had just had with the Prince, by coming to the Council with His Royal Highness' hat in his hand, instead of his own!

A manœuvre of another description is related of Lord Thurlow, during the debate on the Regency. Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, in a speech supporting the claims of the Prince of Wales, incidentally cited a passage from Grotius, with regard to the definition of the word right. "The Chancellor, in his reply," says the Bishop, in his Memoirs, "boldly asserted that he perfectly well remembered the passage I had quoted from Grotius, and that it solely respected natural, but was inapplicable to civil, rights. Lord Loughborough, the first time I saw him after the debate, assured me that before he went to sleep that night, he looked into Grotius, and was astonished to find that the Chancellor, in contradicting me, had presumed on the ignorance of the House, and that my quotation was perfectly correct. What miserable shifts do great men submit to in supporting their parties! The Chancellor Thurlow," continues the Bishop, was an able and upright judge, but as the Speaker of the House of Lords, he was domineering and insincere. It is said of him, that in the Cabinet he opposed everything, proposed nothing, and was ready to support anything. I remember Lord Camden saying to me one night, when the Chancellor was speaking, contrary, as he thought, to his own conviction, 'There, now, I could not do that: he is supporting what he does not believe a word of." "

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LORD THURLOW AT WARREN HASTINGS' TRIAL.

On one occasion, during the progress of the trial of Warren Hastings, Mr. Fox, struck by the solemnity of Lord Thurlow's appearance, said to the Speaker, "I wonder whether any one ever was so wise as Thurlow looks." Lord Brougham describes Fox's remark with a difference: “it was more solemn and imposing than almost any other person's in public life; so much so, that it proved dishonest, since no man could be so wise as he looked." "Nor," says Lord Brougham, “did Thurlow neglect any of the external circumstances, how trifling soever, by which attention and deference could be secured on the part of his audience. Not only were his periods well rounded, and the connecting matter or continuing phrases well flung in, but the tongue was so hung as

to make the sonorous voice peal through the hall, and appear to convey things which it would be awful to examine too near, and perilous to question. Nay, to the more trivial circumstances of his place, when addressing the House of Lords, he scrupulously attended. He rose slowly from his seat; he left the woolsack with deliberation; but he went not to the nearest place, like ordinary chancellors, the sons of mortal men; he drew back by a pace or two, and, standing, as it were, askance, and partly behind the huge bale he had quitted for a season, he began to pour out, first in a growl, and then in a clearer and louder roll, the matter which he had to deliver; and which, for the most part, consisted in some positive assertions, some personal vituperation, some sarcasms at classes, some sentences pronounced upon individuals, as if they were standing before him for judgment; some vague mysterious threats of things purposely not expressed, and abundant protestations of conscience and duty, in which they who keep the consciences of kings are apt to indulge."

Lord Campbell has described from recollection the appearance of the great Chancellor "bent with age, dressed in an old-fashioned grey coat, with breeches and gaiters of the same stuff, a brown scratch wig, tremendous white bushy eyebrows, eyes still sparkling with intelligence, dreadful crowsfeet round them, very deep lines in his countenance, and shrivelled complexion of a sallow hue."

They who had never seen Lord Thurlow might well imagine they heard him, if they had access to such excellent imitators as George the Fourth and Lord Holland.

JOHN WILKES-HIS PLACE-HUNTING, AND HIS WIT.

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Wilkes was, at his entrance into public life, a friend of the elder Pitt's ;" and the Chatham Correspondence shows that he continued to profess to be so, and was a candidate for office under him. In 1761 he addressed to him a letter, a model of its class, avowing his pride "to have Mr. Pitt his patron and friend," and his desire for a scene of business. "I wish," he writes, "the Board of Trade might be thought a place in which I could be of any service;" adding, " among all the chances and changes of a political world, I will never have an obligation in a parliamentary way but to Mr. Pitt and his friends." Wilkes did not succeed; but, contriving

to mix himself up with the constitutional questions of "general warrants" and " parliamentary privilege," such men as Mr. Pitt, though they disapproved of the violence and despised the calumnies of Wilkes, they used him as the tool of their ambition. Wilkes, encouraged by such support, grew so violent, that in 1763, Mr. Pitt denounced, in Parliament, the North Briton, and its author, as "the blasphemer of his God, and the libeller of his King," and repudiated all connexion with Wilkes.

1.

Mr. Malone relates, in his Memoirs, that Wilkes, about the time when his North Briton began to be much noticed, dined one day with Mr. Rigby, and after dinner honestly confessed that he was a ruined man, not worth a shilling; that his principal object in writing was to procure himself some place, and that he should be particularly pleased with one that should remove him from the clamour and importunity of his creditors. He mentioned the office of Governor of Canada, and requested Mr. Rigby's good offices with the Duke of Bedford, so as to prevail on that nobleman to apply to Lord Bute for that place. Mr. Rigby said the Duke had not much intercourse with Lord Bute; neither could it be supposed that his lordship would purchase Mr. Wilkes's silence by giving him a good employment. Besides, he could have no security that the same hostile attacks would not be still made against him by Mr. Wilkes's coadjutors, Lloyd and Churchill, after he had left England. Wilkes solemnly assured him there need not be the least apprehension of that, for that he would make Churchill his chaplain, and Lloyd his secretary, and take them both with him to Canada. The Duke, at Rigby's request, made the application. Lord Bute would not listen to it, and even treated the affair with contempt. When this was told to Mr. Wilkes, he observed to Mr. Rigby that Lord B. had acted very foolishly, and that he might live to lament that he and his colleagues had not quitted England, as much as King Charles did that Hampden and Cromwell had not gone to America, after the famous representation of the state of the nation in 1641; for now he should never cease his attacks till he had made him the most unpopular man in England. He kept his word. Malone relates this information from Mr. Rigby.

Wilkes well understood this cunning, which was the secret of his popularity: he was compelled to follow, that he might

seem to lead, or, at least, to go two steps with his followers, that he might get them to go three with him.

Gibbon,

Of Wilkes's convivial wit no doubt can remain. who passed an evening with him in 1762, when both were militia officers, says, "I scarcely ever met with a better companion: he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge." He adds, "A thorough profligate in principle as in practice; his life stained with. every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in, for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted." This, no doubt, is greatly exaggerated, and the historian, believing him really to confess his political profligacy, is perhaps in error also: "he told us that in this time of public dissension he was resolved to make his fortune." Possibly this was little more than a variety of his well-known saying to some one who was fawning on him with extreme doctrines, "I hope you don't take me for a Wilkite?" His examination, powerfully humorous certainly, on Lord Thurlow's solemn hypocrisy in the House of Lords, is well known. When that consummate piece of cant was performed with all the solemnity which the actor's incredible air, eyebrows, voice, could lend the imprecation, "If I forget my sovereign, may my God forget me!" Wilkes, seated on the steps of the throne, eyeing him askance with his inhuman squint and demoniac grin, muttered," Forget you! He'll see you d-d first."

Wilkes's notoriety led to his head being often painted as a public-house sign, which, however, did not invariably raise the original in estimation. An old lady, in passing a publichouse, distinguished as above, to which her companion had called her attention, "Ah!" replied she, "Wilkes swings everywhere but where he ought."

Wilkes's ugliness was proverbial: his squint has been immortalised by Hogarth. Yet, even this natural obliquity he turned to humorous account. When Wilkes challenged Lord Townshend, he said, "Your lordshsp is one of the handsomest men in the kingdom, and I am one of the ugliest. Yet, give but half an hour's start, and I will enter the lists against you with any woman you choose to name, because you will omit attentions on account of your fine exterior, which I shall double on account of my plain one.” He used to add that it took him just half an hour to talk away his face. He was so

exceedingly ugly that a lottery-office keeper is said to have offered him ten guineas not to pass his window whilst the tickets were drawing, for fear of his bringing ill-luck upon the house.

Wilkes, in an ironical speech on Lord George Germaine, said the noble lord might conquer America, but he believed it would not be in Germany. This rhodomontade of Lord Chatham had been so often applied, that it seemed difficult to allude to it with novelty any more. Lord George, whose insolence bore him up against all his disgraces, repeated this sarcasm himself in council, and commended it. Complaining to the King of the neglects and dilatoriness of the Admiralty and Ministry, and of the badness of the transports, he said, "But I must say, sir, that the two heaviest and worst sailors are King George and the Lord North;" and he bragged of having said it.

The following epigram on Mr. Wilkes, in consequence of becoming a favourite at Court in April. 1784, and having once more come into Parliament for Middlesex, in conjunction with the Court Candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, appeared in a newspaper of the time :

POLITICAL CONSISTENCY.

What! Liberty-Wilkes, of oppression the hater,
Call'd a turncoat, a Judas, a rogue, and a traitor!
What has made all our patriots so angry and sore?
Has Wilkes done that now which he ne'er did before?

Consistent was John all the days of his life;

For he loved his best friends as he loved his own wife ;
In his actions he always kept self in his view,

Though false to the world, to John Wilkes he was true.

Luttrell and Wilkes were standing on the Brentford hustings, when Wilkes asked his adversary, privately, whether he thought there were more fools or rogues among the multitude of Wilkites spread out before them. "I'll tell them what you say, and put an end to you," said the Colonel; but, perceiving the threat gave Wilkes no alarm, he added, "Surely you don't mean to say you could stand here one hour after I did so?" "Why (the answer was), you would not be alive one instant after." How so?" "I should merely say it was a fabrication, and they would destroy you in the twinkling of an eye!"

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