A.D. 1753. HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH MONTESQUIEU.

75

I have the pleasure of seeing him, to mount timber on Sunday as a compliment to the benchers." Warburton thereupon warily suggested to Hurd,—“Mr. Yorke may be right in your not being too punctilious about sermons at first. But take care not to accustom them to works of supererogation, for, as puritanical as they are, they have a great hankering after that Popish doctrine."

Charles Yorke likewise kept up a constant correspondence with the President Montesquieu. Having expressed to him a wish to renounce public life for literary leisure, he received the following answer :—

“Une noble ambition convient aux jeunes gens, le repos à un âge plus avancé; c'est la consolation de la perte des agrémens et des plaisirs. Ne négligez pas des talents qui vous sont venus avant l'âge, et qui ne doivent point être contraires à votre santé, quoiqu'ils sont votre nature même. Vous vous souvenez des belles choses que dit Cicéron, dans son Livre des Offices, contre les philosophes, et combien il les met au dessous de la vie active des citoyens et de ceux qui gouvernent la république; et on ne peut pas le soupçonner d'avoir eu de l'envie contre ceux qui s'attachoient à la philosophie; puis qu'il étoit lui-même un si grand philosophe; le même, dans un autre endroit, appelle Archimède un petit homme; et Platon nʼalla en Sicile que pour faire voir à l'univers qu'il étoit non seulement capable de donner des loix à une république, mais de la gouverner. Continuez donc une profession que vous faites avec tant de gloire; continuez une profession qui fait qu'en vous regardant on se souvient toujours de votre illustre père; continuez une profession qui fait voir que dans un âge très-tendre vous avez pu porter le poids de la réputation sans vous courber."

The President afterwards sent him a copy of his works, with this polite epistle :—

66

'Monsieur, mon très-cher et très-illustre Ami,

"J'ai un paquet de mes ouvrages, bons ou mauvais, à vous envoyer; j'en serai peut-être le porteur; il pourra arriver que j'aurai le plaisir de vous embrasser tout à mon aise. Je remets à ce tems à vous dire tout ce que je vous écrivois. Mes sentimens pour vous sont gravés dans mon cœur, et dans mon esprit, d'une manière à ne s'effacer jamais. Quand vous verrez Monsieur le Docteur Warburton, je vous prie de lui dire l'idée agréable que je me fais de faire plus ample connoissance avec lui; d'aller trouver la source du sçavoir, et de voir la lumière de l'esprit. Son ouvrage sur Julien m'a enchanté, quoique je n'ai que de très-mauvais lecteurs Anglois, et que j'ai presque oublié tout ce que j'en sçavois.

d This was in vacation time, and it is the duty of the preacher of Lincoln's Inn to officiate only during the terms.

Je vous embrasse, Monsieur. Conservez-moy votre amitié; la mienne est éternelle.

"à Paris, ce 6 Juin, 1753." e

"MONTESQUIEU.

In the autumn of the same year, Charles Yorke left England with the intention of visiting the President at his château in Gascony, and accompanying him to Bordeaux, that he might see how justice was administered in the parliament there; but he was recalled home before this object could be accomplished. The President thus expressed his disappointment:-"J'aurois été bien heureux de passer quelque tems avec vous à Labrede; vous m'aurez appris à raisonner, et moy je vous aurois appris à faire du vin et à planter des chênes, sous lesquels quelque druide se mettra quelque jour; mais quand je serois aussi jeune que vous, je ne verrois point cela." He then goes on to talk of their common friend "Monsieur le Docteur Walburthon "—to whom he promises a copy of the Esprit des Lois, and a cask of wine, in return for his new edition of Pope.

I ought not to pass over a misfortune which had befallen him, the severity of which I can the better appreciate from having been visited by a similar one myself. In the night of the 5th of July, 1752, a fire suddenly burst out from his staircase in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn. He narrowly escaped with his life, but he suffered an irreparable loss, in which the whole nation participated-the invaluable State Papers in thirty volumes folio, collected by his grand-uncle, Lord Somers, and made over to him, having been all reduced to ashes. Warburton says,- 66 They were full of very material things for the history of those times, which I speak upon my own knowledge." Perhaps posterity had a heavier loss in the destruc

e In sending a copy of this letter to Warburton, Yorke observes,-"His heart is as good as his understanding in all he says or writes; though he mixes now and then a little of the French clinquant with all his brightness and solidity of genius, as well as originality of expression."-Corresp. p. 507.

f When I was Attorney-General, my chambers in Paper Buildings, Temple, were burnt to the ground by fire in the night time, and all my law books and MSS., with some valuable official papers, were consumed. Above all, I had to lament a collection of letters written to me by my dear father, in a continued series, from the time of my going to College till his death in 1824. All lamented

this calamity except the claimant of a peerage, some of whose documents (suspected to be forged) he hoped were destroyed; but, fortunately, they had been removed into safe custody a few days before, and the claim was dropped.

8 Lord Hardwicke, in a letter written next day, says, "My son Charles was forced to run down stairs in danger of suffocation, with nothing on but his shirt and breeches, and in that condition took shelter in his friend Mr. Clarke's chambers on the other side of the square. He lost every thing, and came home to me almost as naked as he came into the world. But what affects him most is the loss of his library and all his MSS. and papers."

A.D. 1755.

HIS MARRIAGE.

77

tion of Charles Yorke's own MSS.; for although he was too modest to talk much of them, it was generally believed that he had prepared for the press several law treatises, which would have rivalled the fame of the "Considerations on Forfeiture for Treason;" and Cowper's verses, on a like misfortune which befel Lord Mansfield, might have been addressed to him :

"And Murray sighs o'er Pope and Swift,

And many a treasure more,
The well-judg'd purchase and the gift
That grac'd the letter'd store.

"Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;

But AGES YET TO COME SHALL MOURN
THE BURNING OF HIS OWN."

He soon got a new set of chambers, and furnished his shelves with new copies of such books as could be obtained from the booksellers; but even in consulting reports and law treatises -for years there was almost daily something annoyingly reminding him of those he had lost,-which were made valuable to him by notes and scratches, and with every page of which he had formed an endearing familiarity.

A.D. 1755.

For this, or some better reason, he became tired of a bachelor's life, and, being now in his thirty-third year, he resolved to enter the holy state of wedlock. The object of his choice was Catherine, only child and heiress of William Freeman, Esq., of Aspeden, Herts, a granddaughter of Sir Thomas Pope, Bart., of Tittenhanger. To her he was united on the 19th of May, 1755, and with her he lived most happily till, after bringing him three children, she was snatched away to an early grave.

Though still what we in our time should consider quite a youth at the bar, who ought to be pleased with the prospect of gradually getting into a little business, he compared his father's progress with his own, and he was exceedingly dissatisfied to think that he was not yet made a Judge, or a law officer of the Crown. So far back as 1747, he had had a feather put into his

cap by being made Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales. But his only other Government preferment hitherto had been the grant of Clerk of the Crown to him jointly with his brother John Yorke, the grasping Chancellor being desirous to keep this good thing in the family as long as possible. Disappointed at not sooner obtaining the real honours of the profession, Charles now talked of leaving it altogether, and taking entirely to the political line, in which he flattered himself he might rise to be Prime Minister. It appears that he had infused his discontented notions into his friends. Warburton writes to Hurd, “Yorke, who has spent the holidays with me, has just now left me to return to the bar, whose nature, virtue, and superior science in any age but this would have conducted their favourite pupil to the bench."

A.D. 1756.

At last an opening appeared to have arisen. On the 25th of May, 1756, died Sir Dudley Ryder, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, the day before he was to have kissed hands on being raised to the peerage, and it was expected that this would make an immediate move in the law. But the assistance of Murray, the Attorney-General, was so essentially necessary to the Duke of Newcastle's government in the House of Commons, that, although he demanded the Chief Justiceship as of right, the office was kept vacant six months, in the hopes of bribing him to forego his claim. In the mean while the Chancellor being supposed to have all the law appointments at his disposal, his son earnestly pressed that now some arrangement might be made whereby he might be promoted. On the 2nd of June, 1756, thus wrote Mr. Potter, the son of the Archbishop, to Mr. Pitt:

"Charles Yorke, who has long had a wish to quit the profession, has taken advantage of this opportunity, and has sternly insisted with his father, that, unless he makes him Solicitor-General now, he will immediately pull off his gown. The Chancellor yields, and has promised either to make him Solicitor, or to consent that he shall quit the profession and be a Lord of the Admiralty. I think I know which side of the alternative the Chancellor will take. On Murray's leaving the bar, and Charles Yorke becoming Solicitor-General, he would get at least 40007. per annum. The Chancellor will compute how much that exceeds the salary of a Lord of the Admiralty, and the vices of the family will probably operate, so as to keep poor Charles in the only train in which he can be of any consequence.'

i Warb. Corresp.

k Chatham Correspondence, i. 160.

A.D. 1756.

MADE SOLICITOR-GENERAL.

79

Murray having at length obtained the Chief Justiceship by the threat of withdrawing from public life, the administration was subverted, and Lord Hardwicke resigned the Great Seal. But he contrived that the desired promotion should be bestowed upon his son, who, on the 6th of November, 1756, was sworn in Solicitor-General.m

CHAPTER CLI.

CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR CHARLES YORKE.

A.D. 1756.

THE first public duty cast upon Charles Yorke, after his promotion, was to make a complimentary speech on the elevation of a rival. Murray, the Chief-Justice-elect, was to take leave of the Society of Lincoln's Inn previous to going through the preliminary form of being made a Serjeant at Law, that he might thereby be qualified to become a Judge. Mr. Solicitor, being then the Treasurer or head of the Inn, according to ancient usage presented the departing member with a purse of gold as a retaining fee, and addressed him in a flowing oration, extolling his eloquence, his learning, and his qualifications for the high judicial office which he was about to fill. The very words of the answer are preserved, from which we may judge of the talent and the courtesy exhibited on both sides :

"I am too sensible, Sir, of my being undeserving of the praises which you have so elegantly bestowed upon me, to suffer commendations so delicate as yours to insinuate themselves into my mind; but I have pleasure in that kind partiality which is the occasion of them. To deserve such praises is a worthy object of ambition; and from such a tongue, flattery itself is pleasing. If I have had in any measure success in my profession, it is owing to the great man who has presided in our

m The retiring Chancellor represented it as the spontaneous act of the King. Writing to a friend, he says, "Your congratulations on my son's promotion to the office of Solicitor-General are extremely obliging, not only to me, but to him. The King my gracious master, who accepted my resignation with those demonstrations of goodness which

related by me might have the appearance of vanity, was pleased to do it as a mark of his approbation of my long and faithful though unmeriting service. I had made it my firm resolution neither to ask nor accept any pecuniary or lucrative advantage-but of this favour I own I am proud."