learn, but only to recollect. At fourteen he was as forward as most lads at seventeen or eighteen, and was considered already ripe for college.

Without any disparagement to Mr. Wilson, it was certainly from Lord Chatham that young William profited most. Lord Chatham was an affectionate father to all his children. He took pleasure, as we have seen, in teaching them all. But he discerned-as who would not? -the rare abilities of William, and applied himself to unfold them with a never-failing care. From an early age he was wont to select any piece of eloquence he met with and transmit it to his son. Of this I have seen a striking instance in a note from him to Lady Chatham, which is endorsed in pencil " Ma. 1770," and which was thought to have no literary value. It was kindly presented to me in answer to my request for autographs to oblige some collectors among my friends; and it was designed to be cut up into two or three pieces of handwriting. But I found the note conclude with these words: "I send Domitian as a specimen of oratory for William." Now, "Domitian" was one of the subsidiary signatures of the author of Junius,' and the letter in question seems to be that of March 5, 1770.6 The words of Lord Chatham prove what has sometimes been disputed, that the eloquence of the author of 'Junius' was noticed and admired by the best judges, even when his compositions were concealed under another name.

In the same spirit Lord Chatham used to recommend

6 See Woodfall's Junius, vol. iii. p. 249.

to his son the best books as models. Thus he bid him read Barrow's Sermons, which he thought admirably calculated to furnish the copia verborum. Thus again he enjoined upon him the earnest study of the greatest Greek historians. Bishop Tomline says:-" It was by Lord Chatham's particular desire that Thucydides was the first Greek book which Mr. Pitt read after he came to college. The only other wish ever expressed by his Lordship relative to Mr. Pitt's studies was, that I would read Polybius with him."

But I have yet to notice what for Lord Chatham's object was his main plan of all. In 1803 my father, then Lord Mahon, had the high privilege, as a relative, of being for several weeks an inmate of Mr. Pitt's house at Walmer Castle. Presuming on that familiar intercourse, he told me that he ventured on one occasion to ask Mr. Pitt by what means he had acquired his admirable readiness of speech-his aptness of finding the right word without pause or hesitation. Mr. Pitt replied that whatever readiness he might be thought to possess in that respect was, he believed, greatly owing to a practice which his father had impressed upon him. Lord Chatham had bid him take up any book in some foreign language with which he was well acquainted, in Latin or Greek especially. Lord Chatham then enjoined him to read out of this work a passage in English, stopping, where he was not sure of the word to be used in English, until the right word came to his mind, and then proceed. Mr. Pitt stated that he had assiduously followed this practice. We may conclude that at first he had often to stop for awhile before he could recollect the

proper word, but that he found the difficulties gradually disappear, until what was a toil to him at first became at last an easy and familiar task.

7

To an orator the charm of voice is of very far more importance than mere readers of speeches would find it easy to believe. I have known some speakers in whom that one advantage seemed almost to supply the place of every other. The tones of William Pitt were by nature sonorous and clear; and the further art how to manage and modulate his voice to the best advantage was instilled into him by his father with exquisite skill. Lord Chatham himself was pre-eminent in that art, as also in the graces of action, insomuch that these accomplishments have been sometimes imputed to him as a fault. In a passage of Horace Walpole, written with the manifest desire to disparage him, we find him compared to Garrick.

8

To train his son in sonorous elocution Lord Chatham caused him to recite day by day in his presence passages from the best English poets. The two poets most commonly selected for this purpose were Shakespeare and Milton, and Mr. Pitt continued through life familiar with both. There is another fact which Lord Macaulay has recorded from tradition, and which I also remember to have heard:-"The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well deserved to be, one of his favourite passages; and his early friends used to talk, long after his death,

7 Already related by me in my 8 Memoirs of George II., vol. i. Aberdeen Address, March 25, 1858. p. 479.

p. 20.

of the just emphasis and the melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial.”

Being at fourteen so forward in his studies, William Pitt was sent to the University of Cambridge. He was entered at Pembroke Hall in the spring of 1773, and commenced his residence in October the same year. Mr. Wilson in the first instance attended him to Cambridge, and resided with him for some weeks in the same apartments, but solely for the care of his health, and without any concern in the direction of his studies. He had been commended to the especial care of the Rev. George Pretyman, 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.

George Pretyman, whom I have already cited and called by anticipation Bishop Tomline, was born at Bury St. Edmunds in 1750. Proceeding to Cambridge he showed not indeed any brilliant ability, but a keen and unflinching application. He made himself an excellent mathematician, as well as an excellent scholar, and in 1772 he was the Senior Wrangler for the year. I shall have occasion to show how in after life the friendship of Mr. Pitt as Minister raised him to high honours in the Church, and above all to the Bishopric of Lincoln. In 1803 he assumed the name of Tomline, on the bequest of a large estate. He was translated to the See of Winchester in 1820, and he died in 1827.

It was Bishop Tomline to whom, as we shall see, Mr. Pitt bequeathed his papers for examination. Some years later the Bishop evinced his attachment to the

memory of his pupil and his patron by undertaking the Memoirs of his Life. This work he did not live to finish. The first part, which was published in 1821, and which now lies before me, in three octavo volumes, extends only to the close of 1792. Great expectations had been formed on the appearance of this work. I am certainly not going beyond the truth if I say that such expectations of it were much disappointed. It does indeed impart to us an authentic and important though rather meagre account of Pitt in his earlier years. It does indeed contain some, though very few, extracts from his private correspondence. But nearly the whole remainder of this biography is a mere compilation. It gives us for the most part Pitt's measures from the 'Annual Register,' and his speeches from the Parliamentary debates. It was composed, as an Edinburgh reviewer said at the time, not by the aid of his Lordship's pen, but rather "by his Lordship's sharp and faithful scissors!"9

At Cambridge 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 and 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

› Edinburgh Review, July, 1821, |

p. 452.

1 See the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 295.