26 JULY 1845, Page 14

SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

BIOGRAPHY,

Memoirs and Correspondence of George Lord Lyttleton, from 1734 to 1773. Com- piled and edited by Robert Phllilmore, late Student of Christchurch. In two vo- lumes RickneaY•

VOYAGRA AND TRAVELS,

Journal of an African Cruiser: comprising Sketches of the Canaries, the Cape de 'Perth, Liberia, Madeira, Sierra Leone, and other places of interest on the West Coast of Africa. By an 031oer of the II. S. Navy. Edited by Nathaniel lime.

thorns Wiley and Putnam,

TOPOGRAPHY,

A Tour through the Valley of' the Meuse; with the Legends of the Walloon Cenntris

and the Ardennes. By Dudley Costello Gammen and.liail• MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDRECE Or ZOILD LYTTLETON.

THE manner in which the memory of George first Lord Lyttleton hac. faded is anomalous, when one considers the variety of his accomplish- meats, his industry if not his activity, and the conspicuous place he filled in the Parliamentary and political life of his own generation. The Mend of Pope, the friend and patron of Thomson and many lesser, authors, he was himself an accomplished versifier after the fashion of his time, and occasionally brought a knowledge of actual life to the produce tions of his pen, if he could not contribute the fire and fancy of a poet. In his Persian Letter; he aimed at depicting the manners and satirize. lug the follies and vices of his contemporaries : in his Dialogues qf the Dead, he pretended to philosophy and criticism : his History of Henry the Second, in four (or five ?) quartos, was the labour of the better part of his life, and was published with a painful and expensive attention to the accuracy of the printing such as is probably unexampled ;* it has the reputation of a learned and conscientious work—a storehouse of mate- rials for those who will read it. lu his youth he had leaned to freethink- ing opinions but having in advancing life set himself to examine the sub- ject, he became convinced of the truths of Christianity, and published his Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul; to which, in Johnson'e. opinion "Infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer." And besides these more sustained efforts, Lyttleton occasionally engaged in periodical literature, to serve either his friends or his party.

In polities he was more conspicuous than in literature. Born (in 1709) the heir to a baronetcy and an estate, he studied with credit both at Eton and Christchurch ; and made the grand tour, between 1728 and 1731; in which last year he returned to England. In 17341 , he obtained a seat in Parliament; and "fur many years," says Johnson, " thename of George Lyttleton was seen in every account of every debate in the House of Commons. He opposed the standing Army; he opposed the Excise; - he supported the motion for petitioning the King to remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as violent, but as acrimonious and malignant ; and when Walpole was at last hunted from his places, every effort was made by his friends, and many friends he had, to exclude Lyttleton from the Secret Committee." When Frede- rick Prince of Wales quarrelled with his father George the Second, Lyttle- ton became his secretary and confidential adviser ; and, as it appears from the volumes before us, with an honesty and a freedom not always offered to princes. On Walpole's eventual expulsion from power, Lyttleton became a Lord of the Treasury ; and continued to rise under Newcastle, till, on Pitt and Legge's coalition in 1755 to oppose the Mi- nistry, Lyttleton was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, though a story goes that he was unable to comprehend the easiest sum in arith- metic, he contrived to make a good general statement, but with an air, according to Walpole, as if he had learned his speech "by rote." When Pitt succeeded in driving Newcastle from office, in the following year, the King gave Lyttleton a peerage ; and though not so active in the House of Lords as in the House of Commons, he continued to speak upon great public questions. In 1765, when George the Third was at his wits-end after he had determined on getting rid of the Grenville Ministry and Pitt refused to take office Lyttleton was offered the Premiership. He was not wholly disengaged from the political intrigues that disgraced the fed., lowing years, distinguished by the brawls of Wilkes and the bitterness of Junius. He, however, filled no further office; and he died in 1773.

Such various acquirements and exertions ought, it would seem, to have better preserved his memory : for men of less accomplishment and' respectability are better known. His verse from the prologue to Thom- son's posthumous tragedy of Coriolanus,

"No line which, dying, he would wish to blot," is quoted for the general truth embodied in the particular sentiment : the' stanza in the Castle of Indolence, descriptive of the author, which it is said Lyttleton wrote, "A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems," &c.

is read for its own merit, and its portraiture of Thomson : but in nei- ther case does the mind revert to Lyttleton. Religion, which raises an author the soonest and upholds him the longest of any subject, has pre- served the Conversion of St. Paul as a tract-book : death, which scatters libraries, causes the occasional appearance of Henry the Second in a catalogue or at a book-stall, and more rarely, Lytlleton's entire Works : but his name suggests nothing even when presented to those who have known something of his life and writings. He wanted strength to keep ; so that inferior but ranker minds have lasted longer. He headed nothing; he originated nothing either in form or substance; his genius did not suffice, in composition to raise him above the modes of his time ; he did not exercise himself any pursuit where mere in- dustry will preserve a man's memory, even if he had sufficient robustness for this kind of labour, which may be doubted ; and he was connected with no great event that would bring him continually before the historical The whole work was printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times. The booksellers paid for the first Impression; hat the changes and repeated operations of the press were at the expense of tiw. author, whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thonsaidt; panaki.--Johnson's Lives of the Poets. reader. His Poems, his Persian Letters, and his Dialogues of the Dead., had a place in the aeries of popular works that appeared at the close of the last century : but when the manners and opinions of Louis the Fourteenth's age, in which he was formed, were swept away by the American and French Revolutions, his works and his memory followed them as soon as the survivors of that "style of thing" died off. The position of such a man necessarily gave him a large connexion. In literature, Pope, Warburton, Thomson, Mallet, and when he turned religious Doddridge, and others, were his correspondents. Besides the common politicians with whom Patliament and office connected him, his relations with the Heir-apparent brought him into contact with Bolingbroke opposing Walpole with the vehemence of personal hatred, with Pitt then struggling to rise, and with Chesterfield acting as a leader of a party striving to turn out his opponents and seat himself. The correspondence and documents preserved at Hagley are not, however, so numerous rich, or various, as might have been expected. Perhaps the best of Lyttieton's own letters have already appeared in his Works; perhaps the character of a correspondence inevitably partakes of that of the person addressed. The effect of sympathy is great. Consciously or unconsciously, we adapt our topics and mode of treatment to the persons we are writing to. The wit will receive more witty letters, or attempts at them, than the dull ; the keen and discriminating will be less bored with pompousness and ceromonplaee than those who are commonplace themselves ; and amiable, able, respectable, and rather diffuse mediocrity, will infuse something of the same character into its correspondents, unless the particular subject carries them away. Chesterfield, the keenest judge and perhaps the most sensible man of the age, seems to have felt this. He cannot be said in his letters not to have trusted Lyttleton to the fullest extent of the matter in hand;. but he did not show himself so plainly and frankly as he does to some others. There is evidently a species of restraint about him, which causes of course a stiffness. Their connexion appears to have been one of business ; and some time afterwards, Chesterfield described the ab- sence and awkwardness of Lyttleton as a beacon for his son to avoid, though be did justice to his learning and virtue.

In one point of view, however, Lord Lyttleton shows to advantage in these volumes, as possessing a quality rare in any age, but especially in a time which, but for the late Railway exposures, we should have called scandalously corrupt. He appears to have acted upon a deter- mination to do what he considered right, without regard to his own ad- vantage or the wishes of others. This, apparently, procured him his peerage, (for he may be said to have been originally forced upon George the Second,) as it seems to have attracted the respect of George the Third: it was this produced a quarrel with Pitt, when Lyttleton persisted in sup- porting the Duke of Newcastle instead of going into opposition with the Temples : and this drew upon him the fierce invective of the great Com- moner; but the mild spirit and conscious integrity of Lyttleton enabled. him to baffle the oratorical genius of the modem De,mosthenes by replies of calmness and of truth without asperity. In like manner, his equanimity triumphed over Voltaire, who was weak enough to feel sore at a passage in the Dialogues of the Dead, which he fancied reflected upon his loyalty and gentility ! Perhaps the effect of the Eragley manuscripts is rather diminished by the editor's mode of treatment and arrangement. He has set the corre- spondence and papers in a sort of lengthy memoirs, which have all the extension of an elaborate biography without its continuity and complete- ness; and dealing, as these settings do with historical subjects, which they glance at rather than exhibit, or with a life about whose minutiw the present reader does not feel much interest, they overlay rather than illustrate the Lyttleton papers. Had the documents been presented with no other additions than notes or general explanations, their division into chrono- logical epochs, with a separation between the political and literary topics, would have been judicious. To the present more complex arrangement it adds complexity. We think a single volume of the letters and memo- randums, with necessary illustrations, would have presented the Hagley manuscripts in a more effective light, and excited more interest in the public.

Besides the labours of Mr. Phillimore, the volumes contain a variety of letters to and from Lyttleton; several narratives or memorandums which he drew up upon important occasions—as his quarrel with Pitt; and speeches found in his handwriting—for he was not ready in Parliament, rather a speaker than a debater, though he seems to have been able to reply when attacked. The principal correspondents are Warburton, who writes like a bishop born; and Doddridge, who appears the humble spiritual director, though he takes the liberties which such persons are in

the habit of taking. The Nonconformist divine was not, however, well acquainted with the polite world ; for he writes to hope that Lady Lyttleton is well some time after her death, and after the publication of the once celebrated monody. Pitt's letters are various,—from the formal and somewhat Machiavellian directions on the private conduct of a politician in a crisis, to the domestic feelings of middle life, and the garrulous effusions of old age. The letters of Lyttelton are often valuable; especially those written to his brother, "my dear Billy," a Colonia Governor, to keep him au courant as to the real state of politics behind the curtain. There are various other correspondents of some political celebrity, but not requiring particular remark. Bolingbroke's epistles do not support his reputation.

The absolute novelty in these letters is not great, and seems to us to be chiefly confined to character. The elder Pitt shows but indifferently as a politician. The actor is not so visible as in some late publications; but the rather factious intriguer, bent upon office by crooked ways if straight would not lead thither, with somewhat of a disposition to bargain for personal advantage, may be traced. The Pelham look rather better than usual; bat the Duke of Newcastle is too well known to be altered by the "character" of a friend. George the Third supports the picture wJiii all the later views of him induce one to draw. Even the courtly and- math as Lord Mansfield shows him, in a single touch, to have been a

consummate trickster on principle. The most important new tbet to Mr is, that the Ministry actually doubted whether the unhappy Byug's throe was sufficient to accomplish the object in view when they sent him out.. A great use of the publication, some years hence, will be to ad4 to the Chatham and Chesterfield Correspondence.

Several of Chesterfield's letters relate to the proper conduct for the Prince of Wales to pursue towards the Ministry on the expected death of his mother, when the Opposition hoped to turn out Walpole. To one of these epistles, expounding fully and freely the line to be taken, he appends this postscript—" Pray, lay use at his Royal Highness's feet, but without showing this latter, which kin too free a style.' He then adds the following on a separate sheet of paper : it is curious as a specimen of hie diplomacy, as well as for his just estimate of Pulteney, five years before the future Earl of Bath had any opportunity of betraying his party. "I add this to my other letter to tell you, that notwithstanding the postscript. you may show it the Prince or not, as you think proper: if you would have lum, see it, make a seeming difficulty at firs; and make him force you at last. "It would be endless to give you an account of the various sallies and estraue, gancies of Pulteney, which change oftener than the wind: his main attention is to pack up a few guineas at whisk. Me despises me too much to talk to me about business, unless when some new-born freak breaks out of him involuntarily. But the only judgment I can form of him is, that he will get as much power and sia much money as soon as he can, and upon any terms. "We have a prospect of the Claude Lorraine kind before us, while Sir Robert's has all the horrors of Salvator Rosa. If the Prince would play the Rising Stu, he would gild it finely: if not, he will be under a cloud, which he will never be' able hereafter to shine through. Instil this into the Woman." [Apparently the Princess.] The following congratulatory epistle to Lyttleton on his marriage is curious, as an example of Chesterfield's complimentary stjde on occasionsi when he thought much of the form and nothing of the sentiment. Fifteen years later, he informs his son of the approaching marriage of a young, friend, and continues—" If, three weeks hence, you write him a short compliment of congratulation upon the occasion, he, his mother, and tutt& guanti, would be extremely pleased with it. These attentions are, always kindly taken, and cost one nothing but pen, ink, and paper. I. consider them as draughts upon good-breeding, where the exchange ie always greatly in favour of the drawer."

" Bath, June the 19th 1742.

"Dear Lyttelton—The newspapers inform me that you are married; but what shall I say to you upon that occasion. Is it necessary, or is it not rather super- fluous, for me to tell you the wishes I form for you in this the most important period of your life, when you have so long known the sincere part I have taken in the most common occurrences of it? To wish you joy were frivolons--that is certain and present; but whenever that does decline, as from its nature it one day must, may all its sweetness turn to strength, or, as Tompson says, may it mellow into friendship; and may that serener and more luting state so insensibly succeed your present tumultuous one that the transition may not be perceived This will and must happen if Mrs. Lyttelton be (what for both your sakes I heartily wish her) like yourself, * * * If she has a head to discern merit and a heart to value it, and if she brings but with her the truth, the tenderness, and all the other virtues she'll meet with, even my wishes for your mutual happiness eau, neither exceed nor survive it. Pray make my compliments to her, though I haye. not yett the honour of being known to her. While you are not only not content with your own existence, * * * here am I, enjoying, if I may use that ex- pression' my nonexistence, not without some satisfaction; for when the quicker pleasures of the senses are at an end, the quiet ones, till then despised, become a comfortable resource."

The following is from a still more conspicuous man on a similar theme —Pitt's reply to Lyttleton's congratulation on the great orator's approack- ing marriage. The event seems to have mollified him into " oomplimentsi all round.'

"31st October 1754.

"My dear Sir George—Your warm and kind assurances of the joy you receive from an approaching event, full of every happiness and honour to your friend and. servant, is a circumstance of additional Omura and satisfaction most sensibly. felt. I am indeed a most happy man. I on, who know what it is tenderly and. psssionately to love the object of your perfect esteem and entire confidence, wilk best be able to estimate this happiness truly. I can add, if I may without vanity, that I have the pride as well as joy to find every taste of my mind, and more serious purposes of my life, correspond to those of Lady Hester Grenville. Would I could add, that my nature was as free from defects and weaknesses. I write this from Marlborough, so much happier than when your letter readied me as I am nearer to the source of every felicity. My obligations to Lady Heater ars indeed infinite: for what, my dear Lyttelton have I to lay at her feet, in return for the invaluable present her goodness makes me, but a fortune very far from tempting and a health shattered and declined? The manner in which you re- ceive my warmest wishes for your brother William's fortune and figure is most obliging. Nothing could add to it but adopting so kindly the ideal ventured ta intimate concerning Bewdley. Many, many cordial thanks to you for all your kind wishes for my welfare in general, which you do me the honour to express so largely. Accept in return of the warmest and sincerest wishes of my heart for all you wish to yourself of honour or of advantage. Give me leave to comprehend all Hagley in this letter of grateful thanks. I would do myself the honour to write to Lady Lyttelton separately, but that I know this will give her less trouble as well as more pleasure coming to her through you. "I am ever your affectionate and happy friend, W. Pax. "If Miller is with you, my kindest remembrance to him."

Among other plans of the Leicester House Opposition, was one to get a larger allowance for their patron the Prince: this scheme Lyttletor strenuously opposed in a long letter to his Royal Highness ; alleging, and doubtless truly, that some of those who were most forward in the sugges- tion were only anxious to share the produce. A singular passage occurs in it, as indicating the style of his Royal Highness's conversation when he visited Pope—he of whom his bitterest opponents could only say,

"Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead,"

expounding the mysteries of political economy!

"Give me leave, on this subject, to remind your Royal Highness of whab you said at Mr. Pope's, where you was heard with such emotions of joy and gratitude by all who were present You said you would gladly reduce yourself to live upon no more than three hundred pounds a year, tf you could Out hope to lessen the National Debt, the state of which you had set forth to us with an much knowledge, and so deep a sense of the mischiefs attending upon it Will you now Sir, unsay all this again, and yourself contribute to lay te heavier load on the nation? Will you suffer your name to be used by those, Ministers whose conduct you arraigned, and who will even dare to call themselves, scour servants, while they are oppressing that people whom you love, and in- creasing those burdens which you deplore? God forbid this should happen. It never can happen while your Royal Highness preserves that generous sprit which, I trust, will besslastingasitisnecessaiytoyourgloiy and to the happiness of the kingdom. For the sake of these, I have often seen you resist both promises and threats; for the sake of these, I shall see you resist yet more."

THOMSON ON MIDDLE-AGED LOVE.

"Kew Lane, 19th December 1797.

"Dear Sir—I should have answered your kind and truly friendly letter some time ago. My not having answered it hitherto, proceeded from my giving it mature and deep consideration. I have considered it in all lights, and in all humours, by night and by day, even during these long evenings—that the result of my consideration is not such as you would wish. My judgment agrees with you, and you know I first impressed yours in her favour. She deserves a better than me, and has as many good and worthy qualities as any woman; nay, to others, and I hope too men of taste, she bad charming and piquant ones. But every man has a singular and uncontrollable imagination of his own. Now, as I told you be- fore, she does not pique mine. I wonder you should treat that objection so lightly, as you seem to do in your last. To strike one's fancy, is the same in love that charity is in religion. Though a woman has the form and spoke like the angels, though all divine gifts and graces were hers, yet without striking the fancy she does nothing. I am too much advanced in life to venture to marry, without feel- ing myself invigorated and made as it were young again with a great flame of imagination. But we shall discuss this matter more fully when I have the happiness of seeing you at full leisure."

PREMIERSHIP A-BEGGING, 1765.

In this emergency I was sent for by the Duke of Newcastle, and told by his Grace that he had advised the Duke of Cumberland to mention me to his Majesty as the fittest person to be put at the head of the Treasury; that the Duke had done so, and the King had very readily and willingly approved of the choice. M answer was negative; but soon afterwards I was sent for by the Duke himsell, who said, "It was necessary that the King's standard should be set up, and that he and the King were persuaded there was no man in England under whom there would be so general a resort to that standard as there would be under me." I expressed a proper sense of the great honour done to me in this opinion but de- clined to accept the Treasury, which he offered. He pressed me to take it, in the strongest and warmest terms; said my duty and my loyalty to the King re- quired it; that his authority was insulted and his person ill-used; mentioned the danger of popular insurrections, which the weavers had begun in the capital, on the Nouse of Lordshaving thrown out a bill to encourage their manufacture by greater restraints on the importation of foreign silks; and added, that in such circumstances the Wing must have a Government, and not a moment could be lostt especially as Lord Sandwich had said in the House of Lords, that whoever advised the King to turn out the Duke of Bedford, in that state of things, was an enemy to his country, as it would have the appearance of making him a victim to the fiiiy of the mob who had attempted to murder him and to pull down his house. It would be mob, long to tell you all I said in answer to this; but the re- sult of it was, that, in so unsettled and dangerous a state of the nation at home and abroad, I could not hope to do the King the service he seemed to expect from me in any system of Ministry that could possibly be formed without Mr. Pitt.

LITTLETON ON NAVAL COLONIAL GOVERNORS.

Governor Reynolds is just returned from Georgia, where he behaved in such a manner as to become the object of contempt and ridicule to the whole people. You may remember I told you this would be the ease; for I hardly ever knew it otherwise with a man bred m the Navy and made a governor. There would have been just as much propriety in making an Indian Sachem captain of a man-of- war, as Reynolds a governor of a province.