are poets little enough to envy even a Poet Laureate." In 1758 he seems to have been much engaged in the study of architecture. In 1762 he was an unsuccessful applicant for the Professorship of Modern Languages, which had been previously promised to another candidate. In 1765 he made a short journey into Scotland, to recruit his health, which had now become very feeble. At this time he declined the degree of Doctor of Laws which was offered to him by the University of Aberdeen, "lest it should seem a slight upon Cambridge." The next year was published the last edition of his poems that appeared during his life. In 1768 the Professorshp of Modern Languages again became vacant, and he received it unsolicited from the Duke of Grafton, who was shortly after chosen Chancellor of the University. The beautiful ode performed at his installation was written by Gray, who "thought it better that gratitude should sing than expectation." It is to be found in all the posthumous collections of his works. His new office, the income of which he greatly needed, was very acceptable, but he never entered upon its duties. He was prevented partly, perhaps, by indolence and diffidence, but chiefly by ill-health. Much of his time after his appointment was spent in short journeys. "Travel I must," he says, "or cease to exist." On one of these trips to Westmoreland and the Lakes, he was to have been accompanied by Dr. Wharton; but the latter was forced to return home by a sudden illness, and, for his amusement, Gray wrote an epistolary description of the tour. The elegance and picturesque merit of this journal called forth the admiration even of Dr. Johnson. During all this time his health was steadily failing, and his attacks of gout were becoming more frequent and alarming. But his death at the last was sudden, and took place after an illness of only five days, July 30, 1771. Of his last hours we have hardly any account, for none of his friends were with him. By his will, Mr. Mason and Dr. Browne were appointed his executors, and to the former were intrusted all his MSS., to be preserved or destroyed at his discretion. He was buried, according to his directions, by the side of his mother in the churchyard at Stoke. The intellectual character of Gray is apparent both from what he did and what he did not. The small number of his works, and the many conceptions left unexecuted, but shadowing forth forms of beauty which might have been, sufficiently indicate the irresolution and fastidiousness which were its prominent defects; while every sentence or verse which he did write is polished by the cultivated taste of the scholar, or sparkles with the splendid imagination of the poet. We shall attempt no eulogy of his genius, or refutation of its detractors. For however the opinions of individuals may differ upon minor points, the day of harsh and illiberal criticism against him has passed, and the judgment of all assigns him a lofty place among English poets. Of his peculiar religious views, we have little knowledge. A passage in the Walpoliana speaks of them as skeptical; but its authority would, under any circumstances, have little weight, and it is entirely counterbalanced by the whole tenor of his life and writings. The doctrines of Hume, Voltaire, Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke are indignantly rebuked in his correspondence. And the excellence of his private character, together with the moral and religious consolations which he invoked in his own despondency and affliction, and to which he beautifully directed his friends, give us reason to hope that, whatever may have been his intellectual belief, the sentiments of genuine piety were alive in his heart. His memoirs were published by Mason, who also edited a complete edition of his poems. Many years after Mr. Mitford wrote his biography, which, together with all his literary remains, was published in a large quarto volume. Mr. Mason's book appeared too soon after Gray's death, to be in all respects complete. That of Mitford contains all the materials from which an excellent biography might be compiled, but thrown together in an ill-considered and undigested work. Some of the notes with which he has illustrated the poems are curious and valuable. There is no good edition of Gray's life and all his works accessible to the public, a deficiency which some of our publishers should supply. The object of the preceding imperfect sketch will be accomplished if it induce some more able writer to undertake the task. JUNIUS. "Podagricus fit pugil."-HORACE. [CONCLUDED.] to the guidance furnished by the character and design of the letter-writer and other circumstances of the time. THE resemblance between Junius and the Earl of Chatham has led a few writers to attribute the celebrated Letters to his Lordship. Among these writers the most re- Before we come to them, we have to spectable has been Dr. Benjamin Water- speak of Chatham's mosaic ministry. Scarcehouse, of Cambridge, Mass., who published ly was it put together, when his unrelenting a book on Junius in 1831. This, though ailment, the gout, obliged him to go to rather garrulous and rambling, has its com- Bath and drink the waters, leaving matters pensation in the justness of its views, and at sixes and sevens. His brain at that time what we believe to be the truth of its con- seemed to be as much tormented as his clusions. The Doctor's meaning is better legs. At the close of 1766, Lord Chesterthan his mode. He is too much like the field, writing from Bath, says: "Mr. Pitt advocates of other Juniuses, who argue less keeps his bed here with a very real gout, for truth than for the honor of their own and not a political one, as is very often sushypotheses, and try to conceal or quietly pected." About a year afterwards, Decemoverlook every thing which does not make ber 1st, 1767, he writes again from the for their object or which they cannot explain. same place: "Lord Chatham's physician Doubtless the untenable nature of the claims had very ignorantly checked a coming fit they put forward obliges them to a great of the gout and scattered it over his body, deal of this; but the fact is palpable. Dr. Waterhouse has laid himself open to the charge of special pleading in his essay. He covers but half the ground; for he omits all consideration of the Miscellaneous Letters, which we know to be those of Junius, not less by their intrinsic evidence than his own admission to Woodfall. The Doctor's book, from this omission, is more calculated to injure the hypothesis than to serve it. But his truth is too strong for his weakness to impair; and in spite of his imperfect way of going over the course, we feel that the old gentleman has been maundering away upon the right track after all. The first of these Miscellaneous Letters of Junius (under various signatures) is undoubtedly à rock on which all the pretensions urged for Lord Chatham seem to split at the very outset. And the second and third and others, as the reader proceeds, appear to put the Pittites completely hors du combat. The letters, however, cannot be ignored. They must be met, scrutinized, and interpreted, according and it fell particularly on his nerves, so that he is sometimes exceedingly vaporish. He would neither see nor speak to any body while he was here. This time twelve months he was here in good health and spirits, but for these last eight months he has been absolutely invisible to his most intimate friends. He would receive no friends, nor so much as open any packet about business." His own business at that period had begun to flow into a new channel. In the beginning of this year, 1767, Lord Charlemont writes from London: "Lord Chatham is still Minister; but how long he may continue so is a problem that would pose the deepest politician. The opposition grows more and more violent, and seems to gain ground: his ill-health as yet prevents his doing any business. The ministry is divided into as many parties as there are men in it; all complain of his want of participation." In another letter of the same month, Charlemont says: "No member of the opposition speaks without directly abusing Lord Chatham, and no friend ever rises to, in a letter signed "Mnemon," "revived the take his part. Is it possible such a man doctrine of dispensing power, State necescan be friendless?" Thus, his cabinet in sity, arcana of government, and all that the confusion of Agramont's camp, his ene- machinery of exploded prerogative that mies loud, his friends silent, and his body had cost our ancestors so much toil and tormented with disease, it is not to be treasure and blood to break to pieces." wondered at if Lord Chatham would neither But the warfare was to be, like that of see nor speak to any body at Bath at the Palafox in a later day, "to the knife," close of 1767. His situation was disastrous waged with all the unleavened hatred of and desperate in the extreme. In the mean his disappointed heart; and he saw that to time General Conway had left the ministry, strike effectually, he must do so anonyand Lord Weymouth was made Secretary mously. He accordingly took his resoluin his place. Lord Hillsborough was made tion, which, being so much at variance with Secretary of State for the Colonies, and in the open controversy which is ever conconsequence of several resignations, Chat-sidered the most honorable, shows how deep ham was obliged, as we have said, to make must have been the bitterness of soul that overtures to the Bedfords. His cup of dis- set him on such a course. He began it in gust and disappointment was nearly full. the beginning of 1767; and during the Being compelled by his gout to stay at eight months in which Chesterfield says he Hampstead on his way to London, he re- was invisible to the world, he was directing ceived while there a letter from His Majesty, with a heated brain the first assaults of his who, either apprehensive of farther resigna- cunningly devised hostility. In January, tions, or anxious to impair the Earl's adminis- 1768, Lord Chesterfield says: "Lord Chattration as much as possible, declared his in-ham is at his repurchased house at Hayes, tention of making more changes, and asked but sees no mortal. Some say he has a fit the advice and assistance of his Lordship. of the gout, which would probably do him To this the stern old man sent a verbal mes-good; but many think that his worst comsage to say, that such was the state of his plaint is in his head, which I am afraid is health, the King must not expect from him too true." Chatham's was not the mind to any farther aid or counsel in the matter. grow inert in solitude, or All these things show what must have been the state of Chatham's mind on this occasion. He saw that in the cabinet and in a corrupt Pafliament, he was obstructed and out-generalled by the Tories and partisans of the Court. There was little or no hope on that side; all his enemies, the gout included, had left him a baffled man, with an angry, impatient, but still unvanquished spirit. The cause of Whiggery and the Constitution was not to be given up. The Earl of Chatham had more weapons in his armory than even Horace Walpole had discovered. Wilkes in his "North Briton" had established a precedent, which would not be lost upon our able and exasperated poli -"like a sword laid by, To eat into itself and rust ingloriously." It was stung into fierce energy by every circumstance of political and bodily suffering in the midst of which he stood; and the thought must have been a gratifying one, that he could wreak his vengeance on his adversaries, even from his sick couch or arm-chair, just as he formerly did on the enemies of England. We must not omit to mention here a curious circumstance quoted by Dr. Waterhouse, which gives strength to what we consider a true hypothesis. In a work styled "An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times," published in London by the Rev. Dr. Brown Chatham was now resolved, as we are in 1757, the following remarkable passages disposed to conclude, from the new ground occur. The writer states it to be his opinof the public press, to continue the war of ion that nothing but the power of some constitutional liberty and of his own ambi- great minister could avail to save the countion, (for the latter must form a prominent try; and then goes on to say: "There feature in any portraiture of this great man,) is another character in a lower walk of against the strength of the Crown and that life, which might be no less strange than policy which, to quote the words of Junius that which has been delineated; I mean tician. the character of a political writer. He would choose an untrodden path of politics, where no party man ever dared to enter. The undisguised freedom and boldnes of his manner would please the brave, astonish the weak, and confound the guilty." It is highly probable that Pitt's character, in all its traits and propensities, was very well known to this reverend pamphleteer, who could thus, ten years before the political writer came, foretell his appearance. To assail the Cabinet of England and all the measures of the Ministry, was a daring piece of strategy, and a dangerous for a Lord Privy Seal to perpetrate. Discovery would ruin the splenetic old assaulter-would certainly tarnish the laurels he had already gathered in a celebrated career. The risk was great indeed; not in the handwriting and the conveyancing, but in the style of the letters. He could no more change this to any purpose, than he could his mind or Passing on, we come to the consideration his face. Hence the last necessity for someDr. Waterhouse shrunk from. Here, in the thing which should neutralize his well-known Miscellaneous Letters, we have the fierce- manner; and hence his indirect but intellihearted old statesman of '59 opening his gible attack on Chatham. This attack is masked battery, in revenge of all his defeats calculated to give the curious investigator and disappointments, against the King of pause. It must seem strange that the England, his policy, and his friends; and in scribe in the mask-a Whig and a man of the first place, as the matter touched him popular principles should begin his undernearest and deepest in his disgusts, he turns taking by abuse of the greatest Whig and his rage against the Cabinet of which he most popular person in England, as if there himself was a part! Very extraordinary was not a Tory of any sort to flesh his this; but not more extraordinary than Wil-maiden sword upon! This falling foul of the liam Pitt himself. But what a perilous undertaking it was for the Lord Privy Seal to fall upon the King's Council with his crutch! The style of Chatham would be palpable to every eye, and then the exposure would follow, such as he himself said would procure his attaintment by bill, or kill him in three days. His first aspiration in these circumstances would be, (the reverse of Cowley's :) "What shall I do to be for ever unknown?" But he took his precautions with consummate subtlety and forethought. He kept himself secluded at Bath and Hayes, and let the report go abroad that he was in the jowest state of sickness and incapacity, tottering on crutches or touched in the head, thus warding off the suspicion that the vivacious and forcible letters of "Poplicola," "Veteran," and the rest, could come from him. But he did far more than this. "Poplicola began the series of letters by a measured and high-sounding denunciation (conditionally conveyed, however) of Lord Chatham himself! Nothing was now to be said. After such feints as these, the acutest political critic could not mention the Minister's name in connection with this authorship. Lord Chatham, in spite of sentiment and style, was safe from public imputation and its consequences; and his power to continue his mighty strokes from behind a mask remained unimpeded and unquestioned. grand and gouty old Earl has a very inconsistent and incredible appearance is unaccountable, in fact, except under our hypothesis. "Wo be to you," says Voltaire, "if you say on a subject all that can be said upon it!" We are less disposed to incur the wo thus denounced than merely to suggest the chief points in our view of this authorship. In considering the Miscellaneous Letters which assail Chatham, we see the first is condi tional throughout, depending on an if. The vagueness of it, so unlike the bareness and particularity of the author's general style, seems to show some secret design. "Poplicola," in the first letter, 28th April, 1767, says: "But if, instead of a man of common mixed character, whose vices may be redeemed by some appearance of virtue and generosity, it should have unfortunately happened, that a nation had placed all their confidence in a man purely and perfectly bad, what security would the nation," &c. "As the absolute destruction of the Constitution would be his great object," &c. "He must also try how far the nation would bear to see the established laws suspended by proclamation, and upon such occasions he must not be without an apostate lawyer, weak enough to sacrifice his own character, and base enough to betray the laws of his country. But the master-piece of his treachery would be, if possble, to foment such discord between the mother country and her colonies, as may leave them both a prey to his own dark machinations!" All this, may mention one, the slightness of which would pass for very good hostility; but is only seems to show that the writer thought amusingly disproportioned to the truth of nothing too trifling to help his plan. The the matter, if not palpably groundless. It first letter called forth a defense of Chatwould only suit the rabid Tories and the ham, signed W. D.-William Draper-who secret purpose. During his whole career, afterwards crossed swords with Junius in the war-cry of Pit was, the Constitution; the affair of the Marquis of Granby. But he fought for it on all occasions. The "sus- Poplicola paid so little attention to the depension of the laws" was a proclamation fense of the Earl, it interested or concerned issued by him and Camden, preventing the him so little, that in alluding to the writer exportation of corn at a time of scarcity; in the next letter, he called him C. D.and neither of them, in issuing it, attempted Mr. C. D.; he did not know who the man was to defend its strict legality. Even Junius- in fact. We think this cunning negligence Poplicola, in the second letter, admits it was worthy of observation. Junius seems to a necessary act; but the treason which de- have taken care of the smallest accessories, served the gibbet, as the Tarpeian Rock was as well as the most prominent appearances. not at hand, was, not admitting the unconstitutional nature of the business! This was "an outrage upon the common sense of mankind." He goes on to say, (and the praise of the Grenvilles, the brothers of his amanuensis, is remarkable in all Junius has written,) that George Grenville deserved high honor for confessing the illegality of the act which aimed at providing food for the people, while "the conduct of the Earl of Chatham and his miserable understrappers deserved nothing but detestation and contempt." The apostate lawyer of the foregoing was Lord Camden, the most constitutional jurist in England, a man of popular principles almost approaching republicanism, and the dear friend of Lord Chatham-one who would be consistently struck at by any foe or pretended foe of the latter. In the third letter the writer, signing himself "Anti-Sejanus," wonders why Chatham's spirit or understanding could ever permit him to take office under a pernicious court-minion, (but had he a control over the existing ministry?) whom he himself had affected to despise or detest. "We will not condemn him for the avarice of a pension, or the melancholy ambition of a title. They were objects which he perhaps looked up to, though the rest of the world thought them beneath his acceptance, (law-breaker, traitor, and Cataline as he was!) But to We think it perfectly conclusive that Jubecome a stalking-horse to a stallion-to nius was a man of high station; the lion is shake hands with a Scotchman at the hazard recognized by his foot-prints. He seems to of catching all his infamy; [the fierce ear- have played a predominating part on the nestness of Junius breaks out now! no stage of politics and statesmanship-to have feigning here!] to receive the word from a personal interest in all that the Letters him-Prerogative and a Thistle-by the refer to, such as could belong to no mere once respected name of Pitt! it is even literary Swiss, writing in the pay of a patron below contempt!" Among the tokens of or a party. He talks to and of the greatest close design apparent in those Letters, we | men of England, as to and of those whom Having thus secured his line of march by these passing charges against Chatham, and by others, growing feebler as he got along, the unknown writer directed all his fierceness against his real objects-the King and his Ministers. The business of government had fallen by degrees into the hands of the King's friends. Chatham was still in the cabinet, but a mere cipher. At last, towards the close of 1768, the Privy Seal, in consequence of his absence, having been put in the hands of three inferior persons as commissioners, his Lordship flung it away in disgust. He sent it back by Lord Camden, instead of surrendering it with the etiquette practised on such occa-. sions. This was three days before the 48th miscellaneous letter, in which he satirizes the cabinet, all round, passing over Chatham with: "Of the Earl of Chatham I had much to say; but it were inhuman to persecute, when Providence has marked out the example to mankind." How admirably this suggestion of the Earl's disease and imbecility saves abuse and serves the purpose of the concealed writer! His soul being thus liberated, as it were, he prepared, at the ripe age of sixty-one, for "the forlorn hope," and the more terible assault on his enemies which they should not soon forget, and the country would always remember. |