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the steady friendship of that great lawyer and sagacious politician, Lord Hardwicke. By his influence their dissensions were calmed -in their most anxious deliberations his counsel was decisive. Walpole seldom errs so grossly as when he says of this nobleman that he was despised in the cabinet.* Lord Waldegrave estimates him more justly when, speaking of his resignation in 1756, he observes that, as a statesman, Lord Hardwicke had been the chief support of the Duke of Newcastle's administration. The documents in Mr. Coxe's work bear a continual testimony to the respect entertained for Lord Hardwicke by the brother ministers, and the high value they placed upon his services. The duke, in a letter to Mr. Pelham (in 1745), says, ' I am sure you will not think unreasonable what I now propose, that everything, as far as possible, should be first talked over by you and me before it is either flung out in the closet or communicated to any of our brethren; I always except the chancellor, who I know is a third brother.'-(Pelham Administration, vol. i. p. 206.) On another occasion, when apprehensive that the chancellor intended to withdraw from the discussions of the cabinet, and devote himself wholly to the judicial business of his office, the duke says (addressing Lord Hardwicke)- I must beg you will consider in what situation you will leave me. My brother has all the prudence, knowledge, experience, and good intention that I can wish or hope in a man, but it will or may be difficult for us alone to stem that which, with your weight, authority, and character, would not be twice mentioned. Besides, my brother and I may differ in opinion; in which case, I am sure yours would determine both." vol. i. p. 40.

In the struggle which ended by the removal of Lord Granville from the administration in 1744, Lord Hardwicke's wisdom and address contributed materially to the success of his friends. The duke wrote to him when the contest was approaching its crisis,— Perhaps nobody but you can carry us through, and you can.' The chapter which relates this transaction is one of the most interesting in Mr. Coxe's volumes. The veteran statesman, Lord Orford, was at length summoned from his retirement to be the umpire in this important conflict; and the final exertion of that influence which he still retained with the king, and almost the last act of his life, was to confirm the ascendency of the Pelhams by recommending the dismissal of Lord Granville. He decided well for the king and for the country. That Lord Granville should have acted cordially with these colleagues was impossible. The appointment of Mr. Pelham, in 1743, to be first lord of the treasury, in

* Memoirs, vol. i. p. 139.

preference

preference to Lord Bath, whose pretensions Granville supported,* was a defeat not easily to be endured by a sanguine and arrogant favourite, presuming upon the confidential station which he held as the king's attendant and adviser on the scene of war, and at that time exulting with a half military vanity in the unfruitful glories of Dettingen. His address to the new prime minister, from Mentz, was sufficiently frank, but gave little prospect of future good understanding:

If I had not stood by Lord Bath, who can (could) ever value my friendship? and you must have despised me. However, as the affair is decided in your favour by his Majesty, I wish you joy of it, and I will endeavour to support you as much as I can, having really a most cordial affection for your brother and you, which nothing can dissolve but yourselves, which I don't apprehend will be the case. I have no jealousies of either of you, and I believe that you love me; but if you will have jealousies of me without foundation, it will disgust me to such a degree that I shall not be able to bear it; and as I mean to cement an union with you, I speak thus plainly.'-vol. i. p. 85.

As might have been expected from the tone of this declaration, his colleagues found him, in his subsequent conduct, self-willed and contemptuous; his official communications from abroad were dry and unsatisfactory,+ and he cared little to conceal that he neither reposed confidence in his partners in administration, nor expected it from them. Too sensible of his great superiority in genius and acquirements, he held cheap those sober qualities of prudence and good sense in which he was himself infinitely excelled by Mr. Pelham. With his characteristic rashness, which defied difficulties without preparing to encounter them, he flattered and urged on the king in that unprofitable course of foreign policy, which was daily becoming more unpopular, and exposing his administration to increased embarrassments. To arrest the course of these mischiefs was a necessary, but a difficult and ungracious task. It was said by near observers, that if the king liked anybody, it was Lord Granville.' His politics, his manners, his knowledge of foreign courts, and (the circumstance deserves remark) his being the only minister who could converse with the

The interest which Lord Orford took in this appointment is very strikingly displayed by his cordial, manly, and sagacious letters to Mr. Pelham, while it was depending. Pelham Administration, chapter I. One of them concludes thus-' Dear Harry, I am very personal and very free, and put myself in your power. Remember me kindly to my Lord Duke. Yours, &c.' Yet Horace Walpole would have it believed that Mr. Pelham had lately been the duke's accomplice in betraying Lord Orford.Memoirs, vol. i. p. 145; and he says elsewhere (p. 205), that Lord Orford was betrayed without being deceived.'

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He corresponded with them but seldom, and then chiefly on points which the next Gazette might have informed them of as fully as his dispatches.' (Introduction to Mr. Yorke's Parliamentary Journal, Pelham Administration, vol. i., p. 478.) Lord Marchmont's Diary, Marchmont Papers, vol. i., p. 197.

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king in his own language,* gave him an influence over the royal mind which was not dispelled by his removal from office. The unsuccessful attempt of George II., on his quarrel with the Pelhams in 1746, to form a new administration under Lord Granville and Lord Bath, gave rise to one of the most extraordinary political scenes of that reign. Mr. Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, and their friends anticipated the design of their master, by a sudden and general resignation; and it became afterwards a favourite theme of party obloquy that they had contumaciously thrown up their offices in the height of a rebellion.' The accusation is futile. Had they indeed renounced their employments with any design of aggravating civil discord, that they might use it as an engine against their adversaries, they would have justly deserved the brand of perpetual infamy. But the rebellion, at that time, (February 1746,) though not extinguished, had long ceased to be formidable. If anything could have revived the languishing spirit of Jacobitism, the accession to power of so unpopular a statesman as Lord Bath, and so Hanoverian a politician as Lord Granville, would most probably have had that effect. Their overthrow, accomplished safely and constitutionally by the well-concerted resignation of their opponents, was a pledge of the public tranquillity. The whole history of the event shows that the measures taken by the Pelhams were safe, wise, and decisive. Fortyeight hours, three quarters, seven minutes, and eleven seconds' (according to a satirical paper of the day) was the term of the new administration: the king found that he had raised a fabric of sand, and that nothing remained but to disperse it as quietly as possible. Lord Bath' (says Walpole in his Memoirs) slipped

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It is singular that this acquirement should have been so rare in a court which had been ruled by two successive German sovereigns. Mr. Pelham, it appears, knew little even of French. Sir Robert Walpole had neither German nor French, and talked with George I. in Latin. It may be suspected that their conferences would sometimes (as Milton says)

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-have made Quintilian stare and gasp.'

I was very uneasy,' says Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, in a letter of Feb. 7th, at finding you still remained in the same anxiety about the rebellion, when it had so long cease 1 to be formidable with us.' In his next letter, Feb. 14, after describing the attempted change in the cabinet, and the return of the Pelhams to office, he says,The duke and his name are pursuing the scattered rebels into their very mountains, determined to root out sedition entirely. It is believed, and we expect to hear, that the Young Pretender is embarked and gone.' 'After describing two revolutions, and announcing the termination of a rebellion, it would be below the dignity of my letter to talk of any thing of less moment.'-vol. ii. p. 194-5. So little were the northern Jacobites, at that time, an object of dread to politicians in London, if we believe Sir Horace Mann's correspondent. Let us now turn to Horace Walpole the historian, writing pour ne frustrer la postérité.' Will it be credited, if it is told? The period they' (the Pelhams) chose for this unwarrantable insult' (their resignation) was the height of a rebellion; the king was to be forced into compliance with their views, or their allegiance was in a manner ready to be offered to the competitor for his crown, then actually wrestling for it in the heart of his kingdom.'—Memoirs, vol. i. p. 149,

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down the back stairs, leaving Lord Carlisle in the outward room expecting to be called in to kiss hands for the privy seal.' Lord Granville left St. James's laughing,' and met a friend who wondered that he had held office so long. Jovial and grandiloquent as ever, he made light of the adventure, and in no long time slid into a subordinate post, (that of President of the Council,) which he continued to hold in the reign of George III. The king, discontented, but taking patience perforce, like the gruff papa' of a comedy, became gradually reconciled to the Pelhams, who returned to office strengthened and advanced in public estimation. Pitt, whose pretensions to the office of Secretary of State had been a proximate cause of the late rupture, obtained a place in the government, but not that to which the Pelhams had been anxious to raise him; the king's personal dislike was an obstacle not yet to be overcome; nor was it until after the lapse of several years, when he at length took the cabinet by storm,' that his genius obtained scope for those bold and vast exertions by which the close of George II.'s reign became one of the most illustrious periods of English history.

In dismissing this posthumous work of an author who laboured so long and so honourably for the advancement of historical knowledge, it will not be complained of by our readers that we should avail ourselves of some private materials at our disposal, and offer a few details of his life and literary career. Mr. Coxe was born in London in 1747. Of his parentage he himself, after some experience of society, wrote thus

'Among the principal blessings of the Almighty, I consider this as one of the greatest, that I was born of a family who were neither of a high nor low birth, and that my parents were such, that were I to come into the world again, and had the power of choosing them, I would fix upon those whom Providence has given me.'

His father was Dr. William Coxe, physician to the king's house-
hold, and grandson of Dr. Coxe, who gave evidence for Lord
William Russell on his trial for high treason.
His mother was

the daughter of Paul d'Aranda, a merchant and a friend of John Locke. She was a person of distinguished good sense and sweetness of disposition, and her son ever regarded her as his dearest and most intimate friend.

After passing some time at a private school, Mr. Coxe was sent to Eton, and was there, on his own petition, indulged with the assistance of a tutor, Mr. Sumner, afterwards Master of Harrow. The teacher was remembered by Mr. Coxe with admiration at a late period of his life; but the pupil, if his own confession may be literally taken, did not very zealously second his exertions. He was a boy of great spirits and volatile disposition, and much addicted to

fives and cricket; and in his progress through the school he merely kept above the middling rank of his companions. When he was fourteen years old, his father, who was then just rising into professional distinction, died, leaving six children very moderately provided for. In order that he might continue at Eton, Mr. Coxe was placed on the foundation, and in 1765 he was elected to King's College, Cambridge.

He came to the University a tolerable Greek and Latin scholar, but in other respects, according to his own report, very imperfectly educated. He shot, fished, and loitered away his first year of residence, forming no settled plan of improvement; but about the end of this period he was fortunately introduced into the society of some students of Peterhouse, a college which possessed at that time, among its younger inmates, several men of more than common talent and acquirements. Mr. Coxe had as yet lived chiefly with members of his own college, and had been contented with the portion of classical scholarship which he had brought from school; but the conversation of his new friends at once disclosed to him the insufficiency of his own attainments, and awakened in his mind that thirst of knowledge and honourable love of distinction which characterized him to the end of his life. Without abandoning his former studies he applied himself diligently to mathematical science, natural philosophy, modern languages, and, above all, history. His intercourse with the friends to whom he now attached himself was a kind of literary brotherhood; they rather lived together than exchanged visits, and their correspondence during the periods of separation gave an unrestrained flow to all the thoughts and feelings of men enjoying literature and the world with the first ardour of youth,

The closest intimacy which Mr. Coxe formed at this period was with Mr. Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, whose father, the Bishop of Carlisle, was then Master of Peterhouse: the son entered the University a little later than Mr. Coxe. In a paper written for the amusement of his chosen friends, Mr. Coxe drew the characters of four conspicuous members of their society, among whom were Mr. Le Blanc (in after years a distinguished ornament of the bench over which Lord Ellenborough presided) and Mr. Law, then at the age of four and twenty. This latter portrait, though traced by an inexperienced hand, has touches that will strike those who remember the original in the height of his attainments and honours.

Philotes hears the first rank in this our society. Of a warm and generous disposition, he breathes all the animation of youth and the spirit of freedom. His thoughts and conceptions are uncommonly great and striking; his language and expressions are strong and

nervous,

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