[133] This is a fair representation of what the Guards were then. The highly-disciplined troop commanded by his Royal Highness of York defy satire.
[134] See John Wilkes' history of the man after God's own heart.
[135] Hogarth seems to have thought that Mr. Pitt wished to be a perpetual dictator; and, in truth, the Secretary's own assertion in some degree justified the supposition: "He would not be responsible for measures which he was no longer allowed to guide." Whether the artist was right or wrong in his opinion, I do not presume to assert: I have endeavoured to describe characters as he has delineated them; but with respect to this great man, the safest way will be to quote his contemporaries. I have subjoined two portraits, drawn in his own day; let the reader adopt that which pleases him best. They prove how difficult it is to ascertain what were the abilities of a statesman from any accounts given during his life. One party assert that Mr. Pitt unites, with the eloquence of Cicero and the force of Demosthenes, the conciseness of Sallust and the polished periods of Isocrates! Another,—but to extract a part is not doing justice to the writers.
Chatham.
"As this lord has long been dead to the world, we shall speak of him as a man that has been.
"A remarkable reflection, arising from the character of Lord Chatham, strikes us: No statesman was ever more successful, and no statesman ever deserved less to have been so.
"This man entered into the army very early in life, and there he ought to have remained. His enterprise, his rashness, and his scrupulous sense of honour, were qualities extremely proper in the profession of arms, and would have adorned any military station, except that of a chief commander. But the field he renounced for the Cabinet, and ceased to be a good soldier that he might be a bad statesman. In nature, he was rash, impetuous, haughty, and uncontrollable; and these dangerous properties were neither tempered nor improved by education. To those advantages which are acquired by study, and those great views which are communicated by habits of reflection, he was entirely a stranger. His quickness was not corrected by judgment, and his mind frequently was tired of the objects presented to it before it could perceive or comprehend them. In a country where eloquence is little known, his noise and vociferation acquired that name; and without the experience of common sense, he was extolled as superior to Demosthenes or Tully. His speeches were not wanting in fire, but they were innocent of thought. He was perhaps the only man of his time who could harangue for many hours without communicating one distinct and well-digested idea to his audience. In estimating his own merit he knew no bounds. His vanity was excessive: he saw every man inferior to himself: on every man, therefore, he lavished his contempt. Capricious to the most boyish excess, he was perpetually forming resolutions, which he abandoned before he could put them in execution. Yet his instability, through a fortuitous and whimsical concurrence of circumstances, generally led the way to success. The happy blunders of his administration procured him a reputation to which he had no title. Every scheme he planned ought to have miscarried. We admire his good fortune, not his wisdom. Popularity was the idol to which he bowed—a certain proof that his conduct was not influenced by those superior ideas which arise in high, liberal, and virtuous minds. Yet to this idol he would have sacrificed everything: it would have sacrificed everything to him. He possessed that intemperate pride which, instead of guarding him from indecent errors, led him to indiscretions; and a respectable character was seldom a security from the licentious fury of his tongue. In private life he was restless, fretful, unsocial, and perpetually affecting complaints which he did not feel: in public life he was weak, headstrong, imprudent, and had no quality of a good minister but enterprise. If he had continued in his first profession, he might have served his country with honour; but his ambition prompted him to assume the character of a statesman, and he abused it.
"On the whole, he possessed virtues; but his passions hurried them into excess, and he did not even wish to restrain them."
Hear the other side:—
Character of the late Earl of Chatham.