DEATH OF LORD MELBOURNE.
This morning has occurred the death, after a short illness, of another remarkable man, Charles Buller. He had an operation successfully performed about ten days ago, but he was afterwards attacked by typhus fever and diarrhoea. The case became hopeless, and be expired at half-past five this morning in the forty-first year of his age. The career of Melbourne was over; that of Charles Buller for great and useful purposes may be said to have been only just beginning. His friends are deeply annoyed and angry at a biographical article on Melbourne which appeared in the 'Times' the morning after his death; and it certainly was coarse, vulgar, and to a great degree unjust. It was a mere daub and caricature, and very discreditable to the paper.
But it is a difficult thing to write a good article upon Melbourne, one which shall delineate his character with impartiality and discrimination, and describe fairly and truly his political career. I have known a great deal of him in the course of my life, but I never lived in real intimacy with him; and as he at no time seemed to have much inclination for my company, though we were always very good friends, I saw but little of him; but every now and then we had something to say to each other, and at rare intervals we met on intimate and confidential terms. He was certainly a very singular man, resembling in character and manner, as he did remarkably in feature, his father, the late Lord Egremont.[77] He was exceedingly handsome, when first I knew him, which was in 1815 or thereabouts. It was at this period that the irregularities of his wife had partly estranged him from her, though they were not yet separated, and he was occasionally amused by her into condonation of her amours, and into a sort of half-laughing, half-resentful reconciliation. They lived in this queer way. He, good-natured, eccentric, and not nice; she, profligate, romantic, and comical. Both were kept together, as they had been brought together, by the influence and management of their common relations and connexions; but it was during this period that he devoted himself with ardour to study, and that he acquired the vast fund of miscellaneous knowledge with which his conversation was always replete, and which, mixed up with his characteristic peculiarities, gave an extraordinary zest and pungency to his society. His taste for reading and information, which was confirmed into a habit by the circumstances of these years, continued to the end of his life, unbroken, though unavoidably interrupted by his political avocations. He lived surrounded by books, and nothing prevented him, even when Prime Minister, and with all the calls on his time to which he was compelled to attend, from reading every new publication of interest or merit, as well as frequently revelling amongst the favourite authors of his early studies. His memory was extremely retentive, and amply stored with choice passages of every imaginable variety, so that he could converse learnedly upon almost all subjects, and was never at a loss for copious illustrations, amusing anecdotes, and happy quotations. This richness of talk was rendered more piquant by the quaintness and oddity of his manner, and an ease and naturalness proceeding in no small degree from habits of self-indulgence and freedom, a license for which was conceded to him by common consent, even by the Queen herself, who, partly from regard for him, and partly from being amused at his ways, permitted him to say and do whatever he pleased in her presence. He was often paradoxical, and often coarse, terse, epigrammatic, acute, droll, with fits of silence and abstraction, from which he would suddenly break out with a vehemence and vigour which amused those who were accustomed to him, and filled with indescribable astonishment those who were not. His mother-in-law, Lady Bessborough, told me that high office was tendered to him many years before he began to play any political part, but at that time he preferred a life of lettered and social idleness, and he would not accept it. He never was really well fitted for political life, for he had a great deal too much candour, and was too fastidious to be a good party man. It may be said of him, at least in his earlier days, that he was
'For a patriot too cool, for a drudge disobedient, And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.'
CHARACTER OF LORD MELBOURNE.
And still less was he fit to be the leader of a party and the head of a Government, for he had neither the strong convictions, nor the eager ambition, nor the firmness and resolution which such a post requires. From education and turn of mind, and from the society in which he was bred and always lived, he was a Whig; but he was a very moderate one, abhorring all extremes, a thorough Conservative at heart, and consequently he was only half identified in opinion and sympathy with the party to which he belonged when in office; he often dreaded and distrusted his colleagues, and was secretly the enemy of the measures which his own Government originated, and of which he was obliged to take the credit or bear the obloquy. No position could be more false than the position in which Melbourne was often placed, and no man ever was more perplexed and tormented than he was by it, for he was remarkably sensitive; and most of the latter years of his administration were passed in a state of dissatisfaction with himself and with all about him. He hated the Reform Bill, which he was obliged to advocate. He saw, indeed, that Reform had become irresistible, and therefore he reconciled it to his conscience to support the Bill; but he had not sufficient energy of character or strength of will to make a stand against the lengths which he disapproved, and he contented himself with those indirect attempts to modify it which I have narrated in their proper place. It was probably his personal popularity, and the reluctance of Lord Lansdowne to take so laborious a post,[78] which led to his being made Prime Minister on the resignation of Lord Grey, for there never was a man more incapable of exercising the vigilance and supremacy which that office demands. After the great breach of 1835, and the abortive attempt of William IV. to throw over the Whig Government, his relations with his Ministers became very uncomfortable; but Melbourne was a good-natured man, and a gentleman, and perhaps no one else would have gone on with the King so harmoniously as he managed it.
But it was upon the accession of the Queen that his post suddenly grew into one of immense importance and interest, for he found himself placed in the most curious and delicate position which any statesman ever occupied. Victoria was transferred at once from the nursery to the throne—ignorant, inexperienced, and without one human being about her on whom she could rely for counsel and aid. She found in her Prime Minister and constitutional adviser a man of mature age, who instantly captivated her feelings and her fancy by his deferential solicitude, and by a shrewd, sagacious, and entertaining conversation, which were equally new and delightful to her. She at once cast herself with implicit confidence upon Melbourne, and, from the first day of her reign, their relations assumed a peculiar character, and were marked by an intimacy which he never abused; on the contrary, he only availed himself of his great influence to impress upon her mind sound maxims of constitutional government, and truths of every description that it behoved her to learn. It is impossible to imagine anything more interesting than more calculated to excite all the latent sensibility of his nature. His loyal devotion soon warmed into a parental affection, which she repaid by unbounded manifestations of confidence and regard. He set himself wisely, and with perfect disinterestedness, to form her mind and character, and to cure the defects and eradicate the prejudices from which the mistakes and faults of her education had not left her entirely free. In all that Melbourne said or did, he appears to have been guided by a regard to justice and truth. He never scrupled to tell her what none other would have dared to say; and in the midst of that atmosphere of flattery and deceit which kings and queens are almost always destined to breathe, and by which their minds are so often perverted, he never scrupled to declare boldly and frankly his real opinions, strange as they sometimes sounded, and unpalatable as they often were, and to wage war with her prejudices and false impressions with regard to people or things whenever he saw that she was led astray by them. He acted in all things an affectionate, conscientious, and patriotic part, endeavouring to make her happy as a woman, and popular as a queen.
It is notorious that he committed two great errors in judgement, both of which were attended with disastrous consequences, and I believe that in both cases his discretion was misled by his feelings, and that it was his care for her ease and happiness which betrayed him into these fatal mistakes. The first was the Flora Hastings affair, the scandal of which he might certainly have prevented; the other was the Bedchamber quarrel, when her reluctance to part with him, and his tenderness for her, overruled his better judgement, and made him adopt a course he must have known to be both impossible and wrong. In these affairs (especially the first), Melbourne must have suffered torments, for his tender solicitude for the Queen, and the deep sense of his own responsibility, were sure to weigh heavily upon him. His influence and authority at Court were not diminished, nor his position there altered by her marriage; but the Prince, though always living on very friendly terms with him, was secretly rejoiced when the political power of this great favourite was brought to a close; for, so long as Melbourne was there, he undoubtedly played but an obscure and secondary part. When the inevitable change of Government at last took place, the parting between the Queen and her Minister was very sorrowful to both of them, and it was then that he gave his last and generous proof of his anxiety for her happiness in sending me with his advice to Peel.
It would be rendering imperfect justice to Melbourne's character to look upon him rather as a courtier than as a statesman, and to fancy that he made his political principles subordinate to his personal predilections. He was deeply attached to the Queen, but he had all the patriotism of an English gentleman, and was jealous of the honour and proud of the greatness of his country. He held office with a profound sense of its responsibilities; there never was a Minister more conscientious in the distribution of patronage, more especially of his ecclesiastical patronage. He was perfectly disinterested, without nepotism, and without vanity; he sought no emoluments for his connexions, and steadily declined all honours for himself. The Queen often pressed him to accept the Garter, but he never would consent, and it was remarked that the Prime Minister of England was conspicuous at Court for being alone undecorated amidst the stars and ribands which glittered around him. He has been not inappropriately compared to Sallustius Crispus, as described by Tacitus: 'Quamquam prompto ad capessendos honores aditu, sine dignitate senatoriâ multos triumphalium consulariumque potentiâ anteiit; diversus a veterum instituto per cultum et munditias; copiâque et affluentiâ luxu propior. Suberat tamen vigor animi ingentibus negotiis par, eo acrior, quo somnum et inertiam magis ostentabat. Igitur incolumi Mæcenate proximus; mox præcipuus cui secreta Imperatorum maxime inniterentur.'[79]
MELBOURNE'S CONVERSATIONS AND OPINIONS.