Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 3

The news of the battle of Trafalgar arrived four days later, and seemed for a moment to revive him. Forty-eight hours after that most glorious and most mournful of victories had been announced to the country came the Lord Mayor's day; and Pitt dined at Guildhall. His popularity had declined. But on this occasion the multitude, greatly excited by the recent tidings, welcomed him enthusiastically, took off his horses in Cheapside, and drew his carriage up King Street. When his health was drunk, he returned thanks in two or three of those stately sentences of which he had a boundless command. Several of those who heard him laid up his words in their hearts; for they were the last words that he ever uttered in public: "Let us hope that England, having saved herself by her energy, may save Europe by her example."

This was but a momentary rally. Austerlitz soon completed what Ulm had begun. Early in December Pitt had retired to Bath, in the hope that he might there gather strength for the approaching session. While he was languishing there on his sofa arrived the news that a decisive battle had been fought and lost in Moravia, that the coalition was dissolved, that the Continent was at the feet of France. He sank down under the blow. Ten days later he was so emaciated that his most intimate friends hardly knew him. He came up from Bath by slow journeys, and, on the 11th of January 1806, reached his villa at Putney. Parliament was to meet on the 21st. On the 20th was to be the parliamentary dinner at the house of the First Lord of the Treasury in Downing Street; and the cards were already issued. But the days of the great minister were numbered. The only chance for his life, and that a very slight chance, was that he should resign his office, and pass some months in profound repose. His colleagues paid him very short visits, and carefully avoided political conversation. But his spirit, long accustomed to dominion, could not, even in that extremity, relinquish hopes which everybody but himself perceived to be vain. On the day on which he was carried into his bedroom at Putney, the Marquess Wellesley, whom he had long loved, whom he had sent to govern India, and whose administration had been eminently able, energetic, and successful, arrived in London after an absence of eight years. The friends saw each other once more. There was an affectionate meeting, and a last parting. That it was a last parting Pitt did not seem to be aware. He fancied himself to be recovering, talked on various subjects cheerfully, and with an unclouded mind, and pronounced a warm and discerning eulogium on the Marquess's brother Arthur. "I never," he said, "met with any military man with whom it was so satisfactory to converse." The excitement and exertion of this interview were too much for the sick man. He fainted away; and Lord Wellesley left the house, convinced that the close was fast approaching.

And now members of Parliament were fast coming up to London. The chiefs of the opposition met for the purpose of considering the course to be taken on the first day of the session. It was easy to guess what would be the language of the King's speech, and of the address which would be moved in answer to that speech. An amendment condemning the policy of the government had been prepared, and was to have been proposed in the House of Commons by Lord Henry Petty, a young nobleman who had already won for himself that place in the esteem of his country which, after the lapse of more than half a century, he still retains. He was unwilling, however, to come forward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself. Lord Grenville, who had been informed of Pitt's state by Lord Wellesley, and had been deeply affected by it, earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, with characteristic generosity and good nature, gave his voice against attacking his now helpless rival. "Sunt lacrymae rerum," he said, "et mentem mortalia tangunt." On the first day, therefore, there was no debate. It was rumoured that evening that Pitt was better. But on the following morning his physicians pronounced that there were no hopes. The commanding faculties of which he had been too proud were beginning to fail. His old tutor and friend, the Bishop of Lincoln, informed him of his danger, and gave such religious advice and consolation as a confused and obscured mind could receive. Stories were told of devout sentiments fervently uttered by the dying man. But these stories found no credit with anybody who knew him. Wilberforce pronounced it impossible that they could be true. "Pitt," he added, "was a man who always said less than he thought on such topics." It was asserted in many after-dinner speeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, that the great minister died exclaiming, "Oh my country!" This is a fable; but it is true that the last words which he uttered, while he knew what he said, were broken exclamations about the alarming state of public affairs. He ceased to breathe on the morning of the 23rd of January, 1806, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day on which he first took his seat in Parliament. He was in his forty-seventh year, and had been, during near nineteen years, First Lord of the Treasury, and undisputed chief of the administration. Since parliamentary government was established in England, no English statesman has held supreme power so long. Walpole, it is true, was First Lord of the Treasury during more than twenty years: but it was not till Walpole had been some time First Lord of the Treasury that he could be properly called Prime Minister.

It was moved in the House of Commons that Pitt should be honoured with a public funeral and a monument. The motion was opposed by Fox in a speech which deserves to be studied as a model of good taste and good feeling. The task was the most invidious that ever an orator undertook: but it was performed with a humanity and delicacy which were warmly acknowledged by the mourning friends of him who was gone. The motion was carried by 288 votes to 89.

The 22d of February was fixed for the funeral. The corpse having lain in state during two days in the Painted Chamber, was borne with great pomp to the northern transept of the Abbey. A splendid train of princes, nobles, bishops, and privy councillors followed. The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his great father lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie. The sadness of the assistants was beyond that of ordinary mourners. For he whom they were committing to the dust had died of sorrows and anxieties of which none of the survivors could be altogether without a share. Wilberforce, who carried the banner before the hearse, described the awful ceremony with deep feeling. As the coffin descended into the earth, he said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed to look down with consternation into the dark house which was receiving all that remained of so much power and glory.

All parties in the House of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousand pounds to satisfy the demands of Pitt's creditors. Some of his admirers seemed to consider the magnitude of his embarrassments as a circumstance highly honourable to him; but men of sense will probably be of a different opinion. It is far better, no doubt, that a great minister should carry his contempt of money to excess than that he should contaminate his hands with unlawful gain. But it is neither right nor becoming in a man to whom the public has given an income more than sufficient for his comfort and dignity to bequeath to that public a great debt, the effect of mere negligence and profusion. As first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pitt never had less than six thousand a year, besides an excellent house. In 1792 he was forced by his royal master's friendly importunity to accept for life the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with near four thousand a year more. He had neither wife nor child; he had no needy relations: he had no expensive tastes: he had no long election bills. Had he given but a quarter of an hour a week to the regulation of his household, he would have kept his expenditure within bounds. Or, if he could not spare even a quarter of an hour a week for that purpose, he had numerous friends, excellent men of business, who would have been proud to act as his stewards. One of those friends, the chief of a great commercial house in the city, made an attempt to put the establishment in Downing Street to rights; but in vain. He found that the waste of the servants' hall was almost fabulous. The quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills was nine hundredweight a week. The consumption of poultry, of fish, and of tea was in proportion. The character of Pitt would have stood higher if with the disinterestedness of Pericles and of De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality.

The memory of Pitt has been assailed, times innumerable, often justly, often unjustly; but it has suffered much less from his assailants than from his eulogists. For, during many years, his name was the rallying cry of a class of men with whom, at one of those terrible conjunctures which confound all ordinary distinctions, he was accidentally and temporarily connected, but to whom, on almost all great questions of principle, he was diametrically opposed. The haters of parliamentary reform called themselves Pittites, not choosing to remember that Pitt made three motions for parliamentary reform, and that, though he thought that such a reform could not safely be made while the passions excited by the French revolution were raging, he never uttered a word indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient season to bring the question forward a fourth time. The toast of Protestant ascendency was drunk on Pitt's birthday by a set of Pittites who could not but be aware that Pitt had resigned his office because he could not carry Catholic emancipation. The defenders of the Test Act called themselves Pittites, though they could not be ignorant that Pitt had laid before George the Third unanswerable reasons for abolishing the Test Act. The enemies of free trade called themselves Pittites, though Pitt was far more deeply imbued with the doctrines of Adam Smith than either Fox or Grey. The very negro-drivers invoked the name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more conspicuously displayed than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro. This mythical Pitt, who resembles the genuine Pitt as little as Charlemagne of Ariosto resembles the Charlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day. History will vindicate the real man from calumny disguised under the semblance of adulation, and will exhibit him as what he was, a minister of great talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions, pre-eminently qualified, intellectually and morally, for the part of a parliamentary leader, and capable of administering with prudence and moderation the government of a prosperous and tranquil country, but unequal to surprising and terrible emergencies, and liable, in such emergencies, to err grievously, both on the side of weakness and on the side of violence.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, INSCRIPTIONS, ETC

EPITAPH ON HENRY MARTYN. (1812.)

     Here Martyn lies.  In Manhood's early bloom      The Christian Hero finds a Pagan tomb.      Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,      Points to the glorious trophies that he won.      Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,      Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,      But trophies of the Cross! for that dear name,      Through every form of danger, death, and shame,      Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,      Where danger, death, and shame assault no more.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF PITT. (1813.)

    Oh Britain! dear Isle, when the annals of story     Shall tell of the deeds that thy children have done,     When the strains of each poet shall sing of their glory,     And the triumphs their skill and their valour have won.     When the olive and palm in thy chaplet are blended,     When thy arts, and thy fame, and thy commerce increase,     When thy arms through the uttermost coasts are extended,     And thy war is triumphant, and happy thy peace;     When the ocean, whose waves like a rampart flow round thee,     Conveying thy mandates to every shore,     And the empire of nature no longer can bound thee,     And the world be the scene of thy conquests no more:     Remember the man who in sorrow and danger,     When thy glory was set, and thy spirit was low,     When thy hopes were o'erturned by the arms of the stranger,     And thy banners displayed in the halls of the foe,     Stood forth in the tempest of doubt and disaster,     Unaided, and single, the danger to brave.     Asserted thy claims, and the rights of his master,     Preserved thee to conquer, and saved thee to save.

A RADICAL WAR SONG. (1820.)

     Awake, arise, the hour is come,      For rows and revolutions;      There's no receipt like pike and drum      For crazy constitutions.      Close, close the shop!  Break, break the loom,      Desert your hearths and furrows,      And throng in arms to seal the doom      Of England's rotten boroughs.      We'll stretch that tort'ring Castlereagh      On his own Dublin rack, sir;      We'll drown the King in Eau de vie,      The Laureate in his sack, sir,      Old Eldon and his sordid hag      In molten gold we'll smother,      And stifle in his own green bag      The Doctor and his brother.      In chains we'll hang in fair Guildhall      The City's famed recorder,      And next on proud St Stephen's fall,      Though Wynne should squeak to order.      In vain our tyrants then shall try      To 'scape our martial law, sir;      In vain the trembling Speaker cry      That "Strangers must withdraw," sir.      Copley to hang offends no text;      A rat is not a man, sir:      With schedules, and with tax bills next      We'll bury pious Van, sir.      The slaves who loved the income Tax,      We'll crush by scores, like mites, sir,      And him, the wretch who freed the blacks,      And more enslaved the whites, sir.      The peer shall dangle from his gate,      The bishop from his steeple,      Till all recanting, own, the State      Means nothing but the People.      We'll fix the church's revenues      On Apostolic basis,      One coat, one scrip, one pair of shoes      Shall pay their strange grimaces.      We'll strap the bar's deluding train      In their own darling halter,      And with his big church bible brain      The parson at the altar.      Hail glorious hour, when fair Reform      Shall bless our longing nation,      And Hunt receive commands to form      A new administration.      Carlisle shall sit enthroned, where sat      Our Cranmer and our Secker;      And Watson show his snow-white hat      In England's rich Exchequer.      The breast of Thistlewood shall wear      Our Wellesley's star and sash, man:      And many a mausoleum fair      Shall rise to honest Cashman.      Then, then beneath the nine-tailed cat      Shall they who used it writhe, sir;      And curates lean, and rectors fat,      Shall dig the ground they tithe, sir.      Down with your Bayleys, and your Bests,      Your Giffords, and your Gurneys:      We'll clear the island of the pests,      Which mortals name attorneys.      Down with your sheriffs, and your mayors,      Your registrars, and proctors,      We'll live without the lawyer's cares,      And die without the doctor's.      No discontented fair shall pout      To see her spouse so stupid;      We'll tread the torch of Hymen out,      And live content with Cupid.      Then, when the high-born and the great      Are humbled to our level,      On all the wealth of Church and State,      Like aldermen, we'll revel.      We'll live when hushed the battle's din,      In smoking and in cards, sir,      In drinking unexcised gin,      And wooing fair Poissardes, sir.

THE BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. (1824.)

     Oh, weep for Moncontour!  Oh! weep for the hour,      When the children of darkness and evil had power,      When the horsemen of Valois triumphantly trod      On the bosoms that bled for their rights and their God.      Oh, weep for Moncontour!  Oh! weep for the slain,      Who for faith and for freedom lay slaughtered in vain;      Oh, weep for the living, who linger to bear      The renegade's shame, or the exile's despair.      One look, one last look, to our cots and our towers,      To the rows of our vines, and the beds of our flowers,      To the church where the bones of our fathers decayed,      Where we fondly had deemed that our own would be laid.      Alas! we must leave thee, dear desolate home,      To the spearmen of Uri, the shavelings of Rome,      To the serpent of Florence, the vulture of Spain,      To the pride of Anjou, and the guile of Lorraine.      Farewell to thy fountains, farewell to thy shades,      To the song of thy youths, and the dance of thy maids,      To the breath of thy gardens, the hum of thy bees,      And the long waving line of the blue Pyrenees.      Farewell, and for ever.  The priest and the slave      May rule in the halls of the free and the brave.      Our hearths we abandon; our lands we resign;      But, Father, we kneel to no altar but thine.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY, (1824.)

BY OBADIAH BIND-THEIR-KINGS-IN-CHAINS-AND-THEIR-NOBLES-WITH-LINKS-OF-IRON, SERJEANT IN IRETON'S REGIMENT   Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,   With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?   And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?   And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?   Oh evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,   And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod;   For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong,   Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of God.   It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,   That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine,   And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair,   And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine.   Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword,   The General rode along us to form us to the fight,   When a murmuring sound broke out, and swell'd into a shout,   Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right.   And hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,   The cry of battle rises along their charging line!   For God! for the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws!   For Charles King of England and Rupert of the Rhine!   The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums,   His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall;   They are bursting on our flanks.  Grasp your pikes, close your   ranks;   For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.   They are here!  They rush on!  We are broken!  We are gone!   Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast.   O Lord, put forth thy might!  O Lord, defend the right!   Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last.   Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground:   Hark! hark!—What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear?   Whose banner do I see, boys?  'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys,   Bear up another minute:  brave Oliver is here.   Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row,   Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes,   Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst,   And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.   Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide   Their coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar;   And he—he turns, he flies:—shame on those cruel eyes   That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.   Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain,   First give another stab to make your search secure,   Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad-pieces and   lockets,   The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor.   Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay   and bold,   When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans to-day;   And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks,   Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey.   Where be your tongues that late mocked at heaven and hell and   fate,   And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades,   Your perfum'd satin clothes, your catches and your oaths,   Your stage-plays and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades?   Down, down, for ever down with the mitre and the crown,   With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope;   There is woe in Oxford halls:  there is wail in Durham's Stalls:   The Jesuit smites his bosom:  the Bishop rends his cope.   And She of the seven hills shall mourn her children's ills,   And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword;   And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear   What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word.

SERMON IN A CHURCHYARD. (1825.)

     Let pious Damon take his seat,      With mincing step and languid smile,      And scatter from his 'kerchief sweet,      Sabaean odours o'er the aisle;      And spread his little jewelled hand,      And smile round all the parish beauties,      And pat his curls, and smooth his band,      Meet prelude to his saintly duties.      Let the thronged audience press and stare,      Let stifled maidens ply the fan,      Admire his doctrines, and his hair,      And whisper, "What a good young man!"      While he explains what seems most clear,      So clearly that it seems perplexed,      I'll stay and read my sermon here;      And skulls, and bones, shall be the text.      Art thou the jilted dupe of fame?      Dost thou with jealous anger pine      Whene'er she sounds some other name,      With fonder emphasis than thine?      To thee I preach; draw near; attend!      Look on these bones, thou fool, and see      Where all her scorns and favours end,      What Byron is, and thou must be.      Dost thou revere, or praise, or trust      Some clod like those that here we spurn;      Some thing that sprang like thee from dust,      And shall like thee to dust return?      Dost thou rate statesmen, heroes, wits,      At one sear leaf, or wandering feather?      Behold the black, damp narrow pits,      Where they and thou must lie together.      Dost thou beneath the smile or frown      Of some vain woman bend thy knee?      Here take thy stand, and trample down      Things that were once as fair as she.      Here rave of her ten thousand graces,      Bosom, and lip, and eye, and chin,      While, as in scorn, the fleshless faces      Of Hamiltons and Waldegraves grin.      Whate'er thy losses or thy gains,      Whate'er thy projects or thy fears,      Whate'er the joys, whate'er the pains,      That prompt thy baby smiles and tears;      Come to my school, and thou shalt learn,      In one short hour of placid thought,      A stoicism, more deep, more stern,      Than ever Zeno's porch hath taught.      The plots and feats of those that press      To seize on titles, wealth, or power,      Shall seem to thee a game of chess,      Devised to pass a tedious hour.      What matters it to him who fights      For shows of unsubstantial good,      Whether his Kings, and Queens, and Knights,      Be things of flesh, or things of wood?      We check, and take; exult, and fret;      Our plans extend, our passions rise,      Till in our ardour we forget      How worthless is the victor's prize.      Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night:      Say will it not be then the same,      Whether we played the black or white,      Whether we lost or won the game?      Dost thou among these hillocks stray,      O'er some dear idol's tomb to moan?      Know that thy foot is on the clay      Of hearts once wretched as thy own.      How many a father's anxious schemes,      How many rapturous thoughts of lovers,      How many a mother's cherished dreams,      The swelling turf before thee covers!      Here for the living, and the dead,      The weepers and the friends they weep,      Hath been ordained the same cold bed,      The same dark night, the same long sleep;      Why shouldest thou writhe, and sob, and rave      O'er those with whom thou soon must be?      Death his own sting shall cure—the grave      Shall vanquish its own victory.      Here learn that all the griefs and joys,      Which now torment, which now beguile,      Are children's hurts, and children's toys,      Scarce worthy of one bitter smile.      Here learn that pulpit, throne, and press,      Sword, sceptre, lyre, alike are frail,      That science is a blind man's guess,      And History a nurse's tale.      Here learn that glory and disgrace,      Wisdom and folly, pass away,      That mirth hath its appointed space,      That sorrow is but for a day;      That all we love, and all we hate,      That all we hope, and all we fear,      Each mood of mind, each turn of fate,      Must end in dust and silence here.