after, he descended to the grave, full of years and honours, the most precious honours which a patriot can enjoy, the unabated gratitude of his countrymen, and the unbroken consciousness of having, through good report and evil, firmly maintained his principles and faithfully discharged his duty."—(Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches.-Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors.)

LORD LYTTELTON.

GEORGE LYTTELTON, the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton of Hagley in Worcestershire, gave nobility to a family that claimed to be one of the most ancient in the kingdom. His ancestors had possessions in the vale of Evesham, Worcestershire, in the reign of Henry III., particularly at South Lyttelton, from which place some antiquarians have asserted they took their name. The great Judge Lyttelton, in the reign of Henry IV., was one of this family; and from him descended Sir Thomas Lyttelton, who was appointed a Lord of the Admiralty in the year 1727. This gentleman married Christian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, and maid of honour to Queen Anne, by whom he had six sons and six daughters, the eldest of whom, George, afterwards created Lord Lyttelton, was born at Hagley, in January, 1709.

He was educated at Eton together with Pitt, and others whose memoirs appear in this chapter. He is said to have been greatly distinguished for the beauty and elegance of his Latin exercises. And while he was at Eton, his taste for English poetry displayed itself in several pleasing compositions, which gave promise of higher poetical excellence than he can be said afterwards to have obtained. One of these, a supposed "Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country," shows a sustained elegance and happy terseness, such as are seldom met with in boyish rhymes:

SOLILOQUY OF A BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY.

'Twas night; and Flavia to her room retir'd,
With evening chat and sober reading tir'd;
There, melancholy, pensive, and alone,
She meditates o'er the forsaken town:
On her rais'd arm reclin'd her drooping head,
She sigh'd, and thus in plaintive accents said:
“Ah, what avails it to be young and fair;
To move with negligence, to dress with care?

What worth have all the charms our pride can boast,

If all in envious solitude are lost?

Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel;

Where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle;
Beauty, like wit, to judges should be shown;
Both most are valued, where they best are known.

With every grace of nature or of art,
We cannot break one stubborn country heart:
The brutes, insensible, our power defy;

To love, exceeds a squire's capacity.

The town, the court, is Beauty's proper sphere;
That is our Heaven, and we are angels there :
In that gay circle thousand Cupids rove,

The Court of Britain is the Court of Love.

How has my conscious heart with triumph glow'd,

How have my sparkling eyes their transport show'd,
At each distinguish'd birth-night ball, to see
The homage, due to Empire, paid to me?
When every eye was fix'd on me alone,

And dreaded mine more than the monarch's frown;
When rival statesmen for my favour strove,
Less jealous in their power than in their love.
Chang'd is the scene; and all my glories die,
Like flowers transplanted to a colder sky:
Lost is the dear delight of giving pain,
The tyrant joy of hearing slaves complain.
In stupid indolence my life is spent,
Supinely calm, and dully innocent:
Unblest I wear my useless time away,

Sleep (wretched maid !) all night, and dream all day;

Go at set hours to dinner and to prayer,

(For dullness ever must be regular.)
Now with mamma at tedious whist I play;
Now without scandal drink insipid tea;
Or in the garden breathe the country air,
Secure from meeting any tempter there.

From books to work, from work to books, I rove,

And am, alas! at leisure to improve !—

Is this the life a beauty ought to lead ?

Were eyes so radiant only made to read?

These fingers, at whose touch ev'n age would glow,
Are these of use for nothing but to sew?

Sure erring nature never could design

To form a housewife in a mould like mine!
O Venus, queen and guardian of the fair,
Attend propitious to thy votary's prayer:
Let me revisit the dear town again;
Let me be seen!—could I that wish obtain,
All other wishes my own power would gain!'

From Eton, Lyttelton went to Christ-church, where he maintained the same reputation for scholarship and abilities which he had previously acquired.

In the year 1728 he set out on the tour of Europe. On his arrival in Paris he accidentally became acquainted with the Honourable Mr. Poyntz, then our minister at the Court of Versailles, who was so struck with the capacity displayed by young Lyttelton, that he invited him to his house, and employed him in many political negotiations, which he executed with great skill and discretion.

On his return from the Continent he sought and obtained a seat in the House of Commons, as representative of the borough of Okehampton in Devonshire. Like his friend Pitt he joined the Opposition, and he made his first speech in the House on the same evening and on the same subject on which Pitt first spoke. Both the young orators attracted general notice, and many prophesied as high Parliamentary exploits from Lyttelton as from Pitt.

It has been mentioned in the memoir of Chatham, that Sir Robert Walpole deprived him of his Cornetcy of Horse in revenge for his first speech. On this occasion Lyttelton addressed his friend in an epigram which acquired considerable credit for, at least, the writer.

TO WILLIAM PITT, ESQUIRE,

ON HIS LOSING HIS COMMISSION.

Long had thy virtues marked thee out for fame,
Far, far superior to a Cornet's name;

This generous Walpole saw, and grieved to find

So mean a post disgrace that noble mind.

The servile standard from thy freeborn hand

He took, and bid thee lead the patriot band.—1736

Lyttelton was taken, not only into the service, but into the close friendship of Frederick Prince of Wales, who, in 1737, appointed him his secretary, and continued to treat him as his most confidential friend until the time of that Prince's death. This connexion with Prince Frederick made, of course, Lyttelton's opposition to Sir Robert Walpole more systematic and acrimonious. For many years he took part regularly in every debate in which that statesman's measures were opposed, or any personal attack was directed against him.

In 1744, Lyttelton was made one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. It must be recorded to his praise, that he availed himself of every opportunity given by his rank, his private fortune, and his influence with the Prince of Wales, to promote literature, and relieve the necessities of men of learning. He was

the generous patron of Fielding, Thomson, Mallet, Young, Hammond, and West, and he was the intimate friend of Pope. Henry Fox, in the House of Comnons, taxed Lyttelton with this lastmentioned intimacy, and expressed his indignation that any statesman should associate with a lampooner so unfair and so licentious in his abuse as Pope. Lyttelton on this occasion defended his friend with spirit and success, stating publicly "that he esteemed it an honour to be admitted to the familiarity of so great a poet."

In 1741 he married Miss Lucy Fortescue, sister to Matthew Lord Fortescue of Devonshire. After six years of domestic happiness he had to bear the heavy affliction of her death. Johnson says sarcastically that "he solaced himself by writing a Monody to her memory, without, however, condemning himself to perpetual solitude and sorrow, for he soon after sought to find the same happiness again in a second marriage with the daughter of Sir Robert Rich (1749); but the experiment was unsuccessful, and he was for some years before his death separated from this lady."

Chalmers, in his biographical notice of Lyttelton, has made some very fair remarks in Lyttelton's justification in answer to the sneers of Johnson. I quite concur with Chalmers, who, after quoting Johnson, says :

"This notice of the Monody, which is given in Dr. Johnson's words, has been thought too scanty praise. In truth it is no praise at all, but an assertion and not a just one, that Lord Lyttelton 'solaced his grief' by writing the poem. The praise or blame was usually reserved by Johnson for the conclusion of his lives, but in this case the Monody is not mentioned at all. We have on record, however, an opinion of Gray, which the admirers of the poem will perhaps scarcely think more sympathetic than Johnson's silence. In a letter to Lord Orford, who had probably spoken with disrespect of the Monody, Gray says, 'I am not totally of your mind as to Mr. Lyttelton's elegy, though I love kids and fauns as little as you do. If it were all like the fourth stanza I should be excessively pleased. Nature and sorrow and tenderness are the true genius of such things; and something of these I find in several parts of it (not in the orange tree); poetical ornaments are foreign to the purpose, for they only show a man is not sorry -and devotion worse; for it teaches him that he ought not to be sorry, which is all the pleasure of the thing.'-Orford's Works, vol. v. p. 389. Dr. Johnson is undoubtedly ironical in saying

that the author 'solaced his grief' in writing the Monody. The poet's grief must have abated, and his mind recovered its tone before he could write at all; and when this became Mr. Lyttelton's case, he felt it his duty to pay an affectionate tribute to the memory of his lady, who certainly was one of the best of women. His talents led him to do this in poetry, and he no more deserves the suspicion of hypocrisy, than if he had, as an artist, painted an apotheosis, or executed a monument."

I will quote two of the stanzas of this Monody, which seem to me to possess much sweetness and grace, as well as to express natural and deep feeling:

"Not only good and kind,

But strong and elevated was her mind :

A spirit that with noble pride

Could look superior down

On Fortune's smile or frown;

That could, without regret or pain,

To virtue's lowest duty sacrifice

Or interest, or ambition's highest prize ;

That, injur❜d or offended, never tried
Its dignity by vengeance to maintain,
But by magnanimous disdain.

A wit that, temperately bright,

With inoffensive light

All pleasing shone; nor ever past

The decent bounds that Wisdom's sober hand,

And sweet Benevolence's mild command,

And bashful Modesty, before it cast.

A prudence undeceiving, undeceiv'd,
That nor too little nor too much believ'd,
That scorned unjust suspicion's coward fear,
And without weakness knew to be sincere.
Such Lucy was, when, in her fairest days,
Amidst th' acclaim of universal praise,

In life's and glory's freshest bloom,

Death came remorseless on, and sunk her to the tomb.