against gaming. I think you did very well to pass your Latin speech upon the magistrates of Dantzic for extempore. I cannot say your application of Ste's speech about Sir James Macdonald was well applied. When he complimented the English young men, he included himself and raised their idea of him. You, on the contrary, lessened their opinion of you by putting the other ministers on a par with yourself. Crawford and James, when I saw them last, both intended to write to you. Whether they have or not, I cannot tell. If there were any way of sending you pamphlets, I would send you a new poem, called the Traveller,' which appears to me to have a great deal of merit. I do not know anything else that I would advise you to read if you were here, though there have been two or three political pamphlets much admired. I was told the rest of your journey was likely to be tolerable enough on account of the frosts. I hope it proved so. You did not describe your stay at Memel as agreeable. It is indeed a great way from hence to Russia, but I do not absolutely despair of seeing you there, though the thoughts of it at present I believe frighten my mother a little. However, if I never see you there, it may not perhaps be so long before we meet as we at present imagine. Let us, however, supply as much as we can what the distance that separates us forbids by writing continually to each other. So as I hear often from you (if it be but to tell me you are well), I shall be satisfied, and will promise in return to write regularly. I dare say you will now and then have a You know him too well to expect I letter from Ste. to keep up a regular correspondence with him. am, dear Macartney, with the most unalterable friendship, "Yours, "CHARLES JAMES FOX." Here follows a postscript from Lord Holland, confirming the newspaper intelligence, and not worth transcribing, or even adverting to, further than as it proves the easy footing on which Charles Fox lived with his father. Another letter from Mr. Fox to Sir George Macartney gives an account of the exaggerated report of his father's illness, which had been sufficient to call him from Oxford, but never dangerous, and, when he wrote, nearly removed. In March, 1765, Lord Holland, in a letter to Sir George Macartney, says-" At Easter, the three sisters * go to Paris, Charles and I sail to sup with them at Calais. Charles goes on with them, and I return to Kingsgate-Charles is still at Oxford, and, I hear, studying very hard." It was probably upon his apprising his Oxford tutor, Dr. Newcome, of this expedition with his mother to Paris, that that gentleman wrote him the letter of which the following is a copy, and which Mr. Fox * [The three sisters were Lady Holland, Lady Louisa Conolly, and Lady Sarah Bunbury, in addition to whom the party consisted of Stephen Fox, Charles Fox, and Mr. Upton. They sailed on the 22nd April, went no further than Paris, and returned to England on the 8th of July. Charles Fox went back to Oxford, and remained there till spring, 1766.] carried about in his pocket-book during the latter years of his life, and used not unfrequently to produce with a sort of playful triumph to confute his political friends, when they censured him, with great appearance of reason, for his idleness and negligence in not reading parliamentary papers and other necessary documents. EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM DR. NEWCOME TO "You judged rightly in thinking I should be much surprised by the information you were so obliging to give me. But upon reflection I think that you have done well to change the scene in such a manner, and I feel myself inclined to envy you the power of doing it. Application like yours requires some intermission, and you are the only person with whom I have ever had connexion, to whom I could say this. I expect that you will return with much keenness for Greek and for lines and angles. As to trigonometry, it is a matter of entire indifference to the other geometricians of the college (who will probably continue some time here), whether they proceed to the other branches of mathematics immediately, or wait a term or two longer. You need not, therefore, interrupt your amusements by severe studies, for it is wholly unnecessary to take a step onwards without you, and therefore we shall stop until we have the pleasure of your company. All your acquaintance here which I know, are well, but not much happier for your absence." [On his return from Paris Mr. Fox went by his own choice for another year to Oxford.] "Charles has been here," says his father in a letter to Sir George Macartney, dated Kingsgate, July 25, 1765, "but is now at Oxford studying very hard, after two months at Paris, which he relished as much as ever. Such a mixture in education was never seen, but extraordinary as it is, it seems likely to do very well."-" Charles is at Oxford, applying himself" [says his mother in a letter of the 14th November, 1765]; next spring he purposes to leave it entirely. What his future schemes are I don't know." He passed the greater part of one whole vacation at Oxford with his friend and contemporary Dickson, afterwards Bishop of Down, a man remarkable for warmth of heart and gentleness of disposition, as well as for uncommon agreeableness of manners and singular advantages of person. They studied very hard, and their relaxation consisted in reading to one another, or by themselves, all the early dramatic poets of England; they spent their evenings for that purpose in the bookseller's shop, and I think I have heard Mr. Fox say, that there was no play extant, written and published before the Restoration, that he had not read attentively. From some accident or another he and Dickson were at this time without money, and as they had no acquaintance between Oxford and London, likely to give them credit, they determined without a penny in their pockets to walk up to Holland House (full 56 miles) without any expense of conveyance, lodging or board. The day was sultry, and when they had got to Nettlebed, between Benson and Henley, Mr. Fox was so hot and fatigued that he stopped with his friend at an alehouse, to eat some bread and cheese and drink some ale. He was obliged to leave his gold watch in pawn, for the payment of his homely fare, with the landlord, and performed the rest of his journey in the course of the day. On his arrival, his first exclamation to his father, who was taking his coffee, was, "You must send half a guinea or a guinea, without loss of time, to the alehouse-keeper at Nettlebed, to redeem the gold watch you gave me some years ago, and which I have left in pawn there for a pot of porter." He always plumed himself on the steadiness and length of his walks, and even later in life, and when he was grown corpulent, not unfrequently decided any disputed distance by walking five or ten miles himself, in full confidence that the time he employed in it was a sure measure of the distance. There is reason to suppose that some months and even years before Mr. Fox was elected to a seat in Parliament, his success there was foretold by his friends, and confidently expected by his relations. The verses of Lord Carlisle on his companions at Eton designate Charles Fox to act the most conspicuous part in the Senate; and in the foregoing pages, as well as a variety of other letters of my family, his powers as an orator were distinctly predicted. Between school and his actual appearance on the great theatre of the world, other and less agreeable prognostics were afforded of his future |