to your Lordship. I hope my letter' to the Duke of Newcastle will meet with the fraternal approbation. It is strong, but not hostile, and will, I believe, operate some effect. I am still more strongly fixed in my judgment from the state of things as it opens, and will open every day, that the place of importance is employment, in the present unsettled conjuncture. It may not to us be the place of dignity, but sure I am it is that of the former. I see, as your Lordship does, the treatment we have had: I feel it as deeply, but I believe, not so warmly. I don't suffer my feelings to warp the only plan I can form that has any tendency or meaning; for making ourselves felt, by disturbing Government, I think would prove hurtful to the public, not reputable to ourselves, and beneficial in the end, only to others. All Achilles as you are, Impiger, Iracundus, &c., what would avail us to sail back a few myrmidons to Thessaly! Go over to the Trojans, to be revenged, we none of us can bear the thought of. What then remains? The conduct of the much-enduring man, who by temper, patience, and persevering prudence, became adversis rerum immersabilis undis. I am so tired I cannot hold my head down to write any longer. A fine Secretary of State I should make. Ten thousand compliments to the ladies, and warm effusions of heart, breathed, not expressed, to yourself, my dearest Lord. W. PITT. 1 This letter is not to be found in the Chatham Correspondence, nor is there any copy of it among the Grenville Papers. The deficiency, however, has been supplied by the author of an article on the Life of Lord Chatham, in the Quarterly Review, No. CXXXI. p. 216, where extracts from the letter in question are given from the Hardwicke MSS. Mr. Pitt had enclosed it to Sir George Lyttelton, open, for his own perusal, and to be shown to the Grenvilles, before it was sealed and sent to the Duke of Newcastle. I hope to be able to set out in a week. I am much mended in my general health, but not half a man yet; were I a legion of men they would be all yours. Be so good not to leave my letters in your pockets, but lock them up or burn them, and caution Sir George to do the same. MR. PITT TO MR. GRENVILLE. Bath, March 24, 1754. DEAR GRENVILLE,-I hope you was so good to excuse my not thanking you for your very kind letter in one addressed to yourself, by my packet of yesterday. I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of supplying that omission to-day, though it be only to write a letter worthy of a profound politician of these dark times, that is, to say nothing. When the day will dawn (for to my poor eyes it is not even twilight at present), I cannot guess: when it comes, may it show us a view men will see with pleasure, and not wish to change! I am deep in a world that is very entertaining; or rather, the demolitions of the metaphysical world, which that intellectual Sampson of Battersea' has pulled down about our ears, but with this difference, that here the Hero is the Philistine, and the poor saints are crushed. I have gone through the Essay on Human Know 1 Lord Bolingbroke. Mr. Pitt alludes to a collected edition of his works, which happened to be published on the morning of Mr. Pelham's death, the 6th instant, and which gave rise to the well-known Ode, by Garrick, in which are the following often-quoted lines: "The same sad morn, to Church and State (So for our sins 't was fixed by fate) Black as the regions of the North, ledge, and will confess that fine as it is, and irresistible as the vogue for writings of that kind may be, I cannot think it the greatest performance that ever was, as I had been made to expect. Old matter new dressed, and often tawdrily enough; trite observations emphatically imposed for most sagacious discoveries, and much fallacious reasoning, or else want of that clearness of conception and luminous discernment to which the author so particularly pretends. I could almost wish him alive again, that he might have the pleasure of reading that stupid fellow (as he calls him) Warburton's answer, and that we might have the entertainment of reading his Lordship's reply. I endeavour, you see, to keep my mind as far as I can, abstracted from what you gentlemen at London are pleased to call the great world, and which we philosophers at Bath call the little; and instead of such trifles as the government of millions, fate of kingdoms, and system of Europe, to hold our minds fixed on the contemplation of nature's system, and intellectual and moral worlds. But I will descend so far from my sublime occupations as to hope that a part of your little world, namely a certain family in Brook Street, is in perfect health. I desire my most humble compliments to Mrs. Grenville, and am, my dear Grenville's Most affectionate, W. PITT. MR. PITT TO MR. GRENVILLE. Bath, April 6, 1754. DEAR GRENVILLE,-I can write but a few words, having a bandage on my arm, after being blooded for a 1 William Warburton, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester. feverish cold. You know so thoroughly my heart about public matters, that not even one word is necessary on that subject; nor is it, I hope, more necessary to tell you that the Treasurer of the Navy gives me great pleasure, especially if the office be allowed to claim its right of succession, in virtue of the precedent lately made'. A better right it will have (whether it will be allowed or not), the ability of the possessor of it to serve his country in a higher sphere; for, some time or other, weight in Parliament will be considered as an ingredient, at least, among the qualifications of a man for the first offices of business. You can't read what is written: my hand can hold out no longer; but it shall to assure Mrs. Grenville, and the House of Grenville, of my humblest compliments. W. PITT. MR. PITT TO EARL TEMPLE. Bath, April 8, 1754. your MY DEAR LORD,—I cannot, without some little difficulty, return you my warmest thanks for kind letter, having been blooded on account of a feverish cold and sore throat. I was much out of condition to answer the great packets with which I was honoured; nor was I the better for the efforts of mind I was forced to make. I am better this morning, and hope to surmount this slight attack in two or three days. Per varios casûs et tot discrimina rerum, I cannot 1 The precedent of Mr. Legge's removal from the office of Treasurer of the Navy to which Mr. Grenville had succeeded, and Mr. Legge being made Chancellor of the Exchequer. say, tendimus ad Latium. Where my sole wishes tend ultimately is to retreat'; but when or how? In the mean time, I see with great pleasure the Treasurer of the Navy and the Cofferer2. George Grenville's turn must come for greater things; there I lay the stress; for my own poor self, I sincerely wish His Majesty's affairs in Parliament all success in the hands to which they are committed. I esteem and love Legge3: Sir Thomas Robinson is a very worthy gentleman. This is all I think of public matters; very concise, but all I can possibly utter, if I were put to the rack. 5 My picture will before now have come to your Lordship's hands, or rather I shall have had the honour to present myself before you in my very person; not only from the great likeness of the portrait, but, moreover, that I have no right to pretend to any other existence than that of a man, en peinture. My arm will not allow me to write more. W. PITT. I hope you will, by Sir George's means, learn the 1 The same desponding wish is mentioned by Mr. Pitt in his letters to the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke. He seems to have been occasionally much depressed in spirits by the continued pain and sickness which had so long afflicted him; but as his health improved, the energy and activity of his mind returned, and we hear no more of that ignoble retreat, by which the destinies of England might have been changed in the events of the "Seven Years' War." 2 George Grenville was now appointed Treasurer of the Navy, and Sir George Lyttelton became Cofferer of the Household. 3 Henry Bilson Legge. He was now Chancellor of the Exchequer. * Sir Thomas Robinson had just succeeded the Duke of Newcastle as Secretary of State. He had been previously employed in some diplomatic missions:-a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations; Master of the Great Wardrobe, &c. He was made Lord Grantham in 1761, and died in 1770. The portrait of Mr. Pitt, painted by William Hoare of Bath. This picture was formerly in the collection at Stowe. |