BOOKS.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE LIFE OF PITT.*

GIBBONIAN circles were lately fluttered by the appearance, in a list of new publications, of the following entry : "Gibbon (E.), Pitt's Life and Times." This variance concealed the authorship of the Right Hon. E. Gibson, Lord Aehbourne, who, by sifting various manuscripts which, with a euphemism pardonable in an author, he christens " abundant new materials," has been able slightly to extend our knowledge of "the pilot that weathered the storm," and his epoch. The sources now utilised for the first time, or with more care than before, include the Bolton Papers : the Stanhope collection of Lady Chatham's correspondence with the tutor Wilson, who took her precocious son to Cam- bridge at the age of thirteen : the important archives of Mr. Pretyman, great-grandson of Bishop Tomline, whose pon- derous quartos, now more utilised by spiders than by readers, only embrace the public life of the great statesman whose intimacy he so long enjoyed. Pitt's youthful epistles are ver- bose and formal. Lady Chatham's style was not that of Madame de &vigil& and the contents of her letters may be ridiculed by "the new woman ; " but the ability of her discussions of domestic and political topics, and her untiring devotion to the juvenile Cantab's physical and intellectual welfare, mark her as a noble British Cornelia, and as a worthy consort of the "terrible cornet of horse." Incredible to modern eyes, though conceived, as it chanced, in true prophetic strain, are

• Pitt : Som. Cheptsrs of his Lila and Times. By the Right Bon. R. Gibson, Lord lishboarne. With Portraits. Loudon: Longinaus and Co. [21s.]

some words written by Lord Chatham to "Eager Mr. William," "the Philosopher," "the Counsellor," after his investiture with the Toga virilis :—" How happy, my loved boy, is it that your mamma and I can tell ourselves that there is at Cambridge one without a beard, and all the elements so mix'd in him,' that Nature might stand up and say This is a man.'"

Touching " Pitt's one love story," this author remarks that on the rumours of a possible marriage, in 1783, between the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer and the famous daughter of the object of Gibbon's early attachment, Mademoiselle Curchod, nothing new can be said. However, according to a letter published by M. de Hanstionville, the young lady's mother, Madame Necker, was eager for a connection whereby, looking to the connubial behaviour of the authoress of Corinne, the great man might probably have fallen within the scope of storms which he would have been unable to weather. As wife of the dull Swedish diplomat, Stael-Holstein, and the Swiss Rocca, this wonderful woman was in her place. We may imagine the scenes which would have occurred if Heine's " whirlwind in petticoats " had married a talker as brilliant as herself, and caught him in the bolster-play at Walmer Castle, or publicly approving the formation of the Custom House Volunteer Corps on the ground that they were "all Ca ears " (seizers). There was never a Nancy, Parsons in Pitt's life. Thirteen years after the assumed flirtation of Fontainebleau Burke wrote: "The talk of the town is of a marriage between the daughter of Lord Auckland and Mr. Pitt, and that our statesman, our premier des hommes, will take his Eve from the Garden of Eden.'" Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt has a somewhat nebulous reference to this episode in the Minister's life. There are now available two very long despatch-like letters from the Pretyman archives in which, while informing Lord Auckland of his sentiments, he explains in vague but stately terms that there are "decisive and insur- mountable" obstacles to a marriage between Eleanor Eden and himself. Here, again, our curiosity is to a great extent baffled. The new texts hardly lift the veil, and Lord Aehboarne is driven to the conclusion that Pitt " did not explicitly give reasons for his conduct : probably considera- tions of health, as well as of fortune, had weight with him." The assertion of the Bedouin adventuress, Lady Hester Stanhope, that this adventure almost broke her " beloved angel's" heart, may be disregarded as unworthy of attention.

The Lord Chancellor of Ireland devotes many interest- ing pages to the Lord - Lieutenancy of the Duke of Rutland, the representative of the " mince-pie" Adminis- tration, exhibiting in detail the political, commercial, and social conditions of Ireland at the close of the last century. Very laudable in a native of Erin is his bright description of the Irish peasantry of the three southern provinces, of whom we read that these genial, courteous, tactful repre- sentatives of the Celtic race, with their love of blarney, music, dancing, sport, and the shillelagh, have suffered from their presentation on the stage, and in caricature, as creatures " with large and hideous mouths, battered hats, and faces making either villainy or imbecility." But the disorderly conduct and violence of the urban Paddy kept the towns in a state of chronic turbulence and riot. Dublin, now the seat of such decorous dullness, had no police, and the local Dogberry looked on in horror at the furious battles with which the Liberty boys and Ormond boys, reinforced by troops of respectable citizens and by gownsman and professors from Trinity College, and mustering in bands several hundred strong, made the streets, quays, and bridges of the city impass- able for days together. The swell " bucks" had their " Hell Fire Club," and other associations of similar kidney bore such appropriate names as " Mohawk," " Hawkabite," and " Chero- kee." The Viceroy wrote to Pitt : "Persons are duly marked out for the operation of tarring and feathering." Under the direction of a regular Committee, unpopular eitizens were dragged out of bed, stripped naked, and then subjected to the pleasing process named. Other Irish specialities were duelling clubs, abductions, secret societies of the type of the Whiteboys, Hearts of Oak, and Wreckers, and, not least, drinking on a scale which would have satisfied Bismarck :- " The habits to ensure a steady and loyal drink were grotesque. If a guest left the room, pieces of paper were dropped into hi

glass, equal to the number of rounds the bottle had gone during his absence, and on his return he was obliged to swallow a glass for each, under the penalty of as many glasses of salt and water. Often the bottles had round bottoms; stopping the bottle was, therefore, impossible, and every one was obliged to fill his glass at once, and pass the bottle to his neighbour, in peril of upsetting the contents. Often the stems were knocked off the glasses, so that they must be emptied as fast as they were filled, as they could not stand. The guests, sometimes, when they sat down, had to take off their shoes, which were taken out of the room, and emptied bottles were broken outside the door, so that no one could leave till the party ended."

However, London, then as now, had its street bullies, and as

Lord Ashbourne shows, drinking as a fine art was not confined to the banks of the Liffey. At a dinner given in 1784 to Pitt by the Goldsmiths' Company, " a party of fifty drank 193 bottles of wine—probably mostly port." We need hardly add that the man who was so shy of Venus was a conscientious devotee of Bacchus, who would have laughed at the Glad- stonian egg and sherry. The Speaker, Addington, was not always at hand with his " Now, Pitt, you sha'n't have another drop." One of the Premier's fine torrents of Parliamentary rhetoric was so plainly prompted by libations of port that an official of the House was made ill by the incident. Pitt remarked, "An excellent arrangement ; I have the wine, and he has the headache,"—one of the many justifications of the assertion of Wilberforce, who was in close intimacy with the choicest boon companions and jokers of the age, that the Ministerial member of the Goosetree Club was the wittiest man he ever knew.

Pitt had his three stages. As regards the period 1784.93, before the great disciple of Adam Smith was driven from the pursuit of his ideals by the appearance on the European stage of Marat, Robespierre, and Napoleon, the youthful Minister's unexampled promotion of Parliamentary administration and reform, scientific finance, industry, and commerce, has obtained universal recognition. As to his second stage, Lord Ashbourne reminds us that the great success of Pitt's war policy, by which he opposed the French system of aggrandisement and aggres- ssion, has been documented and argued by Captain Mahan, who scouts Macaulay's sneers at Pitt's military and naval arrangements as mere "drivelling." But his behaviour in the " hundred days" which followed the Union with Ireland calls, according to our author, for " more explanation than eulogy."

Pitt had " given it to be understood " that he contemplated

the completion of his great work of 1800 by the abolition of the religions tests for Parliament and office, the revision of the Irish tithe grievance, and the grant of a certain partial stipend to the Catholic and Dissenting clergy. Finding that some of his colleagues were hostile, others lukewarm, with

respect to legislation in such sense, and that the King, who was backed by the traitorous Chancellor, Loughborough, had openly declaimed at a Lev& against the bare suggestion of a further movement in the direction supposed, he resigned office early in 1803 in favour of Addington. Lord Ashbourne's new and not very happy edition of a musty old arraignment is as

follows :—

"Either of two courses was not unfairly open to Pitt, and he might have braced himself boldly to adopt either one or the other. He might have said : ' This is a matter of principle and honour. I really encouraged this belief to pass the Union; I will stand to my guns ; I will do all I can to induce the consent of the King, and if he chooses to take a more complaisant Minister I will still adhere to my attitude.' Or he might have said : The interests of the country are in such grave jeopardy from the terrible war now raging that I cannot abandon the helm for any question of domestic policy, no matter what my personal feelings and position may be ; I must reluctantly yield to the King for the present about Catholic relief, but I will at all events pass the measure for tithe commutation and the payment of the Catholic dissenting clergy.' He adopted neither course. He most reluctantly resigned. He showed no sustained purpose, or firm resolve. He proclaimed the strongest determination to support Addington, whose policy was to do nothing for Catholic relief."

With all due deference to the ex calhedrd judgment of the tenant of the Irish woolsack, we would reply thus. Pitt had not held out to the Irish delusive hopes of further reform ; he did stick to his guns ; he did try to induce George III. to assent to the removal of the religious test ; it was not plain

that he could pass the minor statutory changes in question. Furthermore, as to another side of this crux, it should be

remembered that at this conjuncture the King had a fresh attack of madness, and that when Pitt promised not to press the Roman Catholic question on his Sovereign again, he did

but lay on himself the identical restraint subsequently adopted

by Castlereagh, Tierney, Granville, and Fox. Enough to say that the antiquated impeachment which Lord Ash- bourne makes his own is put out of court by Macaulay as beneath discussion, and by Lord Rosebery with the non liquet that when he made way for the successor to whom he was "as London is to Paddington," his cota-1F,-t was as stead- fast and straightforward as it was throughout the rest of his glorious career.

The present book is illustrated by excellent "process" portraits, amongst them a miniature of the lovely Eleanor Eden. There is also an abridged catalogue of one hundred and sixty pictorial and plastic works of art, which de- scribes twenty pictures of Pitt by Hoppner, Gainaborough, and Romney ; the output of Nollekens was one statue, and six hundred and seventy-four busts in marble or plaster, for which he pocketed over £16,000. A few only of the portraits are delineations from the life, and many are copies of copies : the locus classicus is Hoppner's majestic canvas now owned by Mr. Burdett-Coutts.