But his name was a passport to let in older sinners, So he deals out the cards that the knaves may be winners. "Now it happ'd to the country he went, for a blessing, And from his state dad to get a new lesson; He went to Daddy Jenky, by Trimmer Hal attended when he retaliated, his sword was of "that neither keen nor so◄ a temper lid might resist its edge." In the great parliamentary contests, all gave way before him. But Opposition, having no hope of fixing any charge upon his public life, avenged itself in insinuating smaller scandals, when it whispered that the man whom neither the talents nor arts of the party could overcome, was often overcome by wine. Pitt's habits of seclusion gave an easy opportunity for charges which he took no trouble to refute, and the exhaustion of a mind and body, even in early life wearing themselves away in the public service, was readily exaggerated into the effects of indulgence at the table. The well-known anecdote of his being fired at by the turnpike-keeper at Wimbledon, was a fertile source of pleasantry to the wits of Opposition. He had been dining with Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool, and on his return on horseback, not finding the gatekeeper at the turnpike, had rode on without paying. His companions were in high glee, and though not likely to be engaged in a frolic, for they were Thurlow (then Chancellor) and Dundas, President of the Board of Control, they went on laugh. ing at having thus evaded a tax. The turnpike-keeper, however, who evidently thought that it was no laughing matter, running out, called to them to stop; and finding that this produced no effect, had the folly or the frenzy to fire a carbine, loaded with slugs, after them. The fellow, probably to excuse himself, subse. quently said, that he had mistaken them for a gang of robbers, who had lately committed some depredations in the neighbourhood. On this promising topic, Morris wrote a song in the Yankee style, which had vast popularity, and was among the cleverest things of its time : AMERICAN SONG. "Sit down, neighbours all, and I'll tell a merry story, About a British farmer, and Billy Pitt the Tory; I had it, piping hot, from Ebenezer Barber, Who sailed right from England, and lies in Boston harbour. "This Billy Pitt is called Britannia's Prime ruler, Though he be but a puppet, that's hung out to fool her; "Solid men of Boston, banish strong potations; Solid men of Boston, make no long orations; Solid men of Boston, go to bed at sundown; And never lose your way, like the loggerheads of London." This ballad was so well timed, that it made its way every where. In po. pularity, the moment is every thing. It was even quoted in the House, in Pitt's presence, by two such men as Burke and Sheridan. One night, Burke, in rather significant allusion to Sheridan's habits of intemperance, finished some sarcastic remarks on his political conduct, by repeating the lines, "Solid men of Boston, banish strong po tations Solid men of Boston, make no long ora. tions," to the great laughter of the assembly. But Sheridan, always ready, started up, and, in allusion to some presumed negotiation between Burke and the Ministry, happily answered, from the same ballad: "He went to Daddy Jenky, by Trimmer Hal attended Good lack! in such company, how his morals must be mended!" Jenky (Jenkinson) was said to be the immediate channel of communication between the King and the Minister, and to be in some degree also Pitt's political adviser. Trimmer Hal was Harry Dundas, who, however unjustly, was charged with political latitudinarianism, though the chief defender of the Minister's measures in Parliament. The story in the poem is evidently varied from the true state of the case; but poets have an original license to be as picturesque" as they please. 66 But the poet could adopt a more finished style, and range through classic conceptions, in classic numbers, with equal feeling and elegance. The following is a copy of verses, in which he asserts his relationship to Horace, on the title of similarity of style: Folks often quote me and my lays, (A flattery I'm loth to refuse,) As the sample best shown in our days, Of Horace's manner and muse." He then proceeds to establish the connexion of bardship, from the features of their career : "He shone-bon-vivant, 'tis confess'd, Lived with all the first men of his day, Was the charm of each care-shaded breast, And the soul-waking star of the gay. What I've been, my pen's relics must tell, For entomb'd are the tongues of my time, But, if spirits can feel, they know well How gladden'd their days with my rhyme. "He was often in love, too, it seems- Close link'd in my picture of bliss. graced. "Nor have I, fond of privacy's lap, Though favour'd by Royalty's eye, Sought a feather to stick in my cap, Or a string on my button to tie." Morris was a devoted lover of London. It was a part of the fashion of his time, to speak with affected contempt of the country. This style was as old as the time of Charles II. Charles's manners were French, borrowed from a court where the absurd policy of despotism had gathered all the nobles round the throne, and where the natural frivolity of the national character had aided the royal artifice, which thus separated the great landed proprietors from their tenantry. In heart much more a Frenchman than an Englishman, and copying the manners of that showy race, which, whenever it is not suffered to set the fashion in war or negotiation, resumes its natural right, and sets it in the matter of cooks and tailors, he always turned the life of the country gentleman into contempt. But the expulsion of the worn-out dynasty of the Stuarts, and still more, the national triumph over France in the wars of William and Anne, partially restored the good sense of the nation. Natural taste revived, the country gentleman returned to the country, and employed himself in those natural and vigorous pursuits which at once give health and wealth; and from that period England dates the origin of that agricultural skill which has covered her unfertile soil with luxuriance, and filled her mountains and valleys with that garden beauty, which it required even the genius of a Milton to predict and praise. But the courtiers still laughed, and Chesterfield made himself memorable, by saying of some person whom he particularly disliked, that all the punishment he wished him was, "to be married and settled in the country." Town was the paradise of wits and poets; and to men of small income, without families or establishments, of easy habits, and finding their chief indulgence in the daily triflings of society, it undoubtedly offered a strong contrast to the weariness of country solitude; but with Morris the excuse was still stronger. The chief part of his life had been passed in London; the gayest part of it had been spent between Piccadilly and Pall Mall. was a fly on the gilded chariot-wheel of the Carlton House world. He was a bird who sang in the royal cage, and could no more have sung, or perhaps survived, any where else, than the petted goldfinch could live, if turned out to find its fare among the hedge-rows. His poem, entitled the "Contrast," is a pleasant defence of his taste in this matter, and a gay caricature of the calamities of living out of the smoke of London. He The poem is too long to be given in full; and, though every verse has its point, we must limit ourselves to extracts: "In London I never know what I'd be at, Enraptured with this, and enchanted with that; I'm wild with the sweets of variety's plan, And life seems a blessing too happy for man, "In town let me live, and in town let me die; For in truth I can't relish the country, not I. If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!" musician; and his knowledge of literature was classic and extensive. We are to remember too, that, brief as his reign was, and feebly as he was seconded by the habitual sluggishness of that heaviest of ministers, Lord Liverpool; yet he was the source of all the admirable improvements which George IV. was too old when he have changed the face of a large porcame to the throne to give much anition of London, and that he gave the mation to English society; growing impulse to all those which are in proinfirmities had already unfitted him to gress; that he was the first who established a 66 enjoy the life of which he had so long Royal Academy of Libeen the leader; the bitterness of the terature," and endowed it with a thouparty whom his long experience ensand pounds a-year out of his privy abled him to know to the core, and purse-an endowment which the litewhose ambition, once checked, was rature-loving Whigs took away unto be equalled only by their anger, der his successor, and whose loss, of disgusted him with public men; and course, cramped the efforts of a sohis few years upon the throne taught ciety which might, in a few years, him fully the royal lesson, of the joy-have equalled the fame of the" French lessness of having nothing to hope for. But his earlier years exhibited an elegance, a spirit, and an ardour for cultivating the accomplishments of princely rank, new among English princes. We are by no means inclined to be his indiscriminate panegyrists; we know that there were painful circumstances in his career, blots in his history, errors of judgment, and vices of fashion, wholly injurious to the conception of a great, or even a good man. But we are to recollect the temptations of a rank which put all evil in his way; the necessary idleness of a life precluded from all political, military, and civil exertion; the total neutralization of his talents, in the midst of a people engaged in the most stirring crisis of the world; and, above all, his associates. With Fox, Sheridan, and the whole body of the leading Whigs constantly surrounding him-men whose boast it was, to plunge into every extravagance of high life-what could be expected from a prince, who fell into their hands a boy, and whose pecuniary embarrassments left him, broken down and helpless, in their hands, to the moment when he ascended the throne?a moment of which he boldly availed himself, to spurn the whole tribe from him at once and for ever. But he had an original fondness for the brilliant and sparkling portions of life, which, if he had been called earlier into the place of power, might have given a new character to British society. He loved the arts; he collected paintings; he was a tasteful Academy" of Louis Quatorze, and collected within it the chief literary names of England and of Europe; and that he was the chief patron and promoter of the first attempt made to place historical painting in England on a national footing, and to establish a National Gallery. It is unnecessary to say, how important those objects are in a national point of view; or in what manner they have since been pursued. But those services must not be forgotten, when the memory of George IV. is to be brought into judgment with posterity. Morris was a Whig, but he was a generous and rational one; and he could see and honour the public spirit with which the Regent preferred the people to a party, and abandoned the worthless companions of his idle hours, when he was called on to fulfil the duties of a throne. He celebrated this conduct in some bold and flowing lines: "When Europe, released from fierce Tyranny's sway, Saw the dark Reign of Terror chased proudly away, While a demon, in mischief and madness, had shown That to seek others' ruin leads sure to our own; Let the heart of Old England, just, gen had hurl'd, Hath spread the blest mantle of Peace 'Twas this strong British prop that sus- But it is time to say a parting word of the writer of all those various verses. Captain Charles Morris had a kind of hereditary title to two pursuits, once closely allied-bardship and soldiership. His father was a captain, and a poet. He had also a collateral right; for his brother, Captain Thomas Morris, was also a poet, and a rather voluminous one. But the family fame has been eclipsed in his own; and, whatever might be the military laurels of his line, all its Parnassian laurels devolved upon his own head. Charles was one of four sons, and born in London. His father dying in his infancy, he was educated by his mother, an intelligent woman, who lived to the great age of 95. He entered the 17th foot at an early period, his brother being a captain in the corps, and the gallant regiment being almost a family one, three generations of his blood having served in it. The young officer went to America, where he served for some time, previously to the War of Independence. On his return to England, he exchanged into the cavalry, and obtained a commission in the Royal Irish dragoons. But his spirit, gay, courtly, and fashionable, evidently desired a closer intercourse with the town. He accordingly exchanged into the Life Guards, where he found the celebrated Captain Tophain, then acting as adjutant, and as much distinguished for his attention to discipline, as he was afterwards for the pleasantry and eccentricity of his private life. This was exactly the intercourse suited to his taste. He was now in the midst of a circle of gallant gentlemen, uniting the scholar with the soldier, and adorning their bold profession with the graces of accomplished life. In process of time he married a widow, the relict of Sir William Stanhope; and as war at this period had not yet shown his wrinkled front, and the routine duty of a regiment could not occupy much of his time, his original propensities flowed back upon him, and he plunged into poetry. But a period soon arrived, in which polities occupied all minds. The struggles of Whig and Tory for power involved or interested every class of the community; and Captain Morris, always ardent and unhesitating, and captivated by the social manners of Fox, a leader eminently formed to please, poured out Whig verses with the rapidity, and not seldom with the power, of an enthusiast. But of this, too, there was an end. Fox, perpetually baffled, and become desperate, in his wild advo cacy of the French Revolntion, ran so far before even his own party, that he was left alone. All the manlier and better informed of the Whigs grew afraid to follow a leader, whose antics startled the sobriety of the empire. The question now was between England and France. The party was finally broken up, and Fox, with an affectation of disdain which he could not feel, and the consciousness of ruin, as a head of public council, from which even his subsequent momentary possession of power could not even restore him; abandoned Parliament, and declared himself to have abjured public life. All the chief Parliamentary Whigs now ranged themselves on the side of Ministers, for the national security. The principal private ones connected themselves more closely with the prince, for the sake of private friendsl ip. Morris, whose habits had none of the bitterness of political strife, was now among the favourite associates of Carlton House, adopted the public feelings of the prince; and, when the final schism occurred with the Greys and Grenvilles, had no hesitation in making his choice between the prince and the party which had daringly professed its determination to rule. On this occasion he produced some of his bold and powerful songs. This connexion, too, ceased to exist. The misfortune of long life is, that it deprives man of all the associates who made its path pleasant, and leaves the |