CHANGES.
[Sidenote: 1751—"Give us back our eleven days">[
Meanwhile some changes were taking place in political affairs at home which were full of importance to the coming time. William Pitt had taken office; not, indeed, an office important enough for his genius, but still one which gave him an opportunity of making his power felt. The King still detested him; all the more, perhaps, because it was now becoming more and more evident that the King would have to reckon with him as Prime-minister before very long. The stately form of Pitt was, indeed, already throwing a gigantic shadow before it. Henry Fox, too, was beginning to show himself an administrator and a debater, and, it may be added, a political intriguer, of all but consummate ability. Murray was beginning to be recognized as a great advocate, and even a great man. Lyttelton was still making brilliant way in politics, but was even yet hovering somewhat uncertain between politics and literature, destined in the end to become another illustration of the career marred for both fields by the effort to work in both fields. On the other hand, Chesterfield had given up office. He had had a dispute with his colleagues when he was strongly in favor of making a peace, and they would not have it, and he left them to go their own way. He refused the title of duke which the King offered him. He withdrew for the remainder of his years to private life, saying: "I have been behind the scenes both of pleasure and business; I have seen all the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines; and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole {275} decoration to the astonishment and admiration of the ignorant multitude." He seldom spoke in Parliament afterwards; he was growing deaf and weary. In 1751 he broke silence, and with success, when he delivered his celebrated speech on the reform of the calendar. He was "coached," as we should say now, by two able mathematicians, the Earl of Macclesfield and Mr. Bradley. The ignorant portion of the public were greatly excited by what they considered the loss of eleven days, and were strongly opposed to the whole scheme. Years later, when Mr. Bradley was sinking under mortal disease, many people ascribed his sufferings to a judgment from Heaven for having taken part in that "impious undertaking."
The "impious undertaking" was a very needed scientific reform in the calendar, which had long before been adopted in some other countries. Julius Caesar was the first great regulator of the calendar; his work in that way was not the least wonderful of his achievements. The calculations of his astronomers, however, were discovered in much later times to be "out" by eleven minutes in each year. When Pope Gregory the Thirteenth came to the throne of the papacy, in 1572, he found that the eleven minutes had grown by mere process of time to eleven days. He started a new reform of the calendar, which was adopted at once in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It gradually commended itself to France and Germany, and it was adopted by Denmark and Sweden in 1700. England only came into line with the reform of the calendar in 1751. The Act of Parliament which sanctioned the change brought in the use of the words "new style" and "old style." Only Russia and Greece now of European countries cling to the old style. But the new style, as we have said, was bitterly resented by the mob in England, and every one remembers Hogarth's picture of the patriot drunk in the gutter with his banner near him bearing the inscription, "Give us back our eleven days."
Chesterfield laughed at the success of his speech on the {276} reform of the calendar, and made little of it. Perhaps he helped thus to explain the comparative failure of his whole career. Life was to him too much of a gibe and a sarcasm, and life will not be taken on those terms.
Lord Chesterfield was then out of the running, and Lord Granville's active career had closed. The men of the older school had had their day; the new men had pushed them from their stools. The age of Walpole is closed. The age of Chatham is about to open.
[Sidenote: 1751—Fred's epitaphs]
Early in the year 1751 death removed one of the elements of discord from the family circle of George the Second. The end had come for Frederick, Prince of Wales. The long, unnatural struggle was brought very suddenly to a close. On the 12th of March, 1751, the prince, who had been suffering from pleurisy, went to the House of Lords, and caught a chill which brought on a relapse. "Je sens la mort," he cried out on the 20th of March, and the princess, hearing the cry, ran towards him, and found that he was indeed dead. The general feeling of the country was perhaps not unfairly represented in the famous epigram which became the talk of the town:
"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather;
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another;
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her;
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since it is only Fred,
Who was alive and is dead,
There's no more to be said."
It is curious to contrast this grim suggestion for an epitaph on the dead prince with the stately volume which the University of Oxford issued from the Clarendon Press: "Epicedia Oxoniensia in obitum celsissimi et desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliae." Here an {277} obsequious vice-chancellor displayed all the splendors of a tinsel Latinity in the affectation of offering a despairing king and father such consolations for his loss as the Oxonian Muses might offer. Here Lord Viscount Stormont, in desperate imitation of Milton, did his best to teach