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marbles discovered by SPRATT are of the Macedonian period, Book III, and probably productions of the school of Pergamus.

Chap. IV.
ANOTHER
GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND

EXPLORERS.

Reports of

Museum;

years.

At Camerus and elsewhere, in the island of Rhodes, important excavations were carried on by Messrs. BILIOTTI and SALZMANN. These also were effected at the public charge. In the course of them nearly three hundred tombs British were opened, and many choicely painted fictile vases of the 1864, and best period of Greek ceramography were found. Those subsequent researches at Rhodes were the work of the years 1862, 1863, and 1864. In 1865, the excavations at Halicarnassus were resumed by order of the Trustees, and under the direction of the same explorers, and with valuable results. In 1864, an important purchase of Greek and Roman statues, and of the sculptures from the Farnese Collection at Rome, was made. In the following year came an extensive series of antiquities from the famous Collection of the late Count POURTALÉS. Of the precious objects obtained by the researches of Mr. Consul WooD, at Ephesus, in the same and subsequent years, a brief notice will be found in Chapter VI.

the Foreign Secretaries who began a new epoch, in this department of public duty, by setting new official precedents of regard and forethought for the augmentation of the national collections.

BOOK III, Chap. V. THE

FOUNDER

OF THE

GRENVILLE

LIBRARY.

CHAPTER V.

THE FOUNDER OF THE GRENVILLE
LIBRARY.

'He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,
Exceeding wise, fairspoken, and persuading;
Crabbed, mayhap, to them that loved him not;

But to those men that sought him, sweet as Summer.'—
Henry VIII.

'If a man be not permitted to change his political
opinions-when he has arrived at years of discretion-he
must be born a SOLOMON.'-

W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,
(vol. viii, p. 237).

The GRENVILLES and their Influence on the Political Aspect

of the Georgian Reigns.-The Public and Literary Life of the Right Honourable Thomas GRENVILLE.— History of the GRENVILLE Library.

It was the singular fortune of Thomas GRENVILLE to belong to a family which has given almost half a score of ministers to England; to possess in himself large diplomatic ability; and to have been gifted-his political opponents themselves being judges-with considerable talents for administration; and yet, in the course of a life protracted to more than ninety years, to have been an active diplomatist during less than one year, and to have been a Minister of State less than half a year. It is true that he was of that happy temperament which both enables and tempts a man to carve out delightful occupation for himself. He had, too, those rarely combined gifts of taste, fortune, and public spirit, which inspire their possessor with the will,

Chap. V.

OF THE

and confer upon him the power, to make his personal enjoy- Book III, ments largely contribute (both in his own time and after it) THE to the enjoyments of his fellow-countrymen. It might be FOUNDER true, therefore, to say that Thomas GRENVILLE was the GRENVILLE happier and the better for his exclusion, during almost forty-nine-fiftieths of his long life, from the public service. But it can hardly be rash to say that England must needs THOMAS have been somewhat the worse for that exclusion.

LIBRARY.

WHAT WAS

IT THAT

KEPT

GRENVILLE
ALOOF FROM

OFFICE?

Nor was it altogether a self-imposed exclusion. There POLITICAL was among its causes a curious conjunction of outward accidents and of philosophic self-resignation to their results. Untoward chances abroad twice broke off the foreign embassies of this eminent man. Unforeseen political complications amongst Whigs and semi-Whigs twice deprived him of cabinet office at home. But, no doubt, neither shipwreck at sea nor party intrigue on land would have been potent enough to keep Thomas GRENVILLE out of high State employment, but for the personal fastidiousness which withheld him from stretching out his hand, with any eagerness, to grasp it.

TICAL IN

FLUENCE

GRENVILLE
FAMILY; ITS
AND ITS

OF THE

DURATION

PECULIAR

CHARACTER

ISTICS.

It would, perhaps, be hard to lay the finger on any one THE POLI family recorded in the British Peerage' which so long and so largely influenced our political history, in the Georgian era of it, as did that of GRENVILLE. During the century (speaking roundly) which began with the suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and ended with the Repeal of the Corn Laws, GRENVILLES are continually prominent in every important political struggle. The personal influence and (for lack of a plainer word) the characteristic idiosyncrasy' of individual GRENVILLES notoriously shaped, or materially helped to shape, several measures that have had world-wide results. But perhaps the most curious feature in their political history as a family is this: At almost every great

BOOK III,
Chap. V.

THE

FOUNDER

crisis in affairs one GRENVILLE, of ability and prominence, is seen in tolerably active opposition to the rest of the GRENVILLES. In the political history of the man who GRENVILLE forms the subject of this brief memoir the family peculiarity, it will be seen, came out saliently.

OF THE

LIBRARY.

PARENTAGE

AND EARLY

LIFE OF
THOMAS

GRENVILLE.

HIS SHORT
DIPLOMATIC
CAREER.

See above, Book II, Chap. III, page 431.

The political GRENVILLES were offshoots of an old stock which, in the days of eld, were richer in gallant soldiers than in peace-loving publicists. The old GRENVILLES dealt many a shrewd swordthrust for England by land and by sea, in the Tudor times, and earlier. The younger branch has been rich in statesmen and rich in scholars. Not a few of them have shone equally and at once in either path of labour.

Thomas GRENVILLE was the second son of the Minister of GEORGE THE THIRD, George GRENVILLE,-himself the second son of Richard GRENVILLE, of Wotton, and of Hester TEMPLE (co-heiress of Richard TEMPLE, Lord Cobham, and herself created Countess TEMPLE in 1749). He was born on the thirty-first of December, 1755, and entered Parliament soon after attaining his majority. In the House of Commons he voted and acted as a follower of Lord RockINGHAM and a comrade of Charles Fox, in opposition to the other GRENVILLES and the Grenvillite' party. Had the famous India Bill of Fox's ministry been carried into a law, Thomas GRENVILLE, it was understood, would have been the first Governor-General of India under its rule.

His first entrance into the diplomatic service was made in 1782. His mission was to Paris. Its purpose, to negotiate with Benjamin FRANKLIN a treaty of peace with America. The circumstances beneath the influence of which it was undertaken I have had occasion to advert to, already, in the notice of Lord SHELBURNE. It is needless to return to them now.

Chap. V.

Tax

FOUNDER

OF THE

LIBRARY.

Thomas GRENVILLE'S union in the double negotiation Book III, with Mr. OSWALD (instructed by SHELBURNE, it will be remembered, as GRENVILLE was by Fox) proved to be very or TIK distasteful to him. From the beginning it boded ill to the GRENVILLE success of the mission. As early as the 4th of June, 1782, we find Mr. GRENVILLE writing to Fox thus:-'I entreat you earnestly to see the impossibility of my assisting you PARIS, under this contrariety. I cannot fight a daily battle with Mr. OSWALD and his Secretary.* It would be neither for the advantage of the business, for your interest, or for your credit or mine; and, even if it was, I could not do it.'

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THE MIS

SION TO

1782-3.

T. Grenville

to Fox; 1782.

4th June,

Comp. also

same to

same,

The then existing arrangements of the Secretaryship of State gave the control of a negotiation with France to one Secretary, and of a negotiation with America to the other. The reader has but to call to mind the well-known political relationship between Fox and SHELBURNE in 1782, to gain a fully sufficient key to the consequent diplomatic relationship between OsWALD and Thomas GRENVILLE, when thus engaged in carrying on, abreast, a double mission at the Court of Paris. To add to the obvious embroilment, OsWALD had shortly before received from Benjamin FRANKLIN a suggestion that Britain should spontaneously' cede pp. 36-51.) Canada, in order to enable his astute countrymen at home the better to compensate both the plundered Royalists and those among the victorious opponents of those Royalists who had, from time to time, sustained any damage at the hands of the British armies.

The most earnest entreaties, from many quarters, were used to induce GRENVILLE to remain at Paris. His political friends, and his family connections, were, on that point, alike urgent. But all entreaties were in vain.

When the

* Meaning Lord Shelburne. See, heretofore, pp. 431-433.

June 16.

(Court and

Cabinets of
Geo. III,

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