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WARREN HASTINGS

tatement

This book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence and

undiscerning panegyric. (

are with Joburg

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on
If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail,
we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out 10
inaccurate statements, inelegant expressions, and immoral doc-
trines. But it would be idle to waste criticism on a bookmaker;
and whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by
former works, it is as a bookmaker, and nothing more, that he
now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have 15
written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar
drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by the
History of Greece," or Scott by the "Life of Napoleon." Mr.
Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott; but it would be unjust to
deny that he is capable of something better than these Memoirs. 20
It would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge any
Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately maintaining
some propositions which we find in this book. It is not too
much to say that Mr. Gleig has written several passages which
bear the same relation to "The Prince" of Machiavelli that 25
"The Prince" of Machiavelli bears to The Whole Duty of
Man," and which would excite amazement in a den of robbers

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or on board of a schooner of pirates. But we are willing to attribute these offenses to haste, to thoughtlessness, and to that disease of the understanding which may be called the Furor Biographicus, and which is to writers of lives what the goiter is 5 to an Alpine shepherd, or dirt eating to a Negro slave.

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We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes
of our readers, if, instead of dwelling on the faults of this book,
we attempt to give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect,
our own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our
10 feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Com-
mons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the
House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive
him in 1813. He had great qualities and he rendered great
services to the state. But to represent him as a man of stainless
virtue is to make him ridiculous; and from regard for his mem-
ory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to
lend no countenance to such puerile adulation. We believe that,
if he were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and

sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. Heures.

maryed

20 must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He
might also have felt with pride that the splendor of his fame
would bear many spots. He would have preferred, we are con-
fident, even the severity of Mr. Mill to the puffing of Mr. Gleig
He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of him,
25 though an unfavorable likeness, rather than a daub at once
insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else.
"Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to
young Lely.
"If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will
not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle the great Protector
30 showed both his good sense and his magnanimity. He did not

wish all that was characteristic in his countenance to be lost,
in the vain attempt to give him the regular features and smooth,
blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First.
He was content that his face should go forth marked with all

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the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by
sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with valor,
policy, authority, and public care written in all its princely lines.
If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they
would wish their minds to be portrayed.

Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race.
It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the
great Danish sea king, whose sails were long the terror of both
coasts of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce and
doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valor and genius of io
Alfred. But the undoubted splendor of the line of Hastings
needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore,
From
in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke.
another branch sprang the renowned chamberlain, the faithful
adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so strik- 15
ing a theme both to poets and to historians. His family received
from the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon, which, after long
dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events
scarcely paralleled in romance.

The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire,
claimed to be considered as the heads of this distinguished
family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of
the younger shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not
ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till, about two
hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the great ruin 25
of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous
cavalier. He raised money on his lands, sent his plate to
the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and, after spend-
ing half his property in the cause of King Charles, was
glad to ransom himself by making over most of the remain- 30
ing half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still
remained in the family, but it could no longer be kept up,
and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant
of London.

1 Early Life

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Before this transfer took place the last Hastings of Daylesford had presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence of the family stood. The living was of little value, and the situation of the poor clergyman after 5 the sale of the estate was deplorable. He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, well-conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs.

The second son, Pynaston, an idle, worthless boy, married be. Wen

10 fore he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and died in the West Indies, leaving to the care of his unfortunate father a little orphan, destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune.

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Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of 15 December, 1732. His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school, where he learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry. Nor did anything in his garb or fare indicate that his life was to take a 20 widely different course from that of the young rustics with whom he studied and played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so much ambition. The very plowmen observed, and long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of the lands which 25 his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valor. On one bright summer day the boy, then just 30 seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate