[195] Charles, second Earl Cornwallis. [He was the intimate friend of the Duke of Grafton. A pleasing portrait is drawn of him by all contemporary writers. If the failure of his American campaigns, where he certainly proved no match for the self-taught commanders, whose ignorance it was the fashion of the day to ridicule, raised a strong presumption against his military talents, he met with great success in India, both as a soldier and an administrator. His conduct in Ireland during the Rebellion likewise does honour to his sagacity and benevolence. He was one of the few statesmen who inculcated the necessity of forbearance and concession in that misgoverned country,—and the coldness with which the Ministers received his remonstrances was the cause of his resignation. The mild dignity of his demeanour faithfully represented the leading traits of his character. He died in India in 1805, at a very advanced age, leaving an only son, on whose decease, without male issue, the Marquisate became extinct.—E.]
[196] Mr. Stephenson was the son of Sir William Stephenson of Kent. I have been told that later in life he met with great losses in trade, which obliged him to make a composition with his creditors, but having subsequently retrieved his circumstances he paid everything in full.—E.
[197] Mr. Hollis published handsome editions of Toland’s Life of Milton, and Algernon Sidney’s Discourses on Government,—works of which the principles, political and religious, coincided with his own. He was a very honest well-meaning man, the idol of a small circle of friends, who profited largely by his bounty, and showed their gratitude by extravagant praises of his moral and intellectual merit. He died suddenly from apoplexy at his seat at Corscombe, in Dorsetshire, in 1764. An injudicious tribute was paid to his memory by the publication of his Life in two massive volumes, 4to, by Archdeacon Blackburne, in 1780—one of the dullest books of the day—and which as completely failed in its object as some of the biographies of the same cast, the introduction of which into the Biographia Britannica, drew forth the well-known lines of Cowper—
“O fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age.
Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land,
Drop one by one from Fame’s neglecting hand;
Lethæan gulp receives them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.”—E.
[198] Henry Seymour, nephew of Edward eighth Duke of Somerset, and half-brother by the mother to Lord Sandwich, but attached to Grenville. [He was M.P. for Huntingdon.—E.]
[199] Cavendish’s Parliamentary Debates, vol i. p. 226.—E.
[200] This tract was understood to be written by Mr. Knox. It is but a moderate performance, and has long ceased to be read, except by those who wish to appreciate Mr. Burke’s admirable “Observations.” There are some passages in it exactly in Mr. Grenville’s manner, and probably of his composition: the sentiments of the whole were certainly his. Another tract of a similar tendency had, not long before, issued from the same mint, intituled “Considerations on Trade and Finance.”—E.
[201] This brilliant composition has so many beauties, and excites throughout such deep interest, that it seems to be almost an abuse of criticism to note its defects. The author, of course, wrote under a strong bias, and for a temporary purpose; but his genius has cast a halo over his opinions and his political associates, which has enlisted posterity on his side.
The passage to which Walpole refers is in reply to some gloomy statements of the decline of our trade.—“What if all he says of the state of this balance were true? If these [custom-house entries] prove us to be ruined, we were always ruined. Some ravens, indeed, have always croaked out this kind of song. They have a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in doing it. They are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the public prosperity. They overlook us, like the malevolent being of the poet,—
“‘Tritonida conspicit arcem
Ingeniis, opibusque, et festâ pace viventem,
Vixque tenet lachrymas quia nil lachrymabile cernit.’”—E.