MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. 



19 



any of these silly slaves have to object to my 

 opinion being — what it truly is — against the Hol- 

 land House theory of Lord Chatham's madness ? 

 I know that Lord Grenville treated it with con- 

 tempt. I know others now living who did so too, 

 and I know that so stout a "Whig as Sir P. Francis 

 was clearly of that opinion, and he knew Lord 

 Chatham personally. I had every ground to be- 

 lieve that Horace "Walpole, a vile, malignant, and 

 unnatural wretch, though a very clever writer of 

 letters, was nine-tenths of the Holland House au- 

 thority for the tale. I knew that a baser man in 

 character or a meaner in capacity than the first 

 Lord Holland existed not, even in those days of 

 job and mediocrity. Why, then, was I bound to 

 take a false view because Lord Holland's family 

 have inherited his hatred of a great rival I " 



Another instance is as follows : 



" I solicit your best attention to the fate which 

 seems hastening upon the Edinburgh Review. The 

 having always been free from the least control of 

 booksellers is one of its principal distinctions, and 

 long was peculiarly so — perhaps it still has it near- 

 ly to itself. But, if it shall become a Treasury jour- 

 nal, I hardly see any great advantage in one kind 

 of independence without the rest. Nay, I doubt 

 if its literary freedom, any more than its political, 

 will long survive. Books will be treated accord- 

 ing as the Treasury, or their understrappers, regard 

 the authors. . . . But, is it after all possible that 

 the Review should be suffered to sink into such 

 a state of subserviency that it dares not insert any 

 discussion upon a general question of politics be- 

 cause it might give umbrage to the Government 

 of the day? I pass over the undeniable fact that 

 it is underlings only whom you are scared by, and 

 that the ministers themselves have no such inor- 

 dinate pretension as to dream of interfering. I say 

 nothing of those underlings generally, except this, 

 that I well know the race, and a more despicable, 

 above all, in point of judgment, exists not. Never 

 mind their threats, they can do no harm. Even 

 if any of them are contributors, be assured they 

 never will withdraw because you choose to keep 

 your course free and independent." 



Mr. Napier, who seems to have been one of 

 the most considerate and high-minded of men, 

 was moved to energetic remonstrance on this 

 occasion. Lord Brougham explained his strong 

 language away, but be was incapable of really 

 controlling himself, and the strain was never les- 

 sened until 1843, when the correspondence ceases, 

 and we learn that there had been a quarrel be- 

 tween him and his too long-suffering correspond- 

 ent. Yet John Allen — that able scholar and con- 

 spicuous figure in the annals of Holland House 

 — wrote of Brougham to Mr. Napier, "He is not 

 a malignant or bad-hearted man, but he is an un- 



scrupulous one, and, where his passions are con- 

 cerned or his vanity irritated, there is no excess 

 of which he is not capable." Of Bi'ougham's 

 strong and manly sense, when passion or vanity 

 did not cloud it, and even of a sort of careful jus- 

 tice, these letters give more than one instance. 

 The Quarterly Review, for instance, had an ar- 

 ticle on Romilly's " Memoirs," which to Romil- 

 ly's friends seemed to do him less than justice. 

 Brougham took a more sensible view : 



" Surely we had no right whatever to expect 

 that they whom Komilly had all his life so stoutly 

 opposed, and who were treated by him with great 

 harshness, should treat him as his friends would 

 do, and at the very moment when a most injudi- 

 cious act of his family was bringing out all his 

 secret thoughts against them. Only place your- 

 self in the same position, and suppose that Can- 

 ning's private journals had been published — the 

 journals he may have kept while the bitterest en- 

 emy of the Whigs, and in every page of which 

 there must have been some passage offensive to 

 the feelings of the living and of the friends of the 

 dead. Would any mercy have been shown to Can- 

 ning's character and memory by any of the Whig 

 party, either in society or in reviews ? Woidd the 

 line have been drawn of only attacking Canning's 

 executors, who published the papers, and leaving 

 Canning himself untouched ? Clearly and certain- 

 ly not, and yet I am putting a very much weaker 

 case, for we had joined Canning, and all political 

 enmity was at an end: whereas the Tories and 

 Bomilly never had for an hour laid aside their mu- 

 tual hostility." 



And if .he was capable of equity, Brougham 

 was also capable of hearty admiration, even of an 

 old friend who had on later occasions gone into a 

 line which he intensely disliked. It is a relief in 

 the pages of blusterous anger and raging censure 

 to come upon what he says of Jeffrey : 



" I can truly say that there never in all my life 

 crossed my mind one single unkind feeling re- 

 specting him, or indeed any feeling but that of the 

 warmest affection and the most unmingled admira- 

 tion of his character,, believing and knowing him 

 to be as excellent and amiable as he is great in the 

 ordinary, and, as I think, the far less important 

 sense of the word." 



Of the value of Brougham's contributions we 

 cannot now judge. They will not, in spite of 

 their energy and force, bear rereading to-day, 

 and perhaps the same may be said of three-fourths 

 of Jeffrey's once-famous essays. Brougham's 

 self-confidence is heroic. He thought he could 

 make a speech for Bolingbroke, but by-and-by 

 he had sense enough to see that, in order 

 to attempt this, he ought to read Bolingbroke 



