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his fortunate son, whom he had made chief clerk, was entitled to draw 7,000l. a year, the profits of the sinecure, for doing nothing.

Lord Ellenborough's views on sinecures cost the country a large sum of money. Lord Ellenborough's views on capital punishment were far more serious in their consequences. It was on his high authority that the Peers insisted on retaining death as the punishment for stealing five shillings from a shop; it was on his high authority that they were induced to believe that the offence of picking pockets had been encouraged by the abolition of this punishment; it was by his exertions that a harsh criminal code was retained in its integrity during his whole lifetime. Yet Lord Ellenborough was not a bad man; in private life he was not severe; he was not even a very harsh judge. He honestly believed in the horrible opinions which he studiously promoted; and he seriously thought it desirable to stamp out crime just as a later generation have stamped out the cattle plague. His opinions were the product of the period in which he had been trained; reformers, such as Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham, were in his judgment visionary speculators, whose writings it was difficult to read, and whose advice it was inexpedient to follow. The political machinery of the State could only be kept in order by the lubrication supplied by sinecure offices; it could only be preserved in safety by the constant presence of the gallows.

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Gibbs.

The harsh views which distinguished Lord Ellen- Sir Vicary borough both as a judge and a statesman were also entertained by his fellow Chief Justice, Sir Vicary Gibbs. Sir Vicary's character was not an agreeable one. He had an irritable temper, and an excellent opinion of himself. His irritability and conceit made him unpopular at the Bar; yet the counsel who disliked him the most were the first to admit the shrewdness of his intellect. Sir Vicary, how

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ever, is less remembered for his conduct as a judge than as a law officer of the Crown. He became Solicitor-General in 1805. He became Attorney-General in 1812. There were in his time,' said his biographer, no less than fiftytwo newspapers published in London, one half of which are said to have been at one and the same period under prosecution. He hung them all on the horns of a dilemma. If the editor apologised for a libel, his apology came too late; for the Attorney-General would not allow him "first to calumniate a man, and then to nauseate him with flattery." If, on the other hand, the unhappy author made no apology, he obviously deserved punishment as a hardened offender.' 1

It would be impossible at the present time to imagine a Chief Justice employing the ordinary language of Lord Ellenborough; it would be impossible for any AttorneyGeneral to use the arguments of Sir Vicary Gibbs. But it would be equally impossible to revive Vansittart's finance, Castlereagh's foreign policy, or Sidmouth's administration of the Home Office. The tone of thought which made it practicable for Lord Sidmouth to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, for Lord Castlereagh to force the Alien Act through Parliament, or for Vansittart to place prohibitory duties on foreign wool, was accurately represented by the judicial careers of Lord Ellenborough and Sir Vicary Gibbs. But the ministers and judges of 1816 were not harsher than their other contemporaries; their single fault lay in their too close agreement with the opinions of those among whom they lived. That agreement was the origin of their power in their own lifetime. It enabled them to obtain an easy triumph over their political opponents. But posterity has reversed the judgment of contemporary critics. Ten years after Lord Liverpool died, the policy which was pursued by his administration had not a single advocate, and those mem

1 Townshend's Eminent Judges, quoted in Creasy's Eminent Etonians.

bers of his Ministry were regarded with the most favour who were supposed to be the least identified with Lord Liverpool's opinions. So has it constantly been from the days of Alfred to the days of Victoria. Contemporary critics have enthusiastically applauded the statesmen who spent their time in a vigorous defence of existing abuses. Posterity has almost unanimously awarded the chief fame to their opponents who passed their days in assailing them. The fame of Lord Liverpool in 1816 overshadowed the slender authority of Lord Grey. The position of Lord Ellenborough was far more enviable than that of Sir Samuel Romilly. Yet the barren honours of Lord Grey and Romilly seem now far preferable to the stars and sinecures with which Lord Liverpool and Lord Ellenborough were rewarded. The latter are associated with traditions which have been abandoned in disgust; the former are identified with reforms, which have given peace and happiness to a contented people.

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IV.

English
Literature.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAP. THE reign of George III. will always be remarkable for the development of British industry and British trade. The ability and ingenuity of a few great men placed new resources at the disposal of the nation, and by substituting the steam engine for the hand of man; the road for the track; and the canal for the road; increased a hundredfold the resources of the country, and its capacity for industrial enterprise. It is questionable whether great wealth and great prosperity are favourable to the cultivation of literature, science, and art. The noblest literature of Rome was, indeed, produced amidst the prosperity and wealth which made the reign of Augustus Cæsar memorable. The Tuscan school flourished under the patronage of the wealthiest and the wisest of the Medicis. But Raphael in modern history, and Virgil in the ancient world, owed more to the tone of society and to the tone of thought of the ages in which they lived than to the patronage of Augustus or the Medicis. Horace did more to perpetuate the name of Mæcenas than Mæcenas did to cultivate the genius of the poet. This country has become much wealthier since the days of Elizabeth and the days of Anne. But it has failed to produce a second Shakespeare or a second Dryden.

The almost unanimous verdict of competent critics has pronounced the most brilliant era of English literature to have commenced with the age of Elizabeth and to have closed with that of Anne. The century and a half which is embraced in this period produced the three greatest masters of the English language-Shakespeare, Milton,

and Dryden. But other writers, some of whom were hardly inferior to these, dignified this golden period of English literature. Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Raleigh, Cowley, Selden, Clarendon, Bunyan, Butler, Defoe, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Bolingbroke, in various ways illustrated and enriched the noble language of their common country. A circumstance, with which they had no direct connection themselves, stereotyped the expressions which they used. The Bible was translated into English at the very time at which Shakespeare was writing. The Reformation placed the work in the hands of every Englishman who could read. The language of the Bible became the language of the nation; the expressions which its translators used became for ever part and parcel of English speech. An ordinary person can hardly read the pre-Reformation writers without a glossary. No one requires a key to enable him to appreciate the beauties of the Elizabethan dramatist or to understand Raleigh's "History of the World.'

Success in any line of life usually leads to imitation. Where one man achieves fame, a hundred others think that they may become equally famous. Birmingham ware has in every age been foisted on a credulous public; and Brummagem has appeared in spurious literature and art nearly as frequently as in spurious silver and gold. The scholars of Raphael imitated with matchless fidelity the finish of their master; and an uncritical age, enchanted with the beauty of their pigments, forebore to notice their want of originality and power. Exactly the same thing occurred in literature in the eighteenth century. Few writers, indeed, had the hardihood to imitate the imagery of Shakespeare, the diction of Milton, or the vigour of Dryden. But a dozen writers succeeded in copying the rhythmical excellence of Pope. Though, however, they caught the trick of Pope's style, they failed to imitate the vigour of his language. Churchill, the

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