JET. 30.] FOX. 403 



TO EARL GEEY. 



"MIDDLE TEMPLE, June 4, 1808. 



" MY DEAR LORD, I trouble you with a few lines 

 to say how Fox's book is flourishing. The cry is 

 loud and universal in its favour."* All classes poli- 

 tical, fashionable, and literary talk of nothing else, 

 and talk in the same strain. Even Lord Aberdeen 

 whom I chanced to meet in company the other day 

 was in raptures, though a prodigious lover of kings 

 and priests, and a pupil of Pitt and Melville indeed 

 one of 'Stitis favourites. And Lord Camden says he 

 read it at a sitting with infinite avidity, and admires 

 every line separately. You will say this is a proof 

 of his stupidity, for if he understood it all, he must 

 necessarily be shocked at some parts of it. 



" I expect it will still raise a cry, especially in the 

 pulpit, and that you will soon see letters to Lord 

 Holland, and perhaps yourself, by J. Bowles & Co., 

 and hear of sermons by Eennel and all manner of 

 holy animals.t But still the cause of liberty and 

 liberality of opinion is prodigiously refreshed by it, 

 and all its inferior supporters countenanced and en- 

 couraged. As a, party event, too, you are great 



* l A History of the early part of the Reign of King James the 

 Second. With an Introductory Chapter.' 



f John Bowles, barrister-at-law, the author of a multitude of pam- 

 'phlets, chiefly directed against the Whig party, and some of them 

 especially directed against Fox. Thomas Rennel, Dean of Winchester, 

 author of ' Principles of French Republicanism founded on Violence and 

 -Blood-guiltiness,' and other pamphlets of a like tenor. The chief 

 attack on Fox's book was by the. Right Honourable George Hose.- 



