ment is much the same as his first. But | admiration of readers, and he has probably
he was wrong.
Lord Althorp was not a conferred a great and permanent benefit upon
great orator or debater; but he had qual- the country. (Vol. iii. p. 344.)
ities which made him a great leader of
the House of Commons, if leading con-
sist in inducing others to follow. He
ruled with absolute sway in the first Re-
formed Parliament, and in individual in-
fluence might fairly compare with the
greatest of his successors: and when his
leadership came to an end, the reign of
his party ceased also.

Lord Russell also he entirely misjudged, which is the more remarkable that he had, and expresses, the strongest personal regard for him. When he first assumed the leadership of his party in 1835, Mr. Greville writes under date April 3rd:

If John Russell does come in, it is clear that he will have both Peel and Stanley in opposition to him, against whom in the nearly balanced state of parties he could not struggle on for a month. He was miserably feeble in this debate (in his opening speech), and though he may just do to lead an Opposition which wants no leading, and merely sticks him up as a nominal chief, he could no more lead a government in the House of Commons than he could command an army in the field. (Vol. iii. p. 240.)

But he adds within brackets, under the date 1837, "So much for my prediction. Stanley's followers dropped off and left him alone, the government had no difficulty, and John Russell proved a very good leader." And so to be sure, in less than a year, the journal sounds a very different note. In February 1836 Mr. Greville thus writes:

Mr. Greville lived to see Lord Russell become a most successful leader and a formidable debater; holding his own with effect and spirit against all comers, and quite able to cope with Peel even in his most powerful days. It is remarkable, as the editor points out, that of a man who was twice prime minister, and who led his party in the House of Commons for more than fifteen years, Mr. Greville should tell us that on the formation of the Grey government in 1831, "John Russell was to have the war office, but Tavistock entreated that the appointment might be changed, as his brother's health was unequal to it; so he was made paymaster " (vol. ii. p. 70).

him there

The notices of Lord Palmerston very
dimly foreshadow his future greatness.
The author did not mean or expect him
to be great; and yet, in the very few
lurks evidently an uneasy suspicion that
fragmentary references to
he might be wrong. The first time it
flashes on him that there were the germs
of
of distinction in the careless man
fashion, is on the debate on the Catholic.
Palmerston," he says,
"A speech from Lord
question in 1829.
"which astonished
everybody." "An imitation of Canning,
and not a bad one" (vol. i. p. 191). In
1834 our author writes:

Madame de Lieven told me that it was impossible to describe the contempt as well as dislike which the whole corps diplomatique had for Palmerston, and pointing to Talleyrand, who was sitting close by, "surtout lui." They have the meanest opinion of his capacity, and his manners are the reverse of conciliatory. She cannot imagine how his colleagues bear with him, and Lord Grey supports him vehemently. The only friend he has in the cabinet is Graham, who has no weight. His unpopularity in his own office is quite as great as it is among the foreign ministers, and he does nothing, so that they do not make up in respect for what they want in inclination. (Vol. iii. pp. 56, 57.)

February 25th. Lord John Russell immortalized himself on Tuesday night. After a speech from Hume of three hours, in which he produced a variety of the most inconceivable letters from Kenyon, Wynford, Londonderry, and other Orangemen, but made the most miserable hash of his whole case, and instead of working up his ample materials with dexterity and effect stupidly blundering and wasting them all-after this speech John Russell rose, and in a speech far surpassing his usual form, dignified, temperate, and judicious, moved a resolution of a moderate and Again, on the election in 1835 he inoffensive character. The speech actually writes: "Palmerston is beaten in drew tears from the Orangemen, enthusiastic Hants, at which every one rejoices, for he approbation from Stanley, a colder approval is, marvellously unpopular" (vol. iii. p. from Peel, and the universal assent of the 197). But alas for Madame de Lieven's House.... In accomplishing this by moderate and healing counsels, by a conciliatory estimate-she had her own grievance tone and manner, Lord John Russell deserves about the Russian embassy-and the the name of a statesman. His speech is gossip of the clubs, Mr. Greville tells us, worth a thousand flowery harangues which ten pages on, of this inefficient and unhave elicited the shouts of audiences or the popular minister:

1

The other night I met some clerks in the and discriminating estimate. He was an Foreign Office to whom the very name of unlucky minister, for he hardly ever had Palmerston is hateful, but I was surprised to a majority; but his services to the crown hear them (Mellish particularly, who judge both from capacity and opportunity) the present reign have laid the nation can and the country at the commencement of give ample testimony to his abilities. They under obligations they have not forgotsaid that he wrote admirably, and could ex

press himself perfectly in French, very suffi- ten. "He is certainly a queer fellow," ciently in Italian, and understood German; writes Mr. Greville in July 1834, "to be that his diligence and attention were un-prime minister, and he and Brougham wearied he read everything and wrote an are two wild chaps to have the destinies immense quantity; that the foreign ministers of their country in their hands. I should (who detest him) did him justice as an excel-not be surprised if Melbourne was to lent man of business. His great fault is want rouse his dormant energies, and be exof punctuality, and never caring for an en- cited by the greatness of his position, to gagement if it did not suit him, keeping display the vigour and decision in which everybody waiting for hours on his pleasure or caprice. This testimony is beyond suspicion, and it is confirmed by the opinions of his colleagues; but it is certain that he cut a very poor figure in Parliament all the time he was in office before. (Vol. iii. pp. 210, 211.) And a year afterwards he inserts this palinode, which shows how misleading had been the elements on which his original judgment had been formed:

he is not deficient."

There is no detailed character of Melbourne, but many characteristic notices scattered up and down the book illustrative of the man, with whom the author was on terms of intimacy. He mentions earlier in his journal a conversation he had with him about Palmerston, when Lord Melbourne assured him that there was no foundation for the assertion that he was unpleasant and haughty to his colleagues; in fact that he was quite the

reverse.

the general reader than his political career More interesting, however, to are some instances given by Mr. Greville of his wonderful literary knowledge. There are a couple of pages devoted to the description of two dinner-parties at Holland House, which are well worthy of being preserved, if it were only to teach a younger and more superficial generation how the last generation were wont to converse. Greville himself says of one of these parties :

It is surprising to hear how Palmerston is spoken of by those who know him well_officially-the Granvilles, for example. Lady Granville, a woman expert in judging, thinks his capacity first-rate; that it approaches to greatness from his enlarged views, disdain of trivialities, resolution, decision, confidence, and above all his contempt of clamour and abuse. She told me that Madame de Flahaut had a letter written by Talleyrand soon after his first arrival in England, in which he talked with great contempt of the ministers generally, Lord Grey included, and said there was but one statesman among them, and that was Palmerston. His ordinary conversation exhibits no such superiority; but when he takes his pen in his hand his intellect seems to have full play, and probably when engaged exclu- day, where I had not been these two years. September 5th.-At Holland House yestersively in business. (Vol. iii. p. 366.) Met Lord Holland at court, who made me Talleyrand's good opinion had been pre-go.... Spring Rice and his son, Melbourne, viously noticed. The old statesman had recognized the ring of true metal, although the clubs were deaf to it. It is certainly not impossible that Lord Palmerston may have given no measure of his real capacity during the twenty years that he filled a subordinate office in a Tory government, and may, when he assumed the direction of foreign affairs, have exerted himself to make up for past deficiencies; for no man was more sensible of failure, and he never allowed false pride to impede his endeavours to repair an error. This, indeed, was one secret of his ultimate and unquestioned suprem

Of the gay, witty, insouciant, and able Melbourne our author had a more just

and Palmerston dined there: Allen was at Dulwich, but came in the evening, and so did Bobus Smith. There was a great deal of very good talk, anecdotes, literary criticism, and membering, though hardly sufficiently striking what not, some of which would be worth reto be put down, unless as forming a portion of a whole course of conversations of this description. A vast depression came over my spirits, though I was amused, and I don't suppose I uttered a dozen words. It is certainly true that the atmosphere of Holland House is often oppressive, but that was not it; it was a painful consciousness of my own fair share in conversation of this description. deficiencies and of my incapacity to take a felt as if a language was spoken before me which I understood, but not enough to talk in it myself. There was nothing discussed of which I was altogether ignorant, and when

I

the merits of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Crabbe were brought into comparison, and
Lord Holland cut jokes upon Allen for his
enthusiastic admiration of the "De Moribus
Germanorum," it was not that I had not read
the poets or the historian, but that I felt I
had not read them with profit. (Vol. iii. pp.
126, 127.)

And so they discussed poets; "Philip van
Artevelde," Madame de Staël, Sappho,
Quintus Curtius, and Klopstock. Two
days after this he again dines there:

September 7th. At Holland House again; only Bobus Smith and Melbourne; these two, with Allen, and Lord Holland agreeable enough. Melbourne's excellent scholarship and universal information remarkably display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply his mind is impressed with literary subjects.

would induce me to underrate him, but I take vanity and self-sufficiency to be the prominent features of his character, though of the extent of his capacity I will give no opinion. Let time show; I think he will fail.* [Time did show it to be very considerable, and the volvenda dies brought back our former friendship, as will hereafter appear; he certainly did not fail.]

He came into Parliament ten years ago, spoke and failed.. He had been a provincial hero, the Cicero and the Romeo of Yorkshire and Cumberland, a present Lovelace and a future Pitt. He was disappointed in love (the particulars are of no consequence), married and retired to digest his mortifications of various kinds, to become a country gentleman, patriot, reformer, financier, and what not, always good-looking (he had been very handsome), pleasing, intelligent, cultivated, agreeable as a man can be who is not witty and who After dinner there was much talk of the is rather pompous and slow. After many years Church, and Allen spoke of the early re- of retirement, in the course of which he gave formers, the Catharists, and how the early to the world his lucubrations on corn and curChristians persecuted each other; Melbourne rency, time and the hour made him master quoted Vigilantius's letter to Jerome, and of a large but encumbered estate and member then asked Allen about the 11th of Henry of representing a great constituency, he started for his county. Armed with the importance IV., an Act passed by the Commons against the Church, and referred to the dialogue be- again in the House of Commons; took up tween the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Joseph Hume's line, but ornamented it with Bishop of Ely at the beginning of Shake- graces and flourishes which had not usually He succeeded, speare's Henry V.," which Lord Holland decorated such dry topics. sent for and read, Melbourne knowing it all and in that line is now the best speaker in the by heart and prompting all the time. Lin-House. I have no doubt he has studied his gard says of this statute that the Commons subjects and practised himself in public speakproposed to the king to commit an act of ing Years and years ago I remember his spoliation on the clergy, but that the king delight on Hume's comparison between Desharply rebuked them and desired to hear no mosthenes and Cicero, and how he knew the more of the matter. About etymologies Mel-passage by heart; but it is one thing to attack bourne quoted Tooke's "Diversions of Purley," which he seemed to have at his fingers' ends. (Vol. iii. pp. 130, 131.)

strong abuses and fire off well-rounded set phrases, another to administer the naval affairs of the country and be ready to tilt against all comers, as he must do for the future. (Vol. ii. pp. 90, 91.)

In another passage he says that John Allen told him that Melbourne being a very good Greek scholar had compared Their early friendship was afterwards the Evidences" and all modern theo-renewed and ripened into mutual confilogical works with the writings of the dence, and Sir James Graham exerted Fathers. The man who could acquire himself more than once with great vigour so much solid knowledge, living as he and effect in matters touching Mr. Gredid the life of an easy man of pleasure ville's interests. The description of the and society, must have had powers and part he bore when Lord Stanley left the capacity which should have made him Liberal ranks is more respectful to his more than prime minister of England. ability, but by no means so to his political character. But Mr. Greville might be pardoned for not foreseeing the very distinguished position which Sir James Graham afterwards gained. He acquired it slowly; and even after he had become one of the most formidable debaters in Graham's elevation is the most monstrous the House he owned, and it was true, alof all. He was once my friend, a college inone who heard him would timacy revived in the world, and which lasted though no six months, when, thinking he could do better, have thought so, that he never addressed he cut me, as he had done others before. I am it with entire self-possession. He was not a fair judge of him, because the pique bold and clear in thought, but nervous which his conduct to me naturally gave me in action, and more a leader of men

Of Sir James Graham when he first took office the author formed an absurdly low estimate, as he himself afterwards confesses. The passage is so curious that we quote it entire :

in private than he was in public. As an administrator of a department he had few equals.

One of the men whom Mr. Greville disparages in his earlier notices, and to whom at last he yields his tribute of unfeigned admiration, is Macaulay; and it is interesting to observe, as the journal proceeds, how his impressions change. His first meeting with him is amusingly described:

hands for every topic. Primogeniture in this country, in others, and particularly in ancient Rome, was the principal topic, I think, but Macaulay was not certain what was the law of Rome, except that when a man died intestate his estate was divided between his children. After dinner Talleyrand and Madame de Dino came in. He was introduced to Talleyrand, who told him that he meant to go to the House. of Commons on Tuesday, and that he hoped he would speak, "qu'il avait entendu tous les grands orateurs, et il désirait à présent entendre Monsieur Macaulay." (Vol. ii. pp. 245-47.)

thoughts, and the perspiration burst from every pore in my face, and yet it was impossible not to be amused at the idea. It was not till Macaulay stood up that I was aware of all the vulgarity and ungainliness of his appearcountenance; a lump of more ordinary clay ance; not a ray of intellect beams from his never enclosed a powerful mind and lively imagination. He had a cold and sore throat, the latter of which occasioned a constant contraction of the muscles of the thorax, making him appear as if in momentary danger of a fit. His manner struck me as not pleasing, February 6th.-Dined yesterday with Lord but it was not assuming, unembarrassed, yet Holland; came very late, and found a vacant not easy, unpolished, yet not coarse; there place between Sir George Robinson and a was no kind of usurpation of the conversation, common-looking man in black. As soon as I no tenacity as to opinion or facts, no assumphad time to look at my neighbour, began to tion of superiority, but the variety and extent speculate (as one usually does) as to who he of his information were soon apparent, for might be, and as he did not for some time whatever subject was touched upon he evinced open his lips except to eat, I settled that he the utmost familiarity with it; quotation, was some obscure man of letters or of medi-illustration, anecdote, seemed ready in his cine, perhaps a cholera-doctor. In a short time the conversation turned upon early and late education, and Lord Holland said he had always remarked that self-educated men were peculiarly conceited and arrogant, and apt to look down upon the generality of mankind, from their being ignorant of how much other people knew; not having been at public schools, they are uninformed of the course of general education. My neighbour observed that he thought the most remarkable example of self-education was that of Alfieri, who had reached the age of thirty without having acquired any accomplishment save that of driving, and who was so ignorant of his own language that he had to learn it like a child, beginning with elementary books. Lord Holland quoted Julius Caesar and Scaliger as examples of late education, said that the latter Brougham, tall, thin, and commanding in had been wounded, and that he had been mar- figure, with a face which, however ugly, is ried and commenced learning Greek the same full of expression, and a voice of great power, day, when my neighbour remarked "that he variety, and even melody, notwithstanding supposed his learning Greek was not an in- his occasional proxity and tediousness, is an stantaneous act like his marriage." This orator in every sense of the word. Macaulay, remark, and the manner of it, gave me the short, fat, and ungraceful, with a round, thick, notion that he was a dull fellow, for it came unmeaning face, and with rather a lisp, though out in a way which bordered on the ridiculous, he has made speeches of great merit, and of a so as to excite something like a sneer. I was very high style of eloquence in point of coma little surprised to hear him continue the position, has no pretensions to be put in comthread of conversation (from Scaliger's wound) petition with Brougham in the House of and talk of Loyola having been wounded at Commons. Nor is the difference and the Pampeluna. I wondered how he happened to inferiority of Macaulay less marked in society. know anything about Loyola's wound. Hav-Macaulay, indeed, is a great talker, and pours ing thus settled my opinion, I went on eating forth floods of knowledge on all subjects; but my dinner, when Auckland, who was sitting the gracefulness, lightness, and variety are opposite to me, addressed my neighbour, "Mr. Macaulay, will you drink a glass of wine?" I thought I should have dropped off my chair. It was MACAULAY, the man I had been so long most curious to see and to hear, whose genius, eloquence, astonishing knowledge, and diversified talents have excited my wonder and admiration for such a length of time, and here I had been sitting next to him, hearing him talk, and setting him down for a dull fellow. I felt as if he could have read my

This was the first-here is the last a comparison between Brougham and Macaulay in 1836:

wanting in his talk which are so conspicuous in his writings; there is not enough of alloy in the metal of his conversation; it is too didactic, it is all too good, and not sufficiently flexible, plastic, and diversified for general society. Brougham, on the other hand, is all life, spirit, and gaiety-"from grave to gay, from lively to severe dashing through every description of folly and fun, dealing in those rapid transitions by which the attention and imagination are arrested and excited;

always amusing, always instructive, never te- thing in the mind of the one which bears an dious, elevated to the height of the greatest affinity to that of the other; but their characintellect, and familiar with the most abstruse ters how different! their abilities - how subjects, and at the same moment conciliating unequal! yet both, how superior, even the the humble pretensions of inferior minds by weakest of the two, to almost all other men, dropping into the midst of their pursuits and and the success of each so little correspondobjects with a fervour and intensity of interesting with his powers, neither having ever atwhich surprises and delights his associates,tained any object of ambition beyond that of and, above all, which puts them at their ease. fame. All their talents, therefore, and all [Quantum mutatus! All this has long their acquirements, did not procure them conceased to be true of Brougham. Macaulay, tent, and probably Burke was a very unhappy, without having either the wit or the charm and Mackintosh not a very happy, man. The which constitutes the highest kind of collo-suavity, the indolent temperament, the mitis quial excellence or success, is a marvellous, an unrivalled (in his way), and a delightful talker. -1850.] (Vol. iii. pp. 338, 339.)

sapientia of Mackintosh may have warded off sorrow and mitigated disappointment, but the stern and vindictive energies of Burke must have kept up a storm of conflicting passions in his breast. But I turn from Mackintosh and Burke to all that is vilest and foolishest on earth, and among such I now pass my unprofitable hours.

Of Sir James Mackintosh the journalist had the highest opinion, and never mentions him excepting with praise and admiration. The first notice of him is at a party at Middleton in 1819. Under I have finished Mackintosh's Life with great date March 5, 1819, he says: "The delight, and many painful sensations, together with wonder and amazement. His account of other night Sir James Mackintosh made his reading is utterly incomprehensible to me; a splendid speech on the criminal laws; he must have been endowed with some superit was temperate and eloquent, and ex- human faculty of transferring the contents of cited universal admiration." June 14: books to his own mind. He talks in his jour"The other night in the House of Com-nals of reading volumes in a few hours which mons, on the Foreign Enlistment Bill, would seem to demand many days even from Sir James Mackintosh made a brilliant the most rapid reader. I have heard of speech: all parties agree in commend-Southey, who would read a book through as ing it. Canning answered him, but not he stood in a bookseller's shop; that is, his successfully" (vol. i. p. 20). These were eye would glance down the page, and by a two great occasions. The tide of public formed by long habit, he would extract in his process partly mechanical, partly intellectual, opinion has swept so thoroughly over the synoptical passage all that he required to subject of the first as to have obliterated know. (Macaulay was, and George Lewes is, all traces of the abuses which the oration just as wonderful in this respect.) Some of denounced, and has left only the wonder the books that Mackintosh talks of, philosophthat such things ever were. The sec-ical and metaphysical works, could not be so ond has been too much forgotten; but disposed of, and I should like much to know those who are solicitous for the interna- what his system or his secret was. . . . tional law of the future may study it with profit as well as admiration. It contains an elucidation of principles too much neglected, illustrated and enforced with elegance and power; nor will it be long, we venture to predict, before its authority assumes a prominent place.

Sixteen years afterwards Mr. Greville thus moralizes on the career and fate of one whose promise had been so bril

What are we to think of the necessary con

nection between intellectual superiority and Duke of Richmond invited to be a member of official eminence, when we have seen the the Cabinet, while Mackintosh was thrust into an obscure and subordinate office- Mackintosh placed under the orders of Charles Grant ! Well might he regret that he had not been a professor, and "with safer pride content," adorned with unusual glory some academical chair. Then while he was instructliant: ing and delighting the world, there would have been many regrets and lamentations that We dined at Burghley on the way [to Don-such mighty talents were confined to such a caster], and got here at two on Sunday; read Mackintosh's Life in the carriage, which made me dreadfully disgusted with my racing métier. What a life as compared with mine!-passed among great and wise men, and intent on high thoughts and honourable aspirations, existing amidst interests far more pungent even than those which engage me, and of the futility of which I am forever reminded. I am struck with the coincidence of the tastes and dispositions of Burke and Mackintosh, and of some

narrow sphere, and innumerable speculations of the greatness he would have achieved in political life, and how the irresistible force of his genius and his eloquence must have raised him to the pinnacle of Parliamentary fame and political power. (Vol. iii. pp. 314–18.)

It is as difficult sometimes to say why a man succeeds as why he fails; but the reason in both instances lies, in the large proportion of cases, in the man himself.