326 REVIEW.-Coventry's Enquiry regarding Junius. 'were sufficiently important to induce him to write no more.-24. Finally, that so powerful an attack on the private character of persons of such high rank, being inconsistent with the pen of political writers in general, who condemn measures, and not character; we may reasonably conclude, that they proceeded from the pen of one who had received a severe wound from some of those individuals who formed part of the existing administration." "From these articles we may, at one view, collect the leading principles of Junius, which Horne Tooke candidly informed him would suit no form of Government; indeed many of them appear highly inconsistent with so popular a writer;-nevertheless, all which testimonials I have proved are united in the person of Lord Viscount Sackville." The intellectual character of his Hero, Mr. Coventry has collected from the testimony of several of his eminent contemporaries. [Oct. "During the seven years that his Lordship was Secretary for the Colonies, he had, principally, Charles James Fox to contend with. Throughout this long and arduous period, he displayed signal ability in his replies.'-Parliamentary Debates." Butler, Mr. Coventry pays the respect To the "Reminiscences" of Mr. which that Gentleman's talents and integrity so well deserve. Some just compliments are also paid to the Duke of Dorset; who does not, however, appear desirous these delicate investigations relative to his Father should be publicly discussed; but most material assistance has been received from William Little, Esq. of Richmond, and from Mr. George Woodfall, the intelligent son of the original Printer of Junius's Letters. The motives for the pointed ferocity of Junius against many distinguished characters are ingeniously developed "Having shown that the enemies of Ju- by Mr. Coventry; who adds, nius were enemies of Lord Viscount Sackville; that the friends of Junius were the friends of Lord Viscount Sackville; and that the line of politics laid down by the former, was strictly pursued by the latter, it now only remains to affix further testimonials of his Lordship's abilities, which have occasionally been called in question, as inadequate to the performance of the Letters. The able speeches which have been brought forward, as evidence of his Lordship's opinions, clearly prove that he was competent to speak or write on any subject. There were very few topics that came before the House, on which his Lordship did not enlarge. These speeches have, undoubtedly, been read with interest by all statesmen and members of Parliament. For the satisfaction of our readers, I shall lay before them a few testimonials of eminent men who were well ac quainted with him, and who were competent judges to discriminate between natural and acquired talent: There was no trash in his mind.'William Gerard Hamilton. "Lord Sackville never suffered the clearness of his conceptions to be clouded by any obscurity of expressions.'-Richard Cum berland. "Lord Sackville's countenance indicated intellect, particularly his eye, the motions of which were quick and piercing.'— Sir N. Wraxall, "I thank the Noble Lord for every proposition he has held out: they are worthy of a great mind, and such as ought to be adopted.'-Lord North. "Lord George Sackville was a man of very sound parts, of distinguished bravery, and of as honourable eloquence.'-Lord Or ford, vol. 1. p. 244. "Let us now proceed to the most striking object of Junius's attack, the Marquiss of Granby, who received the thanks of Prince Ferdinand, the thanks of the King, was promoted to the station of Commander. in-chief, Master-general of the Ordnance, a Member of the Privy Council, a Governor of Christ's Hospital, with other important places, previously held by Lord George Sackville himself." As far as relates to the high employments under the Government, this is probably correct; but we cannot think that Lord George Sackville was displaced from being a Governor of Christ's Hospital, an honorary office which he had acquired by a liberal donation; and surely Lord Granby might have attained a Governor's staff without the removal of Lord George Sackville. On the whole, we cannot but give it as our own opinion, that Mr. Coventry has fairly made out his case; and that the credit of these celebrated philippics may fairly be assigned to LORD GEORGE SACKVILLE. 1825.] REVIEW.-Remains of the late Rev. C. Wolfe. cuss deep legal questions in the language appropriate only to poetry. Whether this habit of exhibiting every thing by pictures, instead of words, is a good or an evil, we are not called upon to discuss. In pursuits where the attention should be rather directed to things than words, we should deem it better to search for fact; and sound logical conclusion, truth itself, rather than embellishments of it. But such patient investigation and dry Aristotelian expression are not suited to the taste of Irishinen. From Burke to Mr. Charles Phillips, they convert the Senate and the Bar into a Theatre, though all are persuaded that nothing should be thrown into the scales of Justice but law and evidence, and the wise know well that passion can never be the right road to reason. However, this nationality, when it is applied only to the exhibition of acknowledged useful truths, has the tendency to interest the feelings very strongly in their support, and there is no danger of misapplication in the impression created. Maturin's exposure of the silliness of Popery is one of the best instances known to us of the uti lity of imagination, directed in the form mentioned. pre We have gone into this short face, because we like Irish originality. It has produced many literary felicities, and among them one of the first character, applicable to the author before us, viz. the exquisite "Elegy on the Burial of Sir John Moore," who fell at Corunna. Glory to the harp of this Minstrel, who, like a hero at a tournament, stole into the poetical lists in disguise, broke a lance successfully with its men of established fame, and was awarded the meed of triumph by the impartial umpireship of Byron. As the copies have been incorrectly published, we shall give the beautiful original in an authentic form. The words in italics (the correct version) will show where the fine painting of the poetry had been disfigured by unskilful daubing. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, O'er the grave where our Hero was buried, 327 Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his restWith his martial cloak around him. "Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. "We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow. "Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid himBut little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave, where a Briton has laid him. "But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for re- And we heard the distant and random gun, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; stone, But we left him alone with his glory." Of the person who possessed such high poetical merit*, our readers will be glad to know something. Charles Wolfe was the youngest son of Theobald Wolfe, Esq. of Blackhall, in the county of Kildare. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. Peter Lombard. He was born in Dublin, December 14, 1791, and upon the decease of his father, who died when the poet was very young, removed with his family to England. In 1801 he was sent to a school in Bath, but was obliged to return home in a few months, through the delicacy of his health. In 1805 he was placed under the tuition of Dr. Evans of Salisbury, "From which he was removed in the year 1805; and soon after was sent as a boarder to Winchester School [read Hyde Abbey School, Winchester], of which Mr. Richard's, sen. was then the able master. There he soon distinguished himself by his great proficiency in classical knowledge, and by his early powers of Latin and Greek versification, and displayed the dawnings of a genius, which promised to set him amidst that bright constellation of British poets which adorns the literature of the present age." I. p. 4. 328 REVIEW-Remains of the late Rev. C. Wolfe. We knew (or know, if he is yet living) Mr. Richards, sen. and the great stress which he laid upon composition in the business of his school. We therefore think that Wolfe there acquired those poetical habits which have since so distinguished him. He never received even a slight punishment or reprimand at any school to which he ever went, and was the pride of Winchester School (p. 8). In the year 1809 he entered the University of Dublin, and distinguished himself by his academical exercises. In 1817 he took Orders, became a Country Curate in the North of Ireland, (Bally-clog in Tyrone) and gives the following account of his new situa tion. "I am now sitting by myself opposite my turf-fire with my Bible beside me, in the only furnished room of the Glebe-housesurrounded by mountains, frost and snow, and with a set of people with whom I am totally unacquainted, except a disbanded artillery-man, his wife and two children, who attend me, the Churchwarden and the Clerk of the Parish." P. 148. Irish Curacies are very different from those of England. He says, "here is a parish, large beyond all proportion, in which the Curate, who here does every thing, will be unavoidably called on every moment to act indirectly as a magistrate." P. 176. Soon after he removes to Caulfield, a village in the parish of Donoughmore, and his set out is thus described. "One waggon contained my whole for tune and family (with the exception of a cow, which was drawn along-side of the waggon), and its contents were two large trunks, a bed and its appendages; and on the top of these, which were piled up so as to make a very commanding appearancesat a woman (my future house-keeper) and her three children, and by their side stood a calf of three weeks old, which has lately become an inmate in my family." P. 180. The following is an account of the way in which some Irish Curates at least are accommodated with the necessary comforts of life. "He seldom thought of providing a regular meal; and his humble cottage exhibited every appearance of the neglect of the ordinary comforts of life. A few straggling rush-bottomed chairs, piled up with his books-a small rickety table before the fireplace, covered with parish memoranda; and two trunks containing all his papers-serving at the same time to cover the broken [Oct. parts of the floor, constituted all the furniture of his sitting-room. The mouldy walls of the closet, in which he slept, were hanging with loose folds of damp paper; and between this wretched cell and his parlour, was the kitchen, which was occupied by the disbanded soldier, his wife, and their grated with him from his first quarters, and seemed now in full possession of the whole concern, entertaining him merely as a lodger, and usurping the entire disposal of his small plot of ground, as the absolute lords of the soil." P. 216. numerous brood of children, who had mi held a During the short time in which he 252) he so wholly devoted himself to Curacy (says Dr. Miller in p. the discharge of his duties in a very populous parish, that he exhausted his strength, by exertions disproportioned to his constitution, and was cut off by disease [in 1829, æt. 31,] in what should have been the bloom of youth. He seems in the latter part of his life to have expedited his disease, and certainly destroyed the high capacity which he possessed, by adopting that Calvinistical gloom, which makes religious feelings miserable; and, by so doing, mischievously occasions them to be unwelcome, and in consequence discarded. Christianity itself is an unquestionable blessing; but erroneous modes of professing it may be just as unquestionable curses. Here was a young man of very delicate constitution, and high imaginative talent, who, had he regarded religion with the feelings of Gessner, Klopstock, and Sturm, might have found in it the means of prolonging his happiness and existence. Instead of this, under a presumption that he should do more good, he adopted the wretched pseudodivinity of declaimers for the vulgar, and, as his Sermons show, injured both his reputation and taste by writing in their common-place jargon-a Scripture text, and then a groan — another, and an anathema-a third, and an ejaculation-a fourth, and a long aposthrope of insipid bathos-a fifth, and a declamation against innocent pleasures and agreeable feelings-a sixth, and an invective against all other modes of professing religion-a seventh, and a warm and unblushing commendation of themselves—an eighth, and last, another, and a demand upon the pockets of their auditors for liberal contributions for the further propagation of their trash, or the better support of ignorant professors of religion, who can 1825.] REVIEW.-Dr. Parr's Letter to Dr. Milner. 329 cannot construe a Latin-much more affectionate father in the trying moments of a Greek Testament, and whose igno- his death-on behalf of that Church, with rance is to be accounted a feather in the members of which I have lived in communion from my boyhood to grey hairs, and their cap, because such uninformed people can talk, and learned persons hope, by the Providence of God, to pour forth my latest breath-on behalf of your can do no more; and whether they own Church, which abounds, I am sure, talk sense or nonsense, is no point of with enlightened and upright men, who consideration with their auditors. We would disdain to support the honour of it have a just right to speak thus severely, by misrepresentation on the behalf of every because we are told (i. p. 203) that honest and every pious Christian, whether some fanaticks were so pleased with he be a Protestant or a Romanist-I beMr.Wolfe's manner of preaching, as to seech you to tell the world, unreservedly say, he would almost do for a Meet- and distinctly, what is that authority, which ing Minister," a species of eulogium, you have deliberately and publicly pronounced which a scholar or gentleman would good. Your learning, your eloquence, your deem severe satire. We are sensible that well-earned reputation for orthodoxy and this young man, to speak analogically, zeal the dignity of your office, and the cemight have made another Butler-lebrity of your name, must give more than usual weight to any opinion which you may another Paley-another Sherlock-peradopt, and any assertion which you may adhaps, for his poetry is of the first rank, vance. Again, therefore, do I require you another Milton; and we regret that the to tell us, what is your authority for saying, University did not retain him among that the Bishop, whose calumnies you had themselves, in order that he might quoted, when he found himself upon his have become a national ornament and death-bed, must have been struck with shame public benefactor; instead of suffering and compunction, for having mis-employed him to be thrown away upon a Cu- his talents in giving publicity to those caracy (abounding with contemptible lumnies. thinkers,) where he was literally “a pearl among swine," a thing which they could not understand, and which they could only sport with. This they did. 63. Dr. Parr's Letter to Rev. Dr. Milner, continued from p. 243. THE late learned and venerable Doctor thus resumes his remarks: "Deep, Sir, is the concern, with which I read your note upon the passage just now quoted from p. 244 of Part III. The present writer,' say you, has been informed, on good authority, that one of the Bishops, whose calumnies are here quoted, when he found himself on his death-bed, refused the proffered ministry of the Primate, and expressed a great wish to die a Catholic. When urged to satisfy his conscience, he exclaimed what then will become of my Lady and my Children? "Dr. Milner, on the behalf of that lady, whose sensibility has not been blunted by old age, and who, by her accomplishments and her virtues, is justly endeared to her friends and her children--on behalf of those friends, who most assuredly will sympathize with me in their solicitude to rescue the character of the Bishop from the apostacy which you have imputed to him-on the behalf of those children who are now respectable members of society, and whose feelings must be most painfully wounded by the representations which you have given of their GENT. MAG, October, 1825. "Suffer me now, Sir, to bring forward a third passage, in which you drop all mention of probability and good authority, and lancthon, Beza, and Bishop Halifax. You speak with equal confidence of Luther, Meassume that confidence for the purpose of showing that certain refractory children in modern ages have ventured to call their true mother a prostitute, and the common father of Christians, the author of their own conversion from Paganism, the Man of Sin, and the very Antichrist. But they do not really believe what they declare, their object being only to inflame the ignorant multitude." After this double charge of profligate hypocrisy and turbulent malignity, you close a very elaborate letter upon the very momentous question, whether the Pope be Antichrist, in these most remarkable words: 'I have sufficient reason to affirm this, when I hear a Luther threatening to unsay all that he had said against the Pope; a Melancthon lamenting that Protestants had renounced him; a Beza negotiating to return to him; and a late Warburtonian lecturer lamenting, on his death-bed, that he could not do the same.' (Part III. p. 326.) "Here, Sir, we find your story not in the notes, but in the text; and a third introduction of it is a decisive proof of the importance which you affix to it. Well then; you, in the same sentence, speak with the same positiveness of three foreign reformers, who died long ago; and of an English prelate, whose death comparatively may be called recent. Is it possible, Sir, that for the same charge you can in every instance have the same 330 REVIEW. Dr. Parr's Letter to Dr. Milner. same evidence? For your charges against Luther, Melancthon, and Beza, there may be some grounds, either in the histories which you have read of their lives, or in passages which you can select from their writings. But in what genuine work, which bears the name of Halifax, or in what respectable publication, which professes to give a fair and well-founded account of his faith and practice, do you trace even the slightest vestiges of the thoughts and the words which you have ascribed to him? "Reflect, I beseech you, upon the excruciating and perilous situation in which Dr. Halifax must have been placed, if your narrative, Sir, be well-founded, at that moment when hypocrisy, as Dr. Young says, 'drops the mask, and real and apparent are the same.' He, from want of conviction, could not find consolation in the Church of England, and from want of fortitude he did not seek it in the Church of Rome. In a man so accustomed, as Bishop Halifax was, to the study of Theology, such a change of sentiment as you have ascribed to him, could not be instantaneous. It was not effected by the interposition of any wily casuist, or any proselyte-hunting zealot, who might take advantage of those circumstances which sometimes are found in the deathchamber of the most virtuous and the most devout; and by such circumstances, Sir, I mean fluttering spirits, an impaired understanding, a disturbed imagination, momentary fears succeeded by momentary hopes, one dim and incoherent conception rapidly succeeded by another, and sentences formed imperfectly, or uttered indistinctly. No, Sir, the Bishop of St. Asaph, according to your own account, was visited by a Protestant Metropolitan. “Previously, therefore, to his dissolution, while afflicted by sickness and oppressed by age, he must have suffered many a pang from conscious insincerity; and upon the near approach of that dissolution, he was doomed to breathe his last in a disgraceful and dreadful conflict between timidity and piety -between calls upon his prudence, from the praise of men, and upon his conscience from the approbation of God-between the impulses of paternal and conjugal affection upon one hand, and of self-preservation upon the other-between the opposite and irreconcileable interests of time to his family, and eternity to his own soul. To the Primate, who proffered his ministry, and to the Bishop, who, according to your representation, could not avail himself of it, no appeal can be made, for they are numbered among the dead. But the facts, said to be known to your unnamed informer, could not be wholly unknown to those who were under the same roof with the expiring Prelate. Such, I mean, Sir, as personal friends, as near relatives, as chaplains, as domestics, and, perhaps, medical attendants. These men, surely, can [Oct. bear a direct and decisive testimony to a plain fact. They must have been deeply impressed by such a conversion as you describe. They must have the evidence of their senses whether or no such conversion ever occurred; and, upon the supposition that it did not occur, if such a host of witnesses be set in array, in opposition to your anonymous informer, depend upon it, that the attention of all good men will be strongly attracted by this extraordinary case, that their best sympathies will be roused, and that their decision between the veracity of the accuser and the merits of the accused will be ultimately and completely just. Thus far I have expostulated with you, Sir, upon your charges against a Prelate, who, having sunk into the grave, cannot defend himself, and who has been summoned by his Maker to that tribunal, where his guilt or his innocence cannot be unknown." An unpardonable attack on another very excellent Dignitary is thus indignantly repelled : "I make no apology to you, Sir, for producing the very offensive passage, in which you have described Dr. Rennell, one of the candidates for the Episcopal Bench, from whom it would be in vain to expect more moderation than you have observed in Dr. Porteus, Bishop of London; Dr. Halifax, Bishop of St. Asaph; Dr. Barrington, Bishop of Durham; Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff; Dr. Benson, Bishop of Gloucester; Dr. Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester; and Dr. Sparke, Bishop of Ely; and who, white he was content with an inferior dignity, acted and preached as the friend of Catholics; since he has arrived at the verge of the highest dignity, proclaims Popery to be idolatry and Antichristianism;'_maintaining, as does also the Bishop of Durham, that it is the parent of Atheism and of that Antichristian persecution (in France), of which,' you add from yourself, it was exclusively the victim." (Part III. p. 242,243.) "The writer may add, that another of the calumniators here mentioned,' (id est, the Bishops just now named, Mr. De Coetlegon and Archdeacon Hook), being desirous of stifling the suspicion of his having written an anonymous No-Popery publication, when first he took part in that cause, addressed himself to the writer in these terms: How can you suspect me of writing against your religion, when you so well know my attachment to it. In fact, this modern Luther, among other similar concessions, has said this to the writer, I sucked in a love for the Catholic religion with my mother's milk.' (See note, Part III. p. 244.) "Dr. Milner, I have not presumed to hold you up to the scorn and abhorrence of Protestants, nor to let loose upon you the hideous appellations of bigoted controvertist, falsifier, calumniator, incendiary, persecutor, a modern Bonner, and an English Malagrida. |