254 INTERRED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

had repaired to his father's death-bed to say farewell. "Go, my son," said Chatham, "go where your country calls you; let her engross all your attention; spare not a moment which is due to her service in weeping over an old man who will soon be no more." The City of London petitioned that the Earl's remains might be deposited beneath the roof of its Cathedral of St. Paul; but arrangements had already been made for their interment in Westminster Abbey. They lay in state in the Painted Chamber at Westminster on the 7th and 8th of June; and on the 9th were borne, with the pomp of solemn pageantry, to their last resting-place near the northern door of the Abbey. Close at hand sleeps his great contemporary, Mansfield, and, within a narrow area, reposes the dust of his illustrious son, of that son's illustrious rival, Fox, of William Wilberforce, and Grattan, and one who resembled Chatham in his patriotic pride, the gifted Canning. They seem all covered by the shadow of Chatham's stately monument, with its effigy

graven by a cunning hand,"* so worthy of the man, so faithfully preserving the marked features of that regal countenance. The generation which reared this noble memorial of a country's gratitude has passed away; and the time has come when its judgments can be impartially reviewed by posterity, and rectified or adopted. So far as Chatham is concerned, history deliberately declares-and all Englishmen gladly acknowledge-that among England's "illustrious sons of long, long ages none has left a purer fame, none has

* Executed by the sculptor Bacon.

COWPER ON CHATHAM AS AN ORATOR. 255

deserved better of the Commonwealth, than William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

66

In him, Demosthenes was heard again,
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain,
She clothed him with authority and awe,

Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
His speech, his form, his action, full of grace,

And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood, as some inimitable hand

Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.

No sycophant or slave that dared oppose

Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose.

And every venal stickler for the yoke,

Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke."

Cowper, Table Talk.

The strongest proof of Chatham's greatness is the influence he exercised upon his contemporaries. He

* Lord Lyttelton (the second lord, born 1746, died 1779, the hero of the ghost story told by Boswell (a), thus describes Chatham's oratory (b) :— "The two principal orators of the present age (and one of them, perhaps, a greater than has been produced in any age) are, the Earls of Mansfield and Chatham. The former is a great man; Ciceronian, but, I should think, inferior to Cicero: the latter is a greater man; Demosthenean, but superior to Demosthenes. The first formed himself on the model of the great Roman orator; he studied, translated, rehearsed, and acted his orations; the second disdained imitation, and was himself a model of eloquence, of which no idea can be formed, but by those who have seen and heard him. His words have sometimes frozen my young blood into stagnation, and sometimes made it pace in such a hurry through my veins that I could scarce support it. He, however, embellished his ideas by classical amusements, and occasionally read the sermons of Barrow, which he considered as a mine of nervous expressions; but, not content to correct and instruct his imagination by the works of mortal men, he borrowed his noblest images from the language of inspiration."

(a) It is repeated by Sir Walter Scott in his 'Letters on Demonology.' (b) In the Letters attributed to him.

256 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

played in the political world a similar part to that which was played in the religious world by Wesley and Whitefield, and by Thomson and Cowper in the world of letters. English Society, at the time when his sun rose above the horizon, was sunk in the lethargy of material prosperity. Its degraded condition is very plainly exhibited in Brown's celebrated 'Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times'; an "estimate" confirmed in all essential particulars by the contemporary memoirs of Walpole, Lord Hervey, and Bubb Doddington. We read with disgust, not unmingled with astonishment, of its rampant affectation and folly, of its vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy, of its moral weakness, its lewdness, its cowardice, and its corruption. What is to be said of a people who suffered Prince Charles and a handful of Highlanders to travel to the centre of the kingdom unopposed? Of a people who, as Professor Smyth remarks,* offered no remonstrances when Hessians and Hanoverians were imported for their defence? We see the grandeur of Chatham in the new impulse he gave to the energies of a nation thus grievously enfeebled. At his summons "they started from their trance"; † they put forth all their powers; and they defeated their

*Prof. Smyth, 'Lectures on Modern History,' ii. 289. The lectures in this work devoted to the American War supply a very intelligible explanation of the position with respect to it assumed by Chatham.

+ Sainte-Beuve, in his essay on Gibbon (Causeries de Lundi), points out that the future historian, then a comparatively young man, came under the influence of the great Minister. For a time," he says, "amid the perils of the Seven Years' War. Gibbon became again an Englishman through the eloquence of Pitt. He procured an appointment as Captain of Militia, and seemed to be stirred with the breath of patriotic enthusiasm.'

MORAL CHARACTER OF CHATHAM.

257

enemies in every quarter of the globe. He taught them to abhor political corruption, to defy aristocratic greed, to value the independence of the subject. To the man who did a work so noble, may be forgiven some outbursts of theatrical ostentation, some defects of character. To the man who "with one hand wielded the democracy of England, and with the other smote the House of Bourbon," it may be forgiven that in all things he was not superior to his age. But it is a significant fact that his moral elevation made itself felt, sooner or later, even by those who at first regarded him with suspicion or dislike. Such was the case with George the 2nd; such was the case with Colonel Barré, a man of no ordinary talents; such was the case with the Earl of Shelburne, that keen and profound observer of motives and conduct. It was acknowledged by so genial an opponent as Lord North; it was felt by a nature so mean as that of the Duke of Newcastle. The measure of Chatham's achievements must not be limited to the military and naval successes obtained during his first glorious administration: but must be understood as including the impulse he gave to the patriotic sentiment; the example he afforded of disinterestedness and political integrity; and the popular enthusiasm he directed against the divine right of prerogative and the tradition of official corruption.*

"There was this difference between his conduct and that of his contemporaries. His ends were invariably noble. . . He might flatter Lady Yarmouth, but it was not in order to retain the Post Office; he might come down to the House of Lords, robed like some ancient senator about to die for his country, but he would throw them down a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons. Ambition was the lodestone of his life, but it 17

VOL. I.

258

HIS REMARKABLE PERSONALITY.

was ambition associated with worthy objects; the reputation of his country abroad, the integrity of her free institutions at home. And precisely in proportion as his countrymen recognised this to be the fact, they forgave the affectation and the mystery, the waywardness and the contradictory conduct. His personality, which his contemporaries alone would properly appreciate, was his strength. He possessed the rare quality of transfusing others with his own enthusiasm, and making himself the incarnation of the public hopes and fears. He believed that he alone could save the nation, and the nation thought so too. No man could so readily grasp the chief feature of a difficult situation, or so easily lay down the main lines of the necessary measures."-LORD E. FITZMAURICE, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne,' iii. 32-34.