The Greville Memoirs Volume III Part 10

[3] [In addition to other reasons, which are obvious, against this proceeding, it would have been an unprecedented thing to call on an important appeal for hearing at the end of August, in the midst of the long vacation.]

[4] [No colonial judge has ever been appointed to one of the a.s.sessors.h.i.+ps of the Judicial Committee, except Sir Alexander Johnston, who had been Chief Justice of Ceylon; but Sir Alexander refused to accept the stipend (400 a year) attached to the office, and never did receive it.]

September 4th, 1834 {p.125}

At Court yesterday. The King came to town to receive the address of the City on the Queen's return--the most ridiculous address I ever heard. The Queen was too ill to appear. Her visit to Germany knocked her up, and well it might, considering the life she led--always up at six and never in bed till twelve, continual receptions and ceremonies. Errol told me she showed them her old bedroom in the palace (as they call it) at Meiningen--a hole that an English housemaid would think it a hards.h.i.+p to sleep in.

Stanley (not the ex-Secretary, but the Under-Secretary) told me last night an anecdote of Melbourne which I can very easily believe. When the King sent for him he told Young 'he thought it a d.a.m.ned bore, and that he was in many minds what he should do--be Minister or no.' Young said, 'Why, d.a.m.n it, such a position never was occupied by any Greek or Roman, and, if it only lasts two months, it is well worth while to have been Prime Minister of England.' 'By G.o.d that's true,' said Melbourne; 'I'll go.' Young is his private secretary--a vulgar, familiar, impudent fellow, but of indefatigable industry and a man who suits Melbourne. His taste is not delicate enough to be shocked at the coa.r.s.eness, while his indolence is accommodated by the industry, of his secretary. Then Young[5] knows many people, many places, and many things; n.o.body knows whence he comes or what is his origin, but he was a purser in the navy, and made himself useful to the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re when he went to Russia, who recommended him to Melbourne. He was a writer and runner for the newspapers, and has always been an active citizen, struggling and striving to get on in the world, and probably with no inconsiderable dexterity. I know nothing of his honesty, for or against it; he seems good-humoured, but vulgar and familiar. Ben Stanley and I were talking about public men, and agreed that by far the ablest, and at the same time the most unscrupulous, of them are Brougham and O'Connell, and that the latter is probably on the whole the most devoid of principle.

Their characters and adventures would be worthy of a Plutarch.

[5] [Tom Young was commonly known as 'Ubiquity Young,'

because you saw him in every place you might happen to go to.]

September 5th, 1834 {p.126}

[Page Head: HOLLAND HOUSE.]

At Holland House yesterday, where I had not been these two years.

Met Lord Holland at Court, who made me go. The last time I was with my Lady she was so mighty uncivil that I left off my visits, and then we met again as if there had been no interruption, and as if we had been living together constantly. Spring Rice and his son, Melbourne, and Palmerston dined there; Allen was at Dulwich, but came in the evening, and so did Bobus Smith. There was a great deal of very good talk, anecdotes, literary criticism, and what not, some of which would be worth remembering, though hardly sufficiently striking to be put down, unless as forming a portion of a whole course of conversations of this description. A vast depression came over my spirits, though I was amused, and I don't suppose I uttered a dozen words. It is certainly true that the atmosphere of Holland House is often oppressive, but that was not it; it was a painful consciousness of my own deficiencies and of my incapacity to take a fair share in conversation of this description. I felt as if a language was spoken before me which I understood, but not enough to talk in it myself. There was nothing discussed of which I was altogether ignorant, and when the merits of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Crabbe were brought into comparison, and Lord Holland cut jokes upon Allen for his enthusiastic admiration of the 'De Moribus Germanorum,' it was not that I had not read the poets or the historian, but that I felt I had not read them with profit. I have not that familiarity with either which enables me to discuss their merits, and a painful sense came over me of the difference between one who has superficially read and one who has studied, one who has laid a solid foundation in early youth, gathering knowledge as he advances in years, all the stores of his mind being so orderly disposed that they are at all times available, and one who (as I have done) has huddled together a quant.i.ty of loose reading, as vanity, curiosity, and not seldom shame impelled; reading thus without system, more to cover the deficiencies of ignorance than to augment the stores of knowledge, loads the mind with an undigested ma.s.s of matter, which proves when wanted to be of small practical utility--in short, one must pay for the follies of one's youth. He who wastes his early years in horse-racing and all sorts of idleness, figuring away among the dissolute and the foolish, must be content to play an inferior part among the learned and the wise. Some instances there are of men who have united both characters, but it will be found that these have had frequent laborious intervals, that though they may have been vicious, they have never been indolent, and that their minds have never slumbered and lost by disuse the power of exertion.

Reflections of this sort make me very uncomfortable, and I am ready to cry with vexation when I think on my misspent life. If I was insensible to a higher order of merit, and indifferent to a n.o.bler kind of praise, I should be happier far; but to be tormented with the sentiment of an honourable ambition and with aspirations after better things, and at the same time so sunk in sloth and bad habits as to be incapable of those exertions without which their objects are unattainable, is of all conditions the worst. I sometimes think that it would be better for me, as I am not what I might have been (if my education had been less neglected, and my mind had undergone a better system of moral discipline), if I was still lower than I am in the scale, and belonged entirely to a more degraded caste; and then again, when I look forward to that period which is fast approaching--

When ... a sprightlier age-- Comes t.i.ttering on to drive one from the stage--

I am thankful that I have still something in store, that though far below the wise and the learned, I am still something raised above the ignorant mob, that though much of my mental substance has been wasted, I have enough left to appear respectably in the world, and that I have at least preserved that taste for literary pursuits which I cling to as the greatest of blessings and the best security against the tedium and vacuity which are the indispensable concomitants of an idle youth and an ignorant old age.

[Page Head: CONVERSATION AT HOLLAND HOUSE.]

As a slight but imperfect sketch of the talk of Holland House I will put down this:--

They talked of Taylor's new poem, 'Philip van Artevelde.'

Melbourne had read and admired it. The preface, he said, was affected and foolish, the poem very superior to anything in Milman. There was one fine idea in the 'Fall of Jerusalem'--that of t.i.tus, who felt himself propelled by an irresistible impulse like that of the Greek dramatists, whose fate is the great agent always pervading their dramas. They held Wordsworth cheap, except Spring Rice, who was enthusiastic about him. Holland thought Crabbe the greatest genius of modern poets. Melbourne said he degraded every subject. None of them had known Coleridge; his lectures were very tiresome, but he is a poet of great merit.

Then they spoke of Spencer Perceval and Irving preaching in the streets. Irving had called on Melbourne, and eloquently remonstrated that 'they only asked the same licence that was given to puppet-shows and other sights not to be prevented; that the command was express, "Go into the highways," and that they must obey G.o.d rather than man.' Melbourne said this was all very true and unanswerable. 'What _did_ you answer?' I asked. 'I said, "You must not preach there."' Then of Cambridge and Goulburn, who is a saint and gave lectures in his room, by which he has caught several young men. Lord Holland spoke of George III.'s letters to Lord North; the King liked Lord North, hated the Duke of Richmond. Amongst the few people he liked were Lord Loughborough and Lord Thurlow. Thurlow was always 'endeavouring to undermine the Minister with whom he was acting, and intriguing underhand with his enemies.' Loughborough used to say, 'Do what you think right, and never think of what you are to say to excuse it beforehand'--a good maxim. The Duke of Richmond in 1763 or 1764, after an audience of the King in his closet, told him that 'he had said that to him which if he was a subject he should not scruple to call an untruth.' The King never forgave it, and the Duke had had the imprudence to make a young king his enemy for life. This Duke of Richmond, when Lord-Lieutenant of Suss.e.x, during the American war, sailed in a yacht through the fleet, when the King was there, with American colours at his mast-head.

He never forgave Fox for putting the Duke of Portland instead of himself at the head of the Government in 1782. During the riots in 1780 on account of Admiral Keppel, Tom Grenville burst open the door of the Admiralty, and a.s.sisted at the pillage and destruction of papers. Lord Grey a little while ago attacked him about it, and he did not deny it. Such things could not be done now. During the Windsor election they hired a mob to go down and throw Lord Mornington (Lord Wellesley) over Windsor Bridge, and Fitzpatrick said it would be so fine to see St. Patrick's blue riband floating down the stream. They first sent to Piper to know if Lord Mornington could swim. The plan was defeated by his having a still stronger mob. After dinner they discussed women's works: few _chefs-d'oeuvres_; Madame de Sevigne the best; the only three of a high cla.s.s are Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Stael, and (Bobus Smith said) Sappho, but of her not above forty lines are extant: these, however, are unrivalled; Mrs Somerville is very great in the exact sciences. Lady Holland would not hear of Madame de Stael. They agreed as to Miss Austen that her novels are excellent. Quintus Curtius is confirmed by Burnes' travels in Bokhara, but was reckoned no authority by the greatest scholars; Lord Melbourne said Mitford had expressed his confidence in him.

Of the early English kings there is no reason to believe that any king before Edward III. understood the English language; the quarrel between Beckett and King Henry II. was attributed (by some writers) to the hostile feeling between Normans and Saxons, and this was the princ.i.p.al motive of the quarrel and the murder of the Archbishop. Klopstock had a _sect_ of admirers in Germany; some young students made a pilgrimage from Gottingen to Hamburg, where Klopstock lived in his old age, to ask him the meaning of a pa.s.sage in one of his works which they could not understand. He looked at it, and then said that he could not then recollect what it was that he meant when he wrote it, but that he knew it was the finest thing he ever wrote, and they could not do better than devote their lives to the discovery of its meaning.

September 7th, 1834 {p.130}

[Page Head: LORD MELBOURNE'S LITERARY CONVERSATION.]

At Holland House again; only Bobus Smith and Melbourne; these two, with Allen, and Lord Holland agreeable enough. Melbourne's excellent scholars.h.i.+p and universal information remarkably display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply his mind is impressed with literary subjects.

After dinner there was much talk of the Church, and Allen spoke of the early reformers, the Catharists, and how the early Christians persecuted each other; Melbourne quoted Vigilantius's letter to Jerome, and then asked Allen about the 11th of Henry IV., an Act pa.s.sed by the Commons against the Church, and referred to the dialogue between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely at the beginning of Shakespeare's 'Henry V.,' which Lord Holland sent for and read, Melbourne knowing it all by heart and prompting all the time. Lingard says of this statute that the Commons proposed to the King to commit an act of spoliation on the clergy, but that the King sharply rebuked them and desired to hear no more of the matter. About etymologies Melbourne quoted Tooke's 'Diversions of Purley,' which he seemed to have at his fingers'

ends. I forget what other topics were discussed, but after Lady Holland and Melbourne and Allen went to bed, Lord Holland, Bobus, and I sat down, and Lord Holland told us many anecdotes about the great orators of his early days. Fox used to say Grey was the most prudent man he knew, and this perhaps owing to his having got into a sc.r.a.pe early in his Parliamentary life, by attacking Pitt, who gave him a severe castigation; it was about his letter to the Prince being sent by a servant during the Regency discussions. Fox thought his own speech in 1804 on going to war with France the best he ever made. Lord Holland believed that Pitt (the younger) was not so eloquent as Chatham. Grattan said, 'He takes longer flights, does not soar so high.' No power was ever equal to Chatham's over a public a.s.sembly, much greater in the Commons than it was afterwards in the Lords. When Sir Thomas Robinson had been boring the House on some commercial question, and introduced the word 'sugar' so often that there was at last a laugh as often as he did so, Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, who had put him up, grew very angry, and at last his wrath boiled over. When Robinson sat down Pitt rose, and with a tone and manner of the utmost indignation began, 'Mr. Speaker, sir--sugar--I say sugar. Who laughs now?' and n.o.body did laugh. Once in the House of Lords, on a debate during the American war, he said he hoped the King might be awakened from his slumbers. There was a cry of 'Order! order!' 'Order, my Lords?' burst out Chatham, 'Order? I have not been disorderly, but I _will_ be disorderly. I repeat again, I hope that his Majesty may be awakened from his slumbers, but that he may be awakened by such an awful apparition as that which drew King Priam's curtains in the dead of the night and told him of the conflagration of his empire.' Holland regretted much that he had never heard Lord North, whom he fancied he should have liked as much as any of his great opponents; his temper, shrewdness, humour, and power of argument were very great. Tommy Townshend, a violent, foolish fellow, who was always talking strong language, said in some debate, 'Nothing will satisfy me but to have the n.o.ble Lord's head; I will have his head.' Lord North said, 'The honourable gentleman says he will have my head. I bear him no malice in return, for though the honourable gentleman says he will have my head, I can a.s.sure him that I would on no account have his.'

September 13th, 1834 {p.132}

Dined again at Holland House the day before yesterday; Melbourne, Rice, Lord and Lady Albemarle, and Lord Gosford; rather dull. A discussion about _who_ was the man in a mask who cut Charles I.'s head off; Mackintosh believed he knew. What a literary puerility!

The man in a mask was Jack Ketch (whatever his name was); who can doubt it? Where was the man, Roundhead or Puritan, who as an amateur would have mounted the scaffold to perform this office?

But the executioner, though only discharging the duties of his office, probably thought in those excited times that he would not be safe from the vengeance of some enthusiastic cavalier, and that it was more prudent to conceal the features of the man by whom the deed was done. Melbourne swore that Henry VIII. was the greatest man who ever lived, and Allen declared if he had not married Ann Boleyn we should have continued Catholics to this day, both of which a.s.sertions I ventured to dispute. Allen with all his learning is fond of a paradox, and his prejudices s.h.i.+ne forth in every question in which Church and religion are implicated. Melbourne loves das.h.i.+ng opinions.

September 18th, 1834 {p.133}

[Page Head: LORD BROUGHAM'S ABERRATIONS.]

For some weeks past a fierce war has been waged by the 'Times'

against the Chancellor. It was declared in some menacing articles which soon swelled into a tone of rebuke, and have since been sharpened into attacks of a constancy, violence, and vigour quite unexampled; all the power of writing which the paper can command--argument, abuse, and ridicule--have been heaped day after day upon him, and when it took a little breathing time it filled up the interval by quotations from other papers, which have been abundantly supplied both by the London and the country press. I do not yet know what are the secret causes which have stirred the wrath of the 'Times.' The 'Examiner' has once a week thrown into the general contribution of rancour an article perhaps wittier and more pungent than any which have appeared in the 'Times,' but between them they have flagellated him till he is raw, and it is very clear that he feels it quite as acutely as they can desire. While they have thus been administering castigation in this unsparing style, he has afforded them the best opportunities by his extraordinary progress in Scotland, and the astonis.h.i.+ng speeches which he made at Aberdeen and Dundee, making more mountebank exhibitions than he did in the House of Lords, and exciting the unquenchable laughter of his enemies and the continual terror of his friends. Lord Holland told me that he was trembling for the account of the Edinburgh dinner. That great affair appears, however (by the first half of the proceedings), to have gone off very well. Lord Grey in his speech confined himself to general topics, and he and Brougham steered extremely clear of one another, but Brougham made some allusions which Durham took to himself, and replied to with considerable asperity of tone, avoiding, however, any personalities and anything like a direct collision. Everybody asks, How long will Brougham be permitted to go on playing these ape's tricks and scattering his flummery and his lies? and then they say, But you can't get rid of him, and the Government (dangerous as he is to them) could not get on without him. There would probably be no difficulty; experience has demonstrated to me the extreme fallacy of the notion that _anybody_ under _any_ circ.u.mstances is indispensable. Althorp appeared the most indispensable man the other day, but that was only because his friends and the fools in the House of Commons kept bawling out that he was so till they persuaded him, themselves, and everybody else that it really was the case. Who would have dared to say that this Government could have gone on without either Stanley in one House or Lord Grey in the other? But anybody would have been scouted as mad who had argued that it would go on just as well when deprived of both of them. The Chancellor's amazing talents--his eloquence, sarcasm, and varied powers--can never fail to produce considerable effect; but in the House of Lords the field is narrow for the display of these qualities, the audience is cold and unfriendly, and he has excited such a general feeling of personal animosity against himself, and has done such irreparable injury to his character--having convinced all the world that he is desperately ambitious, false, capricious, intriguing, and governed by no principle, and under the influence of no sentiment of honour--that his influence is exceedingly diminished. Those who are charitably disposed express their humane conviction that he is mad, and it probably is not very remote from the truth.[6]

[6] [It is with pain and reluctance that I print these remarks on Lord Brougham, and several pa.s.sages in the preceding pages of these Memoirs which are equally severe, and in some respects, I think, exaggerated. But I certainly do not feel myself justified in withholding them. They were all revised and corrected by the author himself with great care; and nothing but a true and full account of the sentiments which Lord Brougham's conduct had excited amongst his colleagues and contemporaries at that time can account for the catastrophe which awaited him, and which excluded him for the rest of his life from official life and employment.]

Henry Taylor brought me a parcel of letters to frank to Southey the other day; they are from Newton, Cowper's nephew (I think to W. Thornton), and they are to supply Southey with materials for Cowper's Life, which he is writing. There is one curious fact revealed in these letters, which accounts for much of Cowper's morbid state of mind and fits of depression, as well as for the circ.u.mstance of his running away from his place in the House of Lords. It relates to some defect in his physical conformation; some body found out his secret, and probably threatened its exposure.

September 19th, 1834 {p.135}

[Page Head: CANNING AND LORD HOLLAND.]

Yesterday at Holland House; n.o.body there but Melbourne. We were talking of Reform, and Lord Holland said, 'I don't know if we were right about Reform, but this I know, that if we were to propose it at all, we were right in going the lengths we did, and this was Canning's opinion.' Melbourne said, 'Yes, I know it was, and that was mine, and that was the reason why I was against Reform.' Holland then resumed that he had formerly been one of Canning's most intimate friends at college; that at that time--the beginning of the French Revolution--when a general excitement prevailed, Canning was a great Jacobin, much more so than he was himself; that Canning had always hated the aristocracy (a hatred which they certainly returned with interest); that in after life he had been separated from Canning, and they had seen but little of each other. Just before he was going to India, however, Holland called on him, and Canning dined at Holland House. On one of these occasions they had a conversation upon the subject of Reform, when Canning said that he saw it was inevitable, and he was not sorry to be away while the measure was accomplished, but that if he had been here while it was mooted, he could have _let those gentlemen_ (the Whig aristocracy) _know that they should gain nothing by it_. After dinner we had much talk about religion, when Allen got into a fury; he thundered out his invectives against the _charlatanerie_ of the Apostles and Fathers and the brutal ignorance of the early Christian converts, when Holland said, laughing, 'Well, but you need not abuse them so violently.' They were in high delight at Holland House at the way the Edinburgh dinner went off. It was a very ludicrous incident that the Scotchmen could not be kept from falling to before Lord Grey and the grandees arrived, and when they did come most of the dinner was already eaten up. The Chancellor is said to have made an admirable speech at the meeting of _savans_, full of dignity, propriety, and eloquence, and the _savans_ spoke one more absurdly than another.

September 23rd, 1834 {p.136}

[Page Head: PALMERSTON AND BROUGHAM.]

On Sat.u.r.day at Stoke; came up yesterday with Melbourne. We had a great deal of talk. As soon as we got into the carriage he asked me if I thought it was true that Talleyrand had taken such offence at Palmerston that he would not return here on that account, and if I knew what it was that had affronted him, whether any deficiency in diplomatic punctilio or general offensiveness of manner. I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that the complaints against Palmerston were so general that there must be some cause for them, and though Madame de Lieven might be prejudiced against him, _all_ the foreign Amba.s.sadors could not be so. He said it was very extraordinary if it was so, tried to argue that it might not be the case, and put it in all sorts of different ways; he said that Palmerston exhibited no signs of temper or arrogance with his colleagues, but quite the reverse; he owned, however, he was very obstinate. We then talked over the Stratford Canning business; he admitted that it was unfortunate and might lead to serious consequences, both as to our relations with the Emperor and to the question of diplomatic expenses here. I expressed my astonishment that Palmerston's obstinacy should have been permitted to have its own way in the matter, and I should guess, from his own strong opinion on the subject, that an Amba.s.sador would be sent before long. He told me--what I did not know before--that the King of Prussia had desired to have Lord Clanwilliam recalled from Berlin.

He then talked of Brougham, and I found that he knows him thoroughly, and is more on his guard than I thought he was with regard to him. I told him of the change in Sefton's feelings towards him on Lord Grey's account, and also of Brougham's strange want of discrimination and his imprudence in congratulating himself to Sefton on the recent changes, and of his expectations of profiting by Melbourne's advancement to power. I touched lightly on the latter part, because it is never prudent to dwell upon topics which are injurious to a person's vanity, and a word dropped upon so tender a part produces as much effect as the strongest argument. He seemed not a little struck by it, and when I said that I thought there was a taint of insanity in the Chancellor, he said that he thought a great change in him was manifest in the course of the last year, and admitted that he did not think him of sound mind certainly. This he rather implied than expressed, however. He talked of his conduct in Parliament, and observed upon the strange forbearance of the Tories towards him; he thought he had never given stronger evidence of talent than in some of his speeches during the last session. I asked him if the King and Brougham were well together. He shook his head: 'not at all, and the King can't bear these exhibitions in Scotland.' He said the King liked Palmerston, Auckland, Spring Rice, and Mulgrave; had no fancy for any of the rest. (I suspect he likes him (Melbourne), because he appears to talk openly to him, and to express his feelings about the others, and I dare say Melbourne puts him at his ease.) He can't bear John Russell, respects Althorp (and particularly Lord Spencer), but hates Althorp's politics; treats Lord Holland with the familiarity of a connexion,[7] but doesn't like his politics either; he is tenacious about having everything laid before him, often gives his opinion, but is easily satisfied; liked Lord Grey, but was never quite at his ease with him (this accounts for his taking Lord Grey's resignation as quietly as he did); has a very John-Bullish aversion to the French, and the junction of the English and French fleets two years ago was a bitter pill for him to swallow.

[7] [Colonel Fox, Lord Holland's eldest son, having married Lady Mary, the King's eldest daughter, both however born out of wedlock.]

We afterwards talked of Canning and the Duke of Wellington, and the breaking up of the Tory Government. I told him that I believed the Duke and the Tories were aware of Canning's communications with Brougham. Brougham wrote to Canning and made him an unqualified offer of support. When the King asked Canning how he was to obtain support enough to carry on the Government, he pulled this letter out of his pocket, gave it to him, and said, 'Sir, your father broke the domination of the Whigs; I hope your Majesty will not endure that of the Tories.' 'No,' said the King; 'I'll be d.a.m.ned if I do;' and he made him Minister. This Canning told Melbourne himself.

September 25th, 1834 {p.138}

Dined yesterday at Holland House; only Melbourne and Pahlen, and in the evening Senior came. He is a very able man--a conveyancer, great political economist, and author of various works on that subject. He was employed by Government to draw up the Poor Law Bill, and might have been one of the Poor Law Commissioners if he would have accepted the office; his profits in his profession are too great to be given up for this occupation. By a discussion which arose about Bickersteth's merits it was clear that there is a question of his being Solicitor-General. Melbourne said 'he was a Benthamite, and they were all fools.' (He said a doctrinaire was a fool, but an honest man.) I said 'the Austins were not fools.' 'Austin? Oh, a d.a.m.ned fool. Did you ever read his book on "Jurisprudence"?' I said I had read a great part of it, and that it did not appear to be the work of a fool. He said he had read it all, and that it was the dullest book he ever read, and full of truisms elaborately set forth. Melbourne is very fond of being slas.h.i.+ng and paradoxical. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how much he reads even now that he is Prime Minister. He is greatly addicted to theology, and loves conversing on the subject of religion.

----, who wanted him to marry her (which he won't do, though he likes to talk to her), is the depositary of his thoughts and notions on these subjects, and the other day she told me he sent her a book (I forget what) on the Revelation stuffed with marginal notes of his own. It was not long ago that he _studied_ Lardner's book on the 'Credibility of the Christian Religion,'

and compared it with the Bible as he went along. She fancies that all this reading and reflection have turned him into the right way. I can see no symptom of it at Holland House.

After dinner we talked of languages, and Lord Holland insisted that Spanish was the finest of all and the best adapted to eloquence. They said that George Villiers wrote word that nothing could be better than the speaking in the Cortes--great readiness and acuteness in reply--and that a more dexterous and skilful debater than Martinez de la Rosa could not be found in any a.s.sembly. '_That_ speaking so well is the worst thing about them,' said Melbourne. 'Ah, that is one of your paradoxes,' Lord Holland replied.

Allen talked to me about the Harley papers, which were left in a box not to be opened for sixty years; the box was only opened a few years ago at my cousin t.i.tchfield's (the first) desire, and the papers submitted to Mackintosh, with permission to publish them in his 'History of England.' Mackintosh's death put an end to this, and Allen wants me to ask my uncle the Duke of Portland to put them in my hands and let me publish them. I never did so.

Macaulay had all Mackintosh's papers, and amongst them his notes from these MSS.