NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE EARLY YEARS OF PITT.*

THOUGH we have nothing quite worthy of the subject, we must, in one shape or another-in separate forms or in incidental notices-have had as many Lives of Pitt as there have been editions of Mrs. Rundle's Cookery. The most eloquent of modern historians has given us a masterly sketch. But we still look to a Life of Pitt from the pen of Lord Stanhope as an acceptable addition to English literature, and it claims our earliest attention. If the value of a biography were to be estimated by its bulk, the Life by Bishop Tomline would be unapproachable. In other respectswithout saying in the words of Lord Macaulay that it is "the worst biographical work of its size in the world"-for that would be saying a great deal-it may certainly be assumed that, to the general reader, its pages, like the bones in the prophet's valley, must seem both " very many and very dry." It almost rivals the celebrated volumes on Burleigh by Dr. Nares, which the great critic whom we have just quoted informs us "measured fifteen hundred cubic inches and weighed sixty pounds avoirdupois." The Life of Pitt by Gifford, like Bishop Tomline's, is of an overwhelming character. It is true that the average longevity of man may have increased, but as the demands upon his days and hours seem to increase in like proportion, we have not yet the leisure that such works as these require.

As a kinsman and a man of letters, the papers previously confided to Dr. Tomline have come into the hands of Lord Stanhope, with the addition of unused materials from several other sources: and if they had been availed of to illustrate important epochs or events, we might have had a valuable and a readable volume. Lord Stanhope has been ambitious of giving us something more extensive. Two fair tomes are already before us, and it is said that two more may be expected to complete the work. We cannot think that this was necessary, even attractive as he may have the power of making them. After his twenty-fourth year the life of Pitt was but the history of his times. He had no existence separate from the great events in which he took part; and we are disposed to hold that the peculiar province of his biographer was to show in what way any of them had been dependent upon his personal character or influenced by the circumstances of his position. History had already done the rest. It will be to the first part of his life that we shall at present more especially refer. If we do not add to the incidents already recorded, we may

Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt. By Lord Stanhope, Author of the "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht." Vols, I, and II. Murray. July-VOL. CXXII. NO. CCCCLXXXVII.

1861.

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bring them more clearly together than when they are connected with other subjects: and (as bearing upon his political life) our sketch may be considered more as a preface than a commentary.

So far

It was an interesting childhood; for it clearly foreshadowed his future powers, and they were carefully and judiciously cultivated. To his birthplace Lord Stanhope has given an additional claim upon our veneration. "The house and grounds of Hayes, which had been purchased by Lord Chatham, were disposed of by his eldest son after his decease. as can be judged at present (we are told) the house has been but little altered since his time. The best bedroom is still pointed out as the apartment in which William Pitt was born; it is most probably also the apartment in which his father died." There is a city in Italy where the house in which any celebrity, great or small, has lived or died, is marked by a marble tablet; and in one of its principal streets almost every house is thus distinguished: Al Marchese Borro, il terrore dei Turchi, or Qui Melpomene educò l'incomparabile Sgricci.* This is bringing a reverential feeling into ridicule. By Englishmen it is too little regarded.

At Hayes, however, whether the house be marked by a tablet or not, on the 28th of May, 1759, William Pitt was born; and having very "early given signs of great promise," he was designed by his father for the Bar. The expression of his young ambition "to speak in the House of Commons like papa," and Lady Holland's prophecy, when he was only eight years old, that "he would be a thorn in her son Charles's side as long as he lived," may be authentic or not. Such anticipations of future greatness are amongst the staples of biography, and are much more frequently expressed than realised. It was often oracularly declared of one of our school-fellows, by his grandmother, that he would certainly be a great man. He turned out to be a most incorrigible blockhead; but had it been otherwise the saying would have been commemorated. The schoolmaster of a boy to whom, since his death, a statue has been erected, pronounced that he would either distinguish himself, or be hung; a prediction of which both the contingencies might formerly, in some cases, have been fulfilled. Traditions like these may be received for just as much, or as little, as they are worth.

Under the instructions of a private tutor, the Rev. E. Wilson, Pitt went on rapidly acquiring. They had resided together, with some of Lord Chatham's other children, at Weymouth; and in 1773, accompanied by his elder brother-the future hero of Walcheren-they passed the summer, for the sake of sea-bathing, at Lyme Regis, where a house in Broad-street used recently to be pointed out as their place of abodethe marks the boys had made while playing at marbles being still visible on the flags of its porch.

It was here that he met with Hayley the poet. Pitt had himself precociously written a tragedy in blank verse, which Macaulay, to whom Lord Stanhope had shown the manuscript at Chevening, describes as "bad of course, but not worse than the tragedies of Hayley;" and in some respects highly curious. "There is no love. The plot is political; and it is remarkable that the interest, such as it is, turns on a contest about a regency. On one side is a faithful servant of the crown, on the

* Brockedon's Road Book. Murray. 1835.

other an ambitious and unprincipled conspirator. At length the King, who had been missing, reappears, resumes his power, and rewards the faithful defender of his rights." Judging merely by internal evidence, it might be taken (he suggests) for a play written by some Pittite poetaster at the time of the rejoicings for the recovery of George the Third in 1789.*

Hayley evidently regarded the "wonderful boy of fourteen" the author of "Laurentius, King of Clarinium," with something of awe, and regretted that he had not ventured to show him an Epic which he had recently commenced. Yet Hayley was not in the habit of undervaluing himself. He, and Cowper, and Darwin were at that time the ascending stars of poetry, and their laudations were mutual and self-complacent. Cowper (the only one of the three whose position our sympathies, and the evidence of new editions, still recognise) addressed the author of the "Botanic Garden," a few years later, in some verses which commencedTwo poets (poets by report

Not oft so well agree),

Sweet harmonist of Flora's court!

Conspire to honour Thee.

And Hayley thus endorsed the praise that followed,

This with delight two poets heard;

Time verifies it daily;

Trust it, dear DARWIN, on the word

Of CowPER and of HAYLEY!

Such bas bleu intercourse as this would not have had much charm for a mind like Pitt's; and we accordingly hear nothing more either of Hayley or of poetry. The tragedy was twice acted at Burton Pynsent by the children, and there is a prologue "spoken by Mr. Pitt" which is "signed in his own hand."

Owing to feeble health his education was continued at home under the tuition of Mr. Wilson. 66 My poor William is still ailing," was the constant burden of his father's letters; and "there were great fears that so frail a plant would never be reared to maturity." It was no doubt on this account that he was never sent to any public or private school-that Eton, probably, lost an addition to the list of its eminent statesmen; but the direction of his studies was not left entirely to his tutor. Under him he learned Greek and Latin, and the elements of mathematics; and he was so quick in seizing the meaning of an author that he seemed already to know what he was supposed to be learning. In moral and religious training, and in the art which few were so well able to teach, he owed more to the instructions of his father. It was he who called his attention to the occasional eloquence of Junius, or the copia verborum of Barrow. It was he who enjoined upon him the earnest study of the greatest Greek historians; who recommended him to translate impromptu and aloud that he might acquire readiness in finding the words he wanted; who made him recite in his presence from Shakspeare and from Milton; and taught him, with exquisite skill, so to modulate a voice that was naturally clear and sonorous, as to give him much of the power to which he afterwards

Encyc. Brit., Art. Pitt; repub. in the Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. Vol. II.

owed his mastery in debate. His early friends long remembered the just emphasis and melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial.

Mr.

Being as forward at fourteen as most lads at seventeen or eighteen, he was sent to Cambridge and entered at Pembroke Hall in 1773. Wilson accompanied him, and resided for some weeks in the same apartments, but solely for the care of his health. His studies were directed by the Rev. George Pretyman (afterwards Bishop Tomline), "one of the two tutors of his college; and it was not long ere that gentleman became both his sole instructor and his familiar friend."

"At Cambridge"-we again quote from Lord Stanhope-" William Pitt was still intent on his main object of oratorical excellence. Immediately after his arrival we find him attend a course of lectures on Quintilian. But his health at this period gave cause for great alarm. From a boy he had shot up far too rapidly to a tall lank stripling, with no corresponding development of breadth or muscle. In the first few weeks of his college life he was seized with a most serious illness. For nearly two months he was confined to his rooms, and reduced to so weak a state that upon his convalescence he was four days in travelling to London."

He remained at home for half a year; and it was as a means towards his recovery that Dr. Addington, the family physician, prescribed, in addition to early hours and exercise on horseback, those copious draughts of port which became a habit, a required stimulus, and not improbably a cause of early death. On his return to Cambridge he adhered rigidly to Dr. Addington's prescriptions. He neglected neither the early hours, the daily ride, nor the draughts of port; and whether in consequence of the remedy or in spite of it, he slowly but steadily gained strength. At the age of eighteen," says his tutor, "he was a healthy man, and he continued so for many years.'

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Except when prevented by illness, he was never absent from chapel or from hall, and it was in his tutor's society that most of his time was passed. His favourite study was mathematics, in which, as well as in classics, his knowledge is said to have become both extensive and profound. He never much applied himself to Greek or Latin composition. "He had never mastered the laborious inutilities of the ancient metres" (we quote from Lord Stanhope); but in the true aim of classic study"the accurate and critical comprehension of the classic authors-he was certainly in the first rank." "There was scarce a Greek" (continues his lordship) "or a Latin writer of any eminence among the classics, the whole of whose works Pitt and Pretyman did not read together. The future statesman was a nice observer of their different styles, and alive to all their various excellences. So anxious was he not to leave even a single Greek poet unexplored, that at his request Mr. Pretyman went through with him the obscure rhapsody of Lycophron. This,' says his preceptor, he read with an ease at first sight which, if I had not witnessed it, I should have thought beyond the compass of human in

tellect.'

The knowledge he had thus acquired was retained amidst all the cares of office. Lord John Russell has recorded* that while Lord Harrowby

Memorials of Fox, vol. ii. p. 3, cited by Lord Stanhope.

and Lord Grenville were one day waiting for Mr. Pitt in his library they opened a Thucydides, and came to a passage which they could not make out. When Pitt came in he construed it with the greatest ease. Lord Harrowby referring to the same story, said that they were waiting to join Mr. Pitt in an afternoon ride, and that, coming into the room ready to go out with them, he translated the passage in a moment, hat in hand.

His other studies at the university were Civil Law, experimental philosophy, and English literature. He drew out for his own use a complete and correct analysis of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding; and it was probably at this time that he also made himself acquainted with the doctrines of Adam Smith. As examples of style, he preferred Robertson and Hume to Johnson and Gibbon was fond of Middleton's Life of Cicero, and fonder still of the political works of Lord Bolingbroke. The last had been recommended by Lord Chatham, who thought that the "Remarks on the History of England" were worthy of being "studied and almost got by heart for the inimitable beauty of the style." Pitt appears to have retained through life an equal admiration of them. "At Walmer Castle" (says Lord Stanhope) " my father heard him more than once declare that there was no loss in literature which he more lamented than that scarce any trace remained to us of Bolingbroke's Parliamentary Speeches."

To the cultivation of his talent for public speaking he constantly and carefully devoted his attention. He still followed the practice recommended by Lord Chatham, of translating aloud. Every striking passage in oratory or history was diligently studied; and "any eloquent sentence, or beautiful or forcible expression," he was in the habit of copying. "Nothing can be accomplished," said Sheridan, "without hard work;" and when his son smiled at a remark that seemed so little exemplified in his life, "every man," he added, "who has succeeded must have worked some time and I once worked hard myself."

:

Amongst Pitt's acquirements, the only modern language was French. But though Lord Stanhope tells us that his father "had been present at an animated argument between Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt on the merits of Molière," we shall see, as we go on, that he is not warranted in saying that Pitt had learned to speak French with ease. It is remarkable, indeed, considering that it was then the almost universal medium of diplomacy, how few even of the higher classes had a familiar and practical knowledge of the language of our neighbours. After the Continent had been opened to us for a few years previous to the fall of the Bourbons, it was much the same. We can bear testimony to this ourselves. During the revolutionary war, which so soon followed the time we speak of, an important communication from Holland to the British government was confided to a diplomatic personage, with whom we had long afterwards the pleasure of being intimate. On his arrival at the Foreign-office, late in the day, there was no one amongst those summoned to receive him who could converse with him fluently or even very intelligibly. At length an old naval lord was sent for, whose French was considered perfect; but he had unfortunately been brought from the dinner-table, and he was past a distinct utterance of any language: it was consequently the following morning before the communication from Holland could be fully discussed. This we mention par parenthèse.