'His unfitness for the first post of the state.' vol. iv. p. 66.

"The King was worn out with Grafton's negligence and impracticability.'—p. 67.

Lord Suffolk-Secretary of State

his soul was harrowed by ambition, and as he had not parts to gratify it, he sought the despotism of the Crown as means of gratifying his own pride. He was totally unpractised in business, pompous, ignorant, and of no parts, but affecting to be the head of Grenville's late party.'—ib.

His fall was universally ascribed to his pusillanimity; but whether betrayed by his fears or his friends, he had certainly been the chief author of his own disgrace. His haughtiness, indolence, reserve, and improvidence had conjured up the storm, but his obstinacy and feebleness always relaying each other and always mal-à-propos-were the radical Statecause of all the numerous absurdities that dis

Lord George Germaine-Secretary of

colored his conduct and exposed him to de-'was proud, haughty, and desperate.'-vol. iv. served reproaches; nor had he depth of un- p. 84. derstanding to counterbalance the defects of his temper (p. 69). The details of his conduct were as weak and preposterous as the great lines of it' (p. 70).

LORD NORTH had become Chancellor of the Exchequer on Mr. Townshend's death; and on the Duke of Grafton's secession, became First Lord of the Treasury; but there was little other change in the ministry.

Lord Halifax-Privy Seal

'a proud, empty man.'-vol. iv. p. 208.

Lord Hillsborough-Secretary of State'was a pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment.'-vol. iv. p. 199.

Such were, according to Walpole, the talents and characters of the principal statesmen with whom George III. had to conduct 'LORD NORTH had neither system, nor prin- the affairs of his empire in almost, if not ciple, nor shame, but enjoyed the good luck of altogether, the most critical and difficult fortune with a gluttonish epicurism that was equally careless of glory or disgrace. As a how far we are from adopting these gloomy period of our history. We need not repeat minister he had no foresight, no consistence, no firmness, no spirit. He miscarried in all pictures as likenesses-the supposition of he undertook in America-was more improvi- such a monstrous and yet uniform assemdent than unfortunate, and less unfortunate blage of knaves and fools is not merely conthan he deserved to be. If he was free from tradicted by much indisputable evidence, vices, he was as void of virtues; and it is a but it outrages probability and libels even paltry eulogium of a prime minister of a great human nature itself. country-yet the best that can be allotted to But Walpole's eviLord North-that though his country was dence must be taken altogether;—we are ruined under his administration, he preserved forced to meet his representations of George his good humor, and neither felt for his coun-III. by his representations of those with try nor for himself.'—vol. iv. pp. 80-83.

whom the King had to deal, and we must explain and correct Walpole's malevolence against the objects of his secret enmity by thus exposing his sweeping malignity against all mankind.

This character, bad as it is, of Lord North is one of the least defamatory in the whole work; but even this 'paltry eulogium'-the positive merit of good humor, and the negative one of not meaning all the mischief he did-he probably owed to a small fact which we have already quoted in another place. 'In the payments of my office bills,' says Walpole, 'I always received justice and civility from Lord North.'-common plunder-both arts and violences Works, vol. ii. p. 369.

The Chancellor Bathurst

Party, however, it must be after all confessed, is an odious and cancerous corruptor of the human heart, and it is but too certain that politicians will employ against one another, and even against their sovereign-whom they are apt to look at as a

which, as private gentlemen and in the ordinary intercourses of man and man, would disgust their taste and revolt their feelings.

'was too poor a creature to have any weight.' Hear Walpole's own confession of his ad-vol. iv. p. 84.

Lord Rochford-Secretary of State'lees employed, had still less claim to sense, and none at all to knowledge.'-ib.

vice to his ministerial friends about the very time when he was so pleased with the King, and the King as he fancied so pleased with him, that he thought of asking a great favor from his Majesty :

It was now the 29th of May, 1776. I The King-the victim, therefore, of such pressed the Ministers to put an end to the ses- passionate and unceasing conflicts-the sion to prevent their resigning before Parliament rose, and to keep them in place till the only fixed object amidst such flunctuations eve of the next session; that if no circum- of interests, such ambition, such treachery, stances should arise in their favor during that such violence-the one mediator, or rather interval, they might surprise and distress the medium, by or through whom all these conKing by a sudden resignation, or force him to flicting, and strong, and greedy rivalries give them better terms.'-vol. ii. p. 327. were to be restrained, or reconciled, or preferred is it, we say, just-is it rationalis it common sense or common honesty to make the King in any degree responsible for these proceedings, in which he was the greatest sufferer ?-or to give any to the various forms of vexation and disappointment which, according to their various

See also the Earl of Chatham, recently loaded with wealth, honors and all kinds of personal favor, and acknowledging the most cordial, delicate, and almost filial affections from the King:

credence

'Growing more inflammatory, he drew a ture of the late King, who, he said, true, faith-tempers, would be taken and promulgated ture of the late King, who, he said, true, faith-by the un ingrat' and the 'dix mécontens' ful, and sincere, and who, when he disliked a man, always let him perceive it-a portrait in- which it was his Majesty's daily and paintended as a satirical contrast to the character ful but inevitable duty to make? of the reigning monarch.'-vol. iv. p. 101.

And in the same debate his chosen follower, Lord Shelburne, recently Secretary of State

'was of all the most warm, agreeable to his maxim that the King was timid and must be frightened.*-vol. iv. p 102.

The retirement of the Duke of Grafton, whom the King had treated with the greatest regard, and who showed subsequently a due sense of his Majesty's personal kindness and public merits, is thus represented by Walpole:

'Nothing could be more distressful than the

situation into which the Duke of Grafton had

brought the King, and in which he abandoned

him.'-vol. iv. 74.

p.

But truth at last prevails. Every new circumstance of evidence that arises or transpires-even those that, like Walpole's Memoirs, were designed for the very contrary object-have the effect of vindicating the character of the King, and raising him above the gross misrepresentations and malignity of faction in all the lustre and purity of his blameless character as one of the best of kings and the honestest of men.

We have been so used to see Walpole's works miserably edited, that we are thankful for the present Editor's very moderate performance of his task, and will not dwell on many omissions, several inaccuracies, and some errors with which he might be justly reproached. He has afforded a good deal of useful explanation, and has, particularly in the two last volumes, taken oc

And even the Rockingham party-the best-casions, to correct misstatements and mititempered and most moderate of all the factions of the day-disgraced itself, says Walpole, by intrigues of a still deeper guilt.

'Lord North wished to avoid a war with Spain; nor was the unprejudiced part of the nation at all eager for war. The Rockingham party called for it to embarrass the Government, and the patriots in the City meant to clog the operations of it.'-vol. iv. p. 183.

* It is remarkable that very rare and slight mention is made of Lord Shelburne, father of the present Marquis of Lansdowne, one of the most active and conspicuous politicians of the day, and whom we should for many reasons have expected to find very prominent in the pages of Walpole There must be some secret reason for this Supposing that the manuscript has been printed without reserve, we cannot account for its comparative

silence as to Lord Shelburne.

gate the malignity of the author. He has availed himself for this purpose of a portion of the correspondence of George III. with Lord North, obtained for him by the intervention of Lord Brougham from Lord North's daughter, Lady Charlotte Lindsay. He has been allowed to consult, and given some interesting extracts from the papers of the Duke of Grafton; he has also seen some other original documents, and has very works that bear upon the period. From all diligently compared the various printed these sources he has, in many instances, exposed and corrected the errors and asperities of the text-but still by no means, we must say, to the extent that might have been fairly expected. His vindications are confined, if not altogether, yet very nearly so, to the Whig statesmen, for whose de

ley's total nature was altered and darkened when that theme arose transfiguration fell upon him. He that was so gentle, became savage; he that breathed by the very lungs of Christianity-that was so merciful, so full of tenderness and pity, of humility, of love and forgiveness, then raved and screamed like an idiot whom once I personally knew, when offended by a strain of heavenly music at the full of the moon. In both cases, it was the sense of perfect beauty revealed under the sense of morbid

scendants he appears to feel a personal re- of things, does not overlook the absolute gard-as the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of midsummer madness which possessed ShelBedford, and Lord Holland. He occasion- ley upon the subject of Christianity. Shelally, too-but somewhat perfunctorily, we think-ventures to extend a little modicum of justice to the King. We wish that his exercise of this judicial power had been more extensive in scope and more decided in quality. We cannot at all agree in an opinion which he quotes, though he does not altogether adopt, from the late Lord Holland's preface to the first Memoirs, that 'it is no part of the duty of an editor to correct the misrepresentations or errors of his author.' We doubt whether this would be just in almost any case, but undoubtedly estrangement. This it is, as I presume, in the case of all Memoirs-and in that of those Memoirs especially-it was Lord Holland's editorial duty and is the duty of every one who happens to be, by circumstances, made accessary to the promulgation of misrepresentation or error, to do his best to supply an antidote to the poison which he contributes to spread. This duty is peculiarly strong when, as in the present case, the word is published at a time when the slander can still give pain to surviving friends and relatives as well as falsify history, and while there are still living traditions and extant documents, sufficient, with intelligent management, to correct it. Our slight censure of the Editor on this point has rather a smack of praise-what he has done makes us wish that he had done more. The narrow limits, desultory nature, and hasty composition of an article in a review, have not permitted ourselves to notice a tithe of the corrigenda and castiganda of Walpole's text; but we flatter ourselves that we have, now as heretofore, contributed something to that every day more desirable object; we at least have omitted no opportunity of recording a solemn and, we hope, an useful protest against the personal credit and historical value of the Memoirs of Horace Walpole.

From Tait's Magazine.

which Mr. Gilfillan alludes to in the following passage, (p. 104,) "On all other subjects the wisest of the wise, the gentlest of the gentle, the bravest of the brave, yet, when one topic was introduced, he became straightway insane; his eyes glared, his voice screamed, his hand vibrated frenzy." But Mr. Gilfillan is entirely in the wrong when he countenances the notion that harsh treatment had any concern in riveting the fanaticism of Shelley. On the contrary, he met with an indulgence to the first manifestation of his anti-Christian madness, better suited to the goodness of the lunatic than to the pestilence of his lunacy. It was at Oxford that this earliest explosion of Shelleyism occurred; and though, with respect to secrets of prison-houses, and to discussions that proceed "with closed doors," there is always a danger of being misinformed, I believe, from the uniformity of such accounts as have reached myself, that the following brief of the matter may be relied on. Shelley, being a venerable sage of sixteen, or rather less, came to a resolution that he would convert, and that it was his solemn duty to convert, the universal Christian church to Atheism or to Pantheism, no great matter which. But, as such large undertakings require time, twenty months, suppose, or even two years,for you know, reader, that a railway requires on an average little less,-Shelley

NOTES ON GILFILLAN'S "GALLERY OF was determined to obey no impulse of

LITERARY PORTRAITS."

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

"A Gallery of Literary Portraits." By George Gilfillan. Edinburgh: Wm. Tait. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,-continued.

MR. GILFILLAN, whose eye is quick to seize the lurking and the stealthy aspects

youthful rashness. Oh no! Down with presumption, down with levity, down with boyish precipitation! Changes of religion are awful things: people must have time to think. He would move slowly and discreetly. So first he wrote a pamphlet, clearly and satisfactorily explaining the necessity of being an atheist; and, with his usual exemplary courage, (for, seriously,

he was the least false of human creatures,) the kindest motives of forbearance towards Shelley put his name to the pamphlet, and one so young, the heads decided for declinthe name of his college. His ultimate ing all notice of the pamphlet. Levelled object was to accomplish a general apostacy at them, it was not specially addressed to in the Christian church of whatever name. them; and, amongst the infinite children But for one six months, it was quite enough born every morning from that mightiest of if he caused a revolt in the Church of mothers, the press, why should Golgotha England. And as, before a great naval be supposed to have known any thing, action, when the enemy is approaching, officially, of this little brat? That evasion you throw a long shot or two by way of might suit some people, but not Percy trying his range,-on that principle Shelley Bysshe Shelley. There was a flaw, (was had thrown out his tract in Oxford. Oxford there?) in his process? his pleading could formed the advanced squadron of the Eng- not, regularly, come up before the court? lish Church; and, by way of a coup d'essai, Very well-he would heal that defect imthough in itself a bagatelle, what if he mediately. So he sent his pamphlet, with should begin with converting Oxford? To five-and-twenty separate letters, addressed make any beginning at all is one-half the to the five-and-twenty heads of colleges in battle; or, as a writer in this Magazine Golgotha assembled; courteously "invit[June 1845] suggests, a good deal more. ing" all and every of them to notify, at To speak seriously, there is something even his earliest convenience, his adhesion to thus far in the boyish presumption of the enclosed unanswerable arguments for Shelley, not altogether without nobility. Atheism. Upon this, it is undeniable that He affronted the armies of Christendom. Golgotha looked black; and, after certain Had it been possible for him to be jesting, formalities, "invited" P. B. Shelley to conit would not have been noble. But here, sider himself expelled from the University of even in the most monstrous of his under- Oxford. But, if this were harsh, how would takings, here, as always, he was perfectly Mr. Gilfillan have had them to proceed? sincere and single-minded. Satisfied that Already they had done, perhaps, too much Atheism was the sheet anchor of the world, in the way of forbearance. There were he was not the person to speak by halves. many men in Oxford who knew the standBeing a boy, he attacked those [upon a ing of Shelley's family. Already it was point the most sure to irritate] who were whispered that any man of obscure congray; having no station in society, he flew nexions would have been visited for his at the throats of none but those who had; Atheism, whether writing to Golgotha or weaker than an infant for the purpose be- not. And this whisper would have strengthfore him, he planted his fist in the face of ened, had any further neglect been shown to a giant, saying, "Take that, you devil, and formal letters, which requested a formal that, and that." The pamphlet had been answer. The authorities of Oxford, deeply published; and though an undergraduate responsible to the nation in a matter of so of Oxford is not (technically speaking) a much peril, could not have acted otherwise member of the university as a responsible than they did. They were not severe. The corporation, still he bears a near relation severity was extorted and imposed by Shelto it. And the heads of colleges felt a ley. But, on the other hand, in some paldisagreeable summons to an extra-meeting. liation of Shelley's conduct, it ought to be There are in Oxford five-and-twenty col- noticed that he is unfairly placed, by the leges, to say nothing of halls. Frequent and undistinguishing, on the manly station of full the heads assembled in Golgotha, a an ordinary Oxford student. The underwell-known Oxonian chamber, which, being graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, are interpreted, (as scripturally we know,) is not "boys," as a considerable proportion "the place of a skull," and must, there- must be, for good reasons, in other univerfore, naturally be the place of a head. sities,-the Scottish universities, for inThere the heads met to deliberate. What stance, of Glasgow and St. Andrew's, and was to be done? Most of them were in- many of those on the continent. Few of clined to mercy to proceed at all-was to the English students even begin their resiproceed to extremities; and, (generally dence before eighteen; and the larger prospeaking,) to expel a man from Oxford, is portion are at least twenty. Whereas to ruin his prospects in any of the liberal Shelley was really a boy at this era, and professions. Not, therefore, from considera- no man. He had entered on his sixteenth tion for Shelley's position in society, but on year, and he was still in the earliest part of

his academic career, when his obstinate and reiterated attempt to inoculate the university with a disease that he fancied indispensable to their mental health, caused his expulsion.

was full of love to man; so was Shelley. He was full of humility; so was Shelley. Difference of creed, however vast the interval which it created between the men, could not have hid from Shelley's eye, the close I imagine that Mr. Gilfillan will find approximation of their natures. Infidel by himself compelled, hereafter, not less by his intellect, Shelley was a Christian in the his own second thoughts, than by the mur- tendencies of his heart. As to his "lying murs of some amongst his readers, to revise asleep on the hearth-rug, with his small that selection of memorial traits, whether round head thrust almost into the very fire," acts or habits, by which he seeks to bring this, like his "basking in the hottest beams Shelley, as a familiar presence, within the of an Italian sun," illustrates nothing but field of ocular apprehension. The acts his physical temperament. That he should selected, unless characteristic-the habits be seen "devouring large pieces of bread selected, unless representative,-must be amid his profound abstractions," simply reabsolutely impertinent to the true identifica- calls to my eye some hundred thousands of tion of the man; and most of those re- children in the streets of great cities, hearsed by Mr. Gilfillan, unless where they Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, whom I am happen to be merely accidents of bodily daily detecting in the same unaccountable constitution, are such as all of us would be practice; and yet, probably, with very little sorry to suppose naturally belonging to abstraction to excuse it; whilst his "endShelley. To rush out of the room in less cups of tea," in so tea-drinking a land terror, as his wild imagination painted to as ours, have really ceased to offer the athim a pair of eyes in a lady's breast," is tractions of novelty which, eighty years not not so much a movement of poetic ago, in the reign of Dr. Johnson, and under frenzy, as of typhus fever-to "terrify an a higher price of tea, they might have seold lady out of her wits," by assuming, in cured. Such habits, however, are inoffena stage-coach, the situation of a regal sive, if not particularly mysterious, nor sufferer from Shakspeare, is not eccentricity particularly significant. But that, in defect so much as painful discourtesy-and to re- of a paper boat, Shelley should launch upon quest of Rowland Hill, a man most pious the Serpentine a fifty pound bank note, and sincere," the use of Surrey chapel," seems to my view an act of childishness, as a theatre for publishing infidelity, would or else (which is worse) an act of empty have been so thoroughly the act of a heart- ostentation, not likely to proceed from one less coxcomb, that I, for one, cannot bring who generally exhibited in his outward myself to believe it an authentic anecdote. deportment a sense of true dignity. He Not that I doubt of Shelley's violating at who, through his family,* connected himself times his own better nature, as every man with that "spirit without spot," (as Shelley is capable of doing, under youth too fervid, calls him in the "Adonais,") Sir Philip wine too potent, and companions too mis- Sidney, (a man how like in gentleness, and leading; but it strikes me that, during in faculties of mind, to himself!)-he that, Shelley's very earliest youth, the mere acci- by consequence, connected himself with dent of Rowland Hill's being a man well-that later descendant of Penshurst, the born and aristocratically connected, yet noble martyr of freedom, Algernon Sidney, sacrificing these advantages to what he could not have degraded himself by a pride thought the highest of services, spiritual so mean as any which roots itself in wealth. service on behalf of poor laboring men, On the other hand, in the anecdote of his would have laid a pathetic arrest upon any repeating Dr. Johnson's benign act, by impulse of fun in one who, with the very" lifting a poor houseless outcast upon his same advantages of birth and position, had back, and carrying her to a place of rethe same deep reverence for the rights of fuge," I read so strong a character of inthe poor. Willing, at all times, to forget his own pretensions in the presence of those who seemed powerless-willing in a degree that seems sublime-Shelley could not but have honored the same nobility of feeling in another. And Rowland Hill, by his guileless simplicity, had a separate hold upon a nature so childlike as Shelley's. He

Family:" i. e. The gens in the Roman diate branch of the house did not, in a legal sense, sense, or collective house. Shelley's own immerepresent the family of Penshurst, because the rights of the lineal descent had settled upon another branch. But his branch had a collateral might, by accidents possible enough, have come participation in the glory of the Sidney name, and to be its sole representative.