Part 12

Voltaire characterizes Moliere as the best comic poet of any nation; and treats the posthumous hostility which made a difficulty about his burial as a reproach both to France and to the Catholic religion. Professing to have reperused the comedians of antiquity for the purpose of comparison, he gives it as his judgment, that the French dramatist is entitled to the preference. He grounds this decision on the art and regularity of the modern theatre, contrasted with the unconnected scenes of the ancients, their weak intrigues, and the strange practice of declaring by the mouths of the actors, in cold and unnatural monologues, what they had done and what they intended to do. He concludes by saying that Moliere did for comedy what Corneille had done for tragedy; and that the French were superior on this ground to all the people upon earth. A country possessing such a comic drama as ours, throughout the course of about two centuries, with Much ado about Nothing at one end of the list, and The School for Scandal at the other, will be inclined to demur to this broad national assumption: but we, in our turn, must in candour confess, that though the chronological precedence of Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford, had established a glorious stage for us before Moliere was born, or while he was yet in petticoats; yet our most eminent comic writers in the reigns of William III., Anne, and George I., drank deep and often from the abundant source of French comedy. But Moliere’s influence was most beneficially exerted in reclaiming his countrymen from a fondness for such Italian conceits as ringing the changes upon _odours_ and _ardours_, &c., to which authors like Scudery, Voiture, and Balzac had given an ephemeral fashion. Boileau and Moliere principally contributed to arm the French against the invasion from beyond the Alps, of such madrigal-writers as Marini, Achillini, and Préti.

It is not true that Moliere, when he commenced his career, found the theatre absolutely destitute of good comedies. Corneille had already produced Le Menteur, a piece combining character with intrigue, imported from the Spanish stage. Moliere had produced only two of his most esteemed plays, when the public was gratified with La Mère Coquette of Quinault, than which few pieces were more happy either in point of character or intrigue. But if Corneille be the first legitimate model for tragedy, Moliere was so for comedy. The general shaping of his plots, the connexion of his scenes, his dramatic consistency and propriety were attempted to be copied by succeeding writers: but who could compete with him in wit and spirit? His well-directed attacks did more than any thing to rescue the public from the impertinence of subaltern courtiers affecting airs of importance; from the affectation of conceited, and the pedantry of learned, ladies; from the quackery of professional costume and barbarous Latin on the part of the medical tribe. Moliere was the legislator of conventional proprieties. That period might well be called the Augustan age of France, which saw the tragedies of Corneille and Racine; the comedies of Moliere; the birth of modern music in the symphonies of Lulli; the pulpit eloquence of Bossuet and Bourdaloüe. Louis XIV. was the hearer and the patron of all these; and his taste was duly appreciated and adopted by the accomplished Madame, by a Condé, a Turenne, and a Colbert, followed by a long train of eminent men in every department of the state and of society.

Little has come down to us respecting Moliere’s personal history or habits, excepting that his marriage was not among the happy or creditable events of his life. So little did he in his own case weigh the evils of disproportioned age, however sarcastically he might imagine them in fictitious scenes, that he took for his partner the daughter of La Béjard, the associate of his strolling career. If his choice were a fault, it carried its punishment along with it. He was very jealous, and the young lady was an accomplished coquette. The bickerings of married life were the frequent and successful topics of his comedies; and his enemies asserted, that in drawing such scenes, he possessed the advantage of painting from the life. Of that ridicule which had so often set the theatre in a roar, he was himself the serious subject, the repentant and writhing victim.

Fuller accounts of Moliere are to be found prefixed to the best editions of his works: we may mention those of Joly, Petitot, and Auger. An article of considerable length, by the last-named author, is devoted to our poet in the Biographie Universelle.

[Illustration: Scene from Les Précieuses Ridicules.]

[Illustration:

_Engraved by I. W. Cook._

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

_From a Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the possession of Lord Holland._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._ ]

[Illustration]

FOX

The Right Honourable Charles James Fox was third son of the Right Honourable Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, and of Lady Georgina Caroline Fox, eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond. He was born January 24th, 1749, N. S.

Mr. Fox received his education at Eton; and the favourite studies of the place had more than ordinary influence over his tastes and literary pursuits in after-life. Before he left school, his father was so imprudent as to carry him to Paris and Spa. To his early associations at the latter place may be ascribed that propensity to gaming, which was the bane of two-thirds of his life. As the present article is not designed to be a mere panegyric, we abandon the indulgence of this fatal passion to the severest censure that can be bestowed upon it by the philosopher and the moralist: but justice demands it at our hands to say, that after the adjustment of Mr. Fox’s affairs by his friends, personal and political, he resolutely conquered what habit had almost raised into second nature, and abstained from play with scrupulous fidelity. It may further be remarked, that while the paroxysms of the fever were most violent, his mind was never interrupted from more worthy objects of pursuit.

The following anecdote will show the divided empire which discordant passions alternately usurped over his heart. On a night when he had sustained some serious losses, his deportment assumed so much of the character of despair, that his friends became uneasy: they followed him at distance enough to elude his observation, from the clubhouse to his home in the neighbourhood. They knocked at his door in time, as they thought, to have prevented any rash act, and rushed into the library. There they found the object of their anxiety stretched on the ground without his coat, before the fire: his hand neither grasping a razor nor a pistol, but his eyes intently fixed on the pages of Herodotus. The old historian had engrossed him wholly from the moment when he took up the volume, and the ruins of his own air-built castles vanished from before him, as soon as he got sight of the venerable remains of the ancient world.

At Oxford Mr. Fox distinguished himself by his powers of application, as well as by the intuitive quickness of his parts. On quitting the university, he accompanied his father and mother to the south of Europe. Not finding a good Italian master at Naples, he taught himself that language during the winter, and contracted a strong partiality for Italian literature. In a letter from Florence to Mr. Fitz-Patrick, he conjures that gentleman to learn Italian as fast as he can, if it were only to read Ariosto; and adds, “There is more good poetry in Italian than in all other languages I understand put together.” At a later period of life, if we may judge from the tenor of his correspondence with eminent scholars, he would have transferred that praise from the Italian to the Greek tongue. At this time he was very fond of acting plays, and was in all respects the man of fashion. Those who recollect the simplicity, bordering on negligence, of his outward garb late in life, will smile at the idea of Mr. Fox with a powdered toupee and red heels to his shoes, the hero of private theatricals. During his absence, in 1768, he was chosen to represent Midhurst, and made his first speech on the 15th April, 1769. According to Horace Walpole, he spoke with violence, but with infinite superiority of parts.

Circumscribed as we are as to space, we shall not follow Mr. Fox’s subaltern career in the House of Commons. It was his breach with Lord North that raised him into a party leader. He had previously formed an intimate acquaintance with Mr. Burke. He began by receiving the lessons of that eminent person as a pupil; but the master was soon so convinced of his scholar’s greatness of character, and statesman-like turn of mind, that he resigned the lead to him, and became an efficient coadjutor in the Rockingham party, of which, in the House of Commons, he had almost been the dictator. The American war roused all the energies of Mr. Fox’s mind. The discussions to which it gave rise involved all the first principles of free government. The vicissitudes of the contest tried the firmness of the parliamentary opposition. Its duration exercised their perseverance. Its magnitude and the dangers of the country called forth their powers. Gibbon says, “Mr. Fox discovered powers for regular debate, which neither his friends hoped nor his enemies dreaded.” The following passage, from a letter to Mr. Fitz-Patrick, written in 1778, illustrates his honourable and independent character: “People flatter me that I continue to gain rather than lose estimation as an orator; and I am so convinced this is all I ever shall gain (unless I choose to be one of the meanest of men), that I never think of any other object of ambition. I am certainly ambitious by nature, but I have, or think I have, totally subdued that passion. I have still as much vanity as ever, which is a happier passion by far, because great reputation, I think, I may acquire and keep; great situations I never can acquire, nor, if acquired, keep, without making sacrifices that I will never make.” In the summer of 1778, he rejected Lord Weymouth’s overtures to join the ministry, and took his station as the leading commoner in the Rockingham party, to which he had become attached on principle long before he enlisted permanently in its ranks. The conspicuous features of that party, and of Mr. Fox’s public character, were the love of peace with foreign powers, the spirit of conciliation in home management, an ardent attachment to civil and religious liberty.

The day of triumph came at last, when a resolution against the further prosecution of the American war was carried in the Commons. The King was compelled, reluctantly, to part with the supporters of his favourite principles, and had nothing left but to sow the seeds of disunion between the Rockingham and Chatham or Shelburne party, united on the subject of America, but disagreeing on many other points both of external and internal policy. In this he was but too successful. We have neither space nor inclination to unravel the web of court intrigue; but we may remark that Lord Rockingham’s demands were too extensive to be palatable: they involved the independence of America, the pacification of Ireland, bills for economical and parliamentary reform, to be brought into Parliament as ministerial measures. But the untimely death of Lord Rockingham frustrated his enlightened and enlarged designs, by dissolving the ministry over which he had presided. Mr. Fox has been blamed for the precipitancy of his resignation. The tone of sentiment in a letter before quoted will both account and apologise for the rashness if it were such; and it is obvious that the sacrifice of personal feeling, or even of political consistency, could not long have deferred it, amidst the cabals and clashing interests of party. Mr. Fox’s policy was to detach Holland and America from France, and to form a continental balance against the House of Bourbon. Lord Shelburne’s system was to conciliate France, and to treat her allies as dependent powers. Lord Shelburne had the ear of the King. He strengthened himself with some of the old supporters of the American war, to fill the vacant offices, and made Mr. Pitt, just rising into eminence, his Chancellor of the Exchequer. There were now three parties in the Commons; the ministerial, the Whig or Rockingham, and the third consisting of those members of the late war ministry who had not been invited to join the present. A coalition of some two of these three parties was almost unavoidable: the public would have most approved of a reunion among the Whigs; but there had been too much of mutual recrimination and dispute to admit of reconciliation. Nothing, therefore, remained but a junction of the two

## parties in opposition. A judicious friend of Mr. Fox said, “that to

undertake the government with Lord North, was to risk their credit on very unsafe grounds. Unless a real good government is the consequence of this junction, nothing can justify it to the public.” Popular feeling was strongly against this coalition, mainly on account of some personal acrimony vented by Mr. Fox, in the boiling over of his wrath during the American contest, which seemed to bear upon the moral character of his opponent. It is to be considered, however, that the most amiable persons, if enthusiastic, are apt in the heat of passion to launch out into invective far more violent than their natural benevolence would justify in their cooler moments. The question on which Mr. Fox and Lord North had been so acrimoniously opposed, had ceased to exist: and perhaps there existed no solid reason against the union of the two

## parties. But the measure was almost universally believed to arise from

corrupt motives: it afforded a fine scope for satire and caricature; and these have no small influence upon the politics of the multitude. And while the people were displeased, the King was decidedly unfriendly to the administration which had forced itself upon him. He considered the Rockingham party as enemies to his prerogative, as well as friends to American independence. He was forced to take them in, but resolved to throw them out again. The unpopular India bill, which Mr. Pitt afterwards adopted with some modifications, furnished the opportunity. The offence taken by the people against the coalition, made them lend a ready ear to the charge of ministerial oligarchy: the King disguised his sentiments till the last moment, procured the rejection of the bill in the Lords, and instantly dismissed his ministers.

The coalition was still in possession of the House of Commons; but the voice of the people supported the minister, a dissolution was resorted to, and the will of the King was accomplished.

From 1784 to 1792, Mr. Fox was leader of a powerful party in the House of Commons, in opposition to Mr. Pitt. The Westminster Scrutiny, the Regency, the abatement of Impeachments by a dissolution of Parliament, the Libel Bill, the Russian Armament, and the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, were the topics which called forth his most powerful exertions. His force as a professed orator was conspicuously displayed in Westminster Hall, on the trial of Warren Hastings; but the triumph of his talents is to be found in those masterly replies to his antagonists, in which cutting sarcasm and close argument, logical acuteness and metaphysical subtlety were so combined, as to surpass all that modern experience had witnessed. The constitutional doctrines of Mr. Fox on the Regency question were much canvassed, and, by many, severely censured. The fact was, that the case was new; provided for neither by law, precedent, nor analogy. Lord Loughborough first suggested the Prince’s claim of right; and it was hastily adopted by Mr. Fox, who had returned from Italy just as the discussion was pending. Mr. Fox’s Libel Bill places him among the most constitutional of our legislators. He saved his country from an unnecessary, unjust, and expensive war, by his exertions on occasion of the Russian Armament.

The controversy on the Test and Corporation Acts has lost its interest, from having since been satisfactorily set at rest. But as, in a sketch like the present, we have more to do with the character of Mr. Fox’s mind than with his political history, we will here introduce an anecdote which the writer of this life heard related many years ago, by Dr. Abraham Rees, well known both in the scientific world, and as a leading divine in the dissenting interest. We have already spoken of the intuitive quickness of Mr. Fox’s parts; and the following anecdote will set that peculiarity in a strong light.

On the day of the debate, Dr. Rees waited on Mr. Fox with a deputation, to engage his support in their cause. He received them courteously; but, though a friend to religious liberty, was evidently unacquainted with the strong points and principal bearings of their peculiar case. He listened attentively to their exposition, and, with an eye that looked them _through and through_, put four or five searching questions. They withdrew after a short conference, and as they walked up St. James’s Street, Mr. Fox passed them booted, as going to take air and exercise, to enable him to encounter the heat of the House and the storm of debate. From the gallery they saw him enter the House with whip in hand, as just dismounted. When he rose to speak, he displayed such mastery of his subject, his arguments and illustrations were so various, his views so profound and statesman-like, that a stranger must have imagined the question at issue between the high church party and the dissenters to have been the main subject of his study throughout life. That his principles of civil and religious liberty should have enabled him to declaim in splendid generalities was to be expected; but he entered as fully and deeply into the fundamental principles and most subtle distinctions of the question, as did those to whom it was of vital importance, and that after a short conference of some twenty minutes.

The French revolution is a topic of such magnitude, that we can only touch upon Mr. Fox’s opinions and conduct with respect to it. After the taking of the Bastille, he describes it as “the greatest, and much the best event that ever happened in the world: all my prepossessions against French connections for this country will be at an end, and indeed most part of my European system of politics will be altered, if this revolution has the consequence that I expect.” But it had not that consequence; and his views were completely changed by the trial and execution of the King and Queen of France. But because he did not catch that contagious disease, made up of alarm and desperate violence, which involved his country in a disastrous war, he was represented as the blind apologist of injustice and massacre, as the careless, if not jacobinical spectator of the downfall of monarchy. Mr. Burke was the first to quarrel with Mr. Fox, and this quarrel led to the temporary estrangement from him of many of his oldest and most valuable friends. But “time and the hour” restored the good understanding between the members of the party, with the exception of Mr. Burke, who died while the paroxysm of Antigallican mania was at its height.

Mr. Fox opposed to the utmost the war, into which the minister was unwillingly forced. But as his passions became heated, and the difficulties of his situation increased, Mr. Pitt adopted all Mr. Burke’s views, and the rash project of a _bellum internecinum_. Both the public principles and the personal character of Mr. Fox were the subject of daily calumnies; and the warmth of his early testimony in favour of the French revolution was continually thrown in his teeth, after the 10th of August, the massacres of September, and the success of Dumourier. But his whole conduct during this struggle was clear and consistent. At the dawn of the revolution, he felt and spoke as a citizen of the world; but he was the last man alive to have merged patriotism in the vague generalities of universal benevolence. When his own country became implicated in the strife, he no longer felt and spoke as a citizen of the world, but as a British statesman; and endeavoured to persuade his countrymen, not for French interests but for their own, to stand aloof from continental politics, relying, for the maintenance of a proud independence and dignified neutrality, on their insular situation and their wooden walls. His advice was not listened to, and his mind grew indisposed towards public business. He says in a letter, dated April, 1795, “I am perfectly happy in the country. I have quite resources enough to employ my mind, and the great resource of literature I am fonder of every day.” After making a vigorous, but unsuccessful opposition to the Treason and Sedition bills, he and his remaining friends seceded from parliament. He passed the years from 1797 to 1802, principally in retirement at St. Ann’s Hill; and they were the happiest of his life. His mornings passed in gardening and farming, his evenings over books and in conversation with his family and friends. During this period, his attention was much given to the Greek Tragedies and to Homer, whom he read not only with the ardent mind of a poet, but with the microscopic eye of a critic. His correspondence with an eminent scholar of the time was full of sagacious remarks on the suggestions and explanations of the commentators, as well as on the text of the poem. At this time also he conceived the plan of that history of which he left only a splendid fragment in a state fit for publication. He had been diligent in collecting materials, and scrupulous in verifying them. His

## partiality for the Greek classics followed him into this pursuit, and

probably retarded his progress. He is considered to have taken for his model Thucydides, a writer strictly impartial in his narrative, grave even to severity in his style. He went to Paris with Mrs. Fox in the summer of 1802, partly to satisfy their mutual curiosity after so long an estrangement from the Continent, but principally for the purpose of examining the copious materials for the reign of James II. deposited in the Scotch college there. Every thing was thrown open to him in the most liberal manner, and, as the unflinching friend of peace through good and evil report, he was received with enthusiasm both by the people and the government. He had several interviews with Buonaparte: the chief topics of their conversation were the concordat, the trial by jury, the freedom, amounting in the opinion of the First Consul to licentiousness, of the English press, the difference between Asiatic and European society. On one occasion he indignantly repelled the charge against Mr. Windham, of being accessory to the plot of the _infernal machine_, alleging the utter impossibility of an English gentleman descending to so disgraceful a device. During his stay in France, he visited La Fayette at his country seat of La Grange.