November 1st, ’97.—The peace with Emperor and the Republic is certain, and a guerre à mort between this island and all the vast power of the brave, conquering French. How this country can get out of the mauvais pas it is in remains to be seen. I think it is, from the obstinacy and folly of the Government, lost, and that completely by its own fault.
Le bien nous le faisons, le mal c’est la fortune;
On a toujours raison, le destin toujours tort.
Unjust as mankind is, it can hardly rest the blame of our destruction upon Fortune.
À propos of the simple, philosophical La Fontaine, I either read or heard a touching trait of his simplicity lately. He was wise enough to despise money, and spent all he had from not knowing its value or caring for its production. When reduced to nothing he lived with a friend, who loved him and supplied the very few wants he had. This friend died. One who had known La Fontaine at his house immediately went to invite him to come and live with him. He met La Fontaine on the road to his château, and upon hearing the invitation the poet replied ‘J’y allais.’ The naïveté of his reply is very striking: to a mind like his the accepting money was no dependence, he wanted it not for luxuries, but for existence. He paints his own character in his epitaph.
The King has been to see the Dutch prizes. It is supposed that the extreme fuss that has been made about the victory proceeds from some dirty politics of the King’s own, as much less was done for Ld. St. Vincent, and his victory was more brilliant;[170] but Duncan is a relation of Mr. Dundas’s and a Scotchman, and Ld. St. Vincent a member of Ld. Lansdown’s, who though he never voted against the war yet he never did for it, and it was known that his opinion went violently against that of the Court—a crime the paltry Sovereign can never pardon even in the most distinguished. So these rejoicings are meant to mortify him. It is an odd circumstance that Ld. St. Vincent used to sign ‘John Jervis’ for many months after the honour of the earldom had been conferred upon him, and he only ceased using it upon its being noticed from the Ministers. Indeed, some of the new creations might well disgust him of a dignity rendered now so contemptible.
SIR GILBERT ELLIOT
Sir Gilbert Elliot was the man I used to esteem the most for integrity and respectability among the Opposition. He is the son of a poor Scotch baronet, who was one of the King’s men. He and his brother were sent to Paris to be educated, and at the college he formed a friendship with the celebrated Mirabeau, and some years afterwards, when Mirabeau was tried for his life in England upon the accusation of having robbed his servant, Sir G. and Mr. Burke appeared in a court of justice to give testimony to his morals. Sir G. married a Miss Amyand (Lady Malmesbury’s sister). He was a sycophant of Burke’s, and during the Regency was as bitter against the poor mad King as his patron. All the papers at that time were drawn up by him, and he is reckoned to be the choicest writer of his own tongue since Addison. At the great crash among the Opposition he is accused of having repeated conversations falsely, and by so doing pledging each division to go further than they intended. Each party tell a different story, but I cannot decide upon the truth of the report. After the great schism Messrs. Windham, Grenville, and Pelham agreed to remain out of office, and they called themselves the ‘Independent Triumvirate.’ Sir G. E., by intrigue and working upon W.’s vanity, persuaded him that his not having a share of responsibility for the measures he supported was cowardly, and worked upon him to go into office in ’94. Sir G. then got the foolish commission to Toulon, and when that affair ended so ill, averse to giving up the emoluments (the full pay of Ambassador) he and Ld. Hood together hit upon that wild scheme of Corsica.
His display of domestic virtues reminded me of a saying of Saint-Foix, who, talking of Lord A. said he was a crafty, hypocritical man, with mœurs in his mouth and sin in his heart, and that his whole system was artificial, that his wife was the same, and that even ‘les petits enfants jouent aussi leurs rôles.’ His wife is a sprightly, prating, gossiping woman, with a large share of vanity and a moderate one of sense. She is the only woman I ever saw that Ld. H. absolutely cannot endure.
The French made a lively sort of epigram against Santerre,[171] the infamous brewer, who became General, and attended Louis XVI. to the scaffold. The sting of it turns upon their popular liquor, ‘La bonne bierre de Mars’:—