ART. VII.-Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt. By Earl Stanhope. Vols. I. and II. London, 1861...: IN undertaking to write the Life of his distinguished kinsman,

Lord Stanhope is not entering upon absolutely untrodden ground; but his predecessors have done their work so badly, that to the generality of readers a Life of Pitt will be absolutely new. Bishop Tomline's performance has been described, by a high authority, as having the honour of being the worst biography of its size in the world. The small portion of it that is original is undoubtedly distinguished by the solemn emptiness of which the Bishop was an acknowledged master. But the sarcastic observation of a contemporary reviewer, that 'the work was due less to his Lordship's pen than to his Lordship's sharp and faithful scissors,' is really applicable in almost as great a degree to the work of his predecessor, Mr. John Gifford. Gifford's Life of Pitt was 'conceived on too large a scale, and drew too liberally upon Hansard, to be an attractive biography; and a biographer misses his chief function if his performance is not attractive. His business is to increase the fame of his hero, and no hero's fame was ever increased by being associated with a dull compilation. Lord Macaulay's essay in the Encyclopædia Britannica' is, indeed, as fascinating as anything that ever issued from his pen; but he was necessarily limited to a very narrow space, and the sketch with which he was forced to content himself is too slight to rank as a biography. The field is, therefore, open to Lord Stanhope practically without competitors. Few persons could be better fitted to perform a task which every Englishman must wish to see done well. The biography of Pitt should not be abandoned, as the biographies of great men too often are, to writers who have no other title to literary fame. A life that was all public, a career so closely intertwined with English history that all its lights and shades correspond with the prosperity or the perils of the whole community, is most fittingly intrusted to the hands of one who holds the first rank among the living historians of Eng land. Lord Stanhope's political position is also favourable to his undertaking. That Pitt's biographer should have been once a House of Commons partisan is almost indispensable to enable him to describe with fidelity a conflict which was carried on almost entirely within its walls; but a very keen interest in the party struggles of the moment would be incompatible with that judicial habit of mind which is of the first necessity in the chronicler of deeds which have been the subject of such embittered controversy. It is natural that high expectations should be excited by a work whose author possesses so many qualifications Vol. 109.-No. 218.

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for his task; and the work itself will not disappoint those who have formed them. It is agreeable and lively in its style, and at the same time exact and ample in its details, without overtasking the reader's attention by the reprint of tedious state papers or of the jejune and lifeless abstracts which are all that is left to us of the oratory ory of those times, Its solid merits as an historical contribution will be generally recognized. The pleasantness of the style does not rob the narrative of its impartiality. In respect to transactions and questions some of which affect, us, yery nearly even now, it may not be possible to maintain an absolute impartiality; but Lord Stanhope seems to have approached, more nearly than any previous writer upon the same period to this unattainable ideal. Indeed, his gentleness of judgment often overshoots the requirements of equity; it amounts to optimism. He describes the proceedings of an age when political corruption had not died out, and faction was looked upon rather as a merit than a sin, with as large a charity rity and as unsuspicious a faith in the virtue of politicians as if he were writing of our own quieter and purer times. It is, undoubtedly, a fault on the right side. Readers will be more competent and more willing to temper Lord Stanhope's mercy with justice than to perform the opposite process; and his kindlier judgments and roseate views are very agreeable reading, and leave pleasant illusions on the mind, just as a Rich mond head is pleasanter to look at than a photograph, though one may not be able to repress the consciousness that it overflatters the grim human reality.

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The materials already in existence for the history of this period are very ample, and have been long before the world. Lord Stanhope, however, brings to the common stock some new contributions of very considerable interest. Pitt's letters to his mother, his correspondence with his friend the Duke of Rutland, and the King's letters to him, have been committed to Lord Stanhopes care, and are either printed at length in these volumes, or worked up into the narrative, That they should introduce any new facts into a history which has been so exhaustively investigated was, of course, not to be expected; but they enable him to give fresh life to an old story, and, here and there, to throw a new light upon a controverted question. His suggestion, for instance, that Lord Temple's sudden retirement from office, two days after he had overthrown the Coalition, was due to his indignation at not being able to extract a dukedom out of George the Third, will probably be accepted henceforth as the solution of that mysterious episode. It is certainly more probable than the theory of that most inaccurate of chroniclers, Wraxall, which both Lord Macaulay and Mr. Massey have endorsed, that he retired in disgust

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because he could not procure an immediate dissolution. Stanhope produces a letter of George the Third's, hitherto unpublished, which proves that the King was very angry at Temple's desertion on this occasion, and stigmatized it as base conduct;" yet no one pressed an immediate dissolution more anxiously upon Mr. Pitt than the King himself, and he was not likely to treat as base conduct' an over-zealous maintenance of the same opinion. On the other hand, Temple's later correspondence betrays that he had at some earlier period asked for a dukedom, and that he was very sore at having been refused,* The hint which is furnished by the worthlessness of the excuse which he instructed his brother, Mr. W. Grenville, to make in the House of Commons, deserves, too, to be taken into consideration. It was to the effect that Temple had resigned, in order to be in a better position for repelling the charges that had been made against him in that House. But the charges had been made before he took office, so that, if they were enough to induce him to resign it, they would have been enough to induce him never to accept it. Every one appears to be agreed that the reason thus publicly given was not the true one; but if there had not been something in his reason for retiring which he was ashamed of publishing, he never would have put forward a transparently false one in its stead. The most sensitive of men, which Temple was not, would hardly feel that it was disgraceful to have had his advice on a matter of mere tactics overruled; but most people would be rather ashamed of letting it be known that they had abandoned their Sovereign in a grave emergency because an extra title had been refused them,

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The letters of George the Third are the most interesting part of the new matter contributed by Lord Stanhope. They give a very different picture of the King from that which has been drawn by partisan humourists and pamphleteers. They show a shrewd and intelligent mind, thoroughly familiar with public affairs. The style of them is hasty, the grammar not always irreproachable but the sound and practical character of the King's opinions would have done honour to persons who have far more oppor

A letter of Mr. W. Grenville's, to which Lord Stanhope has not adverted, shows that about eight months before, while Temple was still in Ireland, he was' scheming to obtain a step in the peerage, and was only withheld from pressing it on the King by the King's resolution to grant no patents while Fox was minister. It therefore strongly confirms the idea that he seized the first moment after Fox's fall and his own accession to office to urge his claim. The following is the passage, in a letter dated April 1, 1783:

You will observe that part of the King's ground is a resistance to advancements as well as to creations. This seemed naturally to throw so much difficulty upon your object that I thought there would be an indelicacy in pressing it at the time you were lamenting the unavoidable difficulties under which he already labours. This delay I firmly believe will be very short indeed.' 2 N 2

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tunities of mixing with the world than can ever fall to the lot of monarchs. A taste for useless and costly wars has often been How ill those who make this made the reproach of his policy. charge have appreciated the real nature of his convictions and inclinations, the following extract will sufficiently prove. It is a letter written to Mr. Pitt on the occasion of the introduction of the sinking fund. Some portions of it read like selections from one of Mr. Bright's attacks upon Foreign-office diplomacy:Considering Mr. Pitt has had the unpleasant office of providing for the by the last war, it is but just he should have the full merit he deserves of having the public know and feel that he mes incurred by has now proposed a measure that will render the nation again respectable, if she has the sense to remain quiet some years, and not by wanting to take a showy part in the transactions of Europe again becothe the dupe of other Powers and from ideal greatness draw herself intos lasting distressThe told English saying is applicable to our siduation: England must cut her coat according to her cloth." od The King's manner, like his style, never did justice to the sterling value of the shrewd thought and honest emotions that it concealed, boMankind, and especially literary mankind, are the ready dupes of a squibor of a caricature and one ridiculous, trait or habit Twill often outweigh in their judgment a whole catalogue of virines. George the Third's celebrated Whats what?' has made a deeper impression upon the minds of the writers of the last thirty years than all the coarseness of his grandfather, or the still graver failings of this son.ld The letters published in these volumes, will do something to restore to its propen place in public estimation the character of a Monarch who may have committed errors, but who has beeh systematically maligned, not on account of those errors, but bine account of his hostility to the profligate statesman whom the Whigs have delighted to honoured on 911 Two volumes of the biography have been published, extending casi far as the year 1796 qtwo more, which will conclude the twork, will shortly follow. The earlier portion of the biography, which deals with the brief interval that elapsed before he became ha public leader, is enriched with a considerable number of Pitt's oletters to his mother. They, of course, give a clearer insight into the character of the man than it is possible to obtain when once the possession of political power had made communicativeness a - crime. As his life advanced, and both business and secrets mudtiplied upon him, his private correspondence became much more scanty. He could no longer speak freely on the subjects nearest to his heart. His whole life was given up to politics, and politics was precisely the subject on which he was bound to be discreet. Consequently his letters come at rarer intervals, and are written in a tone which, though kindly, is obviously constrained.

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We shall not accompany Lord Stanhope in the earliest stages of his biography. In a previous number of this Journal (No. 194) we followed. Pitt through his boyhood and earliest youth, and through his first political struggles—his acceptance of office under Lord Shelburne, when Fox resigned in Lord Shelburne's appointment-his expulsion from power upon the question of the American peace by the coalition of Fox and North, who had opposed each other all their lives and his of

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the India Bill to dismiss the Coalition. We need not recount how the dismissed Ministers defeated him in division after "division-how his popularity grew rapidly in the country in.. spite of the most threatening resolutions of the House of Commons -how he closed the contest by an appeal to the country and how the appeal was answered by a majority towhich secured his supremacy for life A-conflux of strangely mingled causes had combined to raise him to an eminence which no other English statesman has occupied since England ceased to be despotically ruled. To the measureless astonishment of his adversaries he had at the age of twenty-four, scattered by his own single arm a combination of all thats was eloquent and all that was powerful in the House of Commons. They had never dreamed of such an issue. It had occurred to them as a possibility that the King's undisguised dislike of Fox might break out into action and cause them a temporary reverse. Their letters show that they were not blind to the possible contingency of n short sojourning opposition; but they never harboured a doubt that their huge majority would forces the King to swallow his antipathies and submit to them again In the House of Commons at least they thought that they were unassailable. The idea of danger there never crossed the mind of the most despondent. The numbers who, during the last ten years, had formed the opposing hosts in parliamentary campaigns were now united into a single phalanx.The debaters, who had so often in eloquent periods besought the nation to believe in each other's incapacity and treason, were now rallied under a common standard, and were prepared to combine their vituperations against any one who should attempt to dispute their supremacy. There was no visible power that could make head against such an array in the existing House of Commons; and the leaders of the Coalition had persuaded themselves that an appeal to the constituencies would only add fresh strength to their position.ol on blog 9,4 vir

And yet when the trial came they were defeated by a mere youth, with no majority, no eloquent supporters, no organized party-following, no antecedent fame. He not only utterly routed

them,