A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

And here, on the top of his triumph, Wilkes may be said to drop through the tissue of our history. He was to live nearly a quarter of a century longer, three-and-twenty years of a life that was as calm and peaceful as the hot manhood that preceded it had been vexed and unquiet. Although he lives in history as one of the most famous of the world's agitators, he had in his heart little affection {138} for the life of a public man. And the publicity of the civic official was especially distasteful to him. He hated the gross festivals, the gross pleasures, the gross display of City life. He sickened of the long hours spent in the business of mayoralty; he sickened yet more of the pleasures incidental to mayoralty. Though he remained in Parliament for many years, and conducted himself there with zeal, discretion, and statesmanship, and always, or almost always, proved himself to be the champion of liberty and the democratic principle, he did not find his greatest happiness in public speeches and the triumphs and defeats of the division lobby. What he loved best on earth was the society of his daughter, between whom and himself there existed a friendship that is the best advocate for Wilkes's character. And he loved best to enjoy that society in the kind of sham classic retirement which had so powerful an attraction for so many of the men of the eighteenth century. His cottage in the Isle of Wight, with its Doric column to the manes of Churchill, with its shrine to Fortuna Redux, was his idea of the ancient city of Tusculum.

His tastes and pleasures were the tastes and pleasures of a man of letters. He affected a curious kind of scholarship. The hand that had been employed upon the North Briton, now devoted itself to the editing of classic texts; the intellect that had been associated with the privately printed "Essay on Woman" was now associated with privately printed editions of Catullus which he fondly believed to be flawless, and of Theophrastus, whose Greek text it pleased him to print without accents. In his tranquil old age he made himself as many friends as in his hot manhood he had made himself enemies. Those who had most hated him came under the spell of his attraction, even the King himself, even Dr. Johnson. His interview with Dr. Johnson is one of the most famous episodes in the literary and political history of the last century. His assurance to King George that he himself had never been a Wilkite is in one sense the truest criticism that has ever been passed upon him. If to be a Wilkite was to entertain {139} all the advanced and all the wild ideas expressed by many of those who took advantage of his agitation, then certainly Wilkes was none such. But he was a Wilkite in the better sense of being true to his own opinions and true to his sense of public duty. When he expressed the wish to have the words "A friend to liberty" inscribed upon his monument, he expressed a wish which the whole tenor of his life, the whole tone of his utterances fully justified. And if he was loyal to his principles he could be chivalrous to his enemies. Almost his last public appearance was at the general election of 1796, when he came forward, with a magnanimity which would have well become many a better man, to support the candidature of Horne Tooke at Westminster, of the man who, after having been his fawning friend, his fulsome flatterer, had turned against him with the basest treachery and the bitterest malignity. There may have been, surely there must have been, a vein of irony in the words in which Wilkes complimented the apostate and the turncoat as a man of public virtues. But the irony was cloaked by courtesy; if the action smacked of the cynic, at least it was done in obedience to the behest to forgive our enemies.

[Sidenote: 1797—Death of Wilkes]

On November 38, 1797, the old, worn, weary man, who had worked so hard and done so much, welcomed, in his capacity of Chamberlain of the City of London, Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson to the honorary freedom of the City. The setting star saluted the rising star. Nelson was then thirty-nine. He had been at sea since he was twelve. He had voyaged in polar seas and tropic waters. He had fought the Americans. He had fought the French. "Hate a Frenchman as you would the devil" was his simple-minded counsel of perfection. He had fought the Spaniards. He had lost an eye at Calvi. He had lost an arm at Santa Cruz. He was ten years married. His love, his error, his glory, Emma Hamilton, Carracioli, Trafalgar, were yet to come.

Less than a month later, in the late December, 1797, John Wilkes was dead. He was seventy years old. For nearly forty years he had lived unknown, unheeded. For {140} ten years he was the most conspicuous man in England, the best hated and the best loved. For twenty years more he was an honored public and private citizen. He will always be remembered as one of the most remarkable men of a century of remarkable men.

{141}

CHAPTER LI.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

[Sidenote: 1749-1768—A champion of popular rights]

One of the most immediate results of the Wilkes controversy in the House of Commons was to draw attention to a young man who had entered Parliament at the General Election of 1768 while he was still considerably under age. The young member for Midhurst made himself conspicuous as the most impassioned opponent of Wilkes. A strenuous supporter of Luttrell outside the walls of Westminster, inside those walls the boy who represented the fictitious constituency of Midhurst distinguished himself by the easy insolence with which he assailed Wilkes and the popular cause which Wilkes represented. He delighted in informing the delighted majority in the House that he, for his part, "paid no regard whatever to the voice of the people." When Burke condescended to notice and to rebuke the impertinence of a youth of nineteen, he little thought that the lad whom he reproved would come to be a far more extreme advocate of popular rights than he himself, or that the chronicle of the century in recording the names of those who made themselves prominent for the utterance of democratic opinions should place the name of John Wilkes far below the name of Charles James Fox.