1769. Against Party it is certain that Goldsmith always set Et. 41. himself "I fly from petty tyrants to the throne." He has, at the same time, been careful to tell us that he did this upon principle, and not from "empty notions of divine or "hereditary right." In the preface to his History, where that expression occurs, he takes occasion to object to the opinions put forth by Hume respecting government as "sometimes reprehensible," and to declare, for his own part, that when at any time he had felt a leaning towards monarchy, it had been suggested by the consideration that a King, being but one man, may easily be restrained from doing wrong, whereas, if a number of the great are permitted to divide authority, who can punish them if they abuse it? An error is involved in this reasoning (not inexcusable, I hope, by those who have read the sketches of party given in this narrative), but at least it suffices to show us why, on this theme, Goldsmith joined Johnson against Burke, though he differed from Johnson in this, that in real truth he went with neither faction. Yet surely, if ever even faction, as against itself, could be invested with a something manly and defensible, it was now. The most thoughtful, the most retired, the least excitable of men, were suddenly aroused to some interest in it. A friend of Gray relates that he had an appointment to meet the poet at his lodgings in Jermyn-street, and found him so deeply plunged in the columns of a newspaper, which with his dinner had been sent him from a neighbouring tavern, that his attention was with difficulty drawn from it. "Take this," said he, in a tone of excitement; "here is "such writing as I never before saw in a newspaper."* It *This account is from Sir Egerton Brydges. Mr. Nicholls merely says: "One day when I entered his apartment, I found him absorbed in reading the was the first letter with the signature of "Junius." But it was not what now we must associate with Junius,—not the reckless calumnies and scandals, not the personal spites and hatreds; not such halting liberalism as his approval of the taxation of America, and his protest against the disfranchisement of Old Sarum,-which then so completely seized upon the reason as well as temper of men. It was the startling manifestation of power and courage; it was the sense that unscrupulous ministers had now an enemy as unscrupulous; that here was knowledge of even the worst chicaneries of office, which not the most sneering official could make light of; that no minister in either house, no courtier at St. James's, no obsequious judge at Westminster, no supercilious secretary in any of the offices, could hereafter feel himself safe from treachery and betrayal; and that what hitherto had been only a vulgar half-articulate cry from the Brentford hustings, or at best, a faint whisper imperfectly echoed from St. Stephen's, was now made the property and enjoyment of every section of the people,—of the educated by its exquisite polish, of the vulgar by its relish of malice, of the great middle-class by its animated plainness, vigorous shrewdness, and dogged perseverance. "I will be heard," cried Burke in the House of Commons, in the course of what he wittily called the fifth act of the tragi-comedy acted by his majesty's servants for the benefit of Mr. Wilkes, at the expense of the constitution: "I will be heard. I will throw open those doors, and tell the people of England that when a man is 66 66 addressing the chair on their behalf, the attention of the "Speaker is engaged "-But "great noise" of members talking proved too much for even that impetuous spirit; 46 newspaper. This was the first letter which appeared of Junius." Works, v. 51. 1769. Et. 41. 1769. he was not heard; nor, till the publication of Sir Henry Et. 41. Cavendish's Notes eleven years since,* had the English people any detailed means of knowing what had passed during the most exciting debates ever known within their House. But the gap was filled by Junius. By those celebrated letters, reprinted and circulated in every possible shape, the people were made parties, in its progress, to much of what was doing in St. Stephen's; in the House itself, the popular element was made of greater practical importance; the democratic spirit throughout the country was strengthened ; and, above all, the right of the newspapers to report the debates was at last secured. * Sir Henry Cavendish was member for Lostwithiel through the whole of that Parliament which met in May 1768, and was dissolved in June 1774; while these matters were debated. So strictly, however, was the standing order against strangers enforced during its continuance, or rather, so severely were all persons punished who ventured to make public any speeches of the members, that, with the exception of one or two by Burke and George Grenville, published by themselves, not one of the many famous efforts of the orators of the time, or indeed anything but the scantiest outline of the actual proceedings of the house, has illustrated our parliamentary histories. Nevertheless it was known that Sir Henry Cavendish (like Sir Symonds d'Ewes in a former and yet more exciting parliament) had taken private notes, and the publication of these we owe to the energy of the late Mr. Wright, by whom, after fifteen years' search, they were found among the Egerton MSS. of the British Museum. They filled forty-nine small quarto volumes; contained ample notes of all the debates during the six sessions of the Parliament in question (excepting only a portion of the winter session of 1770); had been corrected and re-written, in a great many places, by Sir Henry Cavendish himself; and in some, continued still in short-hand. Mr. Wright immediately began their publication, continued it with but moderate patronage (I fear) until two large volumes had been nearly completed, leaving the debates of the last three years a blank; and then died. More than two-thirds of these most valuable notes remain unpublished. Will no private or public society undertake to complete them? Might they not by this time be considered sufficiently to belong to our national history to justify their publication, even by an order of the House of Commons itself? Its cost would be something less than of one reasonably sized blue book, and would the good sense and liberality of such a vote be quite without precedent? CHAPTER V. LONDON LIFE. 1769-1770. HORACE WALPOLE, hopeless of his cousin Conway for a Premier, had left politics now; but he could see those increasing intimations of an uneasy democratic spirit at which I have glanced at the close of the last chapter, and he saw them with alarm. To meet this year at the same dinner-table the Duc de Rochefoucault and Mrs. Macauley,* whose statue the rector of St. Stephen's Walbrook had just set up in the chancel of his church, was, to poor Horace, significant of evil. Yet, when he went to Paris a month or two later, and could not get into the Louvre for the crowds that were flocking to see Madame Dubarry's portrait at the Exposition, he did not seem to see evil impending there. He could only wonder that the French should adore the monarch that was starving them; ‡ and when the Revolution did come, was ready to tear his periwig with horror. With all his professions for * "She is one of the sights," adds Walpole, "that all foreigners are carried "to see." Letters to Mann, ii. 25. "I choose to be unpopular, lest I should be chosen alderman for some ward "or other, and there is one just now vacant. I hope they will elect Mrs. Macauley." Walpole to Countess Ossory, Dec. 5, 1769. Ossory Letters (published at the close of 1848, by Mr. Vernon Smith), i. 5. Coll. Lett. v. 268. 1769. Et. 41. 1769. Et. 41. liberty, indeed, he never measured liberty downwards. He never thought of the independence of those below him, though half his life was passed in crying out for freedom from those above him. Unhappily also, little things and great things too often affected him, or escaped him, in exactly the same proportion, to the sad misuse of his brilliant talents; and it was with this Gray pleasantly reproached him, when, after quiet sarcastic enjoyment of the Paris moralities, he blazed up with so much heat against poor Garrick's Stratford Jubilee. Why so tolerant of Dubarrydom, and so wrathful at Vanity Fair ?* The great actors at the Jubilee in Shakspeare's honour Such was the name Gray gave to the Jubilee; but one of Garrick's Cambridge correspondents (Mr. J. Sharp), who reports this, is at the same time careful to tell the sensitive manager (Garrick Correspondence, i. 349) that "he spoke handsomely "of your happy knack at epilogues." In this, let me add, agreeing with Johnson, who went so far as to say that, although of course Dryden had written single prologues and epilogues finer than any of Garrick's, he had not written such a great number on the same level of merit as clever little Davy had managed to write. An ode, however, is not exactly an epilogue, as Garrick found perhaps too late while he was perpetrating his ode for the Jubilee. Connected with it is one of the pleasantest of all the anecdotes of Gray, told to Mr. Rogers by "the little Fitzherbert " of whom the poet speaks so kindly (Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 443), and who became afterwards Lord St. Helens. "I came to St. John's College, Cambridge," he said to Mr. Rogers, who repeated the anecdote to Mr. Mitford, "in "1770, and that year received a visit from Gray, having a letter of introduction to "him. He was accompanied by Dr. Gisborne, Mr. Stonhewer, and Mr. Palgrave, "and they walked one after one, in Indian file. When they withdrew, every "college man took off his cap as he passed, a considerable number having assembled "in the quadrangle to see Mr. Gray, who was seldom seen. I asked Mr. Gray, to "the great dismay of his companions, what he thought of Mr. Garrick's Jubilee Ode, just published? He answered, 'He was easily pleased.'" Works, v. 183. This at any rate was better morality than Bishop Warburton's, who, at the very time when he was most intimate with Garrick, and in his correspondence overflowing with compliment, thus wrote to Hurd on the 23rd of September 1769 (Letters, 439), "Garrick's portentous Ode, as you truly call it, has but one line of "truth in it, which is where he calls Shakspeare the God of our idolatry: for sense I will not allow it; for that which is so highly satirical, he makes the topic of his hero's encomium. The Ode itself is below any of Cibber's. Cibber's nonsense was something like sense; but this man's sense, whenever he deviates "into it, is much more like nonsense." 66 66 66 |