A RECONCILIATION.

Charles Lamb to William Godwin.

151

"1806.

"I repent. Can that God whom thy votaries say that thou hast demolished expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the black Hypocondria never gripe thy heart, till thou hast taken a friend for an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four inched bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything written from this domicile as serious.

"I rank thee with Alves, Latinè, Helvetius, or any of his cursed crew? Thou art my friend, and henceforth my philosopher-thou shalt teach Distinction to the junior branches of my household, and Deception to the greyhaired Janitress at my door.

"What! Are these atonements? Can Arcadias be brought upon knees, creeping and crouching?

"Come, as Macbeth's drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock-seven times in a day shalt thou batter at my peace, and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may Briareus, with his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker, lead me such a life.

C. LAMB,"

CHAPTER VII.

POLITICS AND LITERARY WORK. 1806--1811.

A RENEWED intimacy, of which more hereafter, with Lords Holland and Lauderdale, awakened Godwin's somewhat waning interest in politics, which however, had only waned, because he had drifted out of political into purely literary circles. On the death of Charles James Fox, for whom his admiration had always been sincere, he wrote the éloge which is subjoined, and which was printed in the Morning Chronicle. It is an excellent specimen of his style at this period of his life, dignified and worthy of the great statesman, whose frailties are too well, whose services to liberty are too little remembered by this generation.

To the Editor of the 'Morning Chronicle.

"SIR,-You will, if you think proper, insert the inclosed in your paper, and subscribe it with my name. It is an unexaggerated statement of what I think of the character of our lately deceased Minister, taken in a single point of view. In writing it, I have dismissed from my mind all temporary feelings of regret, and expressed myself with the severity and plainness of a distant posterity. I have nothing to do with Administration, and have scarcely a slight acquaintance with a few of its Members. My character, such as it is, and my disposition, are subjects of notoriety; and every one capable of judging righteous judgment, has a tolerably sound idea respecting them. Perhaps then even my

GODWIN ON C. J. FOX.

153

testimony, individual and uninfluenced as it necessarily is, may not be an unacceptable tribute to the memory of the great man we deplore. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"LONDON, October 21, 1806.

CHARACTER OF FOX.

W. GODWIN.

"Charles James Fox was for thirty-two years a principal leader in the debates and discussions of the English House of Commons. The eminent transactions of his life lay within those walls; and so many of his countrymen as were accustomed to hear his speeches there, or have habitually read the abstracts which have been published of them, are in possession of the principal materials by which this extraordinary man is to be judged.

"Fox is the most illustrious model of a Parliamentary Leader, on the side of liberty, that this country has produced. This character is the appropriate glory of England, and Fox is the proper example of this character.

"England has been called, with great felicity of conception, 'The land of liberty and good sense.' We have preserved many of the advantages of a free people, which the nations of the Continent have long since lost. Some of them have made wild and intemperate sallies for the recovery of all those things which are most valuable to man in society, but their efforts have not been attended with the happiest success. There is a sobriety in the English. people, particularly in accord with the possession of freedom. We are somewhat slow, and somewhat silent; but beneath this outside we have much of reflection, much of firmness, a consciousness of power and of worth, a spirit of frank-dealing and plain-speaking, and a moderate and decent sturdiness of temper not easily to be deluded or subdued.

"For thirty-two years Fox hardly ever opened his mouth in Parliament but to assert, in some form or other, the cause of liberty and mankind, and to repel tyranny in its various shapes, and protest against the encroachments of power. In the American war, in the questions of reform at home, which grew out of the American war, and in the successive scenes which were produced

In

by the French Revolution, Fox was still found the perpetual advocate of freedom. He endeavoured to secure the privileges and the happiness of the people of Asia and the people of Africa. Church and State, his principles were equally favourable to the cause of liberty. Englishmen can nowhere find the sentiments of freedom unfolded and amplified in more animated language, or in a more consistent tenor, than in the recorded Parliamentary Debates of Fox. Many have called in question his prudence, and the practicability of his politics in some of their branches; none have succeeded in fixing a stain upon the truly English temper of his heart.

"The reason why Fox so much excelled, in this reign, William Pulteney, and other eminent leaders of Opposition, in the reign of George II. was, that his heart beat in accord to sentiments of liberty. The character of the English nation has improved since the year 1760. The two first Kings of the House of Hanover, did not aspire to the praise of encouragers of English literature, and had no passion for the fine arts; and their minister, Sir Robert Walpole, loved nothing, nor pretended to understand anything, but finance, commerce, and peace. His opponents caught their tone from his, and their debates rather resembled those of the directors of a great trading company, than of men who were concerned with the passions, the morals, the ardent sentiments, and the religion of a generous and enlightened nation. The English seemed fast degenerating into such a people as the Dutch; but Burke and Fox, and other eminent characters not necessary to be mentioned here, redeemed us from the imminent depravity, and lent their efforts to make us the worthy inhabitants of a soil which had produced a Shakespeare, a Bacon, and a Milton.

Fox, in addition to the generous feelings of his heart, possessed, in a supreme degree, the powers of an acute logician. He seized with astonishing rapidity the defects of his antagonist's argument, and held them up in the most striking point of ridicule. He never misrepresented what his opponent had said, or attacked his accidental oversights, but fairly met and routed him when he thought himself strongest. Though he had at no time studied

law as a profession, he never entered the lists in reasoning with a lawyer that he did not show himself superior to the gowned pleader at his own weapons. It was this singular junction of the best feelings of the human heart, with the acutest powers of the human understanding, that made Fox the wonderful creature he was.

"Let us compare William Pitt in office, and Charles James Fox out of it; and endeavour to decide upon their respective claims to the gratitude of posterity. Pitt was surrounded with all that can dazzle the eye of a vulgar spectator: he possessed the plenitude of power; during a part of his reign, he was as nearly despotic as the minister of a mixed government can be: he dispensed the gifts of the Crown; he commanded the purse of the nation; he wielded the political strength of England. Fox during almost all his life had no part of these advantages.

"It has been said, that Pitt preserved his country from the anarchy and confusion, which from a neighbouring nation threatened to infect us. This is a very doubtful proposition. It is by no means clear that the English people, could ever have engaged in so wild, indiscriminate, ferocious, and sanguinary a train of conduct as was exhibited by the people of France. It is by no means clear that the end which Pitt is said to have gained, could not have been accomplished without such bloody wars, such formidable innovations on the liberties of Englishmen, such duplicity, unhallowed dexterity and treachery, and so audacious a desertion of all the principles with which the minister commenced his political life as Pitt employed. Meanwhile, it was the simple, ingenuous and manly office of Fox to protest against the madness and the despotic proceedings of his rival in administration; and, if he could not successfully counteract the measures of Pitt, the honour at least is due to him, to have brought out the English character not fundamentally impaired, in the issue of the most arduous trial it was ever called to sustain.

"The eloquence of these two renowned statesmen well corresponded with the different parts they assumed in public life. The eloquence of Pitt was cold and artificial. The complicated, yet harmonious, structure of his periods, bespoke the man of contriv