The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-03 00:00:00

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" Could Walpole judge an original genius ?"
is another of the questions about the Straw-
berry-hill gossip to which the answer must be
qualified. He rails at Johnson in the follow-
ing fashion :
- - • -

But I do not know why he called the booksellers
heathens, unless for their worshipping such an uncouth
idol as he is : yet he has other motives than lucre,—pre-
judice, and bigotry, and pride, and presumption,. and
arrogance, and pedantry are the hags that brew his ink,
though wages alone supply him with paper.
The moral character of Johnson has not been
appreciated by Lord Macaulay, and Mr. Car-
lyle has, perhaps, extravagantly over-estimated
it. Burke, and the rest of " the Club," in-
cluding Sir Joshua Reynolds, fully valued
Johnson. How did Walpole estimate Mrs.
Siddons ? Here is Walpole's account of her :
She is a good figure, handsome enough, though neither
nose nor chin according to the Greek standard, beyond
which both advance a good deal. Her hair is either red,
or she has no objection to its being thought so, and had
used red powder. Her voice is clear and good ; but I
thought she did not vary its modulations enough, nor ever
approach enough to the familiar—but this may come when
more habituated to the awe of the audience of the capital.
Her action is proper, bat with little variety ; when without
motion her arms are not genteel. Thus you see, madam,
all my objections are very trifling ; but what I really
wanted, but did not find, was originality, which announces
genius, and without both which I am never intrinsically
pleased. All Mrs. Siddons did, good sense or good in-
struction might give. I dare to say, that were I one-and-
twenty I should have thought her marvellous; but alas !
I remember Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil—and remem•
ber every accent of the former in the very same part.
Yet this is not entirely prejudice: don't I equally recollect
the whole progress of Lord Chatham and Charles Towns-
bend, and does it hinder my thinking Mr. Fox a prodigy ?
—Pray don't send him this paragraph too.
This passage might have had a fuller note than
the following :

He saw her u Isabella in Southerne's tragedy of " The
Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery," one of her
great parts. Walpole was very young when he saw Mrs.
Porter in the same part.—CuNinironix.
Mrs. Siddons, it must be recollected, suc-
ceeded on her second appearance in London,
having rather failed in the first attempt. Wal-
pole must evidently have lost his sense of
beauty when he wrote of Mrs. Siddons in such
frigid terms. We cannot forget that both Gib-
bon and Burke were amongst her most ardent
applauders. " The tears which Garrick for-
" merly, and Siddons not long since, drew from
" me, I should consider as hypocrisy, if I re-
" mained unmoved at such spectacles on the
" real stage of life," Ito. &c , is a passage that
occurs at the close of " The Reflections on
the French Revolution." We must not be too
hard, however, on Walpole. In our own time,
Mrs. Jamieson, usually so appreciative and
finely discriminative, has dealt out a scanty
measure of applause to the renowned tragic
actress whom the French stage has recently
lost; and the characterisation of Hogarth by
Walpole is a choice specimen of encomiastic
criticism on an original genius.
Under date of May 29th, 1783, Walpole
wrote to Sir Horace Mann :
A Mr. Powell, a tool of Lord Holland, and left by him
in the Pay-office, was dismissed last year for a deficiency
in his accounts of 70,0001. It is not yet known whence
this happened; nor do I know, however ill the appearance,
that he was guilty of dishonesty. Still, he had sworn to
a false account, and was to be prosecuted fur perjury. Mr.
Burke, on succeeding Colonel Barre in the Pay-office,
restored this man and another disgraced at the same
time,—as Burke says, from commiseration of their dig-
traded shame. Great censure was passed on that restora•
tion. Mr. Burke vehemently defended himself in the
house, and was supported ; but the men were given up in
two days; and in two days more Powell cut his throat.

" A Mr. Powell." If Walpole had been more
familiar with town politics, he would scarcely
have alluded to Powell in that fashion. The
death of Powell, along with antecedent trans•
actions, are more mixed up with the personal
history of Burke than is commonly supposed.
Upon the foregoing passage Mr. P. Cunning
ham prints a long note from Wright, referring
to some of the generally known particulars of
those defalcations. But it is important to
recollect that many years previously the whole
circle of " the Burkes" were severely vilified
in the public journals In the letter of
" Pliny junior" addressed to the Public Adver-
tiser there occurs a statement which we copy
literatim, and which is worth consideration :

P-11, Lord Holland's man, and by his directions, assisted
the brothers and their cousin ( i.e., Edmund, Richard, snd
William Burke), and the rest of the knot of knaves, in
their deep-laid schemes to raise the India Stock. That is
a history too well known to be entered into.

It seems not too much to infer that the
" P-11" thus vilified in the Public Advertiser
was the identical Powell who committed sui-
cide in 1783 ; and the restoration of Powell to
his place is, under any light, a most curious
incident in the official life of Burke. It is
singular, also. that Lord Holland was spared
by Junius; and though it is certain that Burke
was not Junius, yet there are good grounds
for believing that Junius was more or less
mixed up with Burke's circle.

In a letter to the Countess of Ossory (Au-
gust 19th, 1754), Walpole says of Kingsgate
(Lord Holland's seat, near Broadstairs) :

The situation is uncommon and cheerful, and the
buildings and erections so odd, and so little resembling
any one ever saw, that a view might, to those who
were never there, be passed for a prospect in some half•
civilised island discovered by Captain Cook, and, with
leave of the editors, more novel than any in the new porn.
pour publication. Jam as little surprised that the place,
after the first impression, should have excited a thousand
less pleasing reflections—there's room for meditation.
The italics of the last remark are in the ori-
ginal letter. The emphatic sentence has
clearly an oblique reference to " meditations "
on the profuse expenditure of Lord Holland
at Kingsgate, and how he got his enormous
fortune There are now (1858) but few traces
of Kingsgate in existence, though it was once
a great " lion" in Kent, and guile-books with
pictures were published on it. Kingsgate was
the subject of the scorching satirical verses
by Gray. There is much, we suspect, yet to be
told about the first Lord Holland's political life.
We may quote Walpole's opinion on what
was called " The Catholic Question." He
writes :

Irelatid, as far as my spate intelligence extends, is a
little come to its senses. Landed property, though no
genius, has discovered that popery, if admitted to a com-
munity of votes, would be apt to inquire into the old titles
of estates; and to remember, that prescription never holds
against any Church militant, especially not against the
Church of Rome. You know I have ever been averse to
toleration of an intolerant religion. I have frequently
talked myself .boarse, with many of my best friends, on
the possibility of satisfying Irish Catholics without re-
storing their estates. It was particularly silly to revive
the subject in this age, when popery was so rapidly de-
clining. The world had the felicity to see that fashion
passing away—for modes of religion sre but graver
fashions; nor will anything but contradiction keep fashion
up. Its inconvenience is discovered, if let alone; or, a■
women say of their gowns, it is cut and turned, or variety
is sought; and some mantua-maker or priest, that wants
business, invents a new mode, which takes the faster the
more it inverts its predecessor.

The scoffing Voltairian levity of the concluding
portion of that passage betrays a shallowness
of thought which makes one suspect the writer's
power of dealing with serious political sub-
jects. But it is worth noting that Horace
Walpole was an " anti-Romish Whig."
In the same letter he writes to Mann, " I
" really have nothing to tell you, and I know
" nothing"—words which happily describe
many of these later letters, which are strik-
int.tly deficient in inner knowledge of the
springs of contemporary politics. The letters
to Pinkerton on literary subjects were written
at this period of Walpole's life, and some
parts of them are amongst the best things that
he ever did. His remarks on grace in writing
are of high critical value, and are familiarised
by their publication in the " Walpoliana."
On the whole, we are compelled to say that
this volume would have been improved by
more corrective notes.

History of England,* from the Fall of Trolsey to
the Death of Elizabeth. By J. A. Froude,
M.A. Vols. 111., and IV. London: J. W.
Parker and Son.
(Second Notice.)

THE character of Cardinal Pole, as drawn by
Mr. Fronde, is an excellent subject for the
further application of his own beautiful meta-
phor. In the early days of the Reformation,
Mr. Froude says, " men knew not whether
" night would prevail or day, or which of the
" two was most divine—night, with its starry
" firmament of saints and ceremonies, or day,
" with the single lustre of the Gospel sun.
So the character of Reginald Pole assumes
two distinct abpects, according to the sympa-
thies of him who contemplates it In the

• In our flret notice of this work, in the sentence com-
mencing "The yeomanry and peasantry had, we think, real
grounds of complaint,' .to., the word " gentry " was accidentally
omitted before " yeomanry.",

searching glare of history, it is like Melrose
‘-they in the daytime, when the sunbeams
'ld but to flout" its ruins; but to the eye
a romance, it is like the same edifice viewed
beneath the " pale moonlight," when all its
defects are withdrawn iuto the shade, and its
beauties heightened and idealized. Mr. Fronde
chosen to criticise the Cardinal exclu-
Avely by the merciless light of facts. But we
think that even so he has underrated him.
're were points in Pole's character which
lenge admiration under every aspect. His
elegance of mind, his literary power, and his
,larship demand a less reluctant acknow-
igment than Mr. Fronde has accorded
!ni ; and we think it possible that the
cy of his career may admit of a less un-
airable construction than the historian has
led. It was of course necessary that
Lenry should be exculpated, as well as that
• one who ventured to rebuke him should
ilified ; yet we know not if we are too self-
tplacent in fancying that we discern an-
ler and more creditable motive for Mr.
~ode's portraiture of Pole. We think it
possible that, in drawing a character like the
Cardinal, Mr. Fronde kept a close watch upon
himself. None can feel more deeply the ro-
mance of a dying creed: none touch with
more graceful reverence on the weakness of
its lingering disciples, than he who has chosen
for the labour of his life the vindication of the
House of Tudor. We sometimes imagine that
Mr. Fronde must have set himself this task
as a species of penance, and that, in praising
and condemning the characters of the period
in an inverse proportion to bin own aympathy
with their position, he is making a voluntary
atonement for earlier expressions of opinion.
The merits of Cromwell are perhaps mag-
nified to much about the same extent as those
of Pole are diminished. We quote the following
passage in preference to that in which Crom-
well is specially delineated, as well on account
of the fine general truths which it expresses,
as because it is evidently intend; i to convey
Mr. Froude's idea of the class of men among
whom Cromwell should be ranked :

The intercession was bravely ventured ; hut it was in
vain. The illegal acts of a minister who Lad been trusted
with extraordinary powers were too patent for denial; and
Cranmer himself was forced into a passive acquiescence,
while the enemies of the Reformation worked their revenge,
Heresy and truth, treason and patriotism ! these are words
which in • war of parties change their meaning with the
alternations of success, till time and fate have pronounced
the last interpretation, and human opinions and sympa
thies bend to the deciding judgment. But while the struggle
is still in progress—while the partizans on either side ex-
claim that bush is with them, and error with their anta-
gonists, and the minds of this man and of that man are so
far the only arbiters—those, at such a time, are not the
least to be commended who obey for their guide the law
as it in fact exists. Men there are who need no such di-
rection, who follow their own course—it may be to a
glorious success, it may be to as glorious a death. To
such proud natures the issue to themselves is of trifling
moment. They live for their work or die for it, as their
Almighty Father wills. Hut the law in a free country can-
not keep pace with genias. It reflects the plain sentiments
of the better order of average men ; and if it so happen, PS
in a perplexed world of change it will happen and must,
that a statesman, or a prophet, is beyond his age, Slid in
collision with a law which his conscience forbids him to obey,
he bravely breaks it, bravely defies it, and either win s the
victory in his living person, or, more often, wins it in his
death. In fairness, Cromwell should have been tried ; hut
it would have added nothing to his chances of escape. He
could not disprove the accusations. He could bat have
said that he had done right, not wrong—a plea which would
have been but a fresh crime. But, in the deafening storm
of denunciation which burst out, the hastiest vengeance was
held the greatest jus►ice.
Instead of criticising this passage at length,
or offering any counter-estimate of our own,
we shall content ourselves with extracting
another portrait from Mr. Froilde's fourth
volume which in our opinion exactly hits off
the character here so loft►ly depicted :

The excellent Paget, on the other hand, the cleverest of
living men, the father of that whole race of English states-
men who, finding their lot cast for them in hard times,
have trusted more to intellect than to virtue, improved the
opportunny to give to hie friend Petre a lesson in diplo-
macy and on the character of the man with whom he
would have to deal.

With regard to the King himself, we have
already expressed an opinion that Mr. Froude's
idea of him does not differ so widely from that
of other historians as ho seems to believe him-
self. It is widely enough removed from both
Lingard and Mackintosh, who from different
points of view have arrived at the same con-
clusion. But, in the absence of any strong

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