IV. This faded form! this pallid hue! This blood my veins is clotting in: My years are many, they were few When first I entered at the U-niversity of Gottingen-niversity of Gottingen. V. There first for thee my passion grew, VI. Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu, -niversity of Gottingen. For his share in this drama of "The Rovers," the vials of Niebuhr's wrath were emptied upon poor Canning's head. It is amusing to see the great German historian, the reconstructor of Roman history, exhibiting so curious a misapprehension of contemporary English history, and of the characters of contemporary English statesmen, as the following passage evinces : Canning was at that time (1807) at the head of foreign affairs in England. History will not form the same judgment of him as that formed by his contemporaries. He had great talents, but was not a great statesman; he was one of those persons who distinguish themselves as the squires of political heroes. He was highly accomplished in the two classical languages, but without being a learned scholar. He was especially conversant with the Greek writers; he had likewise poetical talent, but only for satire. At first he had joined the leaders of opposition against Pitt's ministry; Lord Grey, who perceived his ambition, advised him, half in joke, to join the Ministers, as he would make his fortune. He did so, and was employed to write articles for the newspapers and satirical verses, which were often directed against his former benefactors. 66 Through the influence of the Ministers he came into Parliament. So long as the great eloquence of former times lasted, and the great men were alive, his talent was admired; but younger persons had no great pleasure in his petulant epigrammatic eloquence and his jokes, which were often in bad taste. He joined the Society of the Anti-Jacobins, which defended everything connected with existing institutions. This society published a journal, in which the most honoured names of foreign countries were attacked in the most scandalous manner. German literature was at that time little known in England, and it was associated there with the ideas of Jacobinism and revolution. Canning then published in the AntiJacobin the most shameful pasquinade which was ever written against Germany, under the title of Matilda Pottingen.' Gottingen is described in it as the sink of all infamy; professors and students as a gang of miscreants; licentiousness, incest, and atheism as the character of the German people. Such was Canning's beginning. He was at all events useful, a sort of political Cossack.". -(Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, vol. ii. p. 242.) There is one of the prose contributions to the Anti-Jacobin which bears the impress of Canning's peculiar humour, and which contains specimens of oratory so well suited to some of the leading speakers of the Reform League that we must not pass it by. It is entitled the "Report of the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom at the Crown and Anchor Tavern." The writer puts into the mouth of Erskine a speech of which the following extract contains the peroration:— "Mr. Erskine concluded by recapitulating, in a strain of agonizing and impressive eloquence, the several more prominent heads of his speech. He had been a soldier and a sailor, and had a son at Winchester School; he had been called by special retainers, during the summer, into many different and distant parts of the country, travelling chiefly in post-chaises. He felt himself called upon to declare that his poor faculties were at the service of his country-of the free and enlightened part of it, at least. He stood here as a man; he stood in the eye, indeed, in the hand, of God, to whom (in the presence of the company and waiters) he solemnly appealed. He was of noble, perhaps royal, blood; he had a house at Hampstead; was convinced of the necessity of a thorough and radical reform; his pamphlet had gone through thirty editions, skipping alternately the odd and even numbers; he loved the constitution, to which he would cling and grapple; and he was clothed with the infirmities of man's nature. He would apply to the present French rulers (particularly Barras and Reubel) the words of the poet :— Be to their faults a little blind; Be to their virtues very kind; Let all their ways be unconfined, And clap the padlock on their mind! And for these reasons, thanking the gentlemen who had done him the honour to drink his health, he should propose, 'Merlin, the late Minister of Justice, and Trial by Jury." A lengthy speech is delivered by the great Macfungus-by whom is intended the late Sir James Mackintosh. From the ruins of all ancient governments and constitutions, he proposes to raise a magnificent Temple of Freedom, where "Our infants shall be taught to lisp, in tender accents, the Revolutionary Hymn,-where with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine, and olive, and cypress, and ivy, with violets, and roses, and daffodils, and dandelions in our hands, we will swear respect to childhood, and manhood, and old age, and virginity, and womanhood, and widowhood; but, above all, to the Supreme Being. "These prospects, fellow-citizens, may possibly be deferred. The Machiavelism of governments may for the time prevail, and this unnatural and execrable contest may yet be prolonged; but the hour is not far distant; persecution will only serve to accelerate it, and the blood of patriotism streaming from the severing axe, will call down vengeance on our oppressor in a voice of thunder. I expect the contest, and I am prepared for it. I hope I shall never shrink, nor swerve, nor start aside, wherever duty and inelination may place me. My services, my life itself, are at your disposal-whether to act or to suffer, I am yours-with Hampden in the field, or with Sidney on the scaffold. My example may be more useful to you than my talents; and this head may, perhaps, serve your cause more effectually, if placed on a pole upon Temple Bar, than if it was occupied in organizing your committees, in preparing your revolutionary explosions, and conducting your correspondence." When Canning was attacked in Parliament for his share in the AntiJacobin, he declared that he felt no shame for its character or principles, nor any other sorrow for the share that he had had in it than that which the imperfection of his pieces was calculated to inspire. Pitt, however, seems to have thought it better to bring the publication to a close, and it accordingly terminated with the number which contained"New Morality." A monthly review was, indeed, afterwards started under the same name, but with this Canning seems to have had nothing to do. During the Addington administration Canning's muse was very prolific, and many of his effusions against that Minister appeared in the columns of a newspaper of that day called the Oracle. Many of them were reprinted in the Spirit of the Public Journals for 1803 and 1804. The following character of Addington is taken from the conclusion of Good Intentions 'Twere best, no doubt, the truth to tell, May bend men's passions to their will, No tricks to cheat our wondering eyes; On thee shall no suspicion fall Of sleight of hand, or cup and ball; And if that black and nitrous grain Thou ne'er hadst caused the monstrous birth, That diabolical invention ! Hail, then, on whom our state is leaning! O minister of mildest meaning! Blest with such virtues to talk big on, While Rome's great goose could save alone "Ridicule," says Lord Chesterfield, "though not founded upon truth, will stick for some time, and, if thrown by a skilful hand, perhaps for ever." Of the truth of these words Addington was an instance he was literally laughed out of power and place. If, indeed, his administration had been composed of stronger elements, he might have weathered the storm of ridicule, as did Pitt, against whom the wits of the Rolliad directed their fire in vain. Addington was known by the sobriquet of the " "Doctor," and Canning made good use of it in the following parody of Douglas:My name's the Doctor on the Berkshire hills My father purg'd his patients-a wise man : Whose constant care was to increase his store, And keep his eldest son, myself, at home. But I had heard of politics, and long'd To sit within the Commons House, and get A place and luck gave what my sire denied. : In 1804, Pitt made up his mind to resume the premiership. He offered Canning his choice of two posts, the treasurership of the Navy, or the Secretaryship of War. Having chosen the former, Canning took a prominent part in the defence of Lord Melville. Whitbread, the famous brewer, in moving the impeachment, made use of language which struck Canning in so comical a light, that he composed the following rhyming report of the speech: I'm like Archimedes for science and skill; I'm like a young prince going straight up a hill; On that day, too, he died, having finished his summing, One of the last of Canning's political squibs was the following, written in the year 1824 : "Letter from a Cambridge Tutor to his former Pupil, become a Member of Parliament: written in the year (1824) in which the Right Honourable Frederick Robinson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, repealed half the duty on sea-borne coals imported into the Port of London : Yes! fallen on times of wickedness and woe, New fires in Smithfield, with Dick Martin's leave. And hold his coat flaps up with either hand." To him, also, is generally assigned the following parody of Moore's "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms :" Melody, Believe me, if all those ridiculous airs, Which you practise so pretty to-day, Should vanish by age, and your well-twisted hairs, Like my own, be both scanty and gray : Thou would'st still be a goose, as a goose thou hast been, Tho' a fop and a fribble no more, And the world that has laughed at the fool of eighteen, Would laugh at the fool of three-score. 'Tis not whilst you wear that short coat of light brown, That the absolute void of a mind can be shown, Which time will but render more dull. Oh, the fool that is truly so, never forgets, |
