[Footnote 1: In 1739 our Government had declared war against Spain. "There was at the time among the members of the Opposition in the House of Commons a naval captain named Vernon, a man of bold, blustering tongue, and presumed therefore by many to be of a corresponding readiness of action. In some of the debates he took occasion to inveigh against the timidity of our officers, who had hitherto, as he phrased it, spared Porto Bello; and he affirmed that he could take it himself with a squadron of six ships. The Ministry caught at the prospect of delivering themselves from his harangues, and gave him half as many ships again as he desired, with the temporary rank of Vice-admiral; and on July, 1739, he sailed for the American coast. When he reached it he found that the news of the rupture of the peace had not yet reached the governor of the city, and that it was in no condition to resist an attack. Many of the guns were dismounted; and for those that were serviceable there was not sufficient ammunition. A fire of musketry alone sufficed to win the fort that protected the entrance to the harbour, and an equally brief cannonade drove the garrison from the castle. The governor had no further means of defence; and thus in forty-eight hours after his arrival Vernon had accomplished his boast, and was master of the place." In a clever paper in the "Cambridge Museum Philologicum" Bishop Thirlwall compared the man and his exploit to Cleon and his achievement at Sphacteria in the Peloponnesian War. (See the Editor's "History of the British Navy," c. 9.)]
[Footnote 2: "Rienzi."
Then turn we to her latest tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame,
The friend of Petrarch, hope of Italy,
Rienzi; last of Romans.
("Childe Harold," iv. 114.)
His story is told with almost more than his usual power by Gibbon (c. 70). Born in the lowest class, "he could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and his untimely end." He, while still little more than a youth, had established such a reputation for eloquence, that he was one of the deputies sent by the Commons to Avignon to plead with the Pope (Clement VI.). The state of Rome, aggravated by the absence of the Pope, was miserable in the extreme. The citizens "were equally oppressed by the arrogance of the nobles and the corruption of the magistrates." Rienzi recalled to their recollection "the ancient glories of the Senate and people from whom all legal authority was derived. He raised the enthusiasm of the populace; collected a band of conspirators, at whose head, clad in complete armour, he marched to the Capitol, and assumed the government of the city, declining "the names of Senator or Consul, of King or Emperor, and preferring the ancient and modern appellation of Tribune…. Never perhaps has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably felt than in the sudden, though transient, reformation of Rome by the Tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a camp or convent. Patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and the stranger; nor could birth, nor dignity, nor the immunities of the Church protect the offender or his accomplices." But his head was turned by his success. He even caused himself to be crowned, while "his wife, his son, and his uncle, a barber, exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and princely expense; and, without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king." The people became indignant; the nobles whom he had degraded found it easy to raise the public feeling against him. Before the end of the same year (1347) he was forced to fly from Rome, and lived in exile or imprisonment at Avignon seven years; and returned to Rome in 1354, only to be murdered in an insurrection.]
I must finish, for Lord Hertford is this moment come in, and insists on my dining with the Prince of Monaco, who is come over to thank the King for the presents his Majesty sent him on his kindness and attention to the late Duke of York. You shall hear the suite of the above histories, which I sit quietly and look at, having nothing more to do with the storm, and sick of politics, but as a spectator, while they pass over the stage of the world. Adieu!
FLEETING FAME OF WITTICISMS—"THE MYSTERIOUS MOTHER."
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
STRAWBERRY HILL, April 15, 1768.
Mr. Chute tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland, and have given yourself up for two years more to port and parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout, turn Methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great toe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the fulness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive[1] is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all around us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant Duke and Duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talk to them of a call of Serjeants the year of the Spanish Armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George Selwyn's bon mots only by tradition. I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cotillon. I tell you we should get together, and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have known—not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in our youth than they are now; but as my system is always to live in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what one does not remember.