TO THE

EIGHT NEPHEWS OF VERE HENRY, LORD HOBART,

I DEDICATE THIS WORK

IN THE HOPE THAT

HIS LOVE OF TRUTH,

HIS SINGLE AMBITION TO BE JUST, YET ALWAYS MERCIFUL,
HIS STRONG COMMON SENSE,

HIS FAIRNESS IN REASONING AND THE FORESIGHT OF HIS OPINIONS,
HIS INDEPENDENCE AND COURAGE,

HIS HUMILITY IN THOUGHT AND FREEDOM FROM SELF-ASSERTION, HIS REVERENT LOVE OF NATURE,

HIS TENDER CONSIDERATION FOR HIS RELATIONS,

HIS SYMPATHY FOR THE WEAK AND OPPRESSED,

HIS PROTECTION OF THE POOR,

HIS TRUST IN GOD'S LOVE,

MAY STIMULATE THE SONS OF HIS BROTHERS

TO PRESERVE CHARACTERISTICS WHICH THEIR UNCLE LARGELY POSSESSED

AND WHICH WERE PRE-EMINENT

IN THE RECORDS OF HIS AND THEIR COMMON ANCESTOR,

THE PATRIOT, JOHN HAMPDEN.

VOL. I.

4*

PREFACE.

THE difficulties of writing the history of any man's life are generally sufficient to make biography a questionable effort. To judge a man is no easy task to those who are his contemporaries. The judgment which is formed by his descendants, and by history, must necessarily be incomplete; and even to reproduce a fair recollection, where the impression left must be subject to many contending influences, seems at the best to be scarcely possible.

Facts, and their connection with a man's life, may be recorded with less fear of mistake and prejudice. Their published writings are likely to be the safest records of the minds of most men; certainly these are the medium chosen by themselves, and the utterances which they have most deliberately sanctioned; but to those who have the indescribable image of the real character in their own hearts and memories, even the facts, the published writings and the actions, may fail to give any true idea of the unconscious charm or reality of the individual mind.

Reserve, policy, and the immediate object for which men may be striving in their writings and in their actions, to some extent must prevent the accidental betrayal of characteristics which were there, but which are lost to posterity. A few extracts from private correspondence are here invaluable. To seize some unconscious utterance often

reflects light upon a character, and gives a "touch of the vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still!" Such records silence prejudice, and once more we feel

"The tender grace of a day that is dead."

The following outline can only be incomplete; but it is due to a man whose ideals and opinions were in advance of his age, that these should be acknowledged when time has shown that they were the result of his foresight and his judgment The promise of genius must not be surrendered to oblivion. The influence of written words and the records of remembrance may prevail, defying alike the force of events and the work of time. It is well, therefore, to gather up the fragments that remain: these may contain much that is most precious in thought and idea, but they cannot fill in more than a sketch. The circumstances which group round lives are temporary and shifting; but the life outlives them; and that which outlives is somewhere, and its influences and inspirations alike are undying.

“The everlasting stars abide."