The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-20 00:00:00

GENERAL SIR CHARLES NAPIER.

The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles
James Napier, G. C.B. By Lieu t enaet-General
Sir William Napier, K.C.13, In Four Volumes.
Vols. T and 11. John Murray.
Had Tacitus been own brother of Scipio, and.
surviving him, writt-n his Biography—the result
could hardly have been more interesting than are
these enthralling Memorials. of the Conqueror of
Scinde, penned by the classic historian of the Cam-
paigns of the Peninsula. This, in truth, is Charles
Napier's nebleet and most enduring monument.
Here, in this eloquent and touching Narrative of
his Life—here, in these pages, glowing with the
warmth of fraternal love, radiant with the evidences
of chivalric genius, and luminous with the light
shining out of Great Dteds and Heroic Sentiments
—here, if anywhere discernib!e, is most assuredly
the " IVeraento" destined to convey to posterity
the fittest notion of all that was moat memorable in
the Career and Actions of the Hero of Meetinee and
Hyderabad. A glorious history recorded in appro-
priate characters ! A Tribute to the Fame of the
last great Captain of England—in every particular
mote solid, more massive, more substantial, than
the Bronze Statue and the rranite Pedestal, erected
in homage to his memory upon the most conspi-
cuous Fite in the Capital of the Empire—a work of
art so far valuable and of importance, for inasmush
as it will serve to attest to 'a remote epoch the un-
affected admiration with which this Dauntless He In
was regarded by his own immediate contempo-
raries.
It is, impossible not to recognise everywhere
throughout these two introductory volumes of the
biography of Napier, the perfect and tender appre-
ciation of his character by his eminently congenital
biographer. The key-note of this appreciation is
struck in the very first sentence of the first para-
graph. " This," says Sir William Napier, in ac-
cents simple but thrilling, " This shall be the story
of a man who never tarnished his reputation by a
shatneful deed : of one who subdued distant nations
by his valour, and then governed them so wisely,
that English rule was revered and loved, where be-
fore it was feared and execrated." Adding, "For
thus nobly acting, the virulence of interested fac-
tion was loosed to do him :wrong : honours were
withheld, and efforts made to depreciate his ex-
ploits by successive Governments : nevertheless,
his fame has been accepted by the British people
as belonging to the glory of the nation." A mag-
nificent but sorrowful epitome of a brave life, shin
is--with truth, alas, in every syllable! Attestations
of which have already been emblazoned in inde-
liblecolours upon the scroll of the National History.
Read it—and then answer ! They will tell you,
those redoubtable annals, in regard to this Great
Captain—Conqueror and Administrator—that
his Life has no one ".damning. blot." upon it, as
with so many of his renowned predecessors ! They
will say, Here, at least, there is nOcause for ex-
tenuation in regard to the treatment of a Ney or
of a Carraccioli I They will tell you, those atanals
of England, when speaking of Napier, that Here
was one who carved. out for his country with his
sword a new and vast dominion. One who en-
hanced the Oriental Empire of Great Britain by the,
addition to it of 58,000 square miles of territory !
A Great Proconsul—victorious 'first irealie field and
afterwards in the council chamber r- And whose
rewards for 111 this and for How much more ! were
—a star and a bit of ribbon, incessant obloquy and
spiteful depreciation ! It is very bitter and very
heart-galling, all this—but it is wholesome, never-
theless, that the truth, miserable though it be,
should be spoken right out, without fear and without
prevarication. And that Truth. What does it
aver It says, Here, in Charles Napier was aman
who deserved well of his country—one whom chi-
valrous monarchs in the grand old times would
have delighted to honour—a Hero and a States-
man—dauntless and magnanimous ! Yet a man
who, for the most part, from first to last, was treated
as the very target of national Ingratitude—a butt
for every arrow of hatred, winged with calumny,
pointed with envy, barbed with spite, and poi-
soned with virulence ! A strange, sad tale
enough with all its glory—but one, alas ! too true
in everything relating to it thus sorrowfally. So
true that when the dauntless heart of the great
Soldier at last. ceased to beat—there lay by his
couch, as the sole trophies of so much valour, of
such lofty Civism, and of so many and of such re-
splendent achievements—the Ribbon of the Bath
and the. Sword of the Ameers ! The latter a spon-
taneous gift to the Conqueror and Administrator of
Scinde from the gallant foes he had vanquished—
a 'gift expressive at once of their, love, of their
gratitude, and of their admiration ! Honour
to 'the great, man's memory ! He shourd
have -died not thus—but, ah I how differently I
Died more gloriously he could not for his own
heroic reputation. But he should have died at
least surrounded by nobler evidences of the recog-
nition of his great deeds by his fellow-citizens. He
should have died, if ever a soldier died, with the
truncheon of a Marshal in his hand ! He should
have died not simply a Grand Cross of the Bath,
but a Peer of the Realm—an Earl, or at the very
least a Viscount—if only in consideration of he
having added the magnificent province of Scinde to
our vast oriental dominions Napoleen the Great,
with such a Paladin as Charles Napier, would have
given him his baton for Meeanee—would have made
him a Duke and a Viceroy for Hyderabad ! In-
stead of which, there was the paltry ribbon—there
was the presentation sword received from the
Ameers, once his enemies—lying by the noble d-
dier's deathbed ! Remembering which, it may be
well here to epitomise, in contrast, some among
the principal events comprised within the span of
this one memorable existence—events (historical for
the most part) occurring during the interval which
elapsed between 1782—and-1852 : the former the
date of General Sir Charles James Napier's birth in
London • the latter that of his death (in the 70th
year of his age) at Oaklands, near Portsmouth.
It Was on the 10th of August, 1782, that Charles
Napier was born at Whitehall—the eldest son of
the Honourable George Napier and Lady Sarah
Lennox, daughter • of the 'second Duke of Rich-
mond. So that the Hero. of Scinde, through his
Mother, was great-great-grandson of King Cearle•
the Second While through his father ho trac d
his lineage back to the great Montrose, and,
as his brother wisely remarks, to the " still
greater" Inventor of 'Logarithms, Napier of
Merchistoun ! Glorious and aristocratic associa-
tions of consanguinity—enhanced by the remem-
brance that one of the sisters of Charles James
Napier's mother (Lady Caroline Lennox) was wife
to the first Lord Holland, and mother of Charles
James Fox ! Charles Fox, Charles Napier, and
the rest of that generation of first cousini, being
all sixth in descent from Henry the Fourth, of
France, as we have already' remarked that they
were fifth in descent from Charles the Second, of
England ! " Hence"—referring to this blending
together of the blood of the Gallic King and the
Scotch Mathematician, Sir William remarks, in re-
gard to his dauntless brother—" the blood of the
white-plunied Beauvois commingled with that of
the heroic .-Highlander in his veins, and
his arm was not less strong than theirs in battle r
Educated by his father : in January, 1794—being
then scarcely twelve years of age—Charles Napier
received a commission in the 33d Regiment. The'
master passion of his life, an inordinate thirst for
Fame, had already revealed itself through sundry
curious manifestations. For example, while yet a
child, he exulted on finding that he was shout
sighted—because a portrait of Frederick the Gies .
hanging in his father's room had " strange eyes"—
because the eyes of Alexander the Great were said
to be of a -different colour—because he read in
Plutarch, that Philip, and Sartorius, and Han-
nibal, were all one eyed ! "He even wished"
says Sir William, " to lose one cf his own,
as the token of a Great General —[a child's
thought remember !]—unknowing, then, that none
of God's gifts can be lost with satisfaction." It is
curious to note a little further on (vol.. i., p. 470)
how, in 1837, "while fretted •in spirit, he was
oppressed by congestion of blood in the 'eyelids,
causing a painful depression, and leading him to
fear the loss of sight, with poverty and an existence
at once obscure and suftbring." But this was in
his fifty-sixth year, and the period of which we have
previously spoken was the halcyon dawn of his life,
when the future warrior was scarcely escaped from
the freakish fancies and the lovely day-dreams of
childhood. He was then "demure and thought-
ful." He was remarkable for a "gentle and calm
demeanour." Mr. Sheridan offering, one day at the
Hotwells, Bristol, to " tip" him, according; to old
schoolboy custom, but having the "tip" courteously
declined—remarked, in surprise to the father,
" Your boy is a fine fellbw, but very wonderful."
True words, Richard Brinsley—" very wonder-
ful I" Here, however, before we leave these days
of little more than babyhood—so strangely and so
strikingly characteristic—here let us note, in pa s-
ing, one exquisite little baby anecdote of the Helv
of the Hereafter : " When be could but just speak,
hearing for the first time the caw of a single crow,
probably a melancholy one, which infancy could de- 1
tect, he stretched forth his little hands, and, weep-
ing,
exclaimed with broken infantineaccents, ill ha'
matta, poor bird ? what matta ?"' It was the same'
noble h.eart that cried out afterwards in the dapof
is
his Glory and of his Terror, when the flash
sword was as a gleam of lightning in the eyf
es
Ameers, and when the warriors of Asia dubbed him;
in" dread and amazement, "the Brother of the
Devil" —it was the self-same voice, the same
noble. heart, unchanged • and - unchangeable,
that cried aloud in anguish long yeata after-
wards. uptin the very .-morro,w 'of -one of hie
most heroic achievements—, Battle ! victory !I
Oh ! spirit-stirring words in the bosom of society