210] ANNUAL REGISTER, :1795. 
Mr. Hastings’s friends clung to tion, neither to be purchased with 
him during the whole of the trial: money, nor awakened by a love of 
even the lawyers who pled his fame. 
cause, were touched with an emo- 
A true 
In the trial of Mr, Hastings, considered as an heroic poem, we recognize great 
unity of design; to harass, provoke, discompose, embarrass, and finally overwhelm 
and discomfit, an innocent sufferer. Various episodes occur in their nature and ten- 
dency with the main fable: the merit of the accused, particularly magnanimous pa- 
tience, the virtue by which, in this epopeeia, he was most eminently. distinguished, 
was contrasted with the impotent fretfulness and impatience of his principal tormen- 
tor; and, what has been thought by some critics indispensable in a composition of 
this kind, somewhat of the ludicrous and burlesque relieved this serious drama, in 
the petulant obloquy of a Thersites— 
‘ An angry ape, 
- Playing such fantastic tricks’before high Heaven 
As make the angels weep.’—SuaxsPeare. 
The task undertaken by the prosecutors appeared, on the outset, to be, what indeed 
it was, singularly arduous. Public opinion was in favour of Mr. Hastings. And, 
while calumny was heaped on calumny in England, letters were constantly received 
from, India; proclaiming his merit in terms of the most enthusiastic gratitude and ap- 
plause. But the managers of the impeachment, and particularly two men, who were 
of the same country, the same nearly in point of genius, as well as birth, though each 
was marked by)some peculiarities of character, undertook, under the auspices of fac- 
tious combination, to brave every difficulty, and ta storm the temple of virtue on the 
wing of poetical fancy. ‘hey bothof them possessed great variety of style, as welbas 
vigour of ienagibetien: By the magic of their eloquence they could give animation to 
every object they might have occasion to describe; and, where real objects should 
fail, to’ call into existence a thousand airy nothings, They were poets of evidence*. 
They had philosophy enough to know, that a degree of belief attends vivid concep- 
tion} and:that, to arrest the attention of men, is a great step towards their conviction, 
It-appeared to be their general aim to accommodate all appearances to a system 
merely, hypothetical, by exaggeration, by fancy, and a strong appeal to the passions. 
Nor were these gentlemen, it has been supposed, in this ingenious work, actuated 
snierély by an inveteracy against Mr, Hastings; but, in part, on so splendid a theatre 
_as.was opened. by this trial, by a competition for literary,fame. Burke was richer in 
his varidus metaphors and.allusions, as well as more lively in his transitions; but he 
mixed the serious too often with the low and the burlesque. Sheridan’s muse was less 
desultory,and more equal in her flight; though they, both of them, soared with epic 
freedom into the boundless regions of fancy. ; } aa Gaby 
The listless, tedious, and torpid calm,produced by the law’s delay, it mist be owned, 
mars the comparison that has been made between this trial and an epic or dramatic 
representation, in which the art of the poet passes, with an interesting rapidity, over 
what is dull and languid, to changes and events of an affecting and striking nature. 
But, to the eye of true philosophical criticism, the patience of the person principally 
concerned, sustained with invincible fortitude in such torpid calms, appears to the 
greatest advantage. Jn the conflict and agitation of danger quickly to beover, or 
) quickly to spend its utmost fury, the mind of the patriot and hero 1s awakened and 
fortified by general attention and sympathy; when these are removed, and the sufferer 
fs remanded, as it were, to hissolitary prison, the eclat of his virtueis/less, butthe proof 
of its constancy greater; greater in the inverse ratio of the magnitude of the trouble 
and the danger, to the indifference with which: it is regarded, Nor did Mr. Hastings 
_feel,or affect to feel, in his unmerited as unprecedented situation, astoical indifference. 
EHF Oe : 
4 
* As was said of the Italian poct Dante, ‘Ii poeta defl’ evidenza? 
: 
He 
