BISHOP BLOMFIELD AND WILLIAM CAPEL.
October 23rd.—To the Grove on Thursday; came back yesterday to dine with Mr. Grenville; passed the whole morning of Saturday at the British Museum, where I had not been for many years, but where I propose to go henceforward very often. The number of readers is now on an average three hundred a day; in the time of Gray, as may be seen by his letters, it was not half a dozen. I had never dined with Mr. Grenville before, though he has more than once asked me, and I was glad to go there. He is a man whom I have always looked at with respect and pleasure. It is a goodly sight, to see him thus placidly and slowly going down the hill of life, with all his faculties of mind and body, not unimpaired, but still fresh and strong. One would rejoice to procure a new lease for such a man. He may well look round him, as he sits in his unrivalled library and surrounded by his friends, serene and full of enjoyment, and say, like Mazarin, 'Et il faut quitter tout cela!' but no reflexions or anticipations seem to overcast the mild sunshine of his existence. I certainly never saw so graceful and enviable an old age; and though he is eighty-six, and I am forty-eight, I would willingly change lives with him. I would much rather be approaching the end of life as he is approaching it, than live any number of years that I may yet chance to have in store as I am likely to live them. Mr. Grenville is rather deaf, and he complains of loss of memory, but he hears well enough for social purposes, and he is full of recollections of former times and remarkable people. He only laments his own infirmities on account of the trouble or inconvenience they may cause to others; not that he does not hear all that is said, but he pities those who are obliged to exert their voices to make him hear. No old man was ever less selfish and querulous. He told a story of Porson, which I will put in his own words: 'When I was a young man, which is now about seventy years ago, I used to live with Cracherode and other literary men of that day, who were good enough to allow me to come among them, and listen to their conversation, which I used to take great delight in doing, and I remember one day going into the room, and finding Cracherode and another person disputing about language, and whether a certain English word had ever been used by any good authority. In the middle of the dispute, one of them said, "But why do we go on talking here, when that little fellow in the corner can tell us in a moment which of us is in the right?" The little fellow was Porson, who was on his knees poring over a book. They called him up, told him what they were disputing about, and asked if he knew of the word having been used, and by whom. He at once replied, "I only know of one instance, and that is in Fisher's funeral sermon on the death of Margaret of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII., and you will find it about the third or fourth page on the right-hand side;" and there accordingly they did find it.'
MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.
October 26th.—Poor Irby died on Monday last at Newmarket, the place where he had passed all the pleasantest hours of his life. He was an honourable, inoffensive man, who never made an enemy, and with whom I have passed my racing life. That was a sort of man who devoted himself to the turf without any misgivings of shame and regret, and he was, accordingly, happy. He strolled through life, without ambition or vanity, was what he seemed, and did not aspire to be thought better or wiser than he was. He had friends to whom he was attached, one sister whom he loved, and few or no other relations to annoy or trouble him. He was affluent in circumstances, respected in character, and contented in disposition: and such a man is to be envied, living or dying.
Yesterday morning I called on Mr. Grenville, and sat with him for an hour, while he told me many old stories of bygone times, and showed me some of his books, particularly his 'Julio Clovio,' which was what I went on purpose to see. He is a remarkable man, with his mind so fresh and firm, and teeming with recollections, a sort of link between the living and the dead, having been forward enough in his youth to mix with the most distinguished characters, literary and political, more than half a century ago, and still vigorous enough to play his part with those of the present time. He had often dined with Horace Walpole at his grandmother's in Grosvenor Square (before it was planted), and he describes him as effeminate in person, trifling in conversation, and much less amusing and piquant than might be expected from his letters. He talked much of Lord North, whose speaking he thinks would not be admired now. It was of a sing-song, monotonous character. His private secretary used to sit behind him, and take notes of the debate, writing down every point that it was necessary for him to answer, with the name of the speaker from whom it proceeded. When he got up he held this paper in his hand, and spoke from it, sometimes blundering over the sheets in a way Mr. Grenville imitated, and which would certainly be thought very strange now, but he had great good humour and much drollery. He told me a story of Lord North and his son Frank, afterwards Lord Guildford, of whom he was very fond, though he was always in scrapes and in want of money. One day, Frank seemed very much out of spirits, and his father asked him what was the matter. With some hesitation, real or pretended, he at last said, 'Why, father, the truth is, I have no money, and I am so distressed that I have even been obliged to sell that little mare you gave me the other day.' To which Lord North replied, 'Oh, Frank, you should never have done that; you ought to have recollected the precept of Horace, "Æquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem."' Mr. Grenville talked of the elder Pitt, whom he did not admire, but had never heard him except as Lord Chatham. Rigby was a very agreeable speaker, in style not unlike Tierney.
October 29th.—Lord Melbourne has had an attack of palsy, very slight, and he is recovering, but it is of course alarming. He is not himself aware of the nature of the seizure, and asks if it was lumbago. This shows how slight it was. Macaulay's book, which he calls 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' came out yesterday, and admirable his ballads are. They were composed in India and on the voyage home. He showed them to Dr. Arnold, who advised him to publish them, but probably while he was in office he had not time to think about them, and the publication is the result of his leisure. He has long been addicted to ballad-writing, for there is one in the American edition of his works, and there is a much longer one written when he was at Cambridge (or soon after), upon the League, and one of Henry IV.'s battles, which is very good indeed. He is a wonderful fellow altogether.
GOVERNMENT OF CANADA.
Canadian affairs and Bagot's proceedings have lately occupied the world for want of something better.[47] The Whigs are pleased that he has so fully admitted and acted on the principle of Parliamentary control, and carried out practically the theory of the Constitution which they gave the provinces, while the Tories are indignant that he should have been dictated to by men whom they consider disaffected to this country, and who were looked upon as quasi-traitors till a very short time ago, and as they have no taste for the independence and supremacy of a Canadian Parliament, there is no triumph of a principle to console them for what they consider dangerous in practice. But both parties, and everybody without exception, blame the manner in which Bagot has acted, which was indiscreet, undignified, and gives a poor idea of his qualifications for government. He is certainly not a strong man, and he has succeeded one who undoubtedly was. Sydenham turns out to have been a man of first-rate capacity, with great ability, discrimination, judgement, firmness, and dexterity. His whole administration in Canada fully justified the choice which Lord John Russell made of him, and the confidence he reposed in him. It is to the credit of Lord John Russell that he discovered and appreciated the talents of a man who was underrated here; but occasion and circumstance draw out the latent resources of vigorous minds. He was always known to be a man of extraordinary industry, but nobody knew that he had such a knowledge of human nature and such a power of acquiring influence over others as he evinced when he went to Canada. Murdoch, who was his secretary, and himself a very clever man, gave me a remarkable account of him. He was in the habit of talking over the most inveterate opponents of his Government, so much so, that at last it became a matter of joking, and the most obstinate of his enemies used to be told that if they set foot in Government House they would be mollified and enthralled whether they would or no, and so it almost always was. Though of a weak and slender frame, and his constitution wretched, he made journeys which would have appeared hard work to the most robust men. On one occasion he travelled, without stopping, an immense distance, and the moment he got out of his carriage he called for his papers, and went at his business as if he had only returned from a drive. This is something very like greatness; these are the materials of which greatness is made—indefatigable industry, great penetration, powers of persuasion, confidence in himself, decision, boldness, firmness, and all these jumbled up with a finikin manner, and a dangling after an old London harridan; but, as Taylor says so well, 'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,' and half mankind know nothing of their own capacity for greatness. The mistakes made by ourselves and by each other with respect to moral qualities are incessant and innumerable.
DISTRESS IN THE COUNTRY.
November 2nd.—At Windsor yesterday for a Council; almost all the Cabinet went together in a special train. A Whig engineer might have produced an instantaneous and complete change of Government. The Royal consent was given to the marriage of the Princess Augusta with the Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The Chancellor was there, looking very ill and broken, but evidently wishing to be thought strong and capable.[48] He not only affected to be very merry, but very active, and actually began a sort of dancing movement in the drawing-room, which reminded me of Queen Elizabeth and the Scotch ambassador; seventy years of age, ten years of idleness, and a young wife will not do for the labour of the Great Seal. The Ministers are all come to hold Cabinets, and lay their heads together with, God knows, plenty to occupy them. Lord Wharncliffe and Kay Shuttleworth, who are both come from the north, have given me an account of the state of the country and of the people which is perfectly appalling. There is an immense and continually increasing population, deep distress and privation, no adequate demand for labour, no demand for anything, no confidence, but a universal alarm, disquietude, and discontent. Nobody can sell anything. Somebody said, speaking of some part of Yorkshire, 'This is certainly the happiest country in the world, for nobody wants anything.' Kay says that nobody can conceive the state of demoralisation of the people, of the masses, and that the only thing which restrains them from acts of violence against property is a sort of instinctive consciousness that, bad as things are, their own existence depends upon the security of property in the long run. It is in these parts that the worst symptoms are apparent, but there are indications of the same kind more or less all over the country, and certainly I have never seen, in the course of my life, so serious a state of things as that which now stares us in the face; and this, after thirty years of uninterrupted peace, and the most ample scope afforded for the development of all our resources, when we have been altering, amending, and improving, wherever we could find anything to work upon, and being, according to our own ideas, not only the most free and powerful, but the most moral and the wisest people in the world. One remarkable feature in the present condition of affairs is that nobody can account for it, and nobody pretends to be able to point out any remedy; for those who clamour for the repeal of the Corn Laws, at least those who know anything of the matter, do not really believe that repeal would supply a cure for our distempers. It is certainly a very dismal matter for reflexion, and well worthy the consideration of the profoundest political philosophers, that the possession of such a Constitution, all our wealth, industry, ingenuity, peace, and that superiority in wisdom and virtue which we so confidently claim, are not sufficient to prevent the existence of a huge mountain of human misery, of one stratum in society in the most deplorable state, both moral and physical, to which mankind can be reduced, and that all our advantages do not secure us against the occurrence of evils and mischiefs so great as to threaten a mighty social and political convulsion.