now succeeded, and condemn in silence what his censures will never reform.'

These replies, as well as the speech which produced them, were originally written by Dr. Johnson, and afterwards inserted by Chandler in his debates. (Thackeray's History, vol. i. p. 34.)

We know that Pitt's remarkable speech was modelled into its present shape by Dr. Johnson, and it is certainly a striking specimen of sententious sarcasm; but the balanced structure of the phrases and the measured amplification of the ideas are so entirely Johnsonian-so ultra-Johnsonian, indeedthat we are satisfied that it affords little resemblance to the vivid and energetic invective of the original. Archdeacon Coxe asserts, indeed, "that this celebrated retort existed only in Johnson's imagination," and repeats an anecdote, told him by Lord Sydney, to show "how slender was the foundation on which this supposed philippic was formed." In a debate

in which Mr. Pitt and some of his young friends had violently attacked old Horace Walpole, the latter complained of the self-sufficiency of the young men of the day, on which Mr. Pitt got up with great warmth, beginning with these words: "With the greatest reverence for the grey hairs of the honourable gentleman," upon which Walpole pulled off his wig, and showed his head covered with grey hairs, which occasioned a general laughter, in which Pitt joined, and the dispute subsided.-(Life of Walpole, vol. ii. p. 184.)

Now, Lord Sydney's anecdote is perfectly true; for we find it told, at the time it happened, in one of the younger Horace's letters to Sir Horace Mann; but this does not decide the question: for however strange and improbable it may appear, that there should have been two incidents of this nature between the same parties, the fact seems certain. The affair of the wig occurred on the 21st of November, 1745, whereas the "celebrated retort" was delivered on the 10th of March, 1741, and is printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for that year. So that Archdeacon Coxe was certainly mistaken in supposing that Johnson's report was an amplification of an event that did not happen till four years later.

Among the numerous vicissitudes of political friendships and enmities which Mr. Pitt's life exhibits, it is amusing to find fifteen years after this fierce encounter, old Horace and Mr. Pitt confidential friends, and the latter consulting, in 1755, as a kind of oracle, the political Nestor, on whom he had so long before as 1740 pronounced sentence of dotage.*

Sir Herbert Croft, in his compound of fact and fiction, called Love and, Madness, has erroneously attributed the speech to Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, who thus notices the blunder in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Cole, March 13, 1780: "The Editor has in one place confounded me and my uncle ; who, he says (as is true), checked Lord Chatham for being too forward a young man in 1740. In that year I was not even come into Parliament; and must have been absurd indeed if I had taunted Lord Chatham with youth, who was at least six or seven years younger than he was; and how could he reply by reproaching me with old age, who was not then twenty-three? I shall make no answer to these absurdities, nor to any part of the work. Blunder, I see, people will, and talk of what they do not understand! and what care I ?"

HORACE WALPOLE AND MR. PITT.

Walpole was almost invariably the detractor of Mr. Pitt. In 1744, he tells us that "Pitt, who has alternately bullied and flattered Mr. Pelham, is at last to be Secretary-at-War." Then, support of the Ministry having failed to enable Mr. Pelham to introduce Mr. Pitt, he seems to have tried what a little opposition would do. On November 22, Walpole writes: The Ministers had yesterday a baiting from Pitt, who is ravenous for the place of Secretary-at-War; they would give it him; but as a preliminary, he insists on a declaration of our having nothing to do with the Continent." The motion was to increase our naval force. In this motion, it appears that he was supported by Lyttelton and the Grenvilles, and that the whole party numbered but 36.—“In short," says Walpole, "he has nothing left but his words-his

* Quarterly Review, No. 131.-The date of the taunt is, however, 1741, although Walpole, above, gives it as 1740.

Horace

haughtiness-his Lytteltons, and his Grenvilles." Walpole (says the Quarterly Review) had yet to learn how high eloquence and grandeur of mind—which he so flippantly calls "words" and "haughtiness"—were to carry Mr. Pitt.

Mr. Pelham had a much higher opinion of "the Great Commoner:" he is stated to have said that "Pitt had the dignity of Sir W. Wyndham, the wit of Mr. Pulteney, and the knowledge and judgment of Sir Robert Walpole."

Lord Macaulay has left a striking explanation of Horace Walpole's dislike of Mr. Pitt. When Walpole "chose to be humane and magnanimous, for he sometimes, by way of variety, tried this affectation,-he overdid his part most ludicrously. None of his many disguises sat so awkwardly upon him. For example, he tells us that he did not choose to be intimate with Mr. Pitt. And why? Because Mr. Pitt had been among the persecutors of his father? Or because, as he repeatedly assures us, Mr. Pitt was a disagreeable man in private life? Not at all; but because Mr. Pitt was too fond of war, and was great with too little reluctance. Strange that a habitual scoffer like Walpole should imagine that this cant could impose on the dullest reader! Of the twenty-six years during which Walpole sat in Parliament, thirteen were years of war. Yet he did not, during all these thirteen years, utter a single word or give a single vote tending to peace. His most intimate friend, the only friend, indeed, to whom he appears to have been sincerely attached, Conway, was a soldier, was fond of his profession, and was perpetually entreating Mr. Pitt to give him employment. In this Walpole saw nothing but what was admirable. Conway was a hero for soliciting the command of expeditions which Mr. Pitt was a monster for sending out."

MR. PITT'S INTEGRITY.

There are two facts connected with Mr. Pitt's conduct during the time he held the office of Paymaster-General in the revenues of Ireland, and Treasurer of War, (to which he was appointed in 1746,) which reflect the highest honour

upon his name. The first of these was as follows:-When Mr. Pitt was first appointed to this office, it was customary that 100,000l. should be, by way of advance, in the Paymaster's hands. This money, in the time of Pitt's predecessors, was usually vested in government securities, and brought an annual return of 3000 or 4000 pounds, which were appropriated by the Paymaster to his private use. Mr. Pitt, however, declined to avail himself of such a precedent. He instantly placed in the Bank of England every sum belonging to his office, without appropriating a shilling to his private use. He did not, as his predecessors had done, invest it in the funds, or derive the smallest interest from the capital. The second fact is no less honourable to Mr. Pitt. When the English Parliament granted subsidies to the King of Sardinia and the Queen of Hungary, instead of receiving a profit of one and a half per cent. as a perquisite of office, as had been customary in such cases, Mr. Pitt disdained to profit by it. On the King of Sardinia being informed of Pitt's departure from the custom of his predecessors, he desired his agent to offer to the Paymaster, as a royal present, the sum which he had refused as a perquisite of office; but he declined to accept the present in firm but respectful terms.

We may here observe how high, even before he had filled any Cabinet office, or done any great public service, Pitt stood in the estimation of his colleagues, and how frank and cordial had been his conduct towards them. "I think him," writes Pelham to Newcastle, "the most able and useful man we have amongst us; truly honourable and strictly honest. He is as firm a friend to us as we can wish for, and a more useful one there does not exist."

PITT'S LEGACIES.

Walpole estimates Pitt as little better than a legacyhunter. He tells us, in his Last Journals, that when the scholar and antiquary, Thomas Hollis, disgusted with the servility of the times, had retired to Lyme, in Dorsetshire, Mr. Pitt there made court to him, and it was supposed, ex

pected his estate. It is confidently asserted that a little before his death, which happened as he was walking in his garden, on New Year's Day, 1744, Mr. Hollis had sent to Pitt for the Christian names of all his children; but dying of apoplexy, his estate, by a will made long before, came to a distant relation, Thomas Brand, the antiquary.

In the same year, 1744, the old Duchess of Marlborough died; and as she had been decidedly the best hater of her time, the fate of her vast property was a subject of much speculation. Pope, long before her death, predicted

To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store,
Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor.

Pitt was then one of the poor; and to him Heaven directed a portion of the wealth of the haughty Dowager. By a codicil to her will, dated August 12, 1744, she left Mr. Pitt a legacy of ten thousand pounds, upon account of his merit, in "the noble defence he had made for the support of the laws of England, and to prevent the ruin of his country." The Duchess died in the month of October following, and the money was paid to Mr. Pitt.

IMPERFECT REPORTS OF LORD CHATHAM'S SPEECHES.

"It is singular (says Lord Brougham) how much of Lord Chatham, who flourished within the memory of the present generation, still rests upon vague tradition. As a statesman, indeed, he is known to us by the events which history has recorded to have happened under his administration. Yet even of his share in bringing these about, little has been preserved in detail. So, fragments of his speeches have been handed down to us, but these bear so very small a proportion to the prodigious fame which his eloquence has left behind it, that far more is manifestly lost than has reached us.

"The imperfect state of Parliamentary reporting is the great cause of this blank. From the time of his entering the House of Commons to that of his quitting it, the privilege of Parliament almost wholly precluded the possibility of regular and full accounts of debates being communicated to the public.