in opposition to the arguments by which Mr. | which the victory of the Nile and Lord NelKaye justifies the publication, and proceed. son's triumphant arrival at Naples were saMiss Knight was the daughter of Admiral luted by the English there. They were also Sir Joseph Knight, an officer of well-de- the eye-witnesses and the partakers of the served reputation. She made the acquaint- idolatry evinced by the King and Queen of ance, as a girl, of "Johnson, Goldsmith, Naples, and by Lady Hamilton, for the hero Burke, and other celebrities of the age." who threw himself so unsuspectingly into She attained in her day considerable reputa- their arms. She became a kind of deputy tion "as a lady of extensive learning and poetess laureate for the occasion; added a manifold accomplishments." Mrs. Piozzi stanza-"Join we great Nelson's name,” calls her "the far-famed Cornelia Knight." and so forth-to the National Anthem; and She wrote "Dinarbas, a Sequel to Rasse- addressed strains commencing, "Come, cheer las," and "Marcus Flaminius, a View of the up, fair Delia," to Lady Hamilton, in conMilitary, Political, and Social Life of the nection with the great commander. She beRomans," a novel in two volumes, which, as came, apparently, the indispensable inmate Mr. Kaye rather satirically remarks, "being of that circle. She accompanied them to in the stately classical style, hit the taste of Palermo, and there Lady Knight died, in the age." But judging from these remains 1799; and "Cornelia," says the editor, "in alone, and not having read either Dinarbas fulfilment of her mother's dying injunctions, or Marcus Flaminius, we should be inclined to suspect that the learning which gained her celebrity did not reach much beyond the standard required for astonishing "persons of quality." It did not certainly preserve her from startling historical mistakes, or from a pertinacious inability to spell foreign names (which her editor has not taken the trouble to correct), and to scan either French or Latin verses." placed herself under the protection of the Hamiltons." Miss Knight herself tells us nothing of this, nor of the causes which led her to form so close an attachment to her ladyship, whom she cautiously terms "a singular mixture of right and wrong." She only informs us that she left Sicily in company with the Hamiltons, with Lady Hamilton's mother Mrs. Cadogan, Lord Nelson, and the Queen of Naples, on the 8th June, 1800, for Leghorn; and proceeded thence to Ancona, which place they reached after a dif Miss Knight's father, Sir Joseph, died in 1775, when she was about eighteen; and Lady Knight, being in straitened circum-ficult and somewhat romantic journey. She stances, and unable to obtain a pension, went reached Trieste by a different ship; but there with her daughter to live on the Continent. rejoined the Hamilton and Nelson party, and They dwelt a good deal at Rome, where Miss proceeded with them on what may be called Knight picked up an amount of knowledge their triumphal route through Germany, by of the personages and ways of its curious Vienna, Dresden, and, Hamburg. They arcourt very rare with English people, and rived in town in November, when Miss which furnishes the most amusing portion of Knight "went to a hotel in Albemarle Street her foreign diaries. She was at Rome when with Mrs. Cadogan." And it is scarcely necthe French agitator, Basseville, was mur-essary to say that Miss Knight's account of dered by the Conservative mob, in 1793. In the journey contains little but a chronicle of 1798, when Berthier occupied the Eternal the decorous ovations with which it was atCity, she and her mother effected their es-tended. cape to Naples with some difficulty. And here commences that which-when we remember what she afterwards became-is the most curious chapter in Miss Knight's history; over which her editor passes with very discreet forbearance of remark. She and her mother established the closest intimacy with Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy, and with his too celebrated wife. They partook in all the vehement enthusiasm with * See vol ii., pp. 181 and 197. Now let us turn to the other side of the story. In the summer of 1800, Mrs. St. George, an Irish widow lady of family, was residing in Germany, and familiar with several of its courts. She was young, of much talent, and a very lively power of observation. Portions of her "Journal" have been printed by her son, the present Dean of Westminster. We extract from it without comment, which is quite unnecessary, the passages which relate to the sojourn of Nelson, the Hamiltons, and Miss Knight at Dres- has actually obtained some at Dresden by den: "Oct. 2.-Dined at the Elliots'. [Mr. Elliot was British Minister at the Saxon Court.] While I was playing at chess with Mr. Elliot, the news arrived of Lord Nelson's arrival, with Sir. W. and Lady Hamilton, Mrs. Cadogan, mother of the latter, and Miss Cornelia Knight, famous for her Continuation of Rasselas and Private Life of the Ro mans.' the common artifice of admiring and longing. Mr. Elliot says she will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is as vulgar as her own, and play a great part in England. "Oct. 8.-Dined at Madame de Loss', wife to the Prime Minister, with the Nelson party. The Electress will not receive Lady Hamilton, on account of her former dissolute life. She wished to go to court, on which a pretext was made to avoid receiving company last Sunday, and I understand there will be no court while she stays. Lord Nelson, understanding the Elector did not wish to see her, said to Mr. Elliot, "Sir, if there is any difficulty of that sort, Lady Hamilton will knock the Elector down, and I'll knock him down too." She was not invited in the beginning to Madame de Loss', upon which Lord Nelson sent his excuse, and then Mr. Elliot persuaded Madame de Loss to invite her. me, "Oct. 3.-Dined at Mr. Elliot's, with only the Nelson party. It is plain that Lord Nelson thinks of nothing but Lady Hamilton, who is totally occupied by the same object. She is bold, forward, coarse, assuming, and vain. Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. She resembles the bust of Ariadne; the shape of all the features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but "Oct. 9.-A great breakfast at the Ellitolerably white; her eyes bright blue, with ots', given to the Nelson party. Lady Hama brown spot in one, which, though a defect, ilton repeated her attitudes with great effect. takes nothing away from her beauty and ex- All the company, except their party and mypression. Her eyebrows and hair are dark, self, went away before dinner; after which and her complexion coarse. Her expression Lady Hamilton, who declared she was pasis strongly marked, variable, and interest- sionately fond of champagne, took such a ing; her movements in common life ungrace- portion of it as astonished me. Lord Nelful; her voice low, but not disagreeable. son was not behindhand; called more vocifLord Nelson is a little man, without any erously than usual for songs in his own dignity, who, I suppose, must resemble what praise, and after many bumpers proposed Suwarrow was in his youth, as he is like all the Queen of Naples, adding, 'She is my the pictures I have seen of that General. queen; she is queen to the backbone.' Poor Lady Hamilton takes possession of him, and Mr. Elliot, who was anxious the party should he is a willing captive, the most devoted and not expose themselves more than they had submissive I have seen. Sir William is old, done already, and wished to get over the last infirm, all admiration of his wife, and never day as well as he had done the rest, endeavspoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cor-ored to stop the effusion of champagne, and nelia Knight seems the decided flatterer of the two, and never opens her mouth but to show forth their praise; and Mrs. Cadogan, Lady Hamilton's mother, is what one might expect. After dinner we had several songs in honor of Lord Nelson, written by Miss Knight, and sung by Lady Hamilton. She puffs the incense full in his face, but he receives it with pleasure, and snuffs it up very cordially.. "Oct. 7.-Lady H-continues her demonstrations of friendship, and said many fine things about my accompanying her at sight. Still she does not gain upon me. I think her bold, daring, vain, even to folly, and stamped with the manner of her first situation much more strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty and lived in good company fifteen years. Her ruling passions seem to me vanity, avarice, and love for the pleasures of the table. She shows a great avidity for presents, and effected it with some difficulty, but not till round the room on his backbone, his arms, legs, star and ribbon all flying about in the air. "Oct. 10.-Mr. Elliot saw them on board [a boat on the Eibe] to-day. He heard by chance from a king's messenger that a frigate waited for them at Hamburg, and ventured to announce it formally. He says, 'The moment they were on board there was an end of the fine arts, of the attitudes, of the acting, the dancing, and the singing. Lady Hamilton's maid began to scold in French about some provisions which had been forgot, in language quite impossible to repeat, using certain French words which were never spoken but by men of the lowest class, and roaring them out from one boat to another. Lady Hamilton began bawling for an Irish stew, and her old mother set about washing the potatoes, which she did as cleverly as possible. They were exactly like Hogarth's actresses dressing in the barn."* Men like and of personal weaknesses, whether of the But the strange part of this Teniers-like bit of history, for our present purpose, consists in the light which it reflects on the real characteristics of the refined Miss Cornelia Knight, "lady-companion" a few years afterwards to the Princess Charlotte. We find her, not a young girl deprived of her natural protector, but a demure orphan of forty-two, deliberately attaching herself to the fortunes and society of this bacchanalian Now, it may be said once for all, it is open citizeness of the demi-monde, and her conto every one to make such allowance as he venient mother. We do not insinuate the may think proper for the youth and vivacity slightest scandal against Miss Knight. and slightly satirical turn of the authoress Though she must have handled a vast deal of these sketches. But they must be sub- of pitch between Palermo and Albemarle stantially true. They were written down on Street, she remained undefiled; and far from the impression of the moment, and pre- having any imputation cast upon her, she served for no purpose except that of com- passed for a model of decorum, if not quite munication to her own family. There is no "one of the most high-minded women in suspicion of intended publication here. the world, and the kindest-hearted," as Lady Some, in their veneration for the memory of Charlotte Bury calls her, in the spirit of Lord Nelson, have been displeased at their Connaught-House partisanship. Her conappearance. They are wrong, we think. descension, and that of others, to the HamTo get at the truth about the tracasseries of iltons, was in some degree veiled by the Carlton House is of no conceivable impor- blaze of Nelson's glory, and the services tance to mankind; but that the character of which the boldness and readiness of his one of the real heroes of history should be Emma had rendered to the British cause. thoroughly known-known in its weaknesses She was attached to them by the ties of deno less than its strength-is of very consid-pendence and gratitude. "Most of my crable importance indeed. Such men must friends," she says after her arrival in Lonnot be painted "en buste." Nor is there don, "were very urgent with me to drop the any fear that the real fame of Nelson will acquaintance; but circumstanced as I had suffer by additional exposures of his follies been, I feared the charge of ingratitude, about Lady Hamilton. As well criticise though greatly embarrassed what to do, for Samson for his relations with Dalilah. The things became very unpleasant." (Vol. i. truth is that there are marked men in his- p. 162.) All this sufficiently accounts for tory, though very few, whose character is of the Samsonic type-men of unlimited bravery, intense and contagious enthusiasm, absolute simplicity and honesty of purpose, and withal the merest children, or worse than children, in point of external demeanor the indulgence of society towards her; but it does not account for the extraordinary circumstance that a lady, whose antecedents in this respect were so unlucky, was selected, first as the familiar attendant of the stiff Queen Charlotte, next as the "lady-companion" of that queen's granddaughter during the most critical years of her brief life. That the travelling-companion of Emma Hamilton should have been chosen, not sim- | written by the Queen's desire, to give me a ply to play propriety in a youthful Princess' hint that the Prince wished I should come drawing-room, but to train her heart and intellect, and watch over her under circumstances of embarrassment and delicacy almost unparalleled, is such a fact as the greatest enemy of courts would scarcely have dared to invent. We fear it can only remain on record as a proof how indescribably low the standard, not exactly of morals, but of moral sentiment, had descended in ours, at the period in question. So, however, it fell out. In March, 1805, Miss Knight was taken into the service of Queen Charlotte, without any solicitation, she says, on her part : "Her Majesty had been pleased to express a desire that I should be attached to her person, without any particular employment, but that I should be lodged at Windsor, in a house belonging to Her Majesty, with a maid in her service to do the work of the house. Her Majesty added that she would allow me £300 a year, and that I should be present at her evening parties when invited, and always on Sundays and red-letter days, and be ready to attend her in the morning when required to do so."—Vol. i. p. 168. forward to assist him. . . but adding, that the Queen would not bias me either way. The other letter was a private one, in which she urged me to write a letter to the Queen, showing an inclination to accept, and offering to consider myself still as in her service, or terms to that effect." The answer she received was unsatisfactory. "I saw," she says, "that the Queen wished me to take the refusal on myself, that she might not offend the Prince." She was dreadfully disappointed; and went, "with a heavy heart, after an hysterical fit," to the castle, where she met such a reception as compelled her to decline the Prince Regent's proposal. But the pressure on the part of Carlton House continued, until (if we may believe her) she adopted an expedient which seems to carry one back to the days when Queen Elizabeth's courtiers used to propitiate her with purses full of broad pieces. She was aware that Her Majesty was just at this time hard pressed for cash; and, renewing her supplication for permission to depart, "offered some arrangements which I thought would serve to free Her Majesty from embarrassment, and particularly the loan of one thousand pounds, without interest-a sum which I knew the Queen was at that time very desirous to procure, and which, added to the salary which I gave up, and the house which she might let, would set her completely at her ease in respect to Frogmore and the farm." But the Queen, unlike the governor of Tilbury, was proof against the allurement of the "thousand pounds." "To this letter I received, next day, two answers-the one, relative to my offer, of course private; and the other respecting my acceptance of the In this capacity she passed the melancholy season of the death of the Princess Amelia and final seclusion of George III.; and she adds some touching details of these events to those already known. In 1813 she was transferred, or rather transferred herself, to the service of the Princess Charlotte; but the circumstances of the change are very warily recounted, and not quite intelligibly. It seems that she had got heartily tired of the Queen's dreary little society-" dull, uninteresting, and monotonous; every year more confined, and ever, from the kindness of the royal family, condemned to listen to all their complaints and private quarrels." employment. Both were resentful and bitNor does Queen Charlotte seem to have cared particularly for Miss Knight. But Her Majesty had the tenacity of soured old age. Miss Knight could not, therefore, get my feelings, but Lord Moira did not. He herself liberated without a most dispropor- thought my nerves ought to be braced against tionate amount of finesse and diplomacy. marks of resentment which he did not think Sir Henry Halford was the agent employed I had deserved. I did not mention to them by the Regent, as it should seem, to effect the lady's extradition. He wrote her a most pressing letter, offering her among other things, as she asserts, the title of "Honorable;" and "with this letter came two from the Princess Elizabeth, one of which was ter to a high degree." Miss Knight was very angry, and so she told Lord Moira's wife and sister. "The ladies approved of the pecuniary part of the correspondence ; nor is it known to any human being except one friend, who will never repeat it." (Vol. i. p. 196.) At last the arrangement was effected, as she tells us, by means of an urgent letter from the Prince Regent himself; pos sibly the "pecuniary part of the correspond-" was violently angry when he heard of the ence" had diminished her mistress' reluc-letter, and took Lord Eldon down with him tance to part with her. But the Queen re- to Windsor, where in the Queen's room, before Her Majesty, Princess Mary, and mained at least in Miss Knight's beliefLady de Clifford, in a very rough manner her fixed enemy to the end of her days; and the learned lord expounded the law of Engshe herself, as we shall see, ultimately re- land as not affording Her Royal Highness pented having left Her Majesty. what she demanded; and, on the Prince's On the 25th January, 1813, Miss Knight asking what he would have done as a father, was "presented" on her new appointment. he is said to have answered, 'If she had The establishment into which she had, with been my daughter, I would have locked her full knowledge of the facts, introduced her- up.' Princess Charlotte heard this with great dignity, and answered not a word; self, was certainly not such as the well-reg- but she afterwards went into the room of ulated mind of a duenna of fifty would one of her aunts, burst into tears, and exusually select as a refuge after the storms claimed, 'What would the King say if of life. The daughter of George and Caro- he could know that his granddaughter had line was now just seventeen; a fine spirited been compared to the granddaughter of a girl, with much talent, much nobleness of collier?'"-Vol. i. p. 184. heart, an ungoverned will, but a most affec- The story is differently told (as the editor tionate, and through affection a controllable, points out) in Lady Charlotte Bury's Diary, disposition. Such is the verdict posterity and more plausibly, as the epigram is asmay fairly pass on the poor perishing crea-cribed to Lady de Clifford instead of the ture who then filled such a space in the pub-girlish Princess. Most probably neither lic eye-the bright ephemeron of our history, version is true. The result, however, of or the "fair-haired daughter of the isles,"" things being in this uncomfortable state," of whom those who were grown men forty as Miss Knight calls it, was, that the new years ago can even now hardly read without some emotion. So hemmed in from childhood upwards by every evil influence-the victim of so much sinister design-that she should have won love and respect-that calumny should have glanced harmless from beside her, is surely enough to prove her real merit, even after all allowance for the exaggerations both of flattery and of faction, which, in her case, happened to combine. At the time when the Regent chose Miss Knight to attend her, he had been seized with a sudden fear lest his clever child should all at once chip the shell, and soar beyond his control. She had just had the boldness to ask her father, through Lord Liverpool, "that, as she understood Lady de Clifford had resigned, she might have no other governess, but an establishment of her own, and ladies-in-waiting." "I believe," says Miss Knight," she wrote that letter by the advice of Miss Mercer Elphinstone, her old and intimate friend." We believe Miss Knight's suspicion of Miss Mercer's inter-courtyard and gates, at which two sentinels ference to be entirely false; and it will be were placed. On the ground-floor were a hall, dining-room, library, comptroller'sseen presently how this misstatement is in room, and two very small rooms, with a keeping with many other particulars as- good staircase, and two back staircases much serted or insinuated in this Autobiography respecting the lady in question, now Count-stretches rom Cockspur Street towards the mod"At the end of Warwick Street, which ess de Flahault. The Prince, however, ern Carlton House Terrace," says the editor. We establishment, with the Duchess of Leeds at Charlotte and I, with an excellent family |