Chapter VIII (5)

"The servant who showed us the splendid apartments seemed to be a
good deal pleased with his manner of explaining a suite of tapestry
representing the Persian war of Alexander. Though a simple fellow,
he had his lesson well by rote, and ran over the battles of Issus,
Arbela, &c., with surprising fluency. 'But, where is Alexander?'
cries Apjohn, (a young fellow-student, who had accompanied him.)
'There, sir, at the door of Darius's tent, with the ladies at his
feet.' 'Surely,' said I, '_that_ must be Hephæstion, for he was
mistaken by the Queen for Alexander.' 'Pardon me, sir, _I hope I
know Alexander better than that_.' 'But, which of the two do you
think the greater man?' 'Greater!--bless your soul, sir, they are
both dead these _hundred years_.'"

Curran's observation on this official, or, as he would probably have called it, _ministerial_ blunder, exhibits, even in these early days of his mind, something of the reflective spirit which afterwards gave such an interest to his eloquence.

"Oh, what a comment on human vanity! There was the marrow of a
thousand folios in the answer. I could not help thinking at the
instant, what a puzzle that mighty man would be in, should he
appear before a committee from the Temple of Fame, to claim those
laurels which he thought so much of, and to be opposed in his
demands, though his competitor were Thersites, or the fellow who
rubbed Bucephalus's heels!"

All this is showy if not new; yet, in defiance even of Curran's authority, its argument is practically denied by all human nature. What man ever acts _for_ the praise of posterity alone? Present impulses, excited by present rewards, are the law of the living; and Alexander charging through the Granicus, and sweeping the royal Persian cavalry before him, had probably a heart as full of the most powerful impulses, as if he could have assured himself of the inheritance for ten thousand years of the plaudits of the globe. We are also to remember, that he _has_ inherited the great legacy of fame, to this hour--that, to the minds of all the intelligent, he is still the hero of heroes; that clowns are not the clients of memory, or the distributors of renown; and that the man whose history has already survived his throne two thousand years, has exhibited in himself all the distinction between the perishableness of power and the immortality of fame.

In 1775 Curran returned to Ireland, and after anxiously pondering on the chances of abandoning Europe, and seeking fortune in America, as other eminent men--Edmund Burke among the number--had done before him, he fixed his fates at home.

This portion of the subject begins with a high panegyric on the difficult but attractive profession into which Curran now threw himself, without income, connection, or friend:--

"It is not to be questioned, that to the Bar of that day the people
of Ireland looked up in every emergency, with the most perfect
reliance on their talent and their integrity. It was then the
nursery of the parliament and the peerage; there was scarcely a
noble family in the land that did not enrol its elect in that body,
by the study of law and the exercise of eloquence to prepare them
for the field of legislative exertion. And there not unfrequently
arose a genius from the very lowest of the people, who won his way
to the distinctions of the Senate, and wrested from pedigree the
highest honours and offices of the Constitution."

That the Bar was the first body in the country was incontestible, and that it often exhibited remarkable instances of ability is equally known. But those facts must not be understood as giving the author's opinion, that perfection lies in the populace. All the _remarkable_ persons of their time in Ireland were men of _education_, many of birth, and many of hereditary fortune. Grattan was the son of a judge; Flood a man of old family and estate; Clare, the Chancellor, was the son of the leader of the Bar, and began the world with £4000 a-year--a sum probably now equal to twice the amount. The Ponsonbys, the leading family of Whiggism in Ireland, were among the first blood and fortune of the land. Hussey Burgh was a man of old family and fortune. The Beresfords were closely allied to nobility. Plunket and Curran were, perhaps, those among the leaders the least indebted to the Heralds' College; but Plunket was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and both had received the best education which Ireland could give--both were graduates of the University.

Of course, nature is impartial in the distribution of talents, but the _true distinction_ is in their _training_. The Radicalism which fills public life with vulgarity and faction is wholly the work of that absence of all early training, which must be the fate of men suddenly gathered from the _manual_ labours of life. We know the necessity of those labours, but intellectual superiority must be the work of another school. The men of eminence in Ireland were also men of accomplished general knowledge, and of classical acquirement, to an amount seldom found even in the English Legislature. There was not an assembly in the world where a happy classical quotation, or dexterous reference to antiquity, would be received with a quicker sense, or a louder plaudit than in the Irish Parliament.

When the well-known antagonist of the Romish claims, Dr Duigenan, a stern-looking and singularly _dark-featured_ old man, had one night made a long and learned speech on the subject, Sir John Doyle wholly extinguished its effect, by the Horatian line,--

"Hic _niger_ est, hunc tu _Romane_ caveto."

The House shook with applause, and the universal laugh drove the doctor from the field.

On another evening, when the prince of jesters, Toler, then a chief supporter of Government, contemptuously observed, on seeing a smile on some of the Opposition faces--

"Dulce est desipere in loco;"

an Opposition member started up and retorted the quotation, by saying, "That it was much more applicable to the conduct and position of the honourable member and his friends, and that the true translation was, 'It is mighty pleasant _to play the fool_ in a _place_.'"

The novelty and happiness of the translation disturbed the gravity of debate for a considerable time.

But those were the gay days of Ireland. Times of keen anxiety, of daring change, and of social convulsion, were already shaping themselves to the eye of the patriot, and the true debates on which the fate of the nation hung were transferred from parliament to the peasantry, from the council-room to the cabin, from the accomplished intelligence and polished brilliancy of the legislature to the rude resentment, fierce recollections, and sullen prejudices of the multitude. It was on the heath, that Revolution, like Macbeth, met the disturbing spirits of the land, and heard the "All hail, hereafter."

Curran's rapid professional distinctions were the more remarkable, that the Irish Bar was aristocratic, to a degree wholly unknown in England. If it is true, that this great profession often leads to the Peerage, in Ireland the course was reversed, and the Peerage often derived its chief honours from its connection with the Bar. The sons of the first families wore the gown, and the _cedant arma togæ_ was more fully realised in Ireland than it ever was in Rome.

But few men of condition ever entered the Army; and in a nation of habitual passion for publicity, and proverbial love of enterprise, perhaps fewer officers were added to the British service than from the Channel Islands. This has since been largely changed, and Ireland, which in the last century but filled up the rank and file, has since nobly contributed her share to the names which register themselves in the memory of nations. To Ireland, glorious England and rescued Europe owe a WELLINGTON!

The Church, the usual province of high families in England, was poor, feeble, and unpopular in Ireland. With a few positions of great wealth, all below was barren: livings of vast extent, with a meagre population, and still more meagre income; Romanism was hourly spreading with a population, itself spreading until it had nothing to eat, and embittered against Protestantism until conversion became more than a hopeless toil--an actual terror. Law was the only instrument of collecting the clerical income, and the collector and the clergyman were involved in one common obloquy, and often in one common danger--a condition of things which must have largely repelled all those who had the power of choice.

The mitres were chiefly bestowed on the Fellows of English colleges, and tutors of English noblemen. Every new Viceroy imported a succession of chaplains, and quartered them all upon the Irish Church. The majority of those men looked upon their position with the nervous alarm of settlers in the wilderness, thought only of the common-room of the colleges from which they had been torn, or of the noble houses in which they had been installed; and reproached the ill luck which had given them dignities which only excited popular disgust; and wealth, from which they could derive no pleasure, but in its accumulation. We can scarcely wonder that, through almost the whole of the eighteenth century, the Irish Church lay in a state of humiliation, repulsive to the public feelings. This, too, has changed; and the Church now possesses many able men.

Commerce, which plays so vigorous a part in the world, was then a swathed infant in Ireland, and swathed so tightly by provincial regulations, that there was scarcely a prospect of its ever stepping beyond the cradle. Manufactures--that gold-mine worth all the treasures of the Western World--were limited to the looms of the north; and the only manufacture of three-fourths of this fine country consisted in the fatal fabrication of forty-shilling voters.

The Squiredom of Ireland was the favourite profession of busy idleness, worthless activity, and festive folly. But this profession must have an estate to dilapidate, or a country to ride over, and English mortgagees to pamper its prodigality and accelerate its ruin. Gout, the pistol, broken necks, and hereditary disease, rapidly thinned this class. Perpetual litigation stood before their rent-rolls, in the shape of a devouring dragon; and, with a peasantry starving but cheerful, and with a proprietary pauperised, but laughing to the last, they were determined, though hourly sinking into bankruptcy, to be ruined like a _gentleman_.

All those circumstances coming together, made the Bar almost the sole assemblage of the ability of Ireland. But they also made it the most daring, dashing, and belligerent body of gentlemen that Europe has seen. It was Lord Norbury's remark, in his old age, when he reposed on the cushions of the peerage, had realised immense wealth, and obtained _two_ peerages for his two sons--that all this came out of fifty pounds, and a case of pistols, his father's sole present as he launched him in life. The list of duels fought by the leading members of the Bar might figure in the returns of a Continental campaign; and no man was regarded as above answering for a sarcasm dropped in court, by his appearance in the field.

But we must not, from this unfortunate and guilty habit, conceive that the spirit of the higher orders of Ireland was deficient in the courtesies of life. There was a melancholy cause in the convulsions of the country. The war of William III., which had broken down the throne of James II., had left many a bitter feeling among the Popish families of Ireland. Many of the soldiers of James had retired into village obscurity, or were suffered to retain the fragments of their estates, and live in that most embittering of all conditions--a sense of birth, with all the struggles of diminished means. These men indulged their irritable feelings, or avenged their ruin, by the continual appeal to the pistol. Always nurturing the idea that the victory had been lost to them solely by the cowardice of James, they were ready to quarrel with any man who doubted their opinion; and as their Protestant conquerors were brave bold men, equally disposed to maintain their right, and unhesitating in their claim to possess what they had won by their swords, their quarrels became feuds. Law, which reprobated the principle, by its laxity established the practice; and when lawyers led the way, the community followed. Still, there can be no doubt that duelling is a custom alike contrary to the order of society, and the _command of heaven_; and, the first judge who hangs a duellist as a murderer, and sends all the parties engaged in the transaction to the penal colonies _for life_, will have rendered a signal service to his country.

While every part of this volume is valuable, for the display of vigorous writing and manly conception, the more interesting fragments, to us, are the characters of the parliamentary leaders; because such men are the creators of national character, the standards of national intellect, and the memorials to which their nation justly points as the trophies of national honour.

The Parliament of Ireland is in the grave; but, while the statues of her public orators stand round the tomb, it must be felt to be more than a sepulchre. Whatever homage for genius may be left in the distractions of an unhappy country, must come to kneel beside that tomb; and if the time shall ever arrive for the national enfranchisement from faction, the first accents of national wisdom must be dictated from that sacred depository of departed virtue.

Grattan, the first man in the brightest day of the Irish Parliament, was descended of an honourable lineage. His father was a barrister, member of parliament for Dublin, and also its Recorder. He himself was a graduate of the Irish University, where he was distinguished. Entering the Middle Temple, he was called to the Irish Bar in 1772.

But his mind was parliamentary; his study in England had been parliament; and his spirit was kindled by the great orators of the time. He who had beard Burke and Chatham, had heard the full power of imaginative oratory--of all oratory the noblest. Grattan had the materials of a great speaker in him by nature--keen sensibility, strong passion, daring sincerity, and an imagination furnished with all the essential knowledge for debate--not overwhelmed by it, but refreshing the original force of his mind, like the eagle's wing refreshed by dipping into the fountain, but dipping only to soar. Yet, though almost rapturously admiring those distinguished men, he was no _imitator_. He struck out for himself a line between both, and, in some of its happier moments, superior to either; combining the rich exuberance of Burke's imagination with Chatham's condensed dignity of thought. Possessed of an extraordinary power of reasoning, Grattan had the not less extraordinary power of working it into an intensity which made it glow; and some of the most elaborate arguments ever uttered in Parliament have all the brilliancy of eloquence. He continually _reasoned_, though the most metaphorical of speakers; and this combination of logic and lustre, though so unusual in others, in _him_ was characteristic. He poured out arguments like a shower of arrows, but they were all arrows tipped with fire.

Mr Phillips' sketch of him brings Grattan before us to the life:--

"He was short in stature, and unprepossessing in appearance.
His arms were disproportionately long. His walk was a stride.
With a person swaying like a pendulum, and an abstracted air, he
seemed always in thought, and each thought provoked an attendant
gesticulation. Such was the outward and visible form of one
whom the passenger would stop to stare at as a droll, and the
philosopher to contemplate as a study. How strange it is that a
mind so replete with grace and symmetry, and power and splendour,
should have been allotted such a dwelling for its residence! Yet
so it was, and so also was it one of his highest attributes, that
his genius, by its 'excessive light,' blinded his hearers to his
physical imperfections. It was the victory of mind over matter."

It is then stated that, even while at the Temple, he exercised himself in parliamentary studies, and made speeches in his walks in Windsor Forest, near which he had taken lodgings, and in his chamber. Of course, he was supposed to be a little mad:--

"His landlady observed, 'What a sad thing it was to see the poor
young gentleman all day talking to somebody he calls Mr Speaker,
when there was no speaker in the house but himself.' Nor was the
old lady singular in her opinion. In some few years afterwards, no
less a man than Edmund Burke wrote over to Ireland, 'Will no one
stop that madman, Grattan?' Assuredly when Burke himself enacted
the dagger-scene on the floor of the House of Commons, the epithet
was more applicable."

We refer to this remark, chiefly to correct a misconception generally adopted. It has been supposed that Burke, to heighten the effect of his speech on the discontents then engendering against the State, actually purchased a dagger, to throw on the floor of Parliament. This, of course, would have been ridiculous; and it is to do the common duty of rescuing the fame of a great man from the slightest touch of ridicule that this explanation is given. One of his friends (we believe, a member of Parliament) had received, in the course of the day, from Birmingham, a newly-invented dagger, of a desperate kind, of which some _thousands_ had been ordered, evidently for the purpose of _assassination_. Burke, naturally shocked at this proof of the sanguinary designs spreading among the lower population, took the weapon with him, to convince those who constantly scoffed at him as an _alarmist_ that his alarms were true. The whole was a matter of accident; nothing could be less premeditated; and every hearer of the true statement will agree that, so far from being a theatrical exhibition, it was the very act which any rational and manly man would have done. The time was terrible: revolution threatened every hour. Jacobinism was hourly boasting that it had the Church and Throne in its grasp; and, at such a period, the positive statement of a man like Burke, that thousands (we believe five thousand) of weapons, evidently made for private _murder_, were actually ordered in one of our manufacturing towns, and the sight of one of those horrid instruments itself, was an important call on the vigilance of Government, and a salutary caution to the country. It is not at all improbable that this act crushed the conspiracy.

Mr Phillips observes, that when Burke wrote "that madman Grattan, the _madman_ was contemplating the glorious future; his ardent mind beheld the vision of the country he so loved rising erect from the servitude of centuries, 'redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled' by his exertions. Nor was that vision baseless--he made of it a proud and grand reality: her chains fell off, as at the bidding, of an enchanter."

Grattan's influence in Parliament was felt from his first entrance. But he earned it in the only way in which even genius can be _permanently_ successful.

"His industry was indomitable. The affairs of Parliament were
to be thenceforth the business of his life, and he studied them
minutely. The chief difficulty in this great speaker's way was the
first five minutes. During his exordium, laughter was imminent. He
bent his body almost to the ground, swung his arms over his head,
up and down and around him, and added to the grotesqueness of his
manner a hesitating tone and drawling emphasis. Still there was an
earnestness about him, that at first besought, and, as he warmed,
enforced--nay, commanded attention."

His first entrance into the British House of Commons is described with the same graphic effect:--

"He had said of Flood 'that he forgot that he was an oak of the
forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty.' And yet
here he was himself. Whether he would take root was the question,
and for some moments very questionable it was. When he rose,
every voice in that crowded House was hushed; the great rivals,
Pitt and Fox, riveted their eyes upon him; he strode forth and
gesticulated--the hush became unanimous; not a cheer was heard; men
looked in one another's faces, and then at the phenomenon before
them, as if doubting his identity. At last, and on a sudden, the
indication of the master-spirit came. Pitt was the first generously
to recognise it. He smote his thigh hastily with his hand--it was
an impulse when he was pleased--his followers saw it, and knew it,
and with a universal burst they hailed the advent and the triumph
of the stranger."

Grattan was sincere, and this sincerity gave at once substance to his popularity, and power to his eloquence. But, as a politician, he was rash; and as a prophet, he had to see the failure of all his predictions. He wielded a torch of exceeding brightness, it is true; but the torch at once blinded himself and inflamed the nation. His patriotism was pure, but it wanted practicability. He left no great measure of public utility behind him. His liberation, as he called it, of Ireland in 1782, was a showy fiction, to end in the disgrace of a painful discovery. It was the _liberation_ of a fever to end in exhaustion; of a dream of opulence and independence, to finish in an awaking of poverty and despair. Its closest resemblance was to the late festival at the Hanwell Asylum--an assemblage of lunatics dressed for the night in feathers and flowers, dancing and feasting, until the morning light sent them back to their cells, and the drudgery of their melancholy discipline.

The whole policy of the Whig party in Ireland was the counterpart of their policy in England, only on a smaller scale. It was, to the performances of Fox and Opposition here, what the little stage-play in _Hamlet_ is to the tragedy itself--the same characters and the same crime performed in imitation of the larger guilt that gazes on it. The wretched shortsightedness of supporting any demand of the populace whom they at once deluded and despised; the perpetual agitation to give the franchise to classes who _must_ use it without the power of discrimination, and who must be careless of it but for the purposes of corruption; the reckless clientship of the Popish claims, ending in the sale of Irish independence by the Papists; the universal conspiracy, and the sanguinary civil war, followed by the political suicide of the Parliament--_all_ the direct and rapid results of the Whig policy in Ireland--show either the headlong ignorance or the scandalous hypocrisy of Irish faction.

Yet, in all this blaze of fraud and falsehood, the name of Grattan was never degraded by public suspicion. He was an enthusiast; and his robe of enthusiasm, like one of the fire-resisting robes of antiquity, came out only brighter for its passing through the flame. But the Legislature (all impurities) was left in ashes.

Mr Phillips seems to regret Grattan's transfer to England, as an injury to his oratorical distinctions. He tells us "that it is in the Irish Parliament, and in his younger day, that his finest efforts are to be found!" Reluctant as we are to differ from such an authority, yet, judging from his _published_ speeches, it appears to us that his powers never found their right position until they were within the walls of the British Parliament. These walls shut out the roar of the populace, which disturbed him, but to which he once must listen. These walls sheltered him from that perpetual clinging of Popery, which dragged down his fine tastes to its own level. Within these walls, he was relieved from the petty interests of partisanship, and raised from the feuds of an island to the policy of an empire. In Ireland, popularity required perpetual submission to the caprices of the multitude, and no man had more fully felt than Grattan the impossibility of taking a stand on his own principles--he must be either on the shoulders of the mob, or under their heels. In England, no longer wearied with the responsibility of leading parties who refused to be guided, or the disgust of following his inferiors through the dust of their hurried "road to ruin," he had before him, and embraced with the gallantry of his nature, the great Cause for which England was fighting--the cause of human kind. In Ireland, Grattan, with all his intrepidity, would not have dared to make his magnificent speech on the war with Napoleon, or, if he had, would have been denounced by the roar of the million. In England, he was in the midst of the noblest associations; he was surrounded by all the living ability of the empire; and if genius itself is to be inspired by the memories of the mighty, every stone of the walls round him teemed with inspiration.

Thus, if his language was more chastened, it was loftier; if his metaphors were more disciplined, they were more majestic;--the orb which, rising through the mists of faction, had shone with broadened disc and fiery hue, now, in its meridian, assumed its perfect form, and beamed with its stainless glory.

In recording the remarkable names of this period in Ireland, Mr Phillips alludes to the celebrated preacher, Dean Kirwan:--

"He had been a Roman Catholic clergyman, but conformed to the
Church of England. He was a wonderful orator--one of the greatest
that ever filled a pulpit; and yet, when injudicious friends,
after his death, published a volume of his sermons, they were
scarcely readable. This sounds paradoxical: but it is true. The
volume is not remembered--those who heard the preacher never can
forget him. It was my happiness to have the opportunity thrice,
while a student in the University of Dublin. The church, on
those occasions, presented a singular, and, in truth, not a very
decorous spectacle--a bear-garden was orderly compared to it.
The clothes were torn off men's backs--ladies were carried out
fainting--disorder the most unseemly disgraced the entire service,
and so continued till Kirwan ascended the pulpit. What a change
was there then! Every eye was turned to him--every tongue was
hushed--all was solemn silence. His enunciation of the Lord's
Prayer was one of the finest things ever heard. Never before or
since did mortal man produce such wonderful effect. And yet he had
his disadvantages to overcome: his person was not imposing; he was
somewhat wall-eyed; and his voice at times was inharmonious."

We see in this striking portrait the writer _con amore_, and we must give him due credit for his vivid tribute to Irish ability. But there are few miracles in this world, and the fact that Kirwan's printed sermons are wholly inferior to his reputation reduces our wonder within more restricted bounds. If it is true, that much emotion is lost by the loss of the actual speaking; that the full power of the oratory is somewhat diminished by its being calmly read, instead of being ardently heard; still we have but few instances, perhaps none, where true oratory altogether loses its power in publication.

For example, Curran's published speeches give the general reader a very sufficient specimen of the richness of his language, the fertility of imagination, and even the subtlety of his humour. Grattan's speeches, most of them mere fragments, and probably few published with his revision, give the full impression of his boldness of thought, depth of argument, and exquisite pungency of expression. Burke's printed speeches are even said to give a higher sense of his wonderful ability than when they were delivered in the House of Commons. There is an anecdote that, when Pitt had read one of those earlier speeches in the form of a pamphlet, he expressed his astonishment. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that this fine oration _can be_ what we heard the other night?"

That Kirwan's preaching was attended by immense congregations is unquestionable; and that his collections were very large is equally true. But there were circumstances remarkably in favour of both. He preached but three or four times in the year, and he never preached but for charities patronised by the highest personages of the land. The Lord-lieutenant and the principal nobility were generally the patrons of those especial charities. There was this additional advantage, that then poor-laws in Ireland were unknown, and public liberality was thus the more urgently required, and the more willingly exercised. The day of his preaching was in general an _anniversary_; for which the whole preceding year was a preparation; and the collection was thus, in a certain degree, the payment of a rent.

The magnitude of his collections has been the subject of some erroneous conjectures. On the occasion of his preaching for the families of the yeomanry who fell in the rebellion of 1798--a memorable and melancholy occasion, which naturally called forth the national liberality--the collection was said to have amounted to a thousand pounds. A very large sum, but it was a national contribution.

Kirwan's style of delivery, too, had some share in his popular effect--he _recited_ his sermons in the manner of the French preachers; and the novelty formed a striking contrast to the dreary reading of the ordinary preachers. He was also fond of lashing public transgressions, and the vices of high life were constantly the subject of sharp remarks, which even stooped to the dresses of the women. The nobility, accordingly, came to hear themselves attacked; and, as all personality was avoided, they came to be amused.

Still, Kirwan was a remarkable man, and worthy of mention in any volume which treats of the memorable personages of Ireland.

We wish that we could avoid speaking of his treatment by the Church dignitaries of his time. While they ought to have received such a convert with honour, they seem to have made a point of neglecting him. He was not merely a man of talent in the pulpit, but alike accomplished in science and elegant literature; for he had been successively _Professor_ of Rhetoric, and of Natural Philosophy, in (if we recollect rightly) the College of Louvain, at a time when French Mathematics were the pride of the Continent.

Yet he never obtained preferment or countenance, and scarcely even civility, except the extorted civility of fear, from any of the ecclesiastical heads of Ireland. The dull and common-place men, with whom it was then customary to fill the Irish Sees, shrank from one who might have been a most willing, as he must have been a most able, instrument in reconciling his Papist countrymen to the Church of England. And, without any other cause than their own somnolent stupidity, they rendered wholly useless--as far as was in their power--a man who, in a position corresponding to his ability, might have headed a New Reformation in Ireland.

Kirwan's only dignity was given to him by the Lord-lieutenant, Cornwallis, after nearly fifteen years of thankless labour; and it consisted only of the poor Deanery of Killala, a nook on the savage shore of Western Ireland. He died soon after, of a _coup-de-soleil_--as it was observed the natural death of a man of his genius!

But we must break off from this captivating volume. We recollect no political work in which politics are treated with more manly propriety, or personal character delineated with more vigorous truth; in which happier anecdotes abound, or in which the writer gives his own opinion with more firmness, yet with less offence to public feelings. From its evident knowledge of Ireland, it could be written by none but an Irishman; but its sentiments are cosmopolite. If the author sails under his national flag, still, his bark must be recognised as a noble vessel, and welcome in any Port of the World.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] _Curran and his Contemporaries._ By CHARLES PHILLIPS, Esq., A.B., one of her Majesty's Commissioners in the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. 1 vol. 8vo. 1850.

LORD HOLLAND'S FOREIGN REMINISCENCES.[19]

There is no pleasanter kind of reading than a good personal memoir. Works of this description serve a double purpose; for they not only convey to us most lively impressions of society, illustrated with portraits of the most eminent and remarkable men of the time, but, taken in the aggregate, they furnish the best and most authentic store of materials available to the future historian. Ponderous or brilliant, gossiping or grave, according to the peculiar style and idiosyncrasy of their writers, they have all claims to our notice; and more than one posthumous reputation has been achieved through compositions such as these, by men whose other labours have failed to attract the slightest share of the public notice or approbation.

But even in this light walk of literature, there are certain conditions which must be observed, in order to excite interest and to insure success. We expect from the compiler of memoirs a narrative, however desultory, of what passed before his own observation. He must not be altogether a reporter at second-hand--a mere relater of stories or scandals which he has chanced to pick up from others--a dilator, through simple hearsay, of closet or antechamber gossip. The substance at least of his tale must be derived from his personal knowledge, else we have no voucher at all for the authenticity of what he is pleased to relate. The memoirs, in short, must be his own, not fragments from those of other people.

The announcement of the publication of a volume of Memoirs or Reminiscences from the pen of the late Lord Holland could hardly have failed to stimulate the public curiosity. His known intimacy with many of the leading characters of the last generation, his near relationship to the most conspicuous of modern Whig statesmen, his inclination towards letters--which made him appear the centre of a certain literary coterie--were all so many distinct pledges for the value of his literary legacy. True, Byron in his early satire had irreverently scoffed at the reunions of Holland House, and thrown no slight degree of ridicule on the fame of that rising academy; but the satire served at the same time to commemorate the hospitality of the noble Mæcenas. We observe that a critic in the last number of the _Edinburgh Review_ is still magniloquent on this theme. With the savour of past banquets still lingering in his nostrils, he manfully declares his intention of being impartial, nay stern, in the execution of his censorial duty; and attempts to persuade us, as he is persuaded himself, "that the very prepossessions which we feel, and have endeavoured to describe, have been disadvantageous rather than favourable to the author." If so, the inevitable conclusion must be, that the critic is a monster of ingratitude. Had he contented himself with simply stating that no amount of dinners, no extent of hospitalities received, should influence his judgment one whit in favour of the book, the declaration, with some due allowance of course for the frailties of human nature, might have been accepted. But when he tells us that, _because_ he was a guest at the table of the late Lord Holland, and admitted, as he insinuates, to his intimacy, his prepossessions are disadvantageous to the author, he is either writing egregious nonsense, or conveying the reverse of a compliment.

"Had the work," says he, "been anonymous, or had it proceeded--like
many of those innumerable books miscalled histories--from the
Palais Royal or the quays of Paris, we are inclined to think that
a more favourable judgment might have been formed of it, than when
every sentence, nay, almost every line, is weighed against the high
reputation of the author, and the anticipations of readers _like
ourselves_."

The majority of the reading public, however, are by no means in the exalted position of the critic, who, by the way, was under no obligation whatever to review the book, if, on perusal, he found its contents fall greatly short of his expectations. What he means by talking about publications issuing "from the Palais Royal or the quays of Paris" we cannot exactly divine, unless he wishes us to understand that the _Foreign Reminiscences_ intrinsically belong to the same class of writings--an opinion in which we thoroughly agree. Such twaddle as this is altogether superfluous. The public generally has no prepossession either the one way or the other. The name of Lord Holland is known to them as that of a man who moved in a distinguished sphere of society, and who must, in his own day, have seen much which was worth narrating. They have no means of weighing his conversation against his writings; they accept the latter when laid before them, and will judge of them strictly according to their actual value.

It appears that the present volume constitutes but a small part of Lord Holland's written Memoirs. The reason why it is given to us at the present time is set forth in the Preface, which, being short, we transcribe entire.

"The recent events on the Continent have induced the editor to
publish the following pages on foreign politics. The time of which
this volume treats has already acquired the interest of a long
past age; and the public will read with pleasure, and perhaps with
profit, the observations on passing events of a contemporary who,
if not wholly impartial, is acknowledged by all who knew him to
have been as candid as he was benevolent.

"The editor has scrupulously abstained from making the slightest
verbal alteration in the text or notes. The omission of four
insignificant sentences is all that he has deemed necessary for
the immediate publication of what was probably written with the
intention of not seeing the light so soon."

We must fairly confess that this preface stimulated our curiosity still further. From it we understood that the _Reminiscences_ were to have some practical bearing upon the events which have taken place on the Continent during the last three years--that they would throw some additional light upon the causes which have led to so many dynastic convulsions. Our disappointment therefore was proportionably great, when, on perusing the work, we discovered that not a single page of it was calculated to assist us in any such researches, and that even the observations on passing events were of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. What especial purpose the publication of this volume, apart from the remainder of the Memoirs, could serve at the present, or indeed at any other time, we are wholly at a loss to conceive. It treats of no topic which has not been long ago exhausted, contains hardly any personal narrative, and affords us not one single atom of novel information. As a repertory of anecdotes it is singularly worthless. We allude to such anecdotes as may be considered authentic, or at least tolerably so--anecdotes, for example, communicated to the author by Talleyrand, and one or two other foreign statesmen with whom, in later years, he was acquainted. But there is another class of anecdotes, or pseudo-anecdotes, which we cannot pass over even with so slight a censure. We allude to the revelations of private intrigue, on which the author dwells with a zest which to us seems peculiarly offensive. Until we saw this volume, we could not have believed that one British peer would have penned, and another have published, such a tissue of scandals, emanating from discarded serving-women and court menials, and reflecting directly on the honour of some of the first houses of Europe. We are at no loss to discover where the omissions mentioned in the preface are made, or what was the nature of the passages expunged. It would perhaps have been better, where the inuendo is retained, to have preserved the details, in order that they might have been strictly tested. It is, we think, no proper concession to delicacy to find lines of asterisks following a direct charge against the virtue of Marie Antoinette, or the legitimacy of the Duchess of York; or to have a page of such mysterious symbols inserted immediately after the notice of the marriage of Ferdinand VII. of Spain. Lord Holland should have been allowed to tell his own story, if not in justice to the memory of the ladies whose chastity is called in question, at least that we know the true bent of the imagination of the noble author, and appreciate "that humorous pleasantry, guided by good sense and wisdom, and raised above vulgar irony or personality," which his eulogist in the _Edinburgh Review_ is pleased to claim as his attributes. It is difficult to understand why, in one case, there should be an evident suppression, whilst, in another, anecdotes of an offensive nature, reflecting upon the conduct of a queen, are printed without the slightest reserve, introduced in the following highly satisfactory manner:--"A story was current at Madrid, which, _if true_, would at once prove that the Prince of the Peace was aware of her infidelities," &c., and followed by this commentary--"the anecdote is, perhaps, too dramatic to deserve implicit credit." If so, why was it written down, and why is it now published? The appetite for prurient details which is a main feature of this book, is perhaps intelligible when it relates to intrigues notorious to all the world. No man of a really refined or fastidious mind would have committed these details to paper, more especially when they bore reference to the family of an individual with whom he was on something like intimate terms. But the case is far worse, and can admit of no palliation, when we find the most infamous charges, which have never been supported by even a shadow of proof, deliberately revived and repeated against that heroic and unfortunate lady, Queen Marie Antoinette of France. If the lament of Burke for the wane of chivalry was felt, not as a brilliant diatribe, but as a cutting sarcasm at the time when it was first enunciated, how much more appropriate is it now, when we find that a member of the British peerage--a man thought to be distinguished for high sentiment and generous sympathy--did not hesitate to adopt in the solitude of his closet the shameless inventions of the French revolutionary rabble; and that these are now given as facts which will not admit of questioning or denial to the world!

We are extremely glad to observe that the writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ has had the proper spirit to refute--and he does it most satisfactorily--this wretched and scandalous attack upon the memory of a royal lady. It was not perhaps to be expected that he should do more; but what sort of imputation does his vindication of the Queen leave upon the character of her assailant? This is not a matter which should be passed over lightly; and for our part we feel bound to say that we can conceive no spectacle more pitiable or humiliating, than that of an old man committing with a palsied hand to paper the prurient rumours of the past. Had the evidence against Marie Antoinette been ten times stronger than it was, honour and the feelings of a gentleman should have deterred any one even from repeating the accusation. But the late Lord Holland entertained no such scruples. His witness, at second-hand, is the very woman who wrote _Mémoires sur la Vie Privée de Marie Antoinette, Reine de France_; and in these memoirs of hers there is not even an inuendo against the honour of the unfortunate Queen. But Madame Campan cannot so escape. Lord Holland was determined that she should, in some way or other, assist in blackening the reputation of her royal mistress; and accordingly we are treated to the following ingenuous note:--

"Madame Campan's delicacy and discretion are not only pardonable,
but praiseworthy; but they are disingenuous, and her Memoirs
conceal truths well known to her, though such as would have been
unbecoming a lady to reveal. She was, in fact, the _confidante_
of Marie Antoinette's amours. These amours were not numerous,
scandalous, or degrading, but they _were amours_. Madame Campan,
who lived beyond the Restoration, was not so mysterious in
conversation on these subjects as she is in her writings. She
acknowledged to persons, who have acknowledged it to me, that she
was privy to the intercourse between the Queen and the Duc de
Coigny."

And this is evidence upon which we are to condemn Marie Antoinette! I had it--says this distinct and confident accuser--from other people, who had it from the waiting-woman, although the waiting-woman knew better than to write it down! And who were the people "who acknowledged it to me"--what was their character and station--what was their repute for credibility? Lord Holland durst not in his lifetime have said as much of the father or mother of any man of his acquaintance upon such a pretext for authority. It is altogether the very worst instance of a wanton attack which we ever remember to have met with: it has but one parallel in history--the famous warming-pan legend, by means of which Lord Holland's political predecessors sought to bastardise the son of James II. But the motive which dictated the earlier fiction is wanting in the case of the later one.

Let us not be misunderstood. The case stands thus: Lord Holland has made a grievous charge against the honour of the murdered Queen of France. He says that he believes that charge to be true, and he states the grounds of his belief. They are these: A lady, who wrote the memoirs of her mistress's private life, in which no hint of criminal conduct appears, told other persons (who are nameless) who told him, Lord Holland, that the Queen had been guilty of adultery. Far be it from us to doubt the honour of a British peer. But, rather than doubt the honour of Marie Antoinette, we should doubt the fact of Lord Holland having received any such statement from any human being. Who were the indiscreet friends of Madame Campan that conveyed to his ear the hitherto undivulged secret? Were they old menials of the French court--retired waiting-women--confidential lacqueys--or persons who had the _entrée_ to Holland House? Surely, when the honour of a Queen is impeached, we are entitled to know the authority. No authority of any kind is given. On the _ipse dixit_ of Lord Holland rests the entire substantiation of the charge, and on his memory must lie the stigma of having revived the gross and unmanly calumny.

We have felt ourselves bound to say this much, because, if stories of this sort are to be accepted as authentic contributions to history, there is no imaginable kind of falsehood which may not be promulgated as truth. Apply the rule to private life, and the malignity of a discarded butler would be sufficient to taint the best blood in England. What would we think of memoirs, compiled by some man of considerable standing and celebrity, and published under the editorship of his son, which should tell us that the present inheritor of any noble title was a bastard and an intruder, on such authority as this--that somebody had told the writer, that somebody else had told him or her, that she was cognisant of a certain intrigue? Yet the two cases are much the same. If they differ at all, it is in this particular, that the original testimony of the "somebody," who in the instance of the Queen of France was Madame Campan, happens to be written and published, and to contain no insinuation whatever; whereas, in the case we have supposed, that negative vindication would almost certainly be wanting. Who, we ask, would dare, on such authority, to set down such accusations against any private family? and, if we are right in thinking that public indignation would most certainly overwhelm the retailer of such miserable calumny, why should any other rule be applied when royalty is the subject of the attack?

We suspect that Lord Holland's political friends will hardly thank his successor for the publication of this volume. It exhibits the late peer in what we must suppose to be his true colours, not as a constitutional Whig, nor as in any way attached to the recognised forms of the British Constitution, but as an admirer of principles which would necessarily tend to its overthrow. We have searched the work in vain for a single expression of anything which we can venture to designate as patriotic feeling. Kings and courts are condemned by him--what sympathy he has is bestowed on the agents of revolution--and he appears a eulogist, or at least apologist, of the very man whom Whig and Tory alike have agreed in branding with reprobation. The conduct of "Egalité," in voting for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI., appears to him not unnatural. He takes great pains to convince us that the infamous duke was an exceedingly maligned person; and, with characteristic judgment as to the nature of his evidence, cites "a short narrative written by Mrs Elliott, who had, I believe, lived with him," as an apology for an act which, even in the French Revolutionary Convention, called forth an exclamation of horror.

Lord Holland's personal experiences--we should rather call them reminiscences--connected with the French Revolution, were very meagre. He was then, (in 1791,) as he tells us, a mere boy, and not likely to have much cognisance of the state of political affairs. In consequence, we gain absolutely nothing from his observation. Neither was his sojourn in Prussia, during the ensuing year, more fruitful save in the article of scandal, of which we have said enough. The same remark will apply to his Spanish tour; from the records of which, if we abstract the personal and indecent details, not one word of interest remains. This strikes us as very singular. A young and well-educated man, traversing those countries at a time when they widely differed in their aspect and forms of society from those which they afterwards assumed, ought surely to have preserved some "Reminiscences" of their condition, which would have been more acceptable to posterity than stories of court adultery, which he hardly could have derived from any creditable source; and we fairly confess that the total omission of anything like practical details, goes far to convince us that Byron's early judgment was right, and that the fame of Holland House rested far more upon the Amphytrionic, than the natural or acquired accomplishments of the distinguished host. In fact, were it not remarkable for such disgraceful scandal as would lower the character of a theatrical green-room, the first half of this volume is entirely beneath contempt. It has nothing whatever to do with the present crisis of affairs--it refers in no way to national or dynastical interests--it is simply a collection of such trash as, thirty years ago, might have been published under the auspices of a noble name, and then have descended to the hands of the trunk-maker, without the slightest chance of a second resurrection.

But the other half of the volume remains yet to be noticed. It is devoted exclusively to the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte, whom Lord Holland appears to have regarded with the most profound admiration. We approached this part of the book with sharpened curiosity, hoping to find recorded some additional traits of that remarkable character; but again we were doomed to disappointment. Lord Holland's personal recollections of the Emperor are contained in the following passage:--

"Both Lady Holland and myself were presented to him in 1802, when
he was First Consul. He saw her only once, and addressed some usual
questions and compliments to her, but had no conversation; though
I have reason to believe that he was aware of the admiration she
entertained and avowed for his military and political genius. I
stood next to him in the circle when he received and answered, in a
short written speech, (hastily, and somewhat awkwardly delivered,)
the deputation headed by Barthelemi, which came to confer upon him
the consulship for life. He spoke very civilly, but very little
to me on that occasion; and scarcely more when I dined and passed
the evening at his court, in company with Mr Fox, with whom he
conversed at considerable length on various matters, and more
particularly on the Concordat. These were the only opportunities
I ever had of observing his countenance or hearing his voice. The
former, though composed of regular features, and both penetrating
and good-humoured, was neither so dignified nor so animated as I
had expected; but the latter was sweet, spirited, and persuasive
in the highest degree, and gave a favourable impression of his
disposition as well as of his understanding. His manner was
neither affected nor assuming, but certainly wanted that ease and
attraction which the early habits of good company are supposed
exclusively to confer."