Quickly she’ll show ’twas not for want of voice,
Or power to climb, she made so low a choice;
Singing she mounts; her airy notes are stretch’d
Towards heaven, as if from heaven alone her notes she fetch’d.
Then the statesman set spurs to his horse and left Addington far behind.[391] It is curious that when Addington’s ambition was fully aroused, it proved to be an obstacle to Pitt and a danger to the country in the crisis of 1803–4.
Adverting now to certain details of Pitt’s private life, we notice that he varied the time of his first residence on Putney Heath (August 1784–November 1785) by several visits to Brighthelmstone, perhaps in order to shake off the fatigue and disappointment attendant on his Irish and Reform policy. At that seaside resort he spent some weeks in the early autumn of 1785, enjoying the society of his old Cambridge friends, “Bob” Smith (afterwards Lord Carrington), Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden), and Steele. We can imagine them riding along the quaint little front, or on the downs, their interchange of thought and sallies of wit probably helping in no small degree the invigorating influences of sea air and exercise. If we may trust the sprightly but spiteful lines in one of the “Political Eclogues,” it was at Brighton that Pitt at these times especially enjoyed the society of “Tom” Steele, whom he had made Secretary of the Treasury conjointly with George Rose. Unlike his colleague, whose visage always bore signs of the care and toil of his office, Steele was remarkable for the rotundity and joviality of his face and an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits.[392] Perhaps it was this which attracted Pitt to him in times of recreation. The lines above referred to occur in an effusion styled—“Rose, or the Complaint,”—where the hard working colleague is shown as bemoaning Pitt’s preference for Steele:
But vain his hope to shine in Billy’s eyes,
Vain all his votes, his speeches, and his lies.
Steele’s happier claims the boy’s regard engage,
Alike their studies, nor unlike their age: