HENRY FIELDING. tures of Joseph Andrews, Lond., 1742, 2 vols. 12mo, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Lond., 1749, 2 vols. 12mo, and Amelia, Lond., 1752, 4 vols. 12mo, he also published History of Jonathan Wild the Great, Love in Several Masks, The Author's Farce, The Grub Street Opera, The Modern Husband, many other comedies, and poems, and esAmong the collective editions of his Works are those of Chalmers, 1821, 10 vols. Svo, and Roscoe, 1840, etc., imp. 8vo. Novels, with Memoir by Sir W. Scott, Edin., 1821, Savs. "I go to Sterne for the feelings of nature; Fielding for its vices; Johnson for a knowledge of the workings of its powers; and Shakspeare for every thing."-ABERNETHY. "Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, 'He was a blockhead!' and upon expressing my Astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal!' BOSWELL: Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life? JOHNSON: Why, sir, it is of very low life.""-BOSWELL: Life of Johnson. PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAYHOUSE. As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones, “What man that was in the strange dress: something," said he, "like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armour, is it?" Jones answered, "That is the ghost." To which Partridge replied, with a smile, "Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him better than that comes to. No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue till the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage? "Ola! sir," said he, "I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play; and if it was really a ghost, it 175 could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and yet if I was frightened I am not the only person." "Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a coward here beside thyself?" "Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay to be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? Lud have mercy upon such foolhardiness! Whatever happens, it is good enough for you. Follow you! I'd follow the devil as soon. Nay, perhaps it is the devil,— for they say he can put on what likeness he pleases. Oh! here he is again. No farther! No, you have gone far enough already; farther than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions." Jones offered to speak, but Hush, hush, dear sir, Partridge cried, don't you hear him?" And during the whole speech of the ghost he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost, and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions which succeeded each other in Hamlet succeeding likewise in him. 46 When the scene was over, Jones said, "Why, Partridge, you exceed my expectations. You enjoy the play more than I conceived possible." "Nay, sir," answered Partridge, if you are not afraid of the devil, I can't help it; but to be sure, it is natural to be surprised at such things, though I know there is nothing in them: not that it was the ghost that surprised me neither; for I should have known that to have been only a man in a strange dress; but when I saw the little man so frightened himself, it was that which took hold of me." "And dost thou imagine, then, Partridge," cries Jones, "that he was really frightened ?" "Nay, sir," said Partridge, "did not you yourself observe afterwards, when he found it was his own father's spirit, and how he was murdered in his garden, how his fear forsook him by degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow, as it were, just as I should have been had it been my own case. But hush! Ola! what noise is that? There he is again. Well, to be certain, though I know there is nothing at all in it, I am glad I am not down yonder where those men are." Then turning his eyes again upon Hamlet, "Ay, you may draw your sword: what signifies a sword against the power of the devil?" During the second act Partridge made very few remarks. He greatly admired the fineness of the dresses; nor could he help observing upon the king's countenance. "Well," said he, "how people may be deceived by faces! Nulla fides front is, I find, a true saying. Who would think, by look ing into the king's face, that he had ever committed a murder?" He then inquired after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he should be surprised, gave him no other satisfaction than" that he might possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of fire." Partridge sat in fearful expectation of this; and now, when the ghost made his next appearance, Partridge cried out, "There, sir, now: what say you now? is he frightened now or no? As much frightened as you think me, and, to be sure, nobody can help some fears. I would not be in so bad a condition as-what's his name?-Squire Hamlet is there, for all the world. Bless me! what's become of the spirit? As I am a living soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth;" "Indeed you saw right," answered Jones. "Well, well," cries Partridge, “I know it is only a play; and be sides, if there was anything in all this, Madam Miller would not laugh so; for as to you, sir, you would not be afraid, I believe, if the devil was here in person. There, there, ay, no wonder you are in such a passion; shake the vile wicked wretch to pieces. If she was my own mother I should serve her so. To be sure all duty to a mother is forfeited by such wicked doings. Ay, go about your business: I hate the sight of you!" Our critic was now pretty silent till the play which Hamlet introduces before the king. This he did not at first understand till Jones explained it to him; but he no sooner entered into the spirit of it, than he began to bless himself that he had never committed murder. Then turning to Mrs. Miller, he asked her "If she did not imagine the king looked as if he was touched; though he is," said he, "a good actor, and doth all he can to hide it. Well, I would not have so much to answer for as that wicked man there hath, to sit upon a much higher chair than he sits upon. No wonder he run away for your sake I'll never trust an innocent face again." The grave-digging scene next engaged the attention of Partridge, who expressed much surprise at the number of skulls thrown upon the stage, to which Jones answered, That it was one of the most famous burialplaces about town." "No wonder, then," cries Partridge, "that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse gravedigger. I had a sexton when I was clerk that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had ever one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than work, I believe!" Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull, he cried out, "Well! it is strange to see how fearless some men are. I never could bring myself to touch anything belonging to a dead man on any account. He seemed frightened enough too at the ghost, I thought. Nemo omnibus horis sapit." Little more worth remembering occurred during the play; at the end of which Jones asked him "Which of the players he had liked best?" To this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, "The king, without doubt.” Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer; "why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why, Lord help me, any man, that is, any good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me; but, indeed madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country; and the king for my money: he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor!"' History of Tom Jones. RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM, born 1708, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, after serving a short time as a cornet in the Blues, British army, was in 1735 chosen M.P. for Old Sarum, was premier for five months in 1757, and subsequently gained great glory in the same high position; Earl of Chatham, 1766; died 1778. See Letters written by the late Earl of Chatham to his Nephew Thomas Pitt (afterwards Lord Camelford), then at Cambridge, Lond., 1804, crown Svo: large paper; Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham, Lond., 1838. 2 vols. 8vo; History of the Earl of Chatham, by the Rev. Francis Thackeray, A.M., Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 4to; Goodrich's Select British Eloquence, N. York, 1852, 8vo. "His eloquence was of the very highest order: vehement, fiery, close to the subject, concise, sometimes eminently, even boldly, figurative: it was original and surprising, yet quite natural. The fine passages or felicitous hits in which all popular assemblies take boundless delight. . . form the grand charm of Lord Chatham's oratory. is the person to whom every one would at once He WILLIAM PITT. point if desired to name the most successful statesman and most brilliant orator that this country ever produced. Some fragments of his speeches have been handed down to us; but these bear so very small a proportion to the prodigious fame which his eloquence has left behind it, that far more is manifestly lost than has reached us."LORD BROUGHAM: Statesmen of the Time of George III. EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS IN THE WAR WITH AMERICA. 177 my country I never would lay down my arms. Never! Never! Never! But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our I cannot, my lords, I will not, join in brethren? My lords, these enormities_cry congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. aloud for redress and punishment. But, This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous my lords, this barbarous measure has been moment; it is not a time for adulation; the defended, not only on the principles of policy smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this and necessity, but also on those of morality: rugged and awful crisis. It is now neces- "for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord sary to instruct the throne in the language Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the nature have put into our hands." I am asdelusion and darkness which envelope it, and tonished, I am shocked, to hear such princidisplay, in its full danger and genuine col- ples confessed; to hear them avowed in this ours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. house or in this country. My lords, I did Can ministers still presume to expect support not intend to encroach so much on your atin their infatuation? Can parliament be so tention; but I cannot repress my indignadead to their dignity and duty as to give tion,-I feel myself impelled to speak. My their support to measures thus obtruded lords, we are called upon as members of this and forced upon them,-measures, my lords, house, as men, as Christians, to protest which have reduced this late flourishing against such horrible barbarity. "That God empire to scorn and contempt? But yester- and nature have put into our hands"! What day, and England might have stood against ideas of God and nature that noble lord may the world; now, none so poor to do her entertain I know not; but I know that such reverence! The people whom we at first detestable principles are equally abhorrent despised as rebels, but whom we now ac- to religion and humanity. What! to attribknowledge as enemies, are abetted against ute the sacred sanction of God and nature you, supplied with every military store, to the massacres of the Indian scalpinghave their interest consulted, and their am- knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, bassadors entertained by your inveterate murdering, devouring, drinking the blood enemy; and ministers do not, and dare of his mangled victims! Such notions shock not, interpose with dignity or effect. The every precept of morality, every feeling of desperate state of our army abroad is in humanity, every sentiment of honour. These part known. No man more highly esteems abominable principles, and this more abomiand honours the English troops than I do; nable avowal of them, demand the most deI know their virtues and their valour; I cisive indignation. I call upon that right know they can achieve anything but impos- reverend, and this most learned bench to sibilities; and I know that the conquest of vindicate the religion of their God, to supBritish America is an impossibility. You port the justice of their country. I call cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied America. What is your present situation sanctity of their lawn; upon the judges to there? We do not know the worst; but we interpose the purity of their ermine, to save know that in three campaigns we have done us from this pollution. I call upon the nothing and suffered much. You may swell honour of your lordships to reverence the every expense, accumulate every assistance, dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain and extend your traffic to the shambles of your own. I call upon the spirit and huevery German despot: your attempts will manity of my country to vindicate the nabe forever vain and impotent,-doubly so, tional character. I invoke the Genius of indeed, from this mercenary aid on which the Constitution. From the tapestry that you rely for it irritates, to an incurable adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of resentment, the minds of your adversaries, this noble lord frowns with indignation at to overrun them with the mercenary sons of the disgrace of his country. In vain did he rapine and plunder, devoting them and their defend the liberty and establish the religion possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. of Britain against the tyranny of Rome if If I were an American, as I am an English- these worse than Popish cruelties and inman, while a foreign troop was landed inquisitorial practices are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom? your Protestant brethren! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico: we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity: let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles. LORD GEORGE LYTTELTON, born 1708-9, entered Parliament 1730, and warmly opposed Sir Robert Walpole's administration; became a Lord of the Treasury, 1744, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1756; created Lord Lyttelton, 1757; died 1773. He was the author of Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan, vol. i., Lond., 1735. 8vo, 5th edit., 1744, 12mo; vol. ii., 3d edit., 1736, 12mo; Monody to the Memory of a Lady lately Deceased [his wife], Lond., 1747, fol.; Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul, Lond., 1747, 8vo, and in Christian Evidences, Bohn, 1850, royal 8vo; Dialogues of the Dead, Lond., 1760, 8vo; New Dialogues, 1762, 8vo, 4th edit., 1765, 8vo; The History of the Life of King Henry the Second, and of the Age in which he Lived, etc., Lond., 1764-67, 4 vols. 4to, Dublin, 1768, 4 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1769, 6 vols. 8vo, 1777, 6 vols. 8vo. Miscellaneous Works, Lond., 1774, 4to, Dubl., 1774, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., Lond., 1775, 4to, 3d edit., 1776, 3 vols. 8vo. Poetical Works, Lond., 1785, 12mo, Glasg., 1787, fol., 1801, 1 vol. 8vo: and in Collections of British Poets. See his Memoirs and Correspondence, 1734 to 1773, by R. Phillimore, Lond., 1845, 2 vols. 8vo. "His Majesty then asked him [Dr. Johnson] what he thought of Lord Lyttelton's History, which was then just published. Johnson said he thought his style pretty good, but that he had blamed Henry the Second rather too much."-BosWELL: Life of Johnson, edit. 1848, royal 8vo, 185. "The reader may consult Lyttelton's Historyan elaborate and valuable work-with advantage." -SHARON TURNER. "Pedantry was so deeply fixed in his nature that the hustings, the Treasury, the Exchequer, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, left him the same dreaming school-boy that they found him."-LORD MACAULAY: Edin. Rev., July, 1835: Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Revolution; and in Macaulay's Essays. CHARACTER OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. The character of this prince has seldom been set in its true light; some eminent writers have been dazzled so much by the more shining parts of it that they have hardly seen his faults; while others, out of a strong detestation of tyranny, have been unwilling to allow him the praise he de serves. He may with justice be ranked among the greatest generals any age has produced. There was united in him activity, vigilance, intrepidity, caution, great force of judgment, and never failing presence of mind. He was strict in his discipline, and kept his soldiers in perfect obedience; yet preserved their affection. Having been from his very childhood continually in war, and at the head of armies, he joined to all the capacity that genius could give all the knowledge and skill that experience could teach, and was a perfect master of the military art as it was practised in the times wherein he lived. His constitution enabled him to endure any hardships, and very few were equal to him in personal strength, which was an excellence of more importance than it is now, from the manner of fighting then in use. It is said of him that none except himself could bend his bow. His courage was heroic, and he possessed it not only in the field, but (which was more uncommon) in the cabinet, attempting great things with means that to other men appeared totally unequal to such undertakings, and steadily prosecuting what he had boldly resolved; but never disturbed or disheartened by difficulties in the course of his enterprises; but having that noble vigour of mind which, instead of bending to opposition, rises against it, and seems to have a power of controlling and commanding Fortune herself. Nor was he less superior to pleasure than to fear: no luxury softened him, no riot disordered, no sloth relaxed. . . . A lust of power, which no regard to justice could limit, the most unrelenting cruelty, and the most insatiable avarice, possessed his soul. It is true, indeed, that among many acts of JAMES HARRIS. extreme humanity some shining instances of great clemency may be produced, that were either the effects of his policy, which taught him this method of acquiring friends, or of his magnanimity, which made him slight a weak and subdued enemy, such as was Edgar Atheling, in whom he found neither spirit nor talents able to contend with him for the crown. But where he had no advantage nor pride in forgiving, his nature discovered itself to be utterly void of all sense of compassion; and some barbarities which he committed exceeded the bounds that even tyrants and conquerors prescribe to themselves. Most of our ancient historians give him the character of a very religious prince but his religion was after the fashion of those times, belief without examination, and devotion without piety. It was a religion that prompted him to endow monasteries, and at the same time allowed him to pillage kingdoms; that threw him on his knees before a relic or cross, but suffered him unrestrained to trample upon the liberties and rights of mankind. As to his wisdom in government. of which some modern writers have spoken very highly, he was, indeed, so far wise that through a long unquiet reign he knew how to support oppression by terror, and employ the properest means for the carrying on a very iniquitous and violent administration. But that which alone deserves the name of wisdom in the character of a king, the maintaining of authority by the exercise of those virtues which make the happiness of his people, was what, with all his abilities, he does not appear to have possessed. Nor did he excel in those soothing and popular arts which sometimes change the complexion of a tyranny, and give it a fallacious appearance of freedom. His government was harsh and despotic, violating even the principles of that constitution which he himself had established. Yet so far he performed the duty of a sovereign that he took care to maintain a good police in his realm; curbing licentiousness with a strong hand, which, in the tumultuous state of his government. was a great and difficult work. How well he performed it we may learn even from the testimony of a contemporary Saxon historian, who says that during his reign a man might have travelled in perfect security all over the kingdom with his bosom full of gold, nor durst any kill another in revenge of the greatest offences, nor offer violence to the chastity of a woman. But it was a poor compensation that the highways were safe, when the courts of justice were dens of thieves, and when almost every man in authority, or in office, used his power | 179 to oppress and pillage the people. The king himself did not only tolerate, but encourage, support, and even share these extortions. Though the greatness of the ancient landed estate of the crown, and the feudal profits to which he legally was entitled, rendered him one of the richest monarchs in Europe he was not content with all that opulence, but by authorizing the sheriffs who collected his revenues in the several counties to practise the most grievous vexations and abuses for the raising of them higher by a perpetual auction of the crown lands, so that none of his tenants could be secure of possession, if any other would come and offer more; by various iniquities in the court of exchequer, which was entirely Norman; by forfeitures wrongfully taken; and lastly, by arbitrary and illegal taxations, he drew into his treasury much too great a proportion of the wealth of his kingdom. It must, however, be owned, that if his avarice was insatiably and unjustly rapacious, it was not meanly parsimonious, nor of that sordid kind which brings on a prince dishonour and contempt. He supported the dignity of his crown with a decent magnificence; and though he never was lavish, he sometimes was liberal, especially to his soldiers and the church. But looking on money as a necessary means of maintaining and increasing power, he devised to accumulate as much as he could, rather, perhaps, from an ambitious than a covetous nature; at least his avarice was subservient to his ambition, and he laid up wealth in his coffers, as he did arms in his magazines, to be drawn out, when any proper occasion required it, for the enlargement of his dominions. Upon the whole, he had many great qualities, but few virtues; and if those actions that most particularly distinguish the man or the king are impartially considered, we shall find that in his character there is much to admire, but still more to abhor. History of the Life of King Henry the Second. JAMES HARRIS, M.P., born 1709, became a Lord of the Admiralty, 1762, Lord of the Treasury, 1763, Secretary and Comptroller to the Queen, 1774, and died 1780. This very learned Grecian was the author of Three Treatises: I. Art, II. Music, Painting, and Poetry, III. Happiness, Lond., 1744, etc., 8vo; Hermes, a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar, Lond., 1750, etc., 8vo; The Spring, a Pastoral, 1762, 4to; Philosophical Arrangements, Edin. and Lond., 1775, 8vo; Philological Enquiries. |