PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Gay. From The Quarterly Review. childhood was spent at his grandfather's house at Bulstrode. He was educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford; but he left the university early, having been appointed private secretary to Earl Bathurst before he was twenty. tained for him early in life the sinecure apduties of that office being performed by pointment of the secretaryship of Jamaica, the deputy, and likewise the reversion of the clerkship of the council. He entered in 1821 upon the duties of clerk of the council in ordinary, which he discharged for nearly forty years. During the last twenty years of his The influence of the Duke of Portland ob WE approach the critical examination of the late Mr. Charles Greville's journal with a sense of more than ordinary responsibility. It has attracted an unusual amount of attention: it has been widely circulated, at home and abroad: our estimate of it differs essentially from that of the great majority of our contemporaries in the press; and as they have been, we think, unduly prodigal of commendation, the invidious duty is forced upon us of redressing the balance by dwelling more on the demerits than the merits of life Mr. Greville occupied a suite of rooms in the book. It has raised, moreover, a the house of Earl Granville in Bruton Street, question of no slight importance to so- and there, on the 18th of January, 1865, he expired. ciety a question which cannot be summarily set aside by assuming that, pro- He was born in a wing or side-building vided people are interested or amused, of Burlington House, Piccadilly, which it matters little or nothing what feelings had been lent to his father for a resiare wounded, what confidence is broken, dence. He was admitted a student of or what reputations are assailed. The Christchurch on the 24th December, 1810, very first consideration forced upon us on the nomination of Canon Dowdeswell, by the perusal was, whether many of the having entered as a commoner a few most popular passages ought to have days before. He retained his studentbeen published for the next fifty years: ship till December 24th, 1814, whether many ought not to have been long as he could retain it without taking wholly obliterated or permanently sup-a B.A. degree; but he resided or kept pressed. But before laying down and only seven terms, from January 1811 to applying what we take to be the sound June 1812; when, being then in his nineand received doctrine on these points, teenth year, he became private secretary we must come to a precise understanding to Lord Bathurst. He also obtained a as to the position and character of the clerkship in one of the public offices; we writer, the conditions or circumstances believe, the Board of Trade. He always under which he wrote, and the moral or regretted that his father's circumstances honourable obligations imposed upon did not allow of his remaining longer at him. the university. Once upon a time, pointOnly two meagre paragraphs are de-ing out to a lady the rooms he had occuvoted to his biography by Mr. Reeve : pied in his undergraduate days, he paused Of the author of these journals it may before a window from which he and two suffice to say that Charles Cavendish Fulke others had dropped after the college-gates Greville was the eldest of the three sons of were closed, to reach a spot where a Charles Greville (who was grandson of the chaise and four was waiting for them. fifth Lord Warwick), by Lady Charlotte Cav-They dashed off to London to witness endish Bentinck, eldest daughter of William the execution of Bellingham, the assasHenry, third Duke of Portland, K.G., who sin of Mr. Perceval. Having satisfied filled many great offices of State. He was their curiosity, or love of excitement, born on the 2nd of April, 1794. Much of his they dashed back again, and were lucky enough to escape discovery. • The Greville Memoirs: a Journal of the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV. By the late Charles C. F. Greville. Esq., Clerk of the Council of those Sovereigns. Edited by Henry Reeve, Registrar of the Privy Council. In three volumes. London, 1874. Second Edition. as His net income from his two offices exceeded 4000l.; and as, with little or no private fortune, he died worth 30,000l. he was probably a gainer on the turf. He took to it very early in life, and was wont eye to their morals as well as their man 66 ners; but it was a little too much to expect a cabinet-minister to direct the studies or pursuits of a private secretary fresh from Christchurch, singularly precocious for his years, with an approving uncle and a (we presume) not disapproving father to look after him. By way of consolatory assurance to the families of other people, Mr. Reeve states that "the journals contain absolutely nothing relating to his own family." They contain a carefully-composed character of his father, who died in 1832: a short graphic outline of his paternal grandfather and to relate that, having lost 3000l. which he was unable to pay, he applied to his uncle, the duke, who readily lent him the money. As soon as he was in funds, he procured three new Bank of England notes of 1,000l. each, and presented himself to discharge his debt. 'Oh, no, Charles, keep the money by all means. It will bring you luck. I never meant it as a loan." Greville made some show of reluctance, and unluckily laid the notes on the table. He was quite sure, he said, that if he had offered a bundle of dirty notes, or a cheque, the duke would have refused still, but the bright, clean notes grandmother; and several allusions to were too much for his Grace, who placed his mother, who died in July 1863, in her them, neatly folded, in his pocket-book, eighty-ninth year. Shortly before her saying, "Well, Charles, since you insist upon it - but whenever you have a bad time of it, come to me." Moralizing on Lord Bathurst's death, in 1834, after describing him as a very amiable man, with a good understanding, Greville sets down: death, a celebrated spiritualist, never dreaming that a man of his age could have a mother living, told him, at a séance, that her spirit was in attendance, and ready to answer any question he might wish to ask. He coolly replied that this was needless, as he had been conversing with her in the flesh only two hours before. She was a woman of con I was Lord Bathurst's private secretary for several years, but so far from feeling any obligation to him, I always consider his mis-siderable personal attractions, and the taken kindness in giving me that post as the Duke of Wellington took much pleasure source of all my misfortunes and the cause of in her society. my present condition. He never thought fit to employ me, never associated me with the interests and the business of his office, and consequently abandoned me at the age of eighteen to that life of idleness and dissipation from which I might have been saved had he felt that my future prospects in life, my character and talents, depended in great measure upon the direction which was at that moment given to my mind. 64 When the celebrated Lord Chesterfield was named lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he chose for his secretary Mr. Lyddel, a very genteel pretty young fellow, but not a man of business" (this is his lordship's description), and addressed him thus: "Sir, you will receive the emoluments of your place, but I will do the business myself." It is not recorded that Mr. Lyddel went astray, and attributed his aberrations to Lord Chesterfield. There was a time when the heads of noble or princely houses, in which young men of family were bred up, were expected to keep an It was all very well in moments of despondency, after a black Monday at Tattersall's or when laid up with the gout, to lament the want of a mentor or good angel in the shape of an old Tory statesman; or to exclaim that, like the bard, He was born for much more, and in happier times His soul would have burned with a holier flame. The direction was already given to his mind the taint or tendency was too deeply ingrained to be eradicated; and Lord Bathurst may be excused for not discerning a capacity for better things in a man to whom the management of a royal racing-establishment was one of the noblest objects of ambition at twenty-six. February 23rd, 1821. - Yesterday the Duke of York proposed to me to take the management of his horses, which I accepted. Nothing could be more kind than the manner in which he proposed it. March 5th.-I have experienced a great | Life" as a failure, and Luttrell's "Letters proof of the vanity of human wishes. In the to Julia" as a success, although "Human course of three weeks I have attained the Life" abounds in genuine poetry, and three things which I have most desired in the "Letters to Julia," nicknamed "Letters world for years past, and upon the whole I do from a Dandy to a Dolly," are merely not feel that my happiness is at all increased; clever sketches of society in verse. perhaps if it were not for one cause it might fastidious aristocrat stands confessed in such passages as these: be, but until that ceases to exist it is in vain that I acquire every other advantage or possess the means of amusement. March 22nd. —I was sworn in the day before yesterday, and kissed hands at a council at Carlton House yesterday morning as clerk of the council. 66 Two of these three things are obvious; the third is left in doubt. He told a lady who saw the journal in MS. that the one cause was an unrequited attachment; but," ," he added, "it was best for me as it turned out." He was sadly compromised in a subsequent love-affair which led to a divorce, and left him a store of depressing memories embittered by remorse. He had ample reason more than once to exclaim with Edgar The London, February 22nd, 1833. —- Dined yesterday with Fortunatus Dwarris, who was counsel to the Board of Health; one of those dinners that people in that class of society put themselves in an agony to give, and generally their guests in as great an agony to partake of. January 2nd, 1831.- Came up to town yesterday to dine with the Villiers at a dinner of clever men, got up at the Athenæum, and was extremely bored. The original party was broken up by various excuses, and the vacancies supplied by men none of whom I knew. There were Poulett Thomson, three Villiers, Taylor, Young, whom I knew; the rest I never saw before - Buller, Romilly, Senior, Maule, a man whose name I forget, and Walker, a police magistrate, all men of more The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices or less talent and information, and altogether Make instruments to scourge us. producing anything but an agreeable party. have as good a chance of being agreeable as I am very sure that dinners of all fools dinners of all clever people; at least the former are often gay, and the latter are frequently heavy. Nonsense and folly gilded over with good breeding and les usages du monde produce often more agreeable results than a collection of rude, awkward intellectual powers. During most of the time covered by the first and second volumes, he lived almost exclusively with the élite of the sporting and fashionable world with the women who ruled Almack's when Almack's was a power, and the men who congregated in the bay-window at White's, when White's was a sovereign authority on manners, equipage and dress. His Egeria was Madame de Lieven, and his oracle Henry (Lord) de Ros. As to friendship, he probably agreed with Selwyn, "When I lose a friend, I go to White's and get another." He imbibed the prejudices and spoke the language of his clique as when he "admires " an op-much as saw Macaulay till the year folulent and well-connected family, at whose lowing, although Macaulay (to say nothcountry house he was a frequent visitor, ing of Cambridge fame) had flashed into for presenting a specimen of "contented full metropolitan celebrity by his article mediocrity;" or when he calls the cor- on Milton in 1825. onation peers of 1830 a horribly low! set; " or speaks of Rogers' "Human The reflections are just. But the circumstance to which we wish to call attention is, that Charles Buller, John (Lord) Romilly, Senior, Maule (Sir William), and Walker (author of "The Original"), were, one and all, personally unknown to him in 1831. He never SO (Oakeley); Sir George Bampfylde (Poltimore); Sir Paul Lawley (Wenlock); Sir Edward Lloyd (Mostyn); Colonel Berkeley (Segrave); Mr. Chichester, grandson of the second Marquis of Donegal (Templemore); and Colonel Hughes (Dinorben). Here are thirteen heads of families contemptuously disposed of in a sentence. They were in reality a more than ordinarily distin The Marquis of Headfort, the Earl of Meath, the Earl of Dunmore, and the Earl Ludlow were created barons of the United Kingdom; and nine commoners were elevated to the peerage: - Mr. Fox Maule (Panmure); Admiral, afterwards Earl, Cadogan guished set. |