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added to his renown, his return to Hull and other cities where he had long been popular was made in triumph. In the next six months a fortune was amassed. But his t exertions were the last brilliant flicker of a guttering flame; he knew that his life was burning too fast. Before setting out for Liverpool he gave Le Petit Ducrow I a crown and kissed him. Attend to your duty. Be a good boy. You'll never see your papa again,' he said. 0 But he was brought back to the house. Paralysis had suddenly robbed him of speech and the use of one side. A few days later at half-past eight in the evening of Thursday, Jan. 27, 1842-he died. But he provided for Woolford and her babies. She was left, besides the unrivalled stud, 47,000l. in 3 per cents., which seems to reflect his gallant resolve not to leave the earth until his family was safe. Like a true showman, he had also taken thought for his funeral, and his friends carried out his plan faithfully. With so much pomp that great crowds gathered, he was laid in his vault at Kensal Green behind this resounding epitaph:

'Within this tomb repose

In the humble hope of a blessed hereafter
Through the merits of his Redeemer
The mortal remains of
ANDREW DUCROW

Equestrian,

Many years lessee of the Royal Amphitheatre.
In him

The Arts and Sciences have to deplore the loss
of a generous patron ;
His family

An affectionate husband and father;
His friends

A boon companion

and

The World

A strictly Honest Man.'

M. WILLSON DISHER.

Art. 12.-IN MEMORIAM: GEORGE CANNING.

1. The Foreign Policy of Canning (1822–1827). By Harold Temperley. Bell, 1925.

2. The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh (1815-1822). By C. K. Webster. Bell, 1925.

3. George Canning and his Friends. Edited by Captain Josceline Bagot. Two vols. Murray, 1909.

4. Speeches of the Right Honble George Canning, with a Memoir of his Life by R. Therry. Six vols. Ridgeway, 1828.

5. The Political Life of George Canning. By A. J. Stapleton. Three vols. Longmans, 1836.

6. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. New Series. Vols. XVIII and xx. 1904, 1906.

And other works.

ON April 10, 1827, Canning was commissioned by the King to form a Ministry; on Aug. 8 of the same year he died. He had just entered on his fifty-seventh year when for the first time he became Prime Minister, thus fulfilling the anticipations entertained by his friends before he left Oxford or even Eton, and the achievement of his own life-long ambition. He held office for less than four months, and his reign was as troubled as it was brief. 'What a world it is! and how doth Fortune banter us.' So Swift wrote to Bolingbroke during the crisis of 1714, and his words might well form the text for a memorial discourse on the career of Canning. Was ever politician more bantered by Fortune than he was? The son of an Ulster squireen who sold his patrimony for a mess of pottage, and of a penniless beauty who, after his father's death, sought to earn a pittance as a provincial actress, George Canning spent his early childhood among the sordid surroundings of travelling players. Rescued from this unpromising environment by his uncle, a wealthy banker, he went to Eton and Christ Church, and left Oxford as he had left Eton, with a reputation for brilliant scholarship-a man already predestined to eminence. Brought into the House of Commons in Pitt's interest as member for the pocket

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borough of Newtown,* Isle of Wight, at the age of twenty-ch three, he was at the age of twenty-six Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, under Grenville. He exchanged the Foreign Office for an Indian Commissionership in 1799, became Joint Paymaster of the Forces in the following year, and resigned office with his master Pitt in 1801.

Profoundly chagrined, alike on personal and public grounds, that Pitt should have been sacrificed to the ecclesiastical scruples of a king whose mind was never far from the borderland of insanity, Canning devoted the next three years to the composition of lampoons upon poor 'Dr' Addington. Egotistical in temper, pompously consequential in manner, and essentially mediocre in ability, Addington was just the man, apart from the fact that he had supplanted Pitt, to provoke the sarcastic humour of the brilliant Irishman:

'Pitt is to Addington

As London is to Paddington.'

This was the simplest and crudest form of a comparison which sought and found expression in many of Canning's contributions to 'The Oracle.' The following are the concluding lines of a parody entitled Good Intentions':

""Twere best, no doubt, the truth to tell,
But still, good soul, he means so well!

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Hail thou on whom our State is leaning!
O Minister of mildest meaning!
Blest with such virtues to talk big on,
With such a head (to hang a wig on);
Head of wisdom, soul of candour,
Happy Britain's Guardian Gander,
To rescue from the "invading Gaul'
Her" commerce, credit, capital"!

While Rome's great Goose could save alone
One Capitol-of senseless stone.'

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The 'Doctor's' appointment of his brother Hiley as Secretary-at-War, and his brother-in-law Bragge

* Stapleton says Newport (for which Canning afterwards sat), and Stapleton's error misled several later biographers, but the error was finally exposed in 1903 by a scholar of meticulous accuracy-the Rev. Dr Beaven.

ANN

Bathurst, as Treasurer of the Navy, gave the satirist a chance he did not miss :

'How blest, how firm the statesman stands

(Him no low intrigue can move)

Circled by faithful kindred bands,

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And propped by fond paternal love.

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When his speeches hobble vilely,

What "Hear him's" burst from Brother Hiley;
When his faltering periods lag

Hark to the cheers of Brother Bragge.'

All this is very good fooling; but it did less to undermine Addington's position than to injure Canning's political reputation both at Court and in the House of Commons. The House of Commons may laugh at verbal witticisms and applaud a brilliant speech, but it mistrusts the wit and the orator. It is more ready to give its confidence to the Marshalls and Snelgroves than to those who lampoon them; it is apt to pay more heed to the shambling sentences of a Castlereagh than to the polished periods of a Canning. Sydney Smith was, of course, an unfriendly critic, yet there is no doubt that the re-echoed the general opinion when, writing in the character of Peter Plymley, he said:

'It is impossible to hear [Canning] upon an arduous topic without perceiving that he is eminently deficient in those solid and serious qualities upon which and upon which alone the confidence of a great country can properly repose!... Providence has made him a light jesting, paragraph-writing man, and that he will remain to his dying day.'

Lord Malmesbury, though a friend and admirer, wrote of him :

'He is unquestionably very clever but he is hardly yet [this was as late as 1807] a statesman; and his dangerous habit of quizzing (which he cannot restrain) would be most unpopular in any department which required pliancy, tact or conciliatory behaviour.'

Yet nothing could well have been more brilliant than Canning's political début, and he greatly strengthened his position, personally, socially, and politically, by his marriage in 1800 with Miss Joan Scott, a daughter of Major-General Scott, and sister-in-law of the Duke of Portland. Mrs Canning had a fortune of 100,000l., and

made her husband's domestic life one of unclouded happiness. Of Canning's devotion to his wife and children we have become aware from the Bagot Papers.

Having filled several subordinate offices with distinction, and despite more than one refusal to take Cabinet office without his immediate friends, Canning found himself at the age of thirty-seven Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs-an office which was at the moment (1807) unquestionably the most responsible and onerous office under the Crown. Two years later his unfortunate quarrel and duel with Castlereagh interrupted and all but wrecked his career. Not, indeed, until after Castlereagh's death (1822) did Canning regain high office, and when five years later the resignation of Lord Liverpool opened the way to the Premiership Canning was already hastening towards a premature grave.

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'How did Fortune banter him,' with alternate favours and chastenings. Yet it were surely unfitting were the Quarterly Review' to pass over in silence the centenary of the death of the brilliant orator, reviewer, and statesman to whom in its early years it owed so much.* Canning was not only one of the founders of this 'Review,' but of the first twelve numbers no fewer than seven contained articles which were largely inspired and partly written by him. The second number (May 1809) contained an article by Canning and Sharon Turner which, taking as its text the Manifesto of the Archduke Charles to the German people, earnestly appealed for general support for the Austrian rising of 1809, and expressed a belief that even 'this generation' might witness the overthrow of Napoleon, 'the terror of Europe and the scourge of humanity.' The next number (August 1809) contained an article by Canning and George Ellis on 'Spanish Affairs,' in which is a trenchant criticism upon James Moore's attempted vindication of his brother. Incidentally, the writers warmly endorsed the policy of J. H. Frere at Madrid, and condemned (though in temperate and considerate terms) Moore's retreat from

For the circumstances which led to the foundation of the 'Quarterly Review,' cf. 'Quarterly Review,' vol. 210, pp. 731 seq.

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