24 AUGUST 1934, Page 21

Good Lord Lyttelton

I CONFESS that I opened Dr. Rao's critical biography of the first Lord Lyttelton with some misgiving. The strange imprint, the forbidding note announcing that it had been submitted and approved as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English," and, more than anything, the choice of such a subject by an Indian student filled me with gloomy forebodings. But my fears were premature and uncalled for. Dr. Rao's biography is an admirable piece of work. If he has nothing original to offer in the way of new facts or fresh opinions, he shows by his gift for arranging his material, by his choice of quotations, and by his attractive style that he understands the cross-currents of eighteenth- century literature and politics and is sensitive to their climates of taste and ideas ; and further, by his careful annotations and wide reading, that he possesses the patience and industry of a scholar.

Although there is nothing particularly memorable about Georg! Lyttelton—and Dr. Rao does not try to overstate his claim to perpetuity—there is so much in his life and writings characteristic of the society to which he belonged, that he will always be remembered as a type when he is all but forgotten as an individual. In his life, which was exemplary but undistinguished, as well as in those mildly agreeable but uninspired effusions which comprise his " Collected Works," he epitomized the cultured existence of an eighteenth- century Whig gentleman. In both, he went further than many of his more famous contemporaries towards achieving the French ideal of the honnite homme.

Virtue presided at his birth, assisted by those familiar Fersonifications Industry, Sobriety, Classical Learning, Litera- ture and Landscape Gardening. The gifts they brought to his cradle were not given in vain. With the exception of a title and an ample fortune, both of which he was afterwards to obtain, he began his sober and prudent career with all the advantages a devoted father could offer him. From his home at Hagley—" The British Tempe " of Thomson's Seasons—he was sent to Eton, where he met Pitt, Fielding and Grenville and from there to Christ Church, the inspiration of his first verses—" cant of shepherds and flocks and crooks dressed with flowers," commented Dr. Johnson, who heartily disliked Lyttelton and could hardly bring himself to write his Life. From Oxford he proceeded to France, where he dabbled in diplomacy, and to Italy, carefully avoiding grapes, new wine and pretty women," but was recalled after two years when his father refused to send him any more money.

From his return to England to his death some forty years later, nothing but the tragic death of his first wife—the subject of his best poem—and an unhappy second marriage disturbed the progress of a career that was as calm and ordered as his verses. He became Secretary to the Prince of Wales, represented Okehampton in Parliament, joined the Young Patriots," sat in the Cabinet after Walpole's defeat, and finally found himself in the upper chamber after a brief period of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The best that can be said of Lyttelton as a statesman is that he was incorruptible ; the worst, that he was unimaginative, absent- minded and long-winded—" a pompous old Grandee," accor- ding to Horace Walpole, who snatched every opportunity for holding his uncle's enemy up to ridicule.

As a patron of letters it was another matter. Lyttelton used his personal prestige and his public position to encourage and support professional writers. Grave but amiable, he enjoyed playing Maecenas to the minor Augustans. Thomson composed part of his Seasons at Hagley and submitted the manuscript to his host for correction, an action which the latter unwisely interpreted after the poet's death as permission to alter and rewrite much of the poem. Fielding, who dedicated his Torn Jones to him, Joseph Warton, Mallet, West and Shenstone were among the many men whom Lyttelton assisted in various ways. Pope, who needed no assistance from anyone, was one of his closest friends, and so, too, were Garrick and Dodsley, whose famous anthology benefited from his. supervision. When in London, Lyttelton was a passionate salonnier and was such a constant visitor at Mrs. Montagu's in Hill Street that a more than literary sympathy was suspected between them. At Hagley he was no less passionately attached to the prevailing craze for land- scape gardening in the picturesque style, and incurred the jealousy of his friend and neighbour, Shenstone, who could never design a prospect without Lyttelton going one better. Dr. Rao displays unexpected taste and sympathy in his account of the prospects and cascades at Hagley and lingers affectionately over the " ruin," which Lyttelton artfully disguised with " the true nit of the Barons' Wars." He introduced Nature into his domains with the same feeling as he had introduced her into his pastorals, a feeling that trembles with the first intimations of the romantic revival. Ile died as the sun was rising on a new age, enthroned on his good works and supported by all the deities who had attended his cradle, though not before he had paid for the correctness of his own life with the mortification of seeing his son, who was to become the " Wicked Lord Lyttelton," wasting his sub- stance in riotous living. He lies buried along with so many of the minor Augustans he had patronized, and amongst whom he is not to be counted the least, in the great mausoleum Of