On Hayley’s Triumphs of Temper[314]:—
Your nymph her temper keeps six cantos thro’,
By G—d that’s more than half your readers do.
SIR PHILIP FRANCIS
26th.—Yesterday, 25th, we left Sunning Hill; Ld. H. went round by St. Anne’s. Mr. Secretary Windham invited him to dinner, where he went, and met Charles Sheridan.[315] Mr. Francis dined with me. He was pleased at being confidentially treated, as he called it. He is soured against Mr. Fox for various reasons. Notwithstanding he boasts that the violence of his temper prevents his being vindictive, because he ‘expectorates’ his bile at the moment; he yet retains a very settled resentment against him. One of his griefs is that he was not summoned to the meeting previous to the measure of secession. ‘Secession, did I say, Madam? Dispersion I mean.’ Of Fox’s disposition, he says he is a man of great ‘facility,’ but no ‘cordiality.’ Perhaps the remark is not without point and justice. It is impossible to deny Francis’s great cleverness. His vivacity and fine sense survived the rolling over of many years and tens of years. His temper is irritable to madness; indeed, he is more or less always in a passion, for if he begins temperately the ardour of his imagination works him to rage before his sentence closes. He has a remarkable facility in writing all State Papers, Protests, Petitions, etc., etc. It was the desire of displaying that talent that made him advise Ld. Thanet to write to the King; at least, so those say who disapproved of the proceeding. His great intimacy with Burke enabled him to judge of the motives that actuated him to quarrel with Fox; he assured me the arrow was sped long before the French principles became the test of morality and virtue. They were a popular ground for attack, and upon them that venom burst, which had been rankling in his breast since the Regency; for at that period, in the partition of offices, etc., it appears Burke asked something, either for himself or son, which Fox denied him. From thence the enmity sprung, and was constantly fomented by a jealousy of Sheridan and various other trivial occurrences that would have passed unnoticed between sound friends, but were treasured up: ‘All his faults observed, set in a note book, learn’d and conn’d by rote, to cast into his (my) teeth.’
27th.—Instead of going to Cork, I found Add. still remaining; he came Tuesday eve., and yesterday to dinner, and very imprudently did not go to Eden Farm fête. This morning I went to the Tower; Ld. H. made a visit to Ld. Thanet, whilst Drew and I saw the sights. Of the latter none are worthy of notice, except the beasts, and those are very fine. Ld. Thanet came down to the court to see me. He looks very well; the confinement will be of service to his health, as he is perforce obliged to live regularly with regard to hours and drinking, for the gates shut at eleven. He is allowed to see whom he pleases and do precisely as he likes, but not quit the precincts of the Tower. He has always some company with him. It is very amiable in the D. of Bedford being so attentive to him. He scarcely stays a week out of town on purpose that he may visit him; there cannot be a better natured man.
27th.—To-day D. of Bedford and Ld. Boringdon dined here; stayed late in the garden. Ld. B. stayed cozing with me very late. The Duke has half a mind to attend the H. of Lords, but secession hangs round his neck like a dead weight. He and Grey are the two who repent the most; but as they were the two who urged Mr. Fox to it, a dereliction from it in them would come with a bad grace. Indeed, in Grey it would be suspicious, as it might be inferred he had got Fox out of the way to make room for himself as leader. That D. of B. should be unpopular is not marvellous. His manner to all is rude, and to acquaintances must be intolerable; but exterior polish is immaterial when the foundation is good, and with him it is respectable: no man so just, so generous, so true.[316] The first may at times amount to harshness, but the second never to ostentation, for with the slur of penuriousness it may be asserted that his donations to friends and family are unequalled by those reputed highly liberal. His veracity is quite remarkable; to the most minute occurrence he applies a degree of accuracy that is prolix: one would take upon trust what he convinces you by proof is true. His understanding is good, and so is his judgment, but he has given the latter into Ld. Lauderdale’s keeping too much. It is notorious that the secession never would have been dreamt of unless Ld. L. had not lost his election as one of the sixteen Scotch peers, and he, being out of Parliament, determined to make those who were in as null as himself.
NATURE OF THE SOUL
30th June.—On Friday, 28th, Ld. H. went to the Slave business.[317] I dined at home with Drew and Mr. Adderley. When Ld. H. returned they fell into a long metaphysical disquisition upon the nature of the soul. Add. has applied himself to the examination of that inquiry, and can reason fluently and technically upon those abstract, incomprehensible points. He has adopted the Platonician doctrine of spirit and matter, and conceives that spirit is a quality endued with faculties indefinable, that it is a particle of celestial origin, and secures to us immortality. The other two supported the old Epicurean tenet (for after all those old fellows were the first who started the systems which our modern philosophers appropriate to themselves) of materialism, that life and intelligence were carried on by material objects only, matter acting upon matter; in short, that to a fortuitous concourse of atoms we owed being as we are. I have not the capacity to follow thro’ a labyrinth of metaphysical sophisms; the very little I could ever understand I had no sooner been convinced was right than a new system proved to me it was fallacious, and this having happened above once, I have determined not to trouble myself with endless speculations that neither make one wiser nor happier.
Ld. Wycombe has neglected an eruption. He is under the care of Adair and Hawkins, and is quite a cripple. This disease gives him an opportunity of moralising upon the want of moral justice among mankind. A pampered debauchee writhing under the gout, a malady brought on by his own excesses, is an object of general pity; all hearts are in union with his pangs and sympathetic with every twinge, whereas he says a temperate, unoffending person who acquires accidentally a disease conveyed by harmless, innocent contact, is shunned and treated with disgust and contumely.