240 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



Thames at Richmond : " I can't see what they admire in this river. There it goes, 

 flow, flow, all the day long." His portrait in advanced age shows a hard, humorous, 

 clever old face, with a touch of Voltaire in it. His manners are said to have 

 been perfect to the end. He is buried credite posteri /beneath the altar of St. 

 James's Church, Piccadilly, where, let us hope, he rests in peace. 



If " Old O." was a granite rock of self-indulgence, Charles James Fox was a 

 rushing torrent. I have no space here even if it had not been done so well before by 



Sir George Trevelyan 

 and the Rev. William 

 Hunt to give an ade- 

 quate account, even on 

 his social side alone, of 

 this the most remark- 

 able Englishman of his 

 century. He had 

 genius of intellect and 

 genius of temperament 

 both. He had great 

 knowledge, though not 

 wisdom, in affairs, and 

 a splendid eloquence. 

 He had taste and 

 scholarship and loved 

 his books ; he had a 

 quick and deep sym- 

 pathy with others ; he 

 could feel very strong 



affection ; he was an all-round sportsman. An inveterate gambler, and volage to 

 the core, he half ruined his family and many of his friends, and drank as hard 

 as any of them. Rochester's epigram on his ancestor Charles the Second (whom he 

 resembled in more points than his face) applied most accurately to Charles himself. 

 Only a society so secure and so intimately connected as that into which he had the 

 good luck to be born would have tolerated his social and political excesses. Allowing 

 for them and for the injury he did his friends in money matters we must admit that 

 Fox was the best-loved man of his day. He passed at once beyond barriers over 



Charles James Fox. 



