1 Burton Pynsent Oct. 30th, 1773. "With what ease of mind and joy of heart I write to my loved William, since Mr. Wilson's comfortable letter of Monday. I do not mean to address you as a sick man; I trust in heaven, that convalescent is the only title I am to give you in the ailing tribe, and that you are now enjoying the happy advantage of Dr. Glynn's acquaintance, as one of the cheerful and witty sons of Apollo, in his poetic, not his medical, attribute. But, though I indulge with inexpressible delight the thought of your returning health, I cannot help being a little in pain, lest you should make more haste than good speed to be well. Your mamma has been before me in suggesting that most useful proverb, reculer pour mieux santer, useful to all, but to the ardent, necessary. You may indeed, my sweet boy, better than any one, practise this sage dictum, without any risque of being thrown out (as little James would say) in the chace of learning. All you want at present, is quiet, with this, if your ardor αριστεύειν can be kept in, till you are stronger, you will make noise enough. How happy the task, my noble, amiable boy, to caution you only against pursuing too much, all those liberal and praise-worthy things, to which less happy natures are perpetually to be spurred and driven; I will not teaze you with too long a lecture in favour of inaction, and a competent stupidity, your two best tutors and companions at present. You have time to spare; consider there is but the Encyclopedia; and when you have mastered all that, what will remain? you will want, like Alexander, another world to conquer. Your mamma joins me in every word; and we know how much your affectionate mind can sacrifice to our earnest and tender wishes. Brothers and sisters are well, all feel about you, think and talk of you, as they ought. My affectionate remembrances go in great abundance to Mr. Wilson. Vive, vale, is the unceasing prayer of your truly loving father, CHATHAM." The above letter indicates great anxiety, beautifully expressed, lest Mr. Pitt should too soon resume *This eminent physician and excellent scholar became warmly attached to Mr. Pitt, and was a great admirer of his talents and character. He frequently read with him select passages from classical writers, which he thought particularly deserving his notice. his studies; and seems to shew, that on former occasions of illness, lord and lady Chatham had been under the necessity of restraining him. He recovered so slowly and so imperfectly before he left Cambridge, that he was unable to read any book which required much attention; and lord Chatham did not allow him to return to the university till the beginning of July, soon after which he wrote him the following letter, which proves the continuance of the same solicitude: Hayes, Sunday, July 17th, 1774. "Need I tell my dear William that his letter received this morning, diffused general joy here? To know that he is well and happy, and to be happy ourselves, is one and the same thing. I am glad that Chambers, Hall, and tufted Robe, continue to please; and make no doubt, that all the nine, in their several departments of charming, will sue for your love with all their powers of enchantment. I know too well the danger of a new amour or of a reviving passion, not to have some fears for your discretion. Give any of these alluring ladies the meeting by day-light and in their turns; not becoming the slave of any one of them; nor be drawn into late hours by the temptation of their sweet converse. joice that college is not yet evacuated of its learned garrison; and I hope the governor of this fortress of science, the master, or his admirable aides-de-camps, the tutors, will not soon repair to their respective excursions. Dr. Brown, to whom I desire to present my best compliments, is very obliging in accommodating you with a stable. I hope with this aid Mr. I re Wilson's computation may not be out above one half, to bring it at all near the mark. I conclude a horse's allowance at Cambridge is upon the scale of a sizar's commons. However it prove, I am glad to think you and he will find more convenience for riding at every spare hour that offers. Stucky will carry Mr. Wilson safely, and I trust not unpleasantly. The brothers of the turf may hold the solid contents of his shoulders and forehand somewhat cheap; but by Dan's leave, he is no uncreditable clerical steed; no news yet from Pitt; James is here, the flower of schoolboys. Your loving father. CHATHAM." Hayes, Sept. 2, 1774. "I write, my dearest William, the post just going out, only to thank you for your most welcome letter, and for the affectionate anxiety you express for my situation, left behind in the hospital when our flying camp moved to Stowe. Gout has for the present subsided, and seems to intend deferring his favours till winter, if autumn will do its duty, and bless us with a course of steady weather; those days which Madame de Savigné so beautifully points, des jours fités d'or et de soye. "I have the pleasure to tell you, your mother and sisters returned perfectly well from Bucks, warm in praises of magnificent and princely Stowe, and full of due sentiments of the agreeable and kind reception they found there. No less than two dancings in the short time they passed there. One escape from a wasp's nest, which proved only an adventure to talk of, by the incomparable skill and presence of mind of Mr. Cotton. Driving Driving our girls in his carriage with four very fine horses, and no postilion, they fell into an ambuscade of wasps, more fierce than Pandours, who beset these coursers of spirit not inferior to Xanthus and Podarges, and stung them to madness; when, disdaining the master's hand, he turned them short into a hedge, threw some of them, as he meant to do; and leaping down, seized the bridles of the leaders, which afforded time for your sisters to get out safe and sound, their honour, in point of courage, intact, as well as their bones; for they are eelebrated not a little on their composure in this alarming situation. I rejoice that your time passes to your mind, in the evacuated seat of the muses. However, knowing that those heavenly ladies (unlike the London fair) delight most, and spread their choicest charms and treasures, in sweet retired solitude, I won't wonder that their true votary is happy to be alone with them. Mr. Pretyman will by no means spoil company, and I wish you joy of his return. How many commons have you lost of late? Whose fences have you broken? and in what lord of the manor's pound have any strays of science been found, since the famous adventure of catching the horses with such admirable address and alacrity? I beg my affectionate compliments to Mr. Wilson, and hope you will both be aware of an inclosed country for the future. Little James is still with us, doing penance for the high living, so well described to you in Mrs. Pam's excellent epistle. All loves follow my sweetest boy in more abundance than I have time or ability to express. "I desire my best compliments to the kind and obliging master, who loves Cicero and you.” My readers will be sorry to learn that the following is the last letter of lord Chatham, which I am able to submit to their perusal; it was written only seven or eight months before his death. Hayes, Sept. 22, 1777. "How can I employ my reviving pen so well as by addressing a few lines to the hope and comfort of my life, my dear William? You will have pleasure to see, under my own hand, that I mend every day, and that I am all but well. I have been this morning to Camden-place, and sustained most manfully a visit, and all the idle talk thereof, for about an hour by Mr. Norman's clock, and returned home, untired, to dinner, where I eat like a farmer. Lord Mahon has confounded, not convinced, the incorrigible soi-disant Dr. Wilson. Dr. Franklin's lightning, rebel as he is, stands proved the more innocent; and Wilson's nobs must yield to the painted conductors. On Friday, lord Mahon's indefatigable spirit is to exhibit another incendium to lord mayor, foreign ministers, and all lovers of philosophy and the good of society; and means to illuminate the horizon with a little bonfire of twelve hundred faggots and a double edifice. Had our dear friend been born sooner, Nero and the second Charles could never have amused themselves by reducing to ashes the two noblest cities in * The author of these Memoirs, who in 1803 changed his name from Pretyman to Tomline. the the world. My hand begins to demand repose, so with my best compliments to Aristotle, Homer, Thucydides, Xenophon, not forgetting the Civilians, and the Law of Nations tribe, adieu, my dearest William. Your ever most affectionate father, CHATHAM." His first speech in parliament.On the 26th of February, a circumstance of a very remarkable nature occasioned Mr. Pitt to make his first speech in the House of Commons. The subject of debate was Mr. Burke's bill for economical reform in the civil list. Lord Nugent was speaking against the bill; and Mr. Byng, member for Middlesex, knowing Mr. Pitt's sentiments upon the measure, asked him to reply to his lordship. Mr. Pitt gave a doubtful answer; but in the course of lord Nugent's speech, he determined not to reply to him. Mr. Byng, however, understood that Mr. Pitt intended to speak after lord Nugent; and the moment his lordship sat down, Mr. Byng and several of his friends, to whom he had communicated Mr. Pitt's supposed intention, called out, in the manner usual in the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt's name as being about to speak. This, probably, prevented any other person from rising; and Mr. Pitt finding himself thus called upon, and observing that the house waited to hear him, thought it necessary to rise. Though really not intending to speak, he was from the beginning collected and unembarrassed; he urged strongly in favour of the bill, and noticed all the objections which had been urged by the noble lord, who immediately preceded him in the debate, in a manner which greatly astonished all who heard him. Never were higher expectations formed of any person upon his first coming into parliament, and never were expectations more completely answered. They were indeed much more than answered; such was the fluency and accuracy of language, such the perspicuity of arrangement, and such the closeness of reasoning, and manly and dignified elocution,generally, even in a much less degree, the fruits of long habit and experience-that it could scarcely be believed to be the first speech of a young man not yet two-andtwenty. On the following day, Mr. Pitt, knowing my anxiety upon every subject which related to him, with his accustomed kindness, wrote to me at Cambridge, to inform me, that "he had heard his own voice in the House of Commons;" and modestly expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which his first attempt at parliamentary speaking had been received. Before Mr. Pitt had a seat in parliament he had been a constant attendant in the gallery of the House of Commons, and near the throne in the House of Lords, upon every important debate; and whenever he heard a speech of any merit on the side opposite to his own opinions, he accustomed himself to consider, as it proceeded, in what manner it might be answered; and when the speaker accorded with his own sentiments, he then observed his mode of arranging and enforcing his ideas, and considered whether any improvement could have been made, or whether any argument had been omitted. To this habit, and to the practice already mentioned of reading Greek and Latin into English, joined to his wonderful natural endowments, may he attributed his talent for reply, and that command of language, for which he was from the first so highly distinguished. At whatever length he spoke, he avoided repetition; and it was early and justly observed of him, that he never failed to put the best word in the best place." Attempts to form a coalition of the Pitt and Fox parties.-The unanimous adoption of Mr. Grosvenor's motion, by the House of Commons on the 2d of February, was considered as an encourage ment to the gentlemen who met at the St. Alban's tavern, to renew their endeavours to accomplish an union of parties. Several meetings were held, and some of the members, as a committee, had interviews with Mr. Pitt, and with Mr. Fox and the duke of Portland, on the subject. But the same difficulty as before occurred, namely, that Mr. Pitt refused to resign, for the purpose of negociating; and the duke of Portland and Mr. Fox refused to negociate till Mr. Pitt had resigned. On the 9th of February the gentlemen appear to have been convinced that from their inability to surmount this difficulty, their exertions at present must be useless, and they passed a resolution to that effect. They agreed, however, to meet at least once a week, during the session of parliament, for the purpose of availing themselves of any opportunity which might present itself of promoting the great object which they deemed absolutely necessary at that particular juncture." What passed in the House of Commons, on the 11th of this month, in the irregu lar debate which took place upon Mr. Eden's motion, again revived the hopes of these gentlemen; and at a meeting two days afterwards, they unanimously passed the two following resolutions:-" To represent to the right honourable William Pitt, and the right honourable Charles James Fox, the satisfaction we have received from the manly, candid, and explicit avowal they have respectively made of their public views; and to intimate to them that, in consequence of this mutual explanation, we entertain a most assured hope, that such an administration as the House of Commons has unanimously declared to be requisite, may be obtained by an union consistent with principle and honour;" and, "That the thanks of this meeting be given to the right honourable Frederick lord North, for the public and voluntary declaration he has made, of his sincere and earnest desire to promote, as far as depends on him, a cordial and permanent union." In consequence of the eagerness for an union of parties, repeatedly expressed by these gentlemen, and also by many others in the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt, desirous that no backwardness upon the subject should be imputed to him, thought it right, as the most probable means of accomplishing the wishes of so many respectable men, to advise the king to propose an interview between the duke of Portland and himself (Mr. Pitt) for the purpose of endeavouring to form an administration including themselves and their respective friends. This suggestion was received by his majesty with considerable surprise and agitation; and |