doctors, as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from the gout. A monument was erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the Duchess; and Lord Cobham honoured him with a cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings at Stowe.

must stop. Vanbrugh and Farquhar are not men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves space to do them justice.

LORD HOLLAND. (JULY, 1841.) The Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the Journals of the House of Lords, from 1797 to 1841. Collected and edited by D. C. MOYLAN, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. 8vo. London: 1841.

We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There was, indeed, a remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two men. Both were gentlemen liberally educated. MANY reasons make it impossible for Both led town lives, and knew human us to lay before our readers, at the prenature only as it appears between Hyde sent moment, a complete view of the Park and the Tower. Both were men character and public career of the late of wit. Neither had much imagina- Lord Holland. But we feel that we tion. Both at an early age produced have already deferred too long the lively and profligate comedies. Both duty of paying some tribute to his retired from the field while still in early memory. We feel that it is more manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements in literature whatever consideration they enjoyed in later life. Both, after they had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of miscellanies which did little credit either to their talents or to their morals. Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society; and both, in their last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable dispositions of their estates.

becoming to bring without further delay an offering, though intrinsically of little value, than to leave his tomb longer without some token of our reverence and love.

We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And yet it is a book which, even if it had been the work of a less distinguished man, or had appeared under circumstances less interesting, would have well repaid But in every point Congreve main- an attentive perusal. It is valuable, tained his superiority to Wycherley. both as a record of principles and as a Wycherley had wit; but the wit of model of composition. We find in it Congreve far outshines that of every all the great maxims which, during comic writer, except Sheridan, who has more than forty years, guided Lord arisen within the last two centuries. Holland's public conduct, and the chief Congreve had not, in a large measure, reasons on which those maxims rest, the poetical faculty; but compared with condensed into the smallest possible Wycherley he might be called a great space, and set forth with admirable poet. Wycherley had some know- perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To ledge of books; but Congreve was a his opinions on Foreign Policy we for man of real learning. Congreve's the most part cordially assent; but, offences against decorum, though highly now and then we are inclined to think culpable, were not so gross as those of them imprudently generous. We could Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like not have signed the protest against the Wycherley, exhibit to the world the detention of Napoleon. The Protest deplorable spectacle of a licentious respecting the course which England dotage. Congreve died in the enjoy-pursued at the Congress of Verona, ment of high consideration; Wycher- though it contains much that is excelley forgotten or despised. Congreve's lent, contains also positions which, we will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley's last actions appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity. Here, at least for the present, we

are inclined to think, Lord Holland would, at a later period, have admitted to be unsound. But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions, we give our

the heart, and of which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any family.

out scruple, the most immoral and the most unconstitutional manners; as a man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions and feelings, for the work of managing the Parliament by means of secretBut training and situation greatly service-money, and of keeping down modified the fine qualities which na- the people with the bayonet. Many of ture lavished with such profusion on his contemporaries had a morality three generations of the house of Fox. quite as lax as his: but very few among The first Lord Holland was a needy them had his talents, and none had political adventurer. He entered pub- his hardihood and energy. He could lic life at a time when the standard of not, like Sandys and Doddington, find integrity among statesmen was low. safety in contempt. He therefore beHe started as the adherent of a mi-came an object of such general avernister who had indeed many titles to sion as no statesman since the fall of respect, who possessed eminent talents Strafford has incurred, of such general both for administration and for debate, aversion as was probably never in any who understood the public interest country incurred by a man of so kind well, and who meant fairly by the and cordial a disposition. A weak country, but who had seen so much mind would have sunk under such a perfidy and meanness that he had be- load of unpopularity. But that resocome sceptical as to the existence of lute spirit seemed to derive new firmprobity. Weary of the cant of pa-ness from the public hatred. The only triotism, Walpole had learned to talk effect which reproaches appeared to a cant of a different kind. Disgusted produce on him, was to sour, in some by that sort of hypocrisy which is at degree, his naturally sweet temper. least a homage to virtue, he was too The last acts of his public life were much in the habit of practising the marked, not only by that audacity less respectable hypocrisy which os- which he had derived from nature, not tentatiously displays, and sometimes only by that immorality which he had even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox learned in the school of Walpole, but attached himself, politically and per- by a harshness which almost amounted sonally, with the ardour which be- to cruelty, and which had never been longed to his temperament. And it supposed to belong to his character. is not to be denied that in the school His severity increased the unpopularity of Walpole he contracted faults which from which it had sprung. The welldestroyed the value of his many great known lampoon of Gray may serve as endowments. He raised himself, in- a specimen of the feeling of the coundeed, to the first consideration in the try. All the images are taken from House of Commons; he became a con- shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormosummate master of the art of debate; rants. Lord Holland is represented as he attained honours and immense complaining, that the cowardice of his wealth; but the public esteem and accomplices had prevented him from confidence were withheld from him. putting down the free spirit of the His private friends, indeed, justly ex-city of London by sword and fire, and tolled his generosity and good nature. as pining for the time when birds of They maintained that in those parts prey should make their nests in Westof his conduct which they could least minster Abbey, and unclean beasts defend there was nothing sordid, and burrow in St. Paul's. that, if he was misled, he was misled Within a few months after the death by amiable feelings, by a desire to of this remarkable man, his second serve his friends, and by anxious ten-son Charles appeared at the head of derness for his children. But by the the party opposed to the American nation he was regarded as a man of War. Charles had inherited the boinsatiable rapacity and desperate am- dily and mental constitution of his bition; as a man ready to adopt, with-father, and had been much, far too VOL. II.

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much, under his father's influence. It worse than theirs. He had one great was indeed impossible that a son of so advantage over them. He received affectionate and noble a nature should a good political education. The first not have been warmly attached to a lord was educated by Sir Robert Walparent who possessed many fine qua- pole. Mr. Fox was educated by his lities, and who carried his indulgence father. The late lord was educated by and liberality towards his children even Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early to a culpable extent. Charles saw that imbibed by the first Lord Holland, the person to whom he was bound by made his great talents useless, and the strongest ties was, in the highest worse than useless, to the state. The degree, odious to the nation; and the pernicious maxims early imbibed by effect was what might have been ex- Mr. Fox, led him, at the commencepected from the strong passions and ment of his public life, into great faults constitutional boldness of so high- which, though afterwards nobly exspirited a youth. He cast in his lot piated, were never forgotten. To the with his father, and took, while still a very end of his career, small men, when boy, a deep part in the most unjustifi- they had nothing else to say in defence able and unpopular measures that had of their own tyranny, bigotry, and imbeen adopted since the reign of James becility, could always raise a cheer by the Second. In the debates on the some paltry taunt about the election Middlesex Election, he distinguished of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment himself, not only by his precocious of the lord mayor, and other measures powers of eloquence, but by the vehe- in which the great Whig leader had ment and scornful manner in which he borne a part at the age of one or two bade defiance to public opinion. He and twenty. On Lord Holland no was at that time regarded as a man such slur could be thrown. Those likely to be the most formidable cham- who most dissent from his opinions pion of arbitrary government that must acknowledge that a public life had appeared since the Revolution, to more consistent is not to be found in be a Bute with far greater powers, a our annals. Every part of it is in perMansfield with far greater courage. fect harmony with every other part; Happily his father's death liberated and the whole is in perfect harmony him early from the pernicious influence with the great principles of toleration by which he had been misled. His and civil freedom. This rare felicity mind expanded. His range of obser- is in a great measure to be attributed vation became wider. His genius to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord broke through early prejudices. His Holland, as was natural in a person of natural benevolence and magnanimity his talents and expectations, began at had fair play. In a very short time a very early age to take the keenest he appeared in a situation worthy of interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found his understanding and of his heart. the greatest pleasure in forming the From a family whose name was asso- mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corciated in the public mind with tyranny responded largely on political subjects and corruption, from a party of which when the young lord was only sixteen; the theory and the practice were equally and their friendship and mutual conservile, from the midst of the Luttrells, fidence continued to the day of that the Dysons, the Barringtons, came mournful separation at Chiswick. Unforth the greatest parliamentary de-der such training such a man as Lord fender of civil and religious liberty. Holland was in no danger of falling

The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dispositions of his House. But his situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects it was better, in some it was

into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather, and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free.

On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one

equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges was that Lord Holland's oratorical performances, though sometimes most successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers, and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to listen to his conversation without seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word "disputatious" is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can express our meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split

great disadvantage. They were mem- distinguished in debate than any peer bers of the House of Commons. He of his time who had not sat in the became a Peer while still an infant. House of Commons. Nay, to find his When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in "the great Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair seventeen hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on both sides kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them, when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby and the paralytic laid down in their bed-clothes on the benches. The powers of Charles Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence which belonged to him in common with his family required much practice to develope it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the wealth of their vocabu-a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to lary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed neither of them overcame it completely.

In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more

split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman.

His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as