My great comfort is, to write on to my dearest Jack, and about my wife.
Act for me. Wife, child. She knows I recommend her to your care.
Object of my life, to make my sisters easy.
Save ——— from ruin if we can.
Protect my memory by your kindness. Life ebbs very fast with me. My dying thoughts are all kindness and fraternal love about you.
While sensation remains, I think on my dearest brother, with whom I have spent my life. I die with the same sentiments. As the hand of death approaches, it is a consolation to think of him. Oh, cherish my wife! If you loved me, be a brother to her. You will have trouble about my affairs; you will not grudge it. Oh, take care of her! I leave you that duty. It is the last relief of my failing mind. Cherish my memory. Keep ——- from ruin, if you can, by any application of any part of my child's fortune that is reasonable. Once more, farewell! God bless you.
These are affecting testimonials, and show singular tenderness of heart and truth of attachment; for they were written, to be transmitted only in case of death. Those who in after times saw Lord Stowell on the bench, the solemn, and even the stern depository of justice, could scarcely imagine, in that searching glance and compressed lip, the softness of heart which those fragments indicate. Death may be a great subduer of the fierce spirit of man as it approaches; but their language is not the phrase of puling softness, or pusillanimous alarm; it is at once calm and fond, collected and fervid. The writer's natural and honourable feelings are all alive at the moment when the last pang might seem to be at hand; and though nothing is said of his Christian hopes, (probably because the care of his family demanded more urgent consideration than his personal conceptions,) language like theirs could scarcely have come but from a Christian. His disorder was a violent bilious fever, which exhausted him so much that his recovery was slow. But to those who are in the habit of consigning their friends to "inevitable death" on every infliction of disease, it may excite some useful doubt of their own infallibility, to know that this dying man, then thirty-eight, survived for half a century, dying in his ninety-first year.
But the whole biography is a warning—especially against despondency. Who could suppose that, after Lord Eldon's success up to this point; his distinction on the principal circuit; the compliments of the judges; the respect of his seniors in the profession, some of them very remarkable men; his silk gown in the days of Erskine; his seat in Parliament; and, more than all, the consciousness which men of large faculties naturally have of their suitableness, and almost their certainty, to command fortune at some tine or other; we should find the future peer and chancellor desponding? Yet what but deep complaints of his cloudy prospects could have produced this reply from his clever friend Lee, (who, within three weeks' became Attorney-General?)
DEAR SCOTT—Your letter, which I received this minute, was a very cheering one to me. But keep up your spirits, and let it not be said that a good understanding, and an irreproachable life, and an uncommon success, and every virtuous expectation, are insufficient to support tranquility and composure of mind. If you are cast down who is to hold up? In a few days I hope to meet you in good health and good heart; and, in the mean time, remain your faithful and affectionate.
(Nov. 1783) "J. LEE."
On the opening of the session, great popular feeling was excited against the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years heaping on Lord North's luckless head, were now flung upon his own. Traitor, liar, swindler, were "house-hold words;" and Fox, with all his ability, and that happiest of all ability for the crisis, great constitutional good-humour, found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the House he was still powerful; but, outside its doors, he was utterly helpless. Like the witches recorded in some of the German romances, though within the walls chosen for their orgies they could summon spirits, and revel in their incantations uncontrolled, yet, on passing the threshold, they turned into hags again. But as if to make the coalition still more odious in the popular eye, there was presented the most resistless contrast to both its chiefs in the young and extraordinary leader of the Opposition, Pitt; with the ardour of youth and the wisdom of years, at once master of the most vigorous logic, and the loftiest appeal to the public feelings; honoured as the son of Chatham; and yet, even at that immature period of his life and his career, still more honoured for the promise of talents and services which were to throw even his own eminent predecessor into the shade.