Part 4

The intercepted letters are published with a preface avowedly by Canning; the notes are certainly by another hand. During the debate which Mr. Fox attended Canning launched out with his usual flippancy of tongue against the D. of Bedford, and said he would not lose his time in replying to arguments brought forward from a man of _such_ an intellect. Fox gave him the retort _un_courteous and made the little great man shrink. In going out he asked him if he seriously thought he could persuade the country that the D. of B. was an idiot. ‘No, I don’t; but why did he attack my publication?’ ‘My publication!’ And such a thing it is; the prophecies announcing the Messiah could not usher him in with more awful pomp than he does these letters to the notice of the public.

[Sidenote: LORD KING]

It was lucky that the first time Mr. Fox heard his nephew speak, should be when he spoke the best. Tho’ his terror was excessive, yet he possessed himself, and made upon the subject of the negotiation a very able speech. On the Dutch inquiry, moved by Ld. H., Ld. King spoke uncommonly well. Ld. H. was the more pleased, as it was merely out of friendship to him that he prevailed upon himself to conquer his dread of addressing a public assembly. He is a very young man, very handsome, very awkward, and very shy, but very full of most excellent qualities. He is a good son, a warm and generous friend. His principles, political and religious, are inimical to the actual state of those in force. The first are moderated: he was a lover of liberty even to democracy, and still abhors religion to impiety, but the experience that has corrected him of one excess will cure him of the other, and doubtless he will become very like other people.

When the division was coming on, Ld. Liverpool and Ld. Malmesbury and many others called out, ‘Pooh, pooh! you won’t divide! Why, you will have but three. Pooh, pooh! Don’t think of it!’ ‘Aye, but I will divide!’ cried Ld. H. ‘If I am single I will have a division’; when, to his great surprise and pleasure, the Duke of Somerset and Ld. Mansfield divided with him, besides King and Bessborough. Ld. Camelford did the same, but pique against Ld. Grenville explains his conduct.

From several conversations I had alone this summer with the D. of Somerset I collected that he was, tho’ not disposed towards Opposition, yet averse to Ministers. He is a sensible man, inclined to act upon his own judgment: his manner, from shyness, is against him. I suspect that he has a love of fun in him, for he told me that he was occupied in persuading Lewis to write a book on moral philosophy, as he was certain from the opinions he heard from Lewis that it would be at least entertaining. ‘For,’ says he, ‘he calls _virtues_ what the world holds in abhorrence as great vices, and these paradoxes he maintains so strangely that I cannot illustrate them stronger than by telling you that he confesses himself surprised that Wilberforce should have published his book after _The Monk_. He thinks it great want of taste to give a system of morality in a dry, forbidding form, whereas “_mine_ is given in a popular, pleasing manner, which diverts whilst it instructs, annner to upbraid him for his vote the night before, but hed is adapted to every capacity.”’ Yesterday when he came in to dinner Lds. Boringdon and Amherst lifted up their hands in a ma rather showed an unwillingness to be tutored. Again, during a dinner, Ld. B. leant across me to tell him he was a rival to Julian. I immediately said, ‘I see no apostasy in being guided by good sense and not biassed by interest.’ Ld. B. said no more, and the Duke looked thanks for the reproof. Again Ld. B. asked how he meant to vote upon a question which is coming on. The question is improper to ask, and the Duke replied very well, ‘I shall decide when I hear the arguments on both sides.’

We had a numerous party; Sir James St. Clair is lately returned from Minorca, of which place he gives but a sorry account. His wife is handsome; she did not love him when they first married, but his good nature has conquered her dislike, and she is almost in love with him. In most marriages a material change occurs in the course of ten years, but she has the merit of _singularity_ in hers. Ld. Lorne is an old favourite of mine; his good humour, cheerfulness, and ease is quite charming. Lewis’ lines in an epilogue to _Barbarossa_, which they acted at Inverary, are very descriptive of him:--

And Lord Lorne’s easy air, when he got in a passion, Proved a tyrant must needs be a person of fashion. He seemed much at home through the whole of the play; He died in a style that was quite _dégagé_. And his orders for murder, disclosed by their tone, ’Twas the same if he gave them or let them alone.

_14th Feb., 1800._--Bob Heathcote came for the first time. ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’ Most of his is squandered at the gaming table, Newmarket, rare editions, sums lent to ----, splendid dinners, and, in short, in every way that it can go. He is, however, very good-natured, and not conceited--merits that cover a thousand blemishes, and in society make up for most deficiencies.

[Sidenote: MR. KINNAIRD]

A few days back Mr. Kinnaird,[60] eldest son of Ld. Kinnaird, dined here for the first time. Being a Scotchman and having studied in a Scotch University, report puffs him high, of course. Tho’ it overdoes his deserts, yet he merits some praise. He is clever and willing to please; one cannot pity him for _shyness_, as he labours under no embarrassment upon that score. Living in the world will set his head right and render him useful. He is an eager politician against Ministers.

Ld. H. is gone down to the H. of Lords, as a message from the King to subsidise the _German_ Princes is before the House. It is conjectured that our magnanimous ally, the Imperial Paul, is deserting the cause he espoused so vehemently; whilst we are to continue fighting until ‘experience and the evidence of facts’ render a peace proper with Bonaparte. One of the finest passages in Mr. Fox’s speech was where he took up the expression of those who gave for reason the not negotiating immediately, that ‘we should _pause_.’ He described with energy the calamities of war, the villages sacked, cattle destroyed, the field of battle covered with agonised victims weltering in their blood, who, if questioned as to the cause they were fighting in, could not answer as in other wars, ‘ambition,’ ‘aggrandisement of territory,’ etc., etc. ‘No, we fight because the English Ministers are doubtful as to the moral qualities of Bonaparte.’

Lord Carlisle is mightily disposed to vote against the Ministers, a propensity which gives his son great alarm, as he is riveted to all the dogmas of the Ministerial creed, the necessity of the war, faith in the prowess of Suwarrow, the infallibility of Mr. Pitt, etc., etc.

General Fitzpatrick has published his letters to Lord Kenyon.[61] Previous to doing so he sent them to the King, accompanied by a letter calculated to delight him, appealing to him as the head of the school of honour and chief among gentlemen. The motto to the publication is very happy; it is taken from Kenyon’s own speech on the trial of Horne Tooke in 1792: ‘Mr. Horne Tooke, I cannot sit here to hear names calumniated and vilified, persons who are not in this case, persons who are absent, and cannot defend themselves. A Court of Justice is no place for calumny. You must see the impropriety of it, and it does not become the feelings of an honourable mind.’

I heard of a great trait of Scotch nationality. At a dinner at the Chief Baron’s,[62] where Sylvester Douglas[63] was, the news, just then fresh, of Bonaparte’s seizure of the Governt. was mentioned, upon which both the Scotchmen at the same moment inquired, ‘And what did Macdonald[64] do?’

[Sidenote: THE PRINCE’S HEALTH]

The Prince of Wales is supposed to be dying: whatever his illness may be besides, revived love for Mrs. Fitzherbert has aggravated and added to the measure of it. Mde. de Coigny says it’s like a _rondeau_, in which variations are made _ad libitum_, but the return is to the first air. He had a numerous dinner last week, composed solely of parsons; whether this was fun or fear is uncertain. If he had been in a vein for the former, it might have been indulged, as no set of men abhor each other with more heartfelt hatred than those pious brethren; each is in the way of the other, like an overloaded market in Bengal of English beauties. The other night at D. House he fell back in his chair and pointed to have his neckcloth loosened; fortunately Farquhar was there, and ordered proper remedies for his recovery.

The French have played a very good trick in return for our publishing the intercepted letters. They pretend to have found hidden in the wall of a house belonging to a Chouan chief, letters written by Pitt, Windham, etc., to recommend the Royalists to make peace with the Republicans at any rate, and then break it when the English succours arrive. This may be a _real_ correspondence, but if not, _è bene trovato_.

Menzini,[65] the satirist, was derided for his poverty by an insolent and haughty Cardinal, who from his balcony perceived him walking, shabbily dressed. The Cardinal expressed his contempt in the lines of Petrarch:--

Povera e nuda vai Filosofia.

Menzini, with great quickness, replied by the next line of the poet:--

Dice la turba al vil guadagno intesa.

Caraccioli said of England, ‘Que c’était un pays où il y avoit mille religions, et qu’une sauce.’

M. de Lauragais[66] said of it, ‘Qu’il n’y avoit rien de poli que l’acier, point de fruits mûrs que les pommes cuites.’

_1st March, 1800._--Within these last ten or twelve days Mrs. Beauclerk and Mrs. Smith have each added their individual contributions to the population of the world: a little Mimi, and a still smaller boy are the production.

[Sidenote: COMTE D’ARTOIS]

Tierney told me of a circumstance which had been conveyed to him _from authority_. At one of the dinners given by the Comte d’Artois to Pitt and the Cabinet Ministers, the Cte. expressed his astonishment and indignation _to_ Pitt, that a man possessing such principles as Mr. Tierney does, and uttering all that his turbulent and discontented disposition gives rise to, was allowed to go about; that such a man in a well-regulated Governt. should be confined, and not allowed to be at large to preach politics. Pitt replied that Mr. Tierney was a member of Parliament, a very loyal subject, and respectable in his private character. This was said drily, and intended as a reproof to a very ill-judged question. Nothing could show a greater want of taste and knowledge of English customs, than to abuse a member of Parliament to the Prime Minister of England, and tho’ I would not detract from Mr. Pitt, yet his defence of Tierney was such as the occasion extorted, and ought to have been made for any man in Parliament who has not outraged the laws. Even Sir Francis Burdett is as yet entitled to a similar justification. The Cte. d’Artois (at present, according to the _ancien régime_, Monsieur) is a man of slender abilities with violent passions; before the Revolution he was weak and volatile, he is now weak and revengeful.

Bonaparte gives fresh proofs every day of his talents for governing, both in his disposition to conciliate and resist. He has issued letters to recall most of the emigrant nobles who have not borne arms against their country, infants, women, and priests; he manifests a strong determination to fight as well as he did formerly, and not allow of anything being wrested from the nation.

There is upon record a very curious fact, that well considered might abate the ardour of those who are disposed to fight on for the Restoration ‘of the line of Hereditary Princes,’ as it shows that that event would not in all probability induce France to fall back within her ancient limits--one of the objects proposed by the restoration of ye Bourbons. Upon the restoration of Charles II., the Spaniards applied to the English Court for the surrender of Jamaica, upon the ground of its being conquered by an usurper.[67] The English Ministers submitted the question to the ablest civilians in the country, and they were unanimous in their opinion that whatever conquest had been achieved by the arms of G. Britain, whether under lawful or usurped authority, _that_ acquisition, once annexed and become an integral part of the Dominion, it was safe to maintain even by force of arms. And can it seriously be supposed, first, that the French nation will ever receive a Monarch forced upon them at the point of the bayonet by the allied armies, knowing that the incentive that provokes those allies is the partition of France? And, 2ndly, admitting the restoration were practicable, would the Kings, whose object would be popularity, venture to dismember their country? Why, even the unhappy emigrants, starving and exiled, feel triumph and exultation at every victory obtained by their countrymen.

Washington died towards the close of the year 1799. His name will stand high in the page of history, and posterity will be apt to outstep truth to bestow enthusiastic eulogy upon him, who has been great from his mediocrity. Mankind delight in assigning deep designs to very obvious facts. We shall hear of his being the first among generals, legislators, patriots, and practical philosophers, of his integrity, his disinterestedness in sacrificing to the public, of his well understood ambition in preferring a _splendid obscurity_ to elevated insignificancy; in short, what will not be said except the truth--a plain, painstaking, plodding man, whose profession of land surveyor taught him a smattering of mixed mathematics which became useful when military positions were to be conceived, a mild, even temper, that neither offended nor captivated. So much will be said, and hitherto so little has been said, that I shall wait and hear. All France and America mourned at his death.

Canning sent to beg we would fix a day that he might dine here. He came, we had only Lds. G. Leveson, Boringdon, and Ly. Bess. Went off very agreeably. He was witty upon the new Institution,[68] which is a very bad imitation of the _Institut_ at Paris; hitherto there is only one Professor, who is a jack-of-all-trades, as he lectures alike upon chemistry and shipbuilding.

[Sidenote: HORNE TOOKE’S ELECTION]

When Horne Tooke harangued the electors of Westminster from the hustings he was often put out by one of the mob closing his sentences with a nasal ‘Amen.’ This ridiculous finale did him more mischief than all the arguments of his adversaries to prove his incapacity, on account of having taken Priest’s orders, and now the Bishop of London refuses to induct him because he is a layman. He is ingenious enough, I doubt not, to reconcile these seeming contradictions.[69]

Hare, joking with Ld. H. upon his small divisions, some of which have been composed of Ld. King and himself only, says he ought to say, ‘Ego et _Rex_ meus.’

Marquis de la Rivière[70] has with a degree of superabundant loyal zeal, vexed me. At dinner here he overheard me telling Calonne the story of the Cte. d’Artois asking Pitt why a man like Tierney was not shut up. He straight went and asked Monsieur if it was true; he, of course, said _no_, and contradicted it plump. This contradiction Rivière believes implicitly, and wrote me a formal denial of the charge. This provokes me, as I hate being made a party in a _tracasserie_, and still more hate having named any person. However, the thing is of no importance, because I certainly credit Tierney’s statement in preference to Monsieur’s asseveration to the contrary.

I was childish enough last night to go and see the new play; it was almost my first _sortie_ from my couch, but I am not punished for the imprudence, as I have been perfectly well all day. I found Lewis in my box; he is the only person I give leave to enter at all times. He was just returned from Cambridge, where he had heard Ld. Henry Petty deliver a declamation, composed in the very best taste, full of feeling and ingenuity.

I have been reading Le Brun’s journey to Persepolis in 1704, the ruins of which (Persepolis) seem equal to anything of antiquity in point of solidity, size, and extent.

In future times when this little island shall have fallen into its natural insignificancy, by being no longer possessed of a fictitious power founded upon commerce, distant colonies, and other artificial sources of wealth, how puzzled will the curious antiquary be when seeking amidst the ruins of London vestiges of its past grandeur? Acres now covered by high, thin walls of brick, making streets _tirés à cordon_, divided into miserable, straitened, scanty houses, will, when decayed, crumble into a vast heap of brick-dust. No proud arch to survive the records of history, no aqueduct to prove how much the public was considered by ye Governt., no lofty temples, no public works! St. Paul’s anywhere would be a grand edifice; finer as a ruin than in its present state, disfigured with casements, whitewashed walls, pews, etc. The bridges alone would strike the eye as fine remains; they are magnificent. The reason of the meanness of everything throughout England proceeds from two causes. One is the scantiness of materials for great works, viz., stone and marble; second is, that commerce begets independence, from whence springs selfishness and the wish to enjoy what you acquire. Hence there is no ambition, no desire of perpetuating by great works fame to posterity.

[Sidenote: THE HUMANITARIANS]

Hobhouse,[71] who dined here last week for the first time, is a leading man among the Dissenters. He and Mr. Wm. Smith have written controversial books, and he has distinguished his own sect by the denomination of _Humanitarians_, not to be confounded with Unitarians. Priestley, in fact, is the founder of their doctrines, which doctrines they say are drawn from the New Testament in conformity with the primitive practice of Christianity. They assert that most points of faith in the Established Church proceed from the corruptions of Christianity. Christ they believe to have been the son of Joseph and Mary, but that he became inspired by a divine gift. They deny the Trinity, original sin, and the soul; their paradise is composed of material objects, not admitting the separation of soul and body. The Bible they hold to be an historical chronicle, Moses merely a legislator, the Prophets inspired darkly announcing Christ.

Sheridan by chance dined here on Friday, with a whole troop of Frenchmen. I was afraid he would be annoyed, as he does not speak French (which is the strangest thing imaginable for a man in his situation), but he, on the contrary, was pleased with his party. The company were ye Archevêque de Bordeaux, Calonne, Rivière, and Mr. Lattin. He was diverted at seeing the Archevêque laugh heartily at some sallies which might have shocked a bigot or a prude.

Crébillon Père, when upon his deathbed, sent for his son. ‘Ah! mon fils, est-ce donc bien vrai que vous soyez un de ces philosophes à la mode, qui veulent le bouleversement de la religion?’ He drew from behind his pillow a crucifix, and pointing to it, ‘Vous voulez donc détruire ce qu’il lui a tant coûté pour établir?’ This story Condorcet used to be very fond of telling.

Lady Ann Hatton speculates upon marrying Lord Abercorn. Lady Bessborough, who is all credulity, believes _de bonne foi_ that this marriage will take place; even I, who am incredulous, have doubts in his favour, provided what I am told is true, such as, that Ld. A. has taken his daughters to visit their future mother. Beauclerk thinks Ly. Ann dreams, and imparts the vision to Lady B. for facts. Ld. Morpeth behaves admirably, but has wisely not given in a _contre projet_ to the project upon the _tapis_. For a moment I thought the marriage story with Ld. A. was a scheme to obtain a real one from him, but _nous verrons_. Tho’ I do not particularly like Ly. Ann, I shall be glad to see her rescued from the humiliating state she is in; neglect, poverty, and discredit are horrid sufferances. If she closes her career with one of the greatest matches in the kingdom, I don’t know how young women will credit wise precepts of ‘virtue alone is rewarded,’ etc. She is 36, her appearance is so youthful that no one guesses her to be above 24, if so much. Her figure is light, airy, and graceful; Hare says she has a sort of vivacity that raises your expectations, but what she says is so flat that it damps curiosity.

Bonaparte allows of the return of the emigrants; I almost fear he extends that indulgence too far. Once restored to their possessions they will long for their titles, and a King will be the fountain of honour. The Duc de Liancourt has obtained all his estates which were not sold, and those of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; this makes him among the number of the richest individuals in Europe.[72]

[Sidenote: TALLEYRAND’S SARCASMS]

A very profligate man, who was an agent of the Duc de Richelieu in all his vicious debaucheries, said in a company one day where Talleyrand (L’Évêque d’Autun) was, how much he was injured by the calumnies propagated against him, ‘Et vraiment je n’ai jamais fait qu’une méchanceté de ma vie.’ Talleyrand, with calm indifference, replied, ‘Et quand finira-t-elle?’ I rather think the man’s name was Rulhière.[73]

Talleyrand is remarkable for his cold sarcasms. When M. de Narbonne was Minister at War, Mde. de Staël was his protecting mistress, she guided everything; and one day at a Council of War, at which, very improperly, she was present, each Minister gave their opinion upon the different projects proposed for the plan of attack by some generals. She delivered, among the rest, hers with great warmth and decision; when she had finished she turned to Talleyrand, and said, ‘Why, you do not say a word! What do you think?’ He coldly replied, ‘C’est que je ne m’y entends nullement dans les affaires militaires.’ This bitter reproof vexed her to a degree of passion that she burst into tears; she merited the chastisement, for ‘qu’avait-elle à faire dans ce galère-là?’

An excellent pamphlet, called _Observations upon the Preface to the intercepted correspondence_, contains some witty and severe strictures upon Canning’s highly absurd arguments contained in said preface. It has been imputed to Grey, Lds. Wycombe, Holland, and to Tierney. Ld. H. admired it so much that his uncle Fitzpatrick said he could not resist telling him it was his, but it is a profound secret.