams as a trifle unworthy of his care. One of the judges, Chief Justice Willis, if we remember rightly, went to him to beg some ecclesiastical preferment for a friend. Cartere. said, that he was too much occupied with continental politics to think about the disposal of places and bene-ton street. Horace Walpole has spoken less fices. "You may rely on it, then," said the Chief Justice, "that people who want places and benefices will go to those who have more eisure." The prediction was accomplished. It would have been a busy time indeed in which the Pelhams had wanted leisure for jobbing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of place-hunters and pension-hunters resorted. The parliamentary influence of the two broders became stronger every day, till at length

These letters contain many good stories, some of them no doubt grossly exaggerated, about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of his greatness, he fell in love at first sight on a birth-day with Lady Sophia Fermor, the landsome daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he plagued the cabinet every day with reading t them her ladyship's letters; how strangely he brought home his bride; what fine jewels he gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh : and what queen-like state she kept in Arling.

bitterly of Carteret than of any public man of that time, Fox, perhaps, excepted; and this is the more remarkable, because Carteret was one of the most inveterate enemies of Sir Ro bert. In the "Memoirs," Horace Walpole, after passing in review all the great men whorn England had produced within his me mory, concludes by saying, that in genius none of them equalled Lord Granville. Smollett, an "Humphry Clinker," pronounces a simila

judgment in coarser language. "Since Granville was turned out, there has been no minister in this nation worth the meal that whitened his periwig."

ally fearless, Pelham constitutionally timid Walpole had to face a strong opposition; bu no man in the government durst wag a finge! against him. Almost all the opposition which He fell; and the reign of the Pelhams com- Pelham had, was from members of the govern◄ menced. It was Carteret's misfortune to be ment of which he was the head. His own raised to power when the public mind was paymaster spoke against his estimates. His still smarting from recent disappointment. own secretary at war spoke against his Re l'he nation had been duped, and was eager gency Bill. In one day Walpole turned Lord for revenge. A victim was necessary; and Chesterfield, Lord Burlington, and Lord Clin on such occasions, the victims of popular ton out of the royal household, dismissed the rage are selected like the victim of Jephthah. highest dignitaries of Scotland from their posts, The first person who comes in the way is and took away the regiments of the Duke of made the sacrifice. The wrath of the people Bolton and Lord Cobham, because he sushad now spent itself, and the unnatural excite- pected them of having encouraged the resist ment was succeeded by an unnatural calm. ance to his Excise Bill. He would far rather To an irrational eagerness for something new, have contended with a strong minority, under succeeded an equally irrational disposition to able leaders, than have tolerated mutiny in his acquiesce in every thing established. A few own party. It would have gone hard with any months back the people had been disposed to of his colleagues who had ventured to divide impute every crime to men in power, and to the House of Commons against him. Pelham, lend a ready ear to the high professions of on the other hand, was disposed to bear any men in opposition; they were now disposed to thing rather than to drive from office any man surrender themselves implicitly to the manage- round whom a new opposition could form. ment of ministers, and to look with suspicion He therefore endured with fretful patience the and contempt on all who pretended to public insubordination of Pitt and Fox. He thought spirit. The name of patriot had become a it far better to connive at their occasional in by word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely fractions of discipline, than to hear them, night exaggerated, when he said, that in those times, after night, thundering against corruption and the most popular declaration which a candi- wicked ministers from the other side of the date could make on the hustings, was, that he House. had never been and never would be a patriot. At this juncture took place the rebellion of the Highland clans. The alarm produced by that Event quieted the strife of internal factions. The suppression of the insurrection crushed forever the spirit of the Jacobite party. Room was made in the government for a few Tories. Peace was patched up with France and Spain. Death removed the Prince of Wales, who had contrived to keep together a small portion of that formidable opposition, of which he had been the leader in the time of Sir Robert Wal-coln's Inn Fields, or by Grub street writers pole. Almost every man of weight in the House of Commons was officially connected with the government. The even tenor of the session of Parliament was ruffled only by an occasional harangue from Lord Egmont on the army estimates. For the first time since the accession of the Stuarts there was no opposition. This singular good fortune, denied to the ablest statesmen-to Salisbury, to Strafford, to Clarendon, to Walpole-had been re

served for the Pelhams.

We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke of Newcastle. An inter view between his Grace and Jeanie Deans would have been delightful, and by no means unnatural. There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners and conver sation so many particulars have been preserved. Single stories may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories, whether told by people who were perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levee in Lin

who never had more than a glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes and opi nions as much as two human beings could differ. They kept quite different scciety. The one played at cards with countesses and corres ponded with ambassadors. The other passed his life surrounded by a knot of famished scribblers. Yet Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his contemptible person. His understanding dressing-room with his face covered with soap was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller suds to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's scale. Though not a brilliant orator, he was, Newcastle pushes his way into the Duke of like his master, a good debater, a good parlia- Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's mentary tactician, a good man of business. plasters. No man was ever so unmercifully Like his master, he distinguished himself by satirized. But in truth he was himself a satire the neatness and clearness of his financial ready made. All that the art of the satirist expositions. Here the resemblance ceased. does for other ridiculous men nature had done Their characters were altogether dissimilar. for him. Whatever was absurd about him Walpole was good-humoured, but would have stood out with grotesque prominence from the his way; his spirits were high, and his man- rest of the character. He was a living, movhers frank even to coarseness. The tempering, talking caricature. His gait was a shuf of Pelham was yielding, but peevish; his fling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he habits were regular, and his deportment was always in a hurry; he was never in time; Brietly decorous. Walpole was constitution-he abounded in fulsome caresses and io hys

is, he will make an ass of you.'
It was as
dangerous to have any political connection
with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old
Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a
greediness all his own. He was jealous of all
his colleagues, and even of his own brother.
Under the disguise of levity he was false be

terical tears. His oratory resembles that of Justice Shallow. It was nonsense effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some probably invented at cof fee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. "Oh-yes-yes-to be sure-Annapolis must be defended-troops must be sent to Annapo-yond all example of political falsehood. All lis-Pray, where is Annapolis ?"-"Cape Breton an island! wonderful-show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island."

And this man was during nearly thirty years secretary of state, and during nearly ten years first lord of the treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the "Fortunes of Nigel." It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no mosey dealings with my father," says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he

the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together, and he overreached them all round.

If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that this man would have continued at the head of affairs, without admitting any other person to a share of his authority, until the throne was filled by a new prince, who brought with him new maxims of government, new favourites, and a strong will. But the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths. In a few days the whole aspect of the political world was changed.

But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an article already too long. It is probable that we may, at no re mote time resume the subject.

THACKERAY'S HISTORY OF THE EARL OF
CHATHAM.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1834.1

THOUGH several years have elapsed since | ral excellence-the just man made perfect the publication of this work, it is still, we be- He was in the right when he attempted to esta lieve, a new publication to most of our read-blish an inquisition, and to give bounties for ers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book perjury, in order to get Walpole's head. Не is large and the style heavy. The information was in the right when he declared Walpole to which Mr. Thackeray has obtained from the have been an excellent minister. He was in State Paper Office is new, but much of it is to the right when, being in opposition, he mainus very uninteresting. The rest of his narra-tained that no peace ought to be made with tive is very little better than Gifford's or Tomline's Life of the Second Pitt, and tells us little or nothing that may not be found quite as well told in the "Parliamentary History," the "Annual Register," and other works equally com

inon.

Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan. Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in their growth; and smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors-all, in short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the writings others, are peculiarly exposed to the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. But we scarcely remember ever to have seen a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr. Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a vigorous minister, an honourable and highspirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of gods, men, and columns, Pitt must be a poet-a poet capable of producing a heroic poem of the first order; and we are as sured that we ought to find many charms in such lines as these:

"Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, My light-charged bark may haply glide;

Spain, till she should formally renounce the right of search. He was in the right when, being in office, he silently acquiesced in a treaty by which Spain did not renounce the right of search. When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle; when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion; when he execrated the Hanoverian connection; when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire; he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman.

The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a person who had so little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great man. But his was not a complete and wellproportioned greatness. The public life of Hampden, or of Somers, resembles a regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main action. The public life of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece-a piece abounding in incon gruities-a piece without any unity of plan, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of whe follows. His opinions were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most important conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by

Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall pride and resentment. He had one fault, which

cheer,

And the small freight unanxious glide."

Pitt was in the army for a few months in time of peace. Mr. Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all. Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet in esse, and a great general in posse, but a finished example of mo

A History of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Earl ef Chatham, containing his Speeches in Parliament, a con

siderable portion of his Correspondence when Secretary of State, upon French, Spanish, and American Affairs, never before published; and an account of the principal Events and Persons of his Time, connected with his Life, Sentiments, and Administration. By the Rev. FRANCIS THACKERAY, A.M. 2 vcls. 4to. London. 1827.

of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness.. He was ex. tremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room tili every thing was ready for the representation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, all the flannels had been

arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear.

Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of greatness. He had splendid talents, strong passions, quick sensibility, and 7ehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was something about him which ennobled tergiversation itself. He often went wrong, very wrong. But to quote the ianguage of Wordsworth,

"He still retained,

'Mid such abasement, what he had received From nature, an intense and glowing mind."

venteen he was entered at Trinity College Oxford. During the second year of his resi dence at the University, George the First died and the event was, after the fashion of that ge neration, celebrated by the Oxcnians in many very middling copies of verses. On this occa sion Pitt published some Latin lines, which Mr. Thackeray has preserved. They prove that he had but a very limited knowledge even of the mechanical part of his art. All true Etonians will hear with concern, that their illustrious school-fellow is guilty of making the first syllable in labenti short. The matter of the poem is as worthless as that of any college exercise that was ever written before or since. There is, of course, much about Mars, Themis, Neptune, and Cocytus. The Muses are earnestly entreated to weep for Cæsar; for Cæsar, says the poet, loved the Muses;-Cæsar, who could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and

without having received much benefit from his excursion, and continued, till the close of his life, to suffer most severely from his constitu tional malady.

His father was now dead, and had left very little to the younger children. It was neces sary that William should choose a profession. He decided for the army, and a cornet's com mission was procured for him in the Blues.

In an age of low and dirty prostitution-in the age of Doddington and Sandys-it was something to have a man who might, perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her;—a man | fat women. whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire Pitt had been, from his schooldays, cruelly of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for tormented by the gout; and was at last advised glory, and for vengeance. History owes to to travel for his health. He accordingly left him this attestation-that, at a time when any Oxford without taking a degree, and visited thing short of direct embezzlement of the pub-France and Italy. He returned, however, lic money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to be generally taken for granted that government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption: that he looked for support, not like the Pelhams, to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the state.

But, small as his fortune was, his family had both the power and the inclination to serve him. At the general election of 1734, his elder brother Thomas was chosen both for Old Sa rum and for Oakhampton. When Parliament met in 1735, Thomas made his election to serve for Oakhampton, and William was returned for Old Sarum.

Walpole had now been, during fourteen years, at the head of affairs. He had risen to power under the most favourable circum stances. The whole of the Whig party-of that party which professed peculiar attachment to the principles of the Revolution, and which exclusively enjoyed the confidence of the reigning house-had been united in support The family of Pitt was wealthy and respect- of his administration. Happily for him, he able. His grandfather was Governer of Madras; had been out of office when the South Sea Act and brought back from India that celebrated was passed; and, though he does not appear diamond which the Regent Orleans, by the ad- to have foreseen all the consequences of that vice of Saint Simon, purchased for upwards measure, he had strenuously opposed it, as he of three millions of livres, and which is still opposed almost all the measures, good or bad, considered as the most precious of the crown of Sunderland's administration. When the jewels of France. Governor Pitt bought estates South Sea Company were voting dividends of and rotten boroughs, and sat in the House of fifty per cent.-when a hundred pounds of their Commons for Old Sarum. His son Robert was stock were selling for eleven hundred pounds at one time member for Old Sarum, and at an--when Threadneedle street was daily crowd. other for Oakhampton. Robert had two sons. Thomas, the elder, inherited the estates and the parliamentary interest of his father. The second was the celebrated William Pitt.

He was born in November, 1708. About the carly part of his life little more is known than that he was educated at Eton, and that at se

ed with the coaches of dukes and prelates when divines and philosophers turned gamblers

when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence-the periwig company, and the Spanish-jackass company, and the quicksilver-fixation company-Walpole's caim good sense preserved him from the general in