Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The present company at this pleasant theatre is rich in talent. It includes seven or eight actors and actresses, who may be justly termed excellent in their respective styles. At the top of the list stand Bouffé and Déjazet. Respecting the latter, we have but little to add to the opinion we expressed in a recent number of this Magazine. After a long and fatiguing career, and at an age when most actresses have either left the stage, or dwindled into duennas and other subordinate parts, she still affords more pleasure by her performances than nine-tenths of her youthful contemporaries. Her _making-up_, is admirable, and she and Madame Doche divide between the honour of being the best dressed women on the French stage. In the ball-room or the street she still looks young; for although her face depends upon paint, her figure is erect and juvenile, and one would hardly suspect her of being the mother of "Monsieur Eugene Déjazet, who has attained some celebrity as a musical composer, and of a daughter who appeared at the St. James's theatre, in 1844, under the name of Mademoiselle Herminie." Her generosity and excellent heart have endeared her to her comrades. Her wit and ready repartee are proverbial. Mr. Hervey quotes a few of her _bon mots_, but he might have made a better selection. It is true that, besides the difficulty of translation, he may have been hampered by the latitude the lady allows herself. He regrets that a collection of her smart sayings is not made, to be called Déjazetiana; and opines that it would rival in merit, and far surpass in bulk, the volume containing the sallies of the famous Sophie Arnould. Something of the sort has been published, under the title of the "Perroquet de Mademoiselle Déjazet," but to its authenticity or value we are unable to speak.

In the year 1821, a young man in his twenty-first year, by trade a carver and gilder, was engaged to act at the new theatre of the Panorama Dramatique, at the enormous salary of twelve pounds per annum. To augment this pittance, and to please his father, who was averse to his new profession, he employed himself between the acts in gilding frames in a small workshop behind the scenes. This ill-paid aspirant to histrionic fame was MARIE BOUFFÉ, "the most perfect comedian of his day," says Mr. Hervey, and we fully coincide in the verdict. Bouffé, is one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and agreeable actors we ever saw; subtle and delicate in his conceptions of character, energetic without rant, ever true to Nature, and of a rare versatility of talent. We have known several persons who fancied, partly perhaps on account of his name, that he only acted comic parts: they should see him obtain a _succès de larmes_, throw a whole theatre into tears, by his exquisite feeling and pathos in serious ones. No actor more thoroughly makes his audience forget that he is one. His identification with his part is complete. The two lines of characters he usually takes are old men and lads, even very young boys. And in both he perfectly succeeds. We are doubtful in which to prefer him. As the noisy, lively, mischievous urchen in the _Gamin de Paris_, and as the griping old miser in the _Fille de l'Avare_, he is equally excellent. His countenance is remarkable. A clever critic has said of him, that he has the physiognomy of a Mephistopheles and the eye of an angel. The observation is singularly happy. There _is_ something Mephistophelian in the curve of his nose, and in the lines around his mouth. His command of expression is extraordinary; his eyes, especially, alternately flash fire and grow dim with melancholy or tenderness. His figure is short, thin, and frail; his general appearance sickly, and not without cause, for poor Bouffé is consumptive, and, to judge from his looks, not long for this world. The only actor upon the French or English stage with whom we can compare him is the veteran Farren. But the comparison is to the advantage of the Frenchman, whose chief characteristic is his entire freedom from mannerism and stage trick. Mr. Farren is of the old and sterling school of actors, of which, unfortunately, so few remain. He stands first in his line upon the English boards, and deserves to be spoken of with all respect. Would that we had a dozen as good. But he has his faults, and the chief one is mannerism, certain peculiar ways that prevent the spectator from forgetting the actor in the person he represents, trifles, which it may be hypercritical to cavil at, but which nevertheless spoil the illusion, and compel the exclamation, "There is Farren." Take for example his favourite trick of scratching his upper lip with his forefinger. We have seen Bouffé many times--less frequently, certainly, than we have Farren--but we never perceived in him any of these peculiarities. His creations are original and new throughout; the mime disappears, and we have before as the gossiping old man, the rough shipboy, the simple-hearted recruit. We are really at a loss to point out a fault or suggest an improvement in Bouffé's acting. "If the public," says M. Eugene Briffault, "finds that he makes but little progress in the course of each year, it is because he is as near perfection as an actor can be." Many of Mr. Hervey's criticisms are excellent; none more so than the following:--"Bouffé's gaiety is frank and communicative, his pathos simple, yet inexpressibly touching; the foundation of his character is sensibility; he _feels_ all he says. He never employs any superfluity of action for the purpose of producing effect, nor does he seek, by first raising his voice almost to a shriek, and then lowering it to a whisper, to _startle_ his audience into a fit of enthusiasm; on the contrary, a studied sobriety, both of speech and gesture, is one of the peculiar features of his acting." When Bouffé visits England, we recommend some of our actors, who at present "imitate humanity so abominably," to attend his performances, and strive to profit by his example.

We have lingered at the Variétés, and must move onwards, rather against our will, and although much remains to be said concerning that amusing theatre and its actors. Hyacinthe's nose, alone, would furnish materials for a chapter, and of alarming longitude, if in proportion with the feature. The two Lepeintres would fill an article. They are brothers and rival punsters. The jokes of Lepeintre, Jenue have been printed and sold at the theatre door. His senior, who is no way inferior to him, either as a wit or an actor, said, with reference to himself, that he carried abundance, wherever he went, "_puisqu'on y voyoit le pain trainer_ (Lepeintre âiné.)"

On the site of an old cemetery stands the theatre known as the Gymnase Dramatique. A suggestive fact for the moralist. Death replaced by Momus; the mourner's tears succeeded by the quips and cranks of an Achard, by the wreathed smiles of a Rose Chéri. Where the funeral once took its slow and solemn way, rouged processions pass, tinsel heroes strut, and vapour. Thousand-tinted garlands supplant the pale _immortelles_ that decked the graves; the sable cloak is doffed, and motley's the only wear. Surely actors must be bold men to tread a stage covering so many mouldering relics of mortality. Not for Potosi, and the Real del Monte to boot, would we do it, lest, at the witching hour, some ghastly skeleton array should rise and drive us from the Golgotha, or drag us to the charnel-house beneath. But we forget that the good old days are gone when such things were, or were believed in, and that superstition is now as much out of date as a heavy coach upon the Great North Road. Spectres may occasionally be seen at the Gymnase, but they are very material, flesh-and-blood sort of goblins, well known as impostors, even to the scene-shifters. This need not prevent any aspiring young novelist, desirous of coming out in the ghastly and ghostly line, from profiting by our hint, and producing, after a little preparatory cramming with Mrs. Radcliffe and the Five Nights of St. Albans, what the newspapers call "a romance of thrilling interest" on the subject of the gay Gymnase and its grave foundation.

Built in 1819, the Gymnase "was originally intended, as its name denotes, to be a kind of preparatory school for dramatic aspirants, whence the most promising actors and actresses were to be occasionally transferred to the different royal theatres." For some years--from 1824 till the July Revolution--it was known as the _Théatre de Madame_, and was under the special patronage of the Duchess of Berri, whom the manager had propitiated by sending a part of his company to amuse her when bathing at Dieppe. At that time it ranked immediately after the theatres royal, taking the precedence of the Vaudeville and other minors. Shorn by the Revolution of its honours and privileges, its favour with the public suffered little diminution. For many years Bouffé performed there, and there achieved his greatest triumphs. At the Variétés he has not been so well catered for by the dramatists. The present company at the Gymnase is very good. Bressant, Ferville, Numa, Klein, and Achard, are excellent actors. In actresses, also, the theatre is well provided, and the whole tone of its company and performances is such as to render it one of the most correct and agreeable in Paris. But the gem of the Gymnase, its grand attraction, to our thinking, is that delightful little actress, Rose Chéri. Never, assuredly, was a pretty name more appropriately bestowed. Her plump, fresh, pleasant little face, reminds one of the _Rose_, and _chérie_ she assuredly is by the hundreds of thousands whom her graceful and tasteful performance has enchanted. Mademoiselle Chéri, who is only one-and-twenty, made her "first appearance upon any stage" at the somewhat early age of five years. "She acted the part of _Lisette_, in the _Roman d'une Heure_, for the amusement of her parents, (the other two characters being sustained by two of her playmates;) and the talent displayed by her was so remarkable, that she was encouraged to repeat the essay in public at the theatre of Bourges, on which occasion her infant exertions were rewarded by the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and--which was probably still more to her taste--by a shower of _bonbons_." Either the applause or the _bonbons_, or both, decided her vocation, and she continued to act from time to time, until at length she became a regular member of a provincial company, whose manager was her father. In 1842, she went to Paris, where she soon took rank with the best _jeunes premières_ of the capital. She has been justly called the most loveable actress upon the French stage; so graceful, so soft and womanly, displaying alternately such genuine feeling and nature, and such arch coquetry of manner; always such great freshness of style. We were pleased to see her properly appreciated during her last visit to London, both by press and public. Trained to the stage from so early an age--although not, as Mademoiselle Déjazet is said to have been, born in a theatre--it is not surprising that Rose Chéri is in the highest degree self-possessed and at her ease. But if she is _sans peur_ on the boards, she is also--most rare commendation for a French actress--_sans reproche_ in private life. Such a Rose as this is indeed the pride of the garden.

Two words about the Palais Royal, and we have done; leaving the dramatic aristocracy of the theatres royal, and the smaller fry of the Boulevards, for some future opportunity of comment. The Français, although it reckons in its company several excellent comic actors, relies chiefly on tragedy, and will doubtless continue to do so, as long as it possesses Rachel, or until a comedian of very extraordinary talent starts up. And in French tragedies, even, heretical as it may sound, in the classic masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, we take far less pleasure than in the witty and sparkling comedies of many less renowned authors, to which the genius of the language so much better adapts itself. Nay, we confess to have more than once passed the Français without the least compunction, with _les Horaces_ or _Andromaque_ on the bills, and a crowd at the door, to commit ourselves, a few paces farther, to the friendly arms of a stall at the Palais Royal, and the mirth-inspiring influence of Tousez and Levassor, the most comical buffoon and admirable mimic on the French stage.

When the _Variétés'_ company was expelled from the little theatre of the Palais Royal, it became the scene of all manner of bastard performances. Rope dancers, wooden puppets, even dogs were the actors. The most intelligent of these were the quadrupeds. Mr. Hervey gives the following analysis of a melodrama enacted by them:--

"A young Russian princess, held captive in a castle by a tyrant, has a lover, who has sworn to effect her rescue. On the rising of the curtain, the fair prisoner, a pretty spaniel, is discovered walking on the parapet of a tower; the lover, a very handsome dog, presently appears at the foot of the wall, barking most amorously. As for the tyrant, he is represented by a ferocious-looking bull-dog, with a smashed nose. On a given signal, the lover's army make their entrée, and scale the walls of the castle, which, after a gallant defence on the part of the garrison, is finally taken, and the princess delivered."

When the public had had enough of these canine comedies, the theatre was converted into a coffee-house. But the old dramatic prestige still hung about the place, and, after a time, the frequenters of the establishment were diverted, whilst sipping their punch and lemonade, with detached scenes and short vaudevilles, performed by two or three persons. Finally, in 1830, the house was rebuilt, and a regular license obtained; and from that date to the present day it has been a favourite resort of all lovers of a hearty laugh. Déjazet and Achard were long its chief support. They have left it; but others, little, if at all, inferior, have replaced them. Foremost amongst these stands Pierre Levassor, the best comic ballad-singer in France. Innumerable were the difficulties he had to overcome before he could fully gratify his passion for acting, and display his innate talent at a Paris theatre. His father, an old soldier of Napoleon's armies, opposed his propensity, which early manifested itself, in every possible way, and apprenticed him to a trade. During the revolution of 1830, young Levassor was on business at Marseilles, where a dinner was given to celebrate the event. "At the general request, he sang the song of the _Trois Couleurs_, with such immense success, that on the party adjourning after dinner to the theatre, a note was thrown on the stage, in which he volunteered to sing it in public, if agreeable to the audience. The offer was accepted; and both song and vocalist were loudly applauded." This incident was decisive of his future career. On his return to Paris he became an actor, and soon conquered great popularity. He is particularly clever in disguising himself, so as to be quite unrecognisable. With his dress he changes his voice, gait, and even his face; and will look the part of a decrepid old woman every bit as well as the more easily assumed one of a scapegrace student. His vivacity, good-humour, and fun, are inexhaustible. In the ludicrous extravaganzas, reviews of the past year, which nearly every carnival sees produced at the Palais Royal, he is perfectly irresistible. Powerfully aided by Grassot, Lemenil, Sainville, and Alcide Tousez, he keeps the house in an unceasing roar, even at pieces which, like the _Pommes-de-terre Malades_ and the _Enfant du Carnaval_, are in themselves of very feeble merit. An excellent singer and clever actor, he is also a capital dancer and first-rate mimic, imitating with extraordinary facility every possible sound, whether the cries of animals or any thing else. And, off the stage, Levassor is as unassuming and gentlemanly as he is amusing and accomplished upon it.

Ravel is another droll dog, but quite in a different style from Levassor. The latter is all quickness, impetuosity, and _entrain_; Ravel is of a more passive style of comicality. At times he reminds us of two English actors, Buckstone of the Haymarket, and Wright, the Adelphi low comedian. He has something of Buckstone's odd monotony of manner, and, like him, often excites the laughter of an audience by his mere look or attitude. When Wright is not compelled to make a buffoon of himself in some stupid travestie, but is allowed fair scope for the display of his comic talents, which are really considerable, we prefer him to Ravel. He is a steady and improving performer. In _Paul Pry_, and some other stock pieces, his acting is quiet and excellent. Many of Ravel's characters have been taken by him in the English version. Ravel is seldom seen to greater advantage than as a soldier. He exactly renders the mingled simplicity and cunning of the conscript; the tricks of the barrack-room grafted upon clownish dulness. The piece called the _Tourlourou_--the French nickname for a recruit--founded on a novel of Paul de Kock's, was one of his triumphs, and another was _Le Caporal et la Payse_, Englished as "Seeing Wright." In short, he occupies a high position amongst the half-dozen drolls who, night after night, send home the audience of the Palais Royal brimful of mirthful reminiscences.

In this imperfect sketch of some of the leading French theatres and actors, we have taken little opportunity of censure. We could notice but a few, and have selected from the most worthy. In Paris, as elsewhere, _pumps_, to use a green-room term, are plentiful. But in the higher class of theatres they are in the minority; and moreover there is a neatness and _tact_ in the performance of French actors, which, in the less prominent characters, at least, goes some way to atone for the absence of decided talent. A French comedian may be tame, he may be incorrect in the conception of his part; he is rarely vulgar or ridiculous. We refer, of course, to the actors allowed to figure on the boards of the half-score good theatres in Paris. There is no lack of inferior ones, where the laugh is more often at the performer than at the performance. But most even of these will repay a visit, if not for the sake of the actors, for that of the audience. Despised by the fashionable and pleasure-seeking, they afford a rich field to the observant man. He must not, it is true, be squeamish, and fear to let the unsavoury reek of _tabac-de-caporal_, or the odours of potato brandy and logwood wine come betwixt the wind and his nobility. Neither must he dread contact with the mechanic's blouse, with the cotton gown of the grisette, or the velveteen vest of the _titi_ of the Boulevards; he must even make up his mind to see his neighbour, dispensing with his upper garment, exhibit his brawny arms in shirt sleeves of questionable purity. If he dare encounter these little imaginary contaminations, he will find entertainment in the humours of the Boulevard du Temple; in the pantomimes of the Funambules--once the scene of poor Debureau's triumphs--and in the ten-franc vaudevilles of the Petit Lazari.

* * * * *

THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE SECOND.[16]

[16] "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second; by Horace Walpole."
Edited by the late Lord Holland. 3 vols. Colburn: London.

Walpole, in giving his history to the world, renounces the title of an historian. He proclaims himself simply a compiler; his volumes, _Memoires Pour Servir_; and his chief purpose, simply, to give his own recollections, day by day, of the men and things passing before his eyes. Yet what historian has ever told his story with more spirit, ever sketched his characters with more living truth, or led our curiosity onward through the labyrinth of political intrigue, parliamentary struggle, and national vicissitude, with so light, and yet so leading a hand? A part of this charm arises from the interest which he himself took in his performance. He evidently delighted in the revival of those scenes in which he had once figured, and the powerful portraiture which, in his study, realized the characters of the eminent men whom he had seen successively depart from the political world. In this lies the spell which makes Walpole the favourite of all the higher order of readers in our age, and will make him popular to the last hour of the English language.

We read Gibbon like a task. We are astonished at his learned opulence, his indefatigable labour, and his flood of rich and high-wrought conception; but we grow as weary of him, as if we walked through an Indian treasury, and rested the eye only on heaps of gold. With all our great historical writers, the mind feels a sense of their toil, and, however it may be endured for the sake of its knowledge, _our_ toil, too, is inevitable, and the crop must be raised only by the sweat of our own brow.

But the pages of Walpole give us the knowledge without the toil, and, instead of bending to the tillage, we pluck the fruit from the tree as we pass along. When he, too, is heavy, his failure arises simply from his attempting to assume the style of his contemporaries. He is not made for their harness, however it may be plated and embroidered. He cannot move in their stately and measured pace. His genius is volatile and vivid; he moves by bounds: and his display is always the most effective when, abandoning the beaten tracks of authorship, he speeds his light way across the field, and exhibits at once the agility of his powers and the caprice of his will.

What infinite gratification have we lost, by the want of such a writer in the days of classical antiquity! With what interest would the living world follow a Greek or a Roman Walpole! With what delight should we contemplate a Greek Council, with Pericles for its president, sketched by the hand of a spectator, and shown in the brilliant contests, intellectual intrigue, and ardent ambition of these sons of soul! What a scene would such a writer make of Cicero confronting Catiline, with the supremacy of Rome trembling in the scale, and the crowded senate-house preparing to hear the sentence of life or death! We might have wanted the strong historic phraseology of Sallust; or, in a subsequent age, the gloomy grandeur of Tacitus, that Caravaggio of ancient Rome; we might have lost some of the classic beauty, and all the theatric drapery, but we should have had a clearer, more emphatic, and more faithful picture, than in the severe energy of the one, or the picturesque mysticism of the other. We should have _known_ the characters as they were known to the patrician and the populace of two thousand years ago; we should have seen them as they threw out all their stately and muscular strength; we should have been able to recover them from the tomb, make them move before us "in their armour, as they lived," and gather from their lips the language of times and things, now past away from man.

Still, we must acknowledge that Walpole's chief excellence is in his letters. His sportive spleen, his polished sarcasm, and his keen insight into the ways of men, place him at the head of all epistolary authorship. He has had but two competitors for this fame,--it is remarkable that they were both women,--De Sevigne in France, and Lady Wortley Montague in England; yet, how utterly inferior are De Sevigne's feeble sketches of court life, and vapid panegyrics on the "adorable Grignan;" or the Englishwoman's rambling details of travels and tribulations, to the pungent pleasantry and substantial vigour of Walpole! The Frenchwoman's sketches are like her artificial flowers, to the freshness of the true. Lady Mary's slipshod sentences and coarse voluptuousness are equally inferior to the accurate finish and fashionable animation of the man who combined the critic with the courtier, and was the philosopher even more than he was the man of fashion.

Walpole is now an English classic. It is striking, to see a man of talent thus vindicating his genius in the grave, making a posthumous defence of his character, and compelling posterity to acknowledge the distinctions of which he was defrauded by the petulance of his time. His example and his success administer a moral which ought not to be thrown away. There are many individuals in our own time, who might thus nobly avenge themselves on the injustice of their age. The Frenchman's maxim, _Il n'y a que bonheur, et malheur_, is unanswerably true; and not only men of the finest faculties are often ill used by fortune, but they are often the worst used. Their conscious superiority renders them fastidious of the lower arts of success; their sense of honour disqualifies them for all those services which require flexibility of conscience; and their sensibility to injustice makes them retort public injury, by disdainfully abandoning the struggle, and retiring from the vulgar bustle of the world.

Let such men, then, glance over the pages of Walpole, and see how productive may be made the hours of obscurity; how vigorously the oblivion of one generation may be redeemed by the honours of another; and how effectively the humble man of genius may survive the glaring favourites of an ephemeral good fortune.

Walpole, in his lifetime, was either pitied as a disappointed official, or laughed at as a collector of cracked china; but who either pities or laughs at him now? Posterity delights in the products of his study, while the prosperous tribe of his parliamentary day are forgotten, or remembered only through those products of his study. The Pulteneys, Granvilles, Lyttletons, and Wyndhams, are extinguished, and their chief interest now arises from Walpole's fixing their names in his works; as an architect uses the busts and masks of antiquity to decorate the gates, or crowns the buttresses of his temple.

Lord Holland's preface contains the following brief statement relative to the present publication.

Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, "Not to be opened till after my will."

"In my library, at Strawberry Hill, are two wainscot chests or boxes, the larger marked with an A, the lesser with a B. I desire that, as soon as I am dead, my executor and executrix will cord up strongly and seal the larger box marked A, and deliver it to the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour; to be kept by him unopened and sealed, till the eldest son of Lady Waldegrave, or whichever of her sons, being Earl of Waldegrave, shall attain the age of twenty-five years, when the said chest, with whatever it contains, shall be delivered to him for his own."

The rest of the order refers simply to the keeping of the key in the interim. The date is August 19, 1796.

Lord Holland then argues, with a rather unnecessary waste of argument, that the history contained within this chest was intended for publication, which, of course, it must have been.

In his private correspondence, Walpole frequently alludes to his preparation of the present work. In a letter to Mr. Montague, in 1752, he tells him, that "his memoirs of last year are quite finished," but that he means to add some pages of notes, "that will not want anecdotes;" and in answer to Montague, who had ludicrously menaced him with a messenger from the Secretary's office, to seize his papers, he says, "I have buried the memoirs under the oak in my garden, where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken perhaps for a Runic history in rhyme."

In another part of his memoirs of 1758, he says, with reference to the different stages of his work, "During the former part, I lived in the centre of business, was intimately acquainted with many of the chief actors, was eager in politics, and indefatigable in heaping up materials for my work. Now, detached from those busy scenes, with many political connexions dropped or dissolved; indifferent to events, and indolent; I shall have fewer opportunities of informing myself or others." And in this supposed indolence and ignorance, he sits down to his work without delay, and fills his volumes with information, inaccessible to nine-tenths of the ablest and most active in his generation.

But it is not our purpose to give a consecutive view of the contents of those volumes. Their nature is the reverse of consecutive. They are as odd, irregular, and often as novel, as the changes of a kaleidoscope. Nothing can be less like a picture, with its background, and foreground, its middle tints and its _chiaroscuro_. Their best emblem perhaps would be the "Dissolving views," where a palace has scarcely met the eye, before it melts into an Italian lake; or the procession to a Romish shrine is metamorphosed into a charge of cavalry. The volumes are a _melange_ of characters, anecdotes, and reflections. We shall open the pages at hazard, and take, as it comes first, in those "Sortes Walpolianæ," a Westminster election.

There is "nothing new under the sun." What the Irish cry for "Repeal" is now, the cry for the "Stuarts" was a hundred years ago. Faction equally throve on both; and the tribe who live by faction in all ages uttered both cries with equal perseverance--the only distinction between them being, that as the Jacobite cry was an affair of the scaffold, it was uttered with a more _judicious_ reserve.

Yet, it is only justice to the men of the older day, to acknowledge that their motives were of a much higher order than the stimulants of the modern clamour. With many of the Scottish Jacobites, the impulse was a sense of honour to their chieftains, and a gallant devotion to their king; with many of the English, it was a conscientious belief that they were only doing their duty to the lawful throne in resisting the claims of the Prince of Orange. It is remarkable, that of the "seven bishops" sent to trial by James, but one, Trelawny, could be prevailed on to take the oath of allegiance to William; yet, unfounded and extravagant as were these conceptions, they showed manliness and conscience. Later times have had motives, unredeemed by the chivalry of the Scotch, or the integrity of the English; but the cause of both has been marked with a similarity of operation, which makes Solomon still "an oracle."

The elections became the chief scenes of display. The efforts to return Jacobite members were of the most pertinacious kind, and sometimes proceeded to actual violence. In one of the Westminster elections, the court candidate had been furiously attacked by a hired mob; and one Murray, a man of family, and marked, by his name, for an adherent of the Stuarts, had exhibited himself as a leader, had been captured, and consigned to the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms.

After a period of confinement, pardon was tendered to him, if he would ask it. He refused contemptuously, and obtained popularity by playing the hero.

Murray was brought to the bar of the House of Commons to be heard in his own defence. He asserted his innocence, smiled when he was taxed with having called Lord Trentham and the High Bailiff rascals, desired counsel, and was remanded. Another character then comes on the tapis by way of episode. This was Sir William Yonge. It has been said of the celebrated Erskine, that in the House he was a natural, out of the House he was a supernatural; and certainly nothing could be less like, than the orator of the bar, and the prattler of the House of Commons. Yonge's characteristics were just the reverse. He was always trifling, out of the House, and sometimes singularly effective in it. Walpole says of him, that his Parliamentary eloquence was the more extraordinary, as it seemed to come upon him by inspiration. Sir Robert Walpole frequently, when he did not choose to enter early into the debate himself, gave Yonge his notes as the latter came into the House; from which he could speak admirably, though he had missed all the preceding discussion.

Sir Robert Walpole said of him, with a pungency worthy of his son, that "nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character;" but, whatever might be his character, it is certain that his parts served him well, for though but four-and-twenty years in Parliament, he was twice a Lord of the Treasury, a Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary at War, finishing with the then very lucrative situation of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. For the more honorary part of his distinctions, he had the Ribbon of the Bath, was a Privy Councillor, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Carnarvonshire.

We now return to Murray. It was moved that he should appear before the House on his knees. Walpole's description is very graphic. "He entered with an air of confidence, composed of something between a martyr and a coxcomb.

"The Speaker called out, Your obeisances, sir, your obeisances, and then, sir, you must kneel. He replied, Sir, I beg to be excused, I never kneel but to God. The Speaker repeated the command with great warmth. Murray answered, Sir, I am sorry I cannot comply with your request: I should in any thing else. Speaker cried, Sir, I call upon you again to consider of it. Murray answered, Sir, when I have committed a crime, I kneel to God for pardon, but I know my own innocence, and I cannot kneel to any one else. The Speaker ordered the Serjeant to take him away and secure him. He was going to reply, but the Speaker would not suffer him. The Speaker then made a representation to the House of his contemptuous behaviour, and said, However you may have differed in the debate, I hope you will be unanimous in the punishment.

"Then ensued a long, tedious, and trifling succession of speakers, finishing by an adjournment at two in the morning."

Then comes another character passing through the magic lantern. The Mutiny Bill is the back-ground for this caricature. The front figure is Lord Egmont. John Percival, second Earl of Egmont, seems to have been an extraordinary compound of the fanatic and the philosopher. He was scarcely of age, before he had a scheme of assembling the Jews, and making himself their king. His great talent was, indefatigable application. He was never known to laugh. He was once, indeed, seen to smile; but _that was at chess_. His father had trained him to history and antiquities; and he early settled his own political genius by scribbling pamphlets. Towards the decline of Sir Robert Walpole's power, he had created himself a leader of the Independents, a knot of desperate tradesmen, many of them converted to Jacobinism, by being fined at the custom-house for contraband practices. One of their chiefs was Blackistone, a grocer in the Strand, detected in smuggling, and forgiven by Sir Robert Walpole; detected again, and fined largely, on which he turned patriot and became an alderman of London.

At the beginning of this parliament, rejected by Westminster, and countenanced nowhere, he bought what Walpole pleasantly calls, the loss of an election at Weobly, for which place, however, on a petition, Fox procured his return to parliament, and immediately had the satisfaction to find him declare against the court. At the Westminster election, his indefatigability against the ministerial favourite came amply into play. All the morning he passed at the hustings, then came to the House, where he was a principal actor, and the rest of the day he spent at hazard, not to mention the hours spent in collecting materials for his speeches, or in furnishing them to his weekly mercenaries.

We then have a touch of the pencil at Lord Nugent.

"This Irishman's style was florid bombast; his impudence as great as if he had been honest. He affected unbounded good-humour, and it was unbounded, but by much secret malice, which sometimes broke out into boisterous railing, but oftener vented itself in still-born satires. Nugent's attachments were to Lord Granville; but all his flattery was addressed to Mr. Pelham, whom he mimicked in candour, as he often resembled Granville in ranting. Nugent had lost the reputation of a great poet, by writing works of his own, after he had acquired fame by an ode that was the joint production of several others."

Walpole certainly had an aversion to the wits of his day, with the exception of George Selwyn; on whom he lavished a double portion of the panegyric that he deserved, as a sort of compensation for his petulance to others. His next portrait was Lord Chesterfield, the observed of all observers, "the glass of fashion, and the mould of form," a man of talent unquestionably, and a master of the knowledge of mankind, but degrading his talent by the affectation of coxcombry, and turning his knowledge into a system of polished profligacy.

Chesterfield, though not the first who had made a study of the art of _nothings_, was the first who publicly prided himself on its study; and while France owed her fashionable vice to a hundred sources, all England looked up to Chesterfield as the high priest of that shrine, in which time and reputation were equally sacrificed, and in which fame was to be acquired alone by folly.

Walpole's sketch was struck off when Chesterfield was sinking into the vale of years, and he exhibits that celebrated peer under the character, at once melancholy and ridiculous, of a superannuated politician and an old beau. Chesterfield, since he had given up the seals in 1748, had retired from politics; in that spirit of resignation, which, in extinguished politicians, is only a decent disguise for despair.

He had published what he called an apology for his resignation, which, as Walpole says, excited no more notice than the resignation itself. "From that time he had lived at White's, gaming, and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality." He then proceeds to examine the noble lord's construction, pretty much in the style of an anatomist with the subject on the table, and cuts him up with all the zeal of angry science.

"Chesterfield, early in life, announced his claim to wit, and the women believed in it. He had besides given himself out for a man of great intrigue, and the world believed in that too. It was not his fault if he had not wit, for nothing exceeded his efforts in that point. His speeches were fine, but as much laboured as his extempore sayings. His writings were every body's; that is, whatever came out good was given to him, and he was too humble ever to refuse the gift. But besides the passive enjoyment of all good productions in the present age, he had another art of reputation, which was, either to disapprove of the greatest authors of other times, or to patronize whatever was too bad to be ascribed to himself."

We then have a slight glance at his public life. His debut in diplomacy was as ambassador to Holland, where, as Walpole says, "he courted the good opinion of that economical people," by losing immense sums at play. On his return, he attached himself to Lord Townshend, an unlucky connexion; but what did him more harm still, was the queen's seeing him one Twelfth Night after winning a large sum of money at hazard, cross St. James's Court, "to deposit it with my Lady Suffolk until next morning." The queen never pardoned an intimacy there, and well she might not, Lady Suffolk's royal intimacies being perfectly notorious.

His next employment of note was the vice-royalty of Ireland; in which Walpole acknowledges that he was the most popular governor which that luckless country ever had. "Nothing was cried up but his integrity. He would have laughed at any man who had any confidence in his morality."

But Chesterfield's vice-royalty deserves better treatment than this. In Ireland he _was_ an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at the supremacy of the "Saxon."

Jacobitism, in England a fashion, was in Ireland a fury. In England a phantom of party, it was in Ireland a fierce superstition. In England a fading recollection of power lost, and a still feebler hope of favours to come, it was in Ireland a hereditary frenzy embittered by personal sufferings, exalted by fantastic notions of pedigree, and sanctioned by the secret but powerful stimulants of Rome. This was no place for a man to take his rest, unless he could contrive to sleep on thorns.

Chesterfield was thus forced to be vigorous and vigilant; to watch every symptom of disaffection, to suppress every incipient turbulence, to guide without the appearance of control, and to make his popularity the strength of a government almost wholly destitute of civil reputation or military force. But the highest panegyric is to be found in the period of his thus preserving the peace of Ireland. It was in 1745, when the Pretender was proclaimed in Edinburgh, when the Highland army was on its march to London, and when all the hopes of hollow courtiership and inveterate Jacobitism were turned to the triumph of the ancient dynasty. Yet, Ireland was kept in a state of quietude, and the empire was thus saved from the greatest peril since the Norman invasion.

An Irish insurrection would have largely multiplied the hazards of the Brunswick throne; and though we have firm faith in the power of England to extinguish a foreign invader, yet, when the question came to be simply one of the right to the crown, and the decision was to be made by civil conflict, the alienation, or the insurrection, of Ireland might have thrown an irresistible weight into the scale.

It is not our purpose, nor would it be becoming, to more than allude to the private life of this showy personage. His was not the era of either public or private morality. His marriage was contemptible, a connexion equally marked by love of money and neglect of honour; for his choice was the niece of the Duchess of Kendal, the duchess being notoriously the king's mistress, and Chesterfield obviously marrying the niece as being a probable heiress of her aunt, and also of bringing to her husband some share of the royal favour. He was disappointed, as he deserved, in the legacy; and seems to have been not much happier in the wife, who brought him no heir, and was apparently a compound of pride and dulness. He was more fortunate, however, in earning the political favour of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who left him £20,000 in her will.

Still, with all the political chicanery, and all the official squabbles of parliament, those were sportive times; and Walpole records the delay of the debate on the bill for naturalizing the Jews, as arising from the adjournment of the house, to attend private theatricals at Drury Lane, where Delaval had hired the theatre to exhibit himself in Othello! Walpole, in his pleasant exaggeration, says, that "the crowd of people of fashion was so great, that the footman's gallery was hung with blue ribands."

For some reason, which must now sleep with the author, he had an inveterate aversion to Seeker, then Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards translated to Canterbury. "The King," said he, "would not go to chapel because the Bishop of Oxford was to preach before him. The ministers did not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his making him Dean of St. Paul's."

Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances which alone ought to fix either. He then proceeds to hew the right reverend lord in pieces. "This bishop," says he, "who had been bred a Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for a season, while he was President of a Free-thinking Club, had been converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and his faith _settled_ in a prebend of Durham, whence he was transplanted by the queen, and advanced by her (who had no aversion to a medley of religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her own) to the living of St. James's, vacant by the death of her favourite _Arian_, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford."

Then, probably for the purpose of relieving the dark hues of this desperate portrait, he throws in a touch of praise, and tells us that Secker grew surprisingly popular in his parish of St. James's, and was especially approved of in the pulpit.

Secker's discourses, with his charges and lectures, still remain; and it is impossible to conceive any thing more commonplace in style, weaker in conception, or more thoroughly marked with mediocrity of mind. And yet it is perfectly possible to conceive such a man popular. What the multitude call eloquence, in the pulpit, is palpably different from eloquence any where else. At the bar, or in the legislature, it evidently consists in a mixture of strong sense and powerful feeling. It must exhibit _some_ knowledge of the subject, and more knowledge of human nature. But the "sermons" which then achieved a passing popularity were characterised by nothing but by the most shallow notions in the most impotent language. The age of reasoners had passed away with Barrow, South, and Sherlock; and a studied mingling of affected simplicity and deliberate nonsense constituted the sole merits of the pulpit in the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, according to the proverb, that "when things come to the worst, they must mend," came the gentle enthusiasm of Wesley and the fierce declamation of Whitefield, both differing utterly in doctrine, practice, and principle, yet both regarding themselves as missionaries to restore Christianity, and both evidently believed by the multitude to be all but inspired. Their example, however, infused some slight ardour into the established pulpit, and its sermons were no longer dull _rechauffes_ of Epictetus, and substitutes for the Gospel, taken from the schoolboy recollections of Plato. Secker reigned in this middle-age of the pulpit, and his performances are matchless as models of words without thought, doctrines without learning, and language that trickled through the ear without the possibility of reaching the understanding.

But Secker's faults were those of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in the church.

We do not believe in the story of his freethinking, though Walpole strongly repeats it, and gives his authority. Secker's was obviously a commonplace mind, wholly destitute of all pretension to ability, yet as obviously not disinclined to make use of those means which often constitute court favour, but which high minds disdain. He had been made Dean of St. Paul's by the Chancellor's interest, though he had been for some time in the shade at court, from being strongly suspected of cultivating the Prince's connexions at the same time; however, he achieved Canterbury at last, and, once sheltered in Lambeth, he might laugh at the jealousies of courtiers.

Walpole now bursts out into indignant virtue; exclaims that even the church has its renegades in politics, and almost compassionates the king, "who was obliged to fling open his _asylum_ to all kinds of deserters; revenging himself, however, by not speaking to them at his levee, or listening to them in the pulpit."

In the meantime, the great source of all opposition, the dread of the successful, the hope of the defeated, the thorn in the royal side, or, to take a higher emblem, the tree of promise to all that contemptible race who trade in conscience, and live on faction,--disappeared in a moment. The heir-apparent died! The Prince of Wales had suffered from a pleurisy, but was so much recovered as to attend the king to the House of Lords. After being much heated in the atmosphere of the house, he returned to Carlton House to unrobe, put on only a light frock, went to Kew, where he walked some time, returned to Carlton House, and lay down upon a couch for three hours on a ground floor next the garden. The consequence of this rashness or obstinacy was, that he caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night.

After struggling with this illness for a week, he was suddenly seized with an increase of his distemper. Three years before, he had received a blow on the breast from a tennis ball, from which, or from a subsequent fall, he often felt great pain. Exhausted by the cough, he cried, "Je sens la mort," and died in the arms of his valet.

The character of this prince, who was chiefly memorable as the father of George III., had in it nothing to eclipse the past age, conciliate the present, or attract honour from the future. Walpole, in his keen way, says, "that he resembled the Black Prince in nothing, but in dying before his father." "Indeed," he contemptuously adds, "it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by warlike achievements." He had solicited the command of the army in Scotland in the rebellion of 1745, which was of course given to his brother; "a hard judgment," says Walpole, "for what he could do, he did." When the royal army lay before Carlisle, the prince, at a great supper which he gave his court and favourites, had ordered for the dessert a model of the citadel of Carlisle, in paste, which he in person, and the maids of honour, _bombarded with sugar plumbs_!

The Prince had disagreed with the king and queen early after his coming to England, "not entirely," says Walpole, "by his own fault." The king had refused to pay his debts in Hanover, and "it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son!" The queen exerted more authority than he liked, and "the Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not," the historian bitterly observes, "forfeited her duty to the queen, by concealing any of his secrets that _might do him prejudice_."

Gaming was one of his passions; "but his style of play did him less honour than even the amusement." He carried this _dexterity_ into practice in more essential points, and was vain of it. "One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed £5000 of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges, his secretary, 'that man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England; yet, with all his parts, I have just tricked him out of £5000!'" A line from Earl Stanhope summed up his character,--"He has his father's head and his mother's heart."

A smart hit is mentioned of Pelham, who, however, was not remarkable for humour. One Ayscough, who had been preceptor to Prince George, and who had "not taught him to read English, though eleven years old," was about to be removed from the preceptorship. Lyttleton, whose sister he had married, applied to Pelham to save him. Pelham answered, "I know nothing of Dr. Ayscough--Oh, yes, I recollect, a very worthy man told me in this room, two years ago, that he was a _great rogue_." This very worthy man happened to be _Lyttleton himself_, who had then quarrelled with Ayscough about election affairs. Walpole abounds in sketches of character, and they are generally capital. Here is a kit-cat of Lord Albemarle, then ambassador in Paris. "It was convenient to him to be any where but in England. His debts were excessive, though he was ambassador, groom of the stole, governor of Virginia, and colonel of a regiment of guards. His figure was genteel, his manner noble and agreeable. The rest of his merit was the interest Lady Albemarle had with the king through Lady Yarmouth. He had all his life imitated the French manners since he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle at least knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postilion, while he was ruining his tailor."