MR. PERCY FITZGERALD'S LIFE OF GEORGE IV.* MR. PERCY FITZGERALD
is a well-known bookmaker, and in so eallinghim we have no intention of using the word "bookmaker" 10 any depreciatory sense. In an ago when readers include men and women of all classes and all degrees of culture, there is a demand, which is quite legitimate and healthy, not only for works of original thought or research, but for works of simple industry,— compilations that bring together a mass of material which, though existing beforehand in a literary form, is practically Inaccessible as a whole to the general reader, who likes to have his study made easy for him. It is Mr. Fitzgerald's habit to make reading not only easy, but exceedingly pleasant and amusing ; for his favourite sphere is biography, which is always Popular, and his subjects aro chosen from among the men whose stories can be told in that anecdotal manner which charms all readers alike, Some of us may revel in analysis, some may have a passion for polemical logic, and some for highly decorated rhetoric; but a good story appeals to all of us, and as a collector of good stories, Mr. Fitzgerald takes high rank in the world of letters,
The Lit os acme the Fourth. By Percy ritagerald, M.A., F.S.A. 2 vole. Leiden • T.ualoy is,others.
This Life of George 1V., including, as we learn from the title- page, "his letters and opinions, with a view of the men,. manners, and politics of his reign," is one of the bulkiest of Mr. Fitzgerald's works, but not, wo are inclined to think, one of his best. Perhaps what seems to us his comparative want of success is duo to the fact that this is a more ambitious attempt than is usual with him. Mr. Fitzgerald's best work has been in biography, pure and simple, but here he endeavours, to unite the functions of the biographer and the historian ; and in this lie fails, as greater writers than he have failed before
him; the history in his beak confusing and breaking tip the biography, and the biography narrowing and dwarfing the
history. Then, too, Mr. Fitzgerald, like all of us, has the defects of his virtues. From the scandalnionger's point of view, no subject could possibly be better than the life of the
most profligate of English monarchs, the fame of whose coats, snuff-boxes, and elegances of " deportment " was overshadowed only by the notoriety of his illicit amours, disgusting drinking-bouts, and miscellaneous blackguardisms ; but to do full justice to so unsavoury a theme demands a cer- tain amount of unscrupulousness, not to say vulgarity, iu which Mr. Fitzgerald is entirely deficient. An elaborate Life of George IV., which gives a fair general idea of the man, and which can be fearlessly placed in the hands of any young girl who has advanced beyond the " bread-and-butter " stage of de- velopment, may be fairly praised as a triumph of ingenuity and good taste ; but it necessarily lacks not only piquancy, which we could, perhaps, do without, but that perfect vraisent- blance which is more indispensable ; and the book is likely to be regarded as somewhat disappointing, by the lover of biography, the lover of history, and the lover of scandal.
In spite, however, of these defects of construction, Mr. Fitz- gerald's work contains much that is amusing and interesting ; and though there is little or nothing in it that will be new to students of Walpole, Greville, °Tallow, and other chroniclers of the period with which it deals, it brings the cream of their narratives into , convenient compass, and will certainly be in request among the circulating-library readers for whom it has probably been written. Perhaps the best portions of the book are those devoted to the childhood of the young prince, to his secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, to the Regency Bill, and to the unfortunate events consequent upon his second marriage to the Princess Caroline; while some of the ()banters, which may be described as padding, are full of pleasant charac- terisation and entertaining anecdote. The education and general training of the young prince and his brothers were eminently adapted to produce profligates who should add to other vices the vice of hypocrisy. The sons of George HI. had not noble natures, but had they been subjected in youth to more genial influences, the probabilities are that they would have led less ignoble lives. A mechanical system of restraint and repression for their own sake is the worst possible pro- pa•atiou for the inevitable day of enfranchisement, and the longer that day is delayed, the more irresistible becomes the out- burst of unnaturally pent-up selfLwill. This, however, is not all. Deception in some form or other is the favourite, because often the only effectual, weapon of the weak ; and there can be little doubt that the habit of habitual lying, which rendered George IV. so eminently difficult a person to deal with, was contracted in those early days of bondage, whoa- a lie was found so useful to effect or to conceal a transient escape into an atmosphere of freedom, Candid enough in some matters, he did not shrink from confessing this flaw iu his character. During the period of the Regency, he consulted Lady Spencer as to the choice of a governess for his daughter, and in the course of conversation said,—" Above all, I must teach her to tell the truth," adding this remarkable explanatory declaration, " You know that I don't speak the truth, and my brothers don't, and I find it a great defect, from which I would have my daughter free. We have been brought up badly, the Queen having taught us to equivocate." There is a certain frank simplicity and even magnanimity of a kind in this confession, and in other authentic utterances of George ;IV., which dis- credit the theory that he was by nature an irredeemable scoundrel ; or, as Thackeray, in his unscrupulously merciless lecture, tried to persuade the world, a scoundrel and a fool in one. There can be little doubt that he was intellectually superior to his father, even in his father's day of mental health ; and there were in his moral nature seeds of gentleness and generosity, which in a kindly soil might have germinated and
fructified, had they not been overpowered by ranker, poison- ous growths, though it must be admitted that these very early made their presence manifest. When he was quite a child, his preceptor, the Bishop of Lichfield (Hurd), made a very extraordinary prediction concerning the future of his pupil, Being asked one day by his cousin, Mrs. Parsons, what progress the Prince was making, he laid his hand upon her arm, and said,—" My dear, I can hardly tell ; he will be either the most polished gentleman or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe ; possibly an admixture of both." There was an exact literalness in the fulfilment of this prophecy which confers upon it the dignity of a memorable utterance ; and it is clear either that Bishop Hurd must have been a man of .singular insight and foresight, or that the character of the Prince must have assumed its permanent outlines and expres- sion at an unusually early age.
To become an accomplished blackguard was, unfortunately, only too easy for any one moving in the " good society " of the period, which was probably the worst society that England has ever seen. How unspeakably abominable were both its man- ners and morals is proved conclusively by the fact that there were times when even Mr. Fitzgerald's royal hero seemed, in .comparison with some of his chosen associates, a tolerably re- putable person, who had at least instincts of good-nature and decency, if he too seldom acted upon them. In the days of his early youth, when his amusements were more uproarious, though perhaps less vile and heartless than those of his maturer years, we read that,-
" One night, with his chief favourite and the worthy Duke of 'Cumberland, he set off for Blackheath, to sup with Lord Chesterfield, where the whole company presently got so drunk that the Prince was obliged to lie down. One of the party actually proposed a toast, 'A short reign to the King,' which the inebriated Prince felt was in bad- taste, or perhaps an affront to himself. He rose and gave his father's health. The next exploit was to let loose a large and ferocious dog, with whom Mr. George Pitt, a man of uncommon strength, engaged in a fight, attempting, we are told, tear out his tongue.' The enraged animal broke from him, flew at Mr. Windham, tore his arm, then mangled a footman, on which the whole party assailed him en 'mese. He bad just seized the coat of the Prince, when he was felled to the ground. At six in the morning the Prince was setting oft for home, when his host, attempting to light him to his coach, fell down the stops, and all but fractured his skull."
These were our " young barbarians all at play," and it must be granted that the play was sufficiently barbaric. The anecdote ought to be precious to Mr. James Greenwood as an aristocratic and unimpeachably authentic precedent for his much discussed and much doubted man-and-dog fight at Hanley, and is a fine example of what has been called " the accredited incredible." Nor were Lord Chesterfield, Mr. George Pitt, and Mr. Windham
at all exceptional specimens of the jeunesse dorge of the time. ' There was, for instance, the Prince's bosom friend, Lord Barry- more, the distinguished head of a distinguished family. His career was lively, but brief, and while it lasted he was known by the appropriate nickname of " Hellgate :"- "His brother, the Hon. Henry Barry, was lame or club-footed, and dubbed Cripplegate ;' while the Hon. and Rev. Augustus Barry, even less reputable than the other two, went by the name of New- gate,' for the rather illogical reason that he had been a tenant of every jail in the kingdom save that. There was a sister, of whom little is known, save that she became Lady Melfort, and that from her ready and copious use of oaths she received from the refined lips of the Prince the soubriquet of Billingsgate: "
Lord Barrymore is said to have had good intellectual powers, and the record of his miscellaneous amusements certainly .testifies to the inventive fertility of his mind :—
" Often, as he and his brothers were driving in a hackney-coach, they would imitate the screams of a woman struggling—' Murder, murder ! Let me go!' lie.—when the passers-by would be attracted, rush after them in pursuit, and stop the coach to rescue the sufferers. 'Then the fast lord and his friends would descend, fall on the inter- posers, who were quite bewildered to find there was no female in the coach, and administer a sound thrashing on the public highway. Or he would be driving with a guest and his brother Newgate ' in his chaise-and-four, returning to his country place, when, after some bait, the guest would find himself whirled along at a terrific pace, and discover that the postilions were in tho rumble behind, and that the two brothers had taken their place. If he met an ill-conditioned waggoner on the road, who would not give way, his lordship would descend, to fight it out ; if the winner, lie would present the man with a guinea; if the loser, he would shake hands good hamouredly. At Brighton he fitted a coffin to the back of his servant, taking the bottom off, so as to leave room for the man's feet. This was carried with great solemnity to a gentleman's house in the Steyno, and left against the hall door. When the maid opened the door and saw this apparition she shrieked, and fainted away ; and the family rushing down, a pistol was discharged, which penetrated the coffin barely an inch above the servant's head." As might be anticipated, from the nature of the subject and the aptitudes of the writer, Mr. Fitzgerald's book abounds in light, anecdotal matter of this kind, and though it is amusing enough for a time, we must confess that we soon get tired of it. The graver portions of the work testify to the author's industry and reading, but would have been more interesting if the materials had been thoroughly digested, instead of being pre- sented to the reader in the raw state. By this process, two good ends would have been attained ; the book would have lost bulk, and would have gained lucidity, symmetry, and literary finish, in all of which it is in parts somewhat lacking. As a specimen of what may be called circulating-library literature, this Life of George IV. is creditable and praiseworthy ; and probably Mr Fitzgerald himself does not intend it to be regarded as a per- manently valuable contribution to English history. Did it claim to be such, it could not be accounted a success.
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