Neither were his despatches, though not so elaborately perfect as those of his successor (Lord Dudley), inferior to his orations; possessing precision, spirit, and dignity, they remain what they were justly called by no incompetent authority, “models and masterpieces of diplomatic composition.”[128]
There are critics who have said that there was something in his character which tended to diminish our respect for his talents, though it softened our censure for his defects. And it is true that the same unstately love for wit—the same light facility for satire—the same imprudent levity of conduct, that involuntarily lowered our estimate of his graver abilities—involuntarily led us to excuse his graver errors. We at one time blame the statesman for being too much the child—at another we pardon the veteran politician in the same humour in which we would forgive the spoiled and high-spirited schoolboy.
Mr. Canning, indeed, was always young. The head of the sixth form at Eton—squibbing “the doctor,” as Mr. Addington was called; fighting with Lord Castlereagh; cutting jokes on Lord Nugent; flatly contradicting Lord Brougham; swaggering over the Holy Alliance; he was in perpetual personal quarrels—one of the reasons which created for him so much personal interest during the whole of his parliamentary career. Yet out of those quarrels he nearly always came glorious and victorious—defying his enemies, cheered by his friends—never sinking into an ordinary man,—though not a perfect one.
No imaginative artist, fresh from studying his career, would sit down to paint this minister with the broad and deep forehead—the stern compressed lip—the deep, thoughtful, concentrated air of Napoleon Bonaparte. As little would the idea of his eloquence or ambition call to our recollection the swart and iron features—the bold and haughty dignity of Strafford. We cannot fancy in his eye the volume depth of Richelieu’s—the volcanic flash of Mirabeau’s—the offended majesty of Chatham’s. Sketching him from our fancy, it would be as a few still living remember him, with a visage rather marked by humour and intelligence than by meditation or sternness; with something of the petulant mingling in its expression with the proud; with much of the playful overruling the profound. His nature, in short, exhibited more of the genial fancy and the quick irritability of the poet who captivates and inflames an audience, than of the inflexible will of the dictator who puts his foot on a nation’s neck, or of the fiery passions of the tribune who rouses a people against its oppressors.
Still, Mr. Canning, such as he was, will remain one of the most brilliant and striking personages in our historical annals. As a statesman, the latter passages of his life cannot be too deeply studied; as an orator, his speeches will always be models of their kind; and as a man, there was something so graceful, so fascinating, so spirited in his bearing, that even when we condemn his faults, we cannot avoid feeling affection for his memory, and a sympathetic admiration for his genius.