and had great spirits, that I had some parts too, I versal admiration, whatever Charles's are."—vol. but now I have seen it under my own hand, that Ii. p. 102-7. had not, I will never believe it under anybody's hand else."-vol. i. p. 225. This seems incredible and of such a man as Fox! We find, however, that All this from one whose chief occupation there really was such an adventuress-that was letter-writing, of whom we have alrea-" Elizabeth Grieve, alias the Hon. Mrs. dy near 2, 100 published letters, the greater Grieve, was tried and convicted at Hick's part carefully recalled by himself from his Hall of having defrauded several persons of corresdonpents, and in some, we believe the money under false pretences, and was transmajority of instances and in this very one ported for seven years" (Gent. Mag. 1774, of the silly insipid" correspondence with p. 492). It was then stated that she had Mr. Chute-arranged and even annotated been the year before brought up to Bow by himself for posthumous publication. Street for having defrauded people by preThere is nothing blamable in this, and, on tending to be the cousin of the Duke of the contrary, we are very much obliged to Grafton, and being otherwise nobly conhim, and wish that he could have annotated nected. This was the affair mentioned by all his letters (as his editors will not); but Walpole; but of the inimitable farcewhat we do wonder at is the perverseness better even than Foote's Cozeners, which with which a man of such taste and sagacity was founded on it-of getting Charles Fox volunteers, for some little egotistical mo- to wash himself and powder his eyebrows tive which we cannot comprehend, state- we do not remember to have heard before,* ments notoriously at variance with both his and are grateful to Walpole for having imfeelings and the facts. Lady Ossory her-mortalized so remarkable a proof of Fox's self was so well apprized of his anxiety for early good sense. epistolary fame, that she used, we are told, We had hoped, when we saw Walpole's to relate that when they were near neigh- allusion to Lord Hervey's Memoirs, to find bors in town Walpole would omit to pay a solution of the question lately propoundher the usual visit, if he had anything to ed by Mr. Crocker in his preface to that say that he thought might be worked into work, whether Walpole had seen the Mean agreeable letter. There was certainly, moirs-a curious point, and not unimporas we have before said, some constitutional tant to history; for if Walpole had not irregularity in his mind that seems on many seen the Memoirs, the remarkable coincioccasions and topics to have been too strong for his veracity and common sense. For the accuracy of the following strange story and stranger exhibition of the gullibility of Charles Fox, Walpole hesitates to vouch, but it was subsequently confirmed at the trial of the swindler. dence between them and his Reminiscences would give a double and mutual character of authenticity and authority to both. Here are Walpole's allusions to this matter : "Lord Bristol has left a paper, or narrative, of the Lord knows what, that is to be padlocked till his son is of age-nine years hence and then not to be published while whom God long preserve is alive; this was leaving the boy a fortune indeed, if both live nine years! There, too, is another noble author-not for me, but for a supplement. I had rather the Earl Bishop would publish his father's memoirs."-vol. i. p. 392, My last intelligence was wrong; Lord Bristol's codicil, now printed, seems to relate entirely to his father's papers, to nothing of his own; nay, it seems rather civilly than rudely meant as to the "You have read in Fielding's Chronicle (the Bow Street Report) the tale of the Hon. Mrs. Grieve; but could you have believed that Charles Fox could have been in the list of her dupes? Well, he was. She promised him a Miss Phipps, a West Indian fortune of £150,000. Sometimes she was not landed, sometimes had the small-pox. In the mean time, Miss Phipps did not like a black man; Celadon must powder his eyebrows He did, and cleaned himself. A thousand Jews thought he was gone to Kingsgate (his father's marine villa) to settle the payment of his debts. Oh no! he was to meet Celia at Margate. To * Sir Walter Scott, in his Diary of May, 9, 1828, confirm the truth, the Hon. Mrs. Grieve advanced gives the story with some confusion of names, but part of the fortune-some authors say an hun- with one or two amusing variations of circumdred and sixty, others three hundred pounds: but stance. One important point was, in that edition, how was this to answer to the matron?—why, by that the heiress herself had been announced to Fox Mr. Fox's chariot being seen at her door. Her him, that in her youth it was universally underas a damsel of color; and Scott's informant told other dupes could not doubt of her noblesse or stood what was alluded to "when the black woman interest, when the hopes of Britain frequented her appeared in the Cozeners."-Life of Scott, vii. p. 131 home. In short, Mrs. Grieve's parts are in uni-(edit. 1838). hour of publication, and to prevent disagreeable | At a disastrous period of the American truths appearing with regard to the late Prince of Wales."-vol. i p. 395. war he says, "Lord Hervey did leave a Dialogue of one whole" There was a Gazette this morning that will day in the late King's reign, that is, of what com- frighten the combined (French and Spanish, fleets, monly passed there. It was not, I believe, ex- out of their senses. actly what I mean, but rather a ridicule on the in-navy of walnutshells at a place as well known as We have destroyed a whole dividuals of the dramatis personæ. it, but Lady Hervey told me it was the best thing D'Orvilliers, beaten by D'Estaing and comforted I never saw Pharsalia, called Penobscot, .. Flying from he ever wrote."-vol. ii. p. 15. by gathering a wreath of sea-weeds at Penobscot ! may be so insulted!"-vol. i. pp. 364-5. How low is a nation sunk when its understanding Now Walpole might mystify anybody about anything-but at least there is no expression in these passages that gives any support to the notion of his having seen the Hervey Memoirs. He certainly could not have read them if he was at any loss about the motive or the propriety of the Earl's injunction respecting their publication. There is no reason to suppose that the MS. ever belonged to Lady Hervey: Lord Hervey's son was of age at his father's death; and we know that the MS. passed successively to his brothers. Lady Hervey might very well tell Walpole, without having either the power or the wish to show him her husband's memoirs, that they were suppressed in consequence of their disagreeable truths about the late Prince of Wales; and that is all that Walpole says he ever knew about the matter. As to the Dramatic Scene in Queen Caroline's dressingroom on the supposed news of Lord Hervey's death, we readily believe Walpole's assertion that he knew it only from Lady Hervey's eulogistic report; for it has allusions to the Princess Caroline which it is not very likely that Lady Hervey should have been willing to show to any bodyleast of all to such a gossip as Walpoleduring the lifetime of the Princess, which did not close until within a few months of the publication of the "Royal and Noble Authors." On the whole, then, we are nearly satisfied that Walpole never did see the Hervey Memoirs, and agree with what seems to be Mr. Croker's opinion, that the coincidences and variations between them and the Reminiscences are those of general truth conveyed through distinct and independent channels. Happening to mention about the same time the virtues and generosity of two old ladies, Miss Stapylton and Lady Blandford, he adds, "I wish we had some of these exalted charac ters in breeches! These two women shine like the last sparkles in a piece of burnt paper, which rest of our old ladies are otherwise employed; the children call the parson and clerk. Alas! the they are at the heads of fleets and armies."-vol. i. pp. 362-3. says, "A prism," he To hint at some levities of the then Prince of Wales, he says he expects to be invited to revels" in Eastcheap," ii. 48. Announcing the resignation of Lord Shelburne's Ministry before the successors were named, he dates his letter " 13th MarchNew Style," which it was chronologically and politically-and concludes it, "Here ends the first chapter of Exodus, which, in Court Bibles, always precedes Genes s."-vol. ii. p. 148. He describes one of the villas near Richmond Bridge as but a short green apron to the river."-vol. ii. p. There is a grievance of which all letter- From many specimens of Walpole's peculiar style of wit, which it is in general difficult to exhibit in an extract, we select" Our post, madam, which only comes in. turns on a few sparks:its heel, and goes out again, made it impossible for me to answer your ladyship's letter before dinner."-vol. i. p. 438. "What was in the letter that diverted Lord Ossory I remember no more than the man in the moon, whose memory lasts but a month.”—vol i. p. 187. VOL. XV. No. II. 13. It is thus that by the metaphorical use of a single word he combines, condenses, and exhibits in, as it were, one flash, a train of ideas that would cost an ordinary writer a long detail. This is, as we formerly noticed, the chief characteristic and merit of Walpole's epistolary style: even in this collection the least pretentious series of his correspondence-it everywhere inspirits and illuminates what would otherwise be very ordinary matter; though it must be confessed that here, as elsewhere, he frequently abuses his facility, and rides his metaphors too hard. anarchy, indigenous to such sudden and uncontrolled experiments on human tempers not to say passions-are, to our conviction, as pregnant in 1848 as they were in 1789: "4th August, 1789.-The Etats Généraux are, in my opinion, the most culpable. The King had restored their old constitution, which all France constitution. But the Etats, with no sense, pruhad so idolized; and he was ready to amend that dence, or temper, and who might have obtained a good government and perhaps permanently, set out with such violence to overturn the whole frame, without its being possible to replace it at once with a sound model entirely new, and the reverse of every law and custom of their whole country-have deposed not only their King, but, 1 should think, their own authority; for they are certainly now trembling before the populace, and have let loose havoc through every province, which sooner or later will end in worse despotism than that they have demolished."-vol. ii. p. 382. The despotisms of Robespierre and of Bonaparte! So early as a fortnight after the taking of the Bastile the prophetic old man "For old experience doth attain To something of prophetic strain," foresaw the murder of the King and the despotism of the Emperor : But there are things in these volumes more valuable than the best of their wit. He was during a great part of his life a very dishonest politician; but he really loved liberty, and well understood that it was inseparable from good order. His own temper, too, was cynical and selfish almost to infirmity, but he had a sure and prompt taste for kindness and generosity in others. He was the very reverse of what Swift said of himself, that "he loved Jack and Tom, but detested the human race in general." Walpole readily hated and ridiculed individuals, but he loved mankind; and under the surface of his wayward passions and strong prejudices there is always an undercurrent of good feeling, and, above all, of good sense. We have before applauded the sagacity and humanity with which from the very outset he reprobated the American war, and we see him here again writing in the same wise and generous spirit. But it is still more satisfactory to find him at the close of a long and factious life, reclaimed by experience into sounder opinions, and looking at the French revolution with the same ominous feeling as Mr. Then how applicable to the Abbé de LaBurke-though (as might be expected in mennais' recent plan of a constitution is the familiar letters) with a less extensive scope following observation on the constitution than the great political philosopher deve-mongering that was then going on in loped in his more elaborate works. The Franceprinciples on which the shrewdest wit and the most sublime statesman of the age, or perhaps of any age, concurred-contrary to all their original prejudices-in auguring ill of the results of the French Revolution, were drawn from the nature of man and the experience of all human society; and Horace Walpole's anticipations of the results of the first revolution are well worthy of the consideration of those who are now "4th August, 1789.-When they have deposed their monarch, or worse, and committed ten thousand outrages, they will rebound to loyalty, and out of penitence confer on whoever shall be their king unbounded power of punishing their excesses."-vol. ii. p. 383. "An Abbé de Sieyes excused himself to the Etats from accepting the post of speaker, as he is busy in forming a Bill of Rights and a new constitution. One would think he was writing a prologue to a new play!"-vol. ii. p. 386. Any one who reads the National or the Réforme of the present day will see that Walpole had been reading some exactly had especially before him the procès verbal similar publications: one would suppose he of the 15th of May, 1848. speculating on the consequences of the last. The last has not yet (we write in May) been disgraced by the massacres that characterized the first, because there has been They have launched into an ocean of questions neither resistance on the one side nor en-that would take a century to discuss, and, suppose thusiasm on the other; but the germs of that a mob of prating legislators, under the rod of the mob of Paris, and questionable by every tu- system is formed that will be for the interest either multuous congregation in the provinces, are an of the whole or of individuals. Even they who all-powerful senate, and may give laws to other would wish to support what they now call a conkingdoms as well as to their own: and have stitution will be perpetually counteracting it, as already provoked, as they have injured, a very they will be endeavoring to protract their own considerable part of their own countrymen. In power, or to augment their own fortunes-prothe midst of this anarchy, is it not supremely ri-bably both and since a latitude has been thrown diculous to hear of a young gentlewoman present- open to every man's separate ideas, can one coning her watch to the national fund, and a life-ceive that unity or union can arise out of such a guardsman five-and-twenty livres? Nay, there mass of discord?"-vol. ii. p. 450. are some tradesmen's wives appointed commissioners for receiving such patriotic oblations! . . . They have either entailed endless civil wars on, perhaps, a division of their country, or will serious consideration (if, indeed, he has on, perhaps, a division of their country, or will time or disposition for serious consideration) sink under worse despotism than what they have shaken off. To turn a whole nation loose from the example of one of his predecessors in all restraint, and tell them that every man has a revolutionary popularity. We might reright to be his own king, is not a very sage way for preparing them to receive a new code, which must curtail that boundless prerogative of free will, and probably was not the first lesso given on the original institution of government."-vol. ii. pp. 391, 2. "When all Europe is admiring and citing our constitution, I am for preserving it where it is. The decry of prerogative on the Continent is a good counter-security to us; I do not think the season will invite anybody to encroach on liberty; and I hope liberty will be content to sit under her own vine and fig-tree, and receive the advantages that France is flinging into her lap. I own I shall be curious to see the new constitution of France when it shall be formed, if formed it can be. It must be a curious patchwork composed from sudden and unconnected motions, started in a hurlyburly of disputes, without any plan or system, and voted as fluctuating interests and passions preponderate, sometimes one way, sometimes another, with no harmony in the compost, but calculated to contradict every view of the old government, or secretly to preserve enough of it to counteract the new."-vol. ii. p. 394. And finally we recommend to Lamartine's mind him of Roland, Pétion, Danton, and also Robespierre; but a lighter example will be in every respect more appropriate : "Madame de Coigny, who is here and has a have burnt the bust of their late favorite, Mongreat deal of wit, on hearing that the mob at Paris sieur d'Epremenil, said, Il n'y a rien qui brûle sitôt que les lauriers secs.'"-vol. ii. p. 484. Here we must close our extracts and remarks with thanking Mr. Smith for what he has now given us with recommending a search for letters to the Duchess of Grafton-and with expressing a hope that he will not be offended by the freedom with which we have suggested the little that is wanted to make these very acceptable volumes, if not more instructive, at least, in their lighter and more gossiping parts, more amusing CHILDREN IN WORKHOUSES.-The total number of children in the workhouses of 116 unions in Eng land Wales, on the 18th Jan. 1847, was 52,227, viz -boys, 26,788; girls, 24,449. Of these there were boys under three years old, 4456; three years old wards, 16,191; girls under three years old, 4340 and under seven, 6138; seven years old and upthree years old and under seven, 5543; seven years And the following sketch of the issue of * We cannot forbear extracting in a note an ar ecdote, new to ourselves, for which we could find ne fit place amidst the subjects of our text: "A pack of pedants are going to be replaced by a pack of cobblers and tinkers, and confusion will be worse confounded. I should understand the Revelations, or guess the number of the Beast, as soon as conjecture what is to ensue in that country; Till anarchy has been blooded bown to a caput mortuum, there can be no settlement, for all will be struggling different ways, when all ideas have been disjointed and overturned: no great bodies can find their account in it, and no harmonious-vol. ii. p. 407. 26 Nov. 1789.-One story will touch you: the little Dauphin, who is but four years old, and waiting ended by saying of the animal that was the beautiful child, was learning fables: the one is. subject of it, that though she had great misfortunes, she became at last heureuse comme les reines. Hi said, 'Hah! toutes les reines ne sont pas heureuses, car maman pleure depuis le matin jusqu'au soir.'" From Tait's Magazine. THE GENIUS OF JOHN MILTON. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. Revolution. There is a perpetual process going on of action and reaction, between each on the one side, and all on the other. The characteristic of the great man is, that his reaction on his age is more than equal to its action upon him. No man is wholly a creator, nor wholly a creature of his age. The Milton or the Shakspeare is more the creator than he is the creature. PERHAPS Some may be astonished at the subject selected-the Genius of John Milton. Can anything new, that is true-or true, that is new, be said on such a theme? Have not the ages been gazing upon this "mighty orb of song" as at the sun? and have not almost all its gifted admirers uttered each his glowing panegyric, till now they seem to be ranged like planetary bodies round his central blaze? What It is easier to separate the thought of more can be said or sung? Is it not impossible to add to, however easy to diminish, our sense of his greatness? Is not the ambition rash and presumptuous which seeks to approach the subject anew? Surely the language of apology, at least, is the fit preface to such a deed of daring. some men from their age than others. Some men pass through the atmosphere of their time as meteors through the air, or comets through the heavens-leaving as little impression, and having with it a connexion equally slight; while others interpenetrate it so entirely, that the age becomes almost identified with them. Milton was intensely the man of his time; and, although he shot far before it, it was just because he more fully felt and understood what its tendencies really were; he spread his sails in its breath, as in a favorable gale, which propelled him far beyond the point where the impulse was at first given. No apology, however, do we intend to make. We hold, that every one who has been delighted, benefitted, or elevated by a great author, may claim the privilege of gratitude, to tell the world that, and how, he has. We hold, too, that the proof of the true greatness of a man lies in this, that every new encomiast, if in any measure qualified for the task, is sure to find in him some new proof that the praises of all time A glance at the times of Milton would have not been wasted or exaggerated. Who require to be a profound and comprehenthat reads or thinks at all has not frequent sive one; for the times that bore such a occasion to pass by the cairn which a thank-product must have been extraordinary. ful world has reared to Milton's memory? One feature, perhaps the chief, in them and who can, at one time or other, resist the impulse to cast on it another stone, however rough and small that stone may be? Such is all we at present propose. was this: Milton's age was an age attempting, with sincere, strong, though baffled endeavor, to be earnest, holy, and heroic. The Church had, in the previous Every man is in some degree the mirror age, been partially and nominally reformof his times. A man's times stand over ed; but it had failed in accomplishing its him, as the sun above the earth, compelling own full deliverance, or the full deliverance an image from the dewdrop, as well as from of the world. It had shaken off the nightthe great deep. The difference is, that mare of popery, but had settled itself down while the small man is a small, the great man into a sleep more composed, less disturbed, is a broad and full, reflection of his day. but as deadly. Is the Reformation, thought But the effects of the times may be seen in the high hearts which then gave forth their the baby's bauble and cart, as well as in thunder throbs in England, to turn out a the style of the painter's pencil and the mere sham? Has all that bloody seed of poet's song. The converse is equally true. martyrdom been sown in vain? Whether A man's times are reflective of the man, as is worse, after all, the incubus of superstiwell as a man of the times. Every man tion, or the sleep of death? We have got acts on, as well as is acted on by, every rid of the Pope, indeed, but not of the other man. The cry of the child who falls world, or the devil, or the flesh; we must, in yonder gutter as really affects the pro- therefore, repair our repairs-amend our gress of society as the roar of the French amendments-reform our Reformation— |