Still blame I not; the all-devouring maw
Cries for fresh food.

Such is this reading age, which after all
Feeds worse than any miser's servants' hall;
Devours what yesterday was roast and boil'd,
In various hashes, heated, hack'd, and spoil'd.
Le Sage, Cervantes, Fielding, and Molière,
Few care to know if such men ever were ;
But with a glossary's help not one will fail
To pore o'er every new Trans-Tweedic tale,
And more applaud the cunning Scotchman's wit
Than all that Addison or Congreve writ.
Strange that with these the market's overstock'd:
By jostling books the road to fame is block'd.
The Muses, now grown common, walk the streets,
Each ploughman's heart for letter'd glory beats ;
Byron is aped by misses in their teens,
And Moore's poor mimics sweeten magazines.

Nay, Richard Skimall, whose impartial eye
From grave to gay can light and listless fly,
Who mingles Hannah More and Thomas Paine
Repeating all things, nothing to retain ;
Who loves at dinner to produce the lore
Which Murray publish'd some few hours before;
Now fairly vanquish'd by the press of press,
Of this day's works his ignorance must confess.
Hence rose reviews. In blue and buff and brown,
To fifteen pages boil'd whole quartos down;
O'er heavy meats their pungent pepper threw,
Disguised with skill what harsh and vapid grew,
And gave to students, picking bits in haste,
Of superficial things a superficial taste.
Well, this was bearable, but, waxing great,
These middlemen began t' oppress and cheat,
Defrauded the lord reader of his due,

And ground the author by whose sweat they grew.

Your modern critic seeks but for defects,

Shears, twists, misquotes, cuts, mangles, and rejects;

In marking blots approves himself acute,
And, when a beauty strikes his eye, is mute;
Fixes, like flies, upon a tainted spot,

And spreads his filth till all the carcass rot.
But let us analyse this mighty 'we,'

The dreaded lord of him, and you, and me.
Some misform'd reptile we may chance to find,
With envy jaundiced, or false learning blind.
In ancient temple thus a colonnade

Enclosed the spot where trembling vows were paid;
In matchless sculpture heroes stood on high,
And fragrant incense fill'd the ambient sky.
Yet poor weak mortals, in this proud abode,
Adored an ox, or deified a toad.

So our great critics, hid within their shrine,
Assume the honours due to things divine.

But let these gods assume their proper names,
They're only fit for ducking in the Thames.

CHAPTER V.

FIRST STRuggles for reform.

THE Parliament of 1812, to which Lord John had been elected in the session of 1813, was dissolved in the summer of 1818. At the general election which then took place, the Whigs succeeded in slightly reducing the majority by which the Tory Government was supported, and the various members of the Russell family again resumed their old places in the House of Commons. Lord Tavistock was returned for Bedfordshire; Lord William for Bedford; Lord John and his uncle, Lord William Russell, for Tavistock.

It was computed at the time that the ranks of the regular Opposition were increased by the election from 140 to 173 members. Even thus the 'Whigs did not command the support of much more than one member out of every four. And a mere statement of these numbers did not reveal the true weakness of their condition. For all practical purposes they were without a leader. They had lost, since the conclusion of the great war, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Whitbread, and Mr. Horner. Sir Samuel Romilly died in the interval between the dissolution of 1818 and the meeting of Parliament; and Mr. Tierney, whose ability and experience made him in one sense the leader of the Opposition, did not command either the confidence or the votes of Lord Grenville's friends.

This state of things, however injurious to the Whigs as a party, afforded opportunities to Whigs as individuals. Guerilla warfare-whether in the Senate or the field-is fruitful in opportunities to young men of energy and talent; and Lord John, who was recovering from the weak health which had depressed his energies and restricted his activity in 1817, was

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accordingly ready to take a more conspicuous part in the Parliamentary campaign. Hitherto he had rarely spoken in debate, and had been constantly absent from divisions. In 1819 he was a frequent speaker, and constant attendant to his Parliamentary duties..

Of the seven occasions on which Lord John spoke during 1819, little need be said. In March he was advocating a reduction in the number of the Lords of the Admiralty; in May he was supporting Mr. Tierney's motion for an inquiry into domestic and foreign policy, and procuring a return of the material part of the indictment on which Sir M. Lopes had been convicted of bribery; in June he was condemning the surrender of Parga to the Turks,1 and attacking the increased excise duties which Mr. Vansittart was proposing; and in July he was pledging the House to take the system of bribery into its consideration at the commencement of the following session. But the speech of most significance made by him during the session was on Sir F. Burdett's motion on Parliamentary Reform in July. In a few sentences he declared that, though he was not opposed to all Reform, he could not accept schemes which were regarded as wild and visionary, or support

1 The town of Parga, on the coast of Epirus, had for centuries maintained municipal independence under the protection of Venice. With the destruction of the Venetian Republic it was occupied by a French garrison, but the inhabitants rose against the French troops, expelled them from their territory, and surrendered the town to the British. In 1815, the British Government ceded the town to the Turks, stipulating, however, that any of the inhabitants who desired to leave should be compensated for their property. The Parguinotes decided on moving as a body to the Ionian Islands; but their claim to compensation for their property, which they estimated as worth £300,000, was gradually cut down to one half that sum. A case of this character-the surrender of a people to a despotic government-was abhorrent to Lord John's whole nature. He protested in 1819 against the cession of the Parguinotes; he drew formal attention to their case in 1820, severely condemning both the policy of the Government and the conduct of Sir T. Maitland, the Governor of the Ionian Islands, who was charged with its execution; and he contributed, through Ugo Foscolo, out of his own purse to the necessities of the Parguinotes. Lord John had made Ugo Foscolo's acquaintance some years before, and Ugo, Foscolo had introduced him to a friend at Geneva as 'doué d'une âme noble, et d'un esprit distingué, mais surtout il a une aimabilité que l'on trouve rarement parmi ses concitoyens. Il vous sera cher aussi pour ses opinions, car il a été dans le Parlement l'un des défenseurs de la liberté des homimes.'

an inquiry which was 'calculated to throw a slur upon the representation of the country and to fill the minds of the people with vague and indefinite alarms.'1 These few sentences had far more effect than any that Lord John had yet spoken. They elicited a somewhat angry remonstrance from Sir F. Burdett, but they made Lord John the champion of the moderate Reformers.

These various Parliamentary speeches illustrated only a portion of his political labours. In the year in which they were made, he published, under the guise of a letter to Lord Holland, an important pamphlet on foreign politics, in which he reviewed the condition of the various States of Europe, condemned the policy of the Holy Alliance, and called upon England to keep aloof from meetings of sovereigns and auctions of subjects.'

He who has read the foregoing pages cannot be at a loss to discover the causes of the unpopularity of England on the Continent. It was supposed that she was the friend of right, and the patron of the liberal constitution which has been the foundation of her own glory. Instead of this she has been found the follower and the tool of the great Continental monarchs; assisting their spoliations, and confirming their destruction of free governments; violating promises solemnly given, and conditions offered in the plenitude of success; pursuing her course totally regardless of the cries and supplications of Europe. . . It will be said, perhaps, that England was not able, by herself, to protect the rights and independence of nations; but, if so, in God's name, why did she interfere? Why is the name of the English Minister to be affixed to every act of injustice which is perpetrated in Europe? What deadly enemy of England's honourable reputation persuaded Lord Castlereagh that the repose of the world depended on the slavery of Saxony and Genoa? England might have appeared as a member of a confederacy to oppose France without sanctioning any of those acts of pillage by which the deliverance of Europe has been disgraced. If she was not able to prevent those acts, she need not have soiled her fair fame by appearing to countenance them. Throughout the session, therefore, Lord John had been 1 Hansard, xl. 1496.