VII
In 1796, Parliament was dissolved, and Mr. Canning was returned to Parliament this time for Wendover. He had just been named Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and it has been usual to refer to this appointment as a proof of his early parliamentary success. He owed the promotion, however, entirely to the Prime Minister’s favour; for though his late speech, better than the preceding one, had procured him some credit, there was still a careless impertinence in his manner, and a classical pedantry in his style, which were unsuitable to the taste of the House of Commons. Indeed, so much had he to reform in his manner, that he now remained, by, as it is said, Mr. Pitt’s advice, silent for three years, endeavouring during this time to correct his faults and allow them to be forgotten.
It does not follow that he was idle. The Anti-Jacobin, started in 1797, under the editorship of Mr. Gifford, for the purpose which its title indicates, was commenced at the instigation and with the support of the old contributor to the Microcosm, and did more than any parliamentary eloquence could have done in favour of the anti-Jacobin cause.
“Must wit,” says Mr. Canning, who had now to contend against the most accomplished humorists of his day, “be found alone on falsehood’s side?” and having established himself as the champion of “Truth,” he brought, no doubt, very useful and very brilliant arms to her service. The verses of “New Morality,” spirited, exaggerated, polished, and virulent, satisfied the hatred without offending the taste (which does not seem to have been at that time very refined) of those classes who looked upon our neighbours with almost as much hatred and disgust as were displayed in the verses of the young poet; while the “Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder”—almost too trite to be quoted, and yet too excellent to be omitted—will long remain one of the happiest efforts of satire in our language:
“Imitation Sapphics.
“THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.
“Friend of Humanity:
“Needy Knife-grinder, whither are you going?
Rough is the road,—your wheel is out of order;
Bleak blows the blast,—your hat has got a hole in’t,
So have your breeches.
“Weary Knife-grinder, little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike
Road, what hard work ’tis crying all day, ‘Knives and
Scissors to grind, O!’
“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
Was it the squire, or parson of the parish,
Or the attorney?
“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?
“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story.
“Knife-Grinder:
“Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir;
Only last night, a-drinking at the ‘Chequers,’
These poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
“Constables came up for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice:
Justice Aldmixon put me in the parish
Stocks for a vagrant.
“I should be glad to drink your honour’s health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But, for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir.
“Friend of Humanity:
“I give thee sixpence? I’ll see thee damn’d first.
Wretch, whom no sense of wrong can rouse to vengeance!
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!”
[Exit, kicking over the wheel, in a
fit of universal philanthropy.]
An instance of the readiness of Mr. Canning’s Muse may be here related.
When Frere had completed the first part of the “Loves of the Triangles,” he exultingly read over the following lines to Canning, and defied him to improve upon them:
“Lo! where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,
The fair Trochais from the corner bends!
Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark
The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;
Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,
Her much-loved smoke-jack glimmers thro’ the scene;
Mark how his various parts together tend,
Point to one purpose,—in one object end;
The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,
Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,
While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below.”
Canning took the pen, and added:
“The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,
Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns.”
These two lines are now blended with the original text, and constitute, it is said, the only flaw in Frere’s title to the sole authorship of the first part of the poem, from which I have been quoting: the second and third parts were both by Canning.
In prose I cite the report of a peroration by Mr. Erskine, whose egotism could hardly be caricatured, at a meeting of the Friends of Freedom.
“Mr. Erskine concluded by recapitulating, in a strain of agonizing and impressive eloquence, the several more prominent heads of his speech: He had been a soldier, and a sailor, and had a son at Winchester School; he had been called by special retainers, during the summer, into many different and distant parts of the country, travelling chiefly in post-chaises; he felt himself called upon to declare that his poor faculties were at the service of his country—of the free and enlightened part of it, at least. He stood here as a man; he stood in the eye, indeed in the hand, of God—to whom (in the presence of the company, and waiters) he solemnly appealed; he was of noble, perhaps royal blood; he had a house at Hampstead; was convinced of the necessity of a thorough and radical reform; his pamphlet had gone through thirty editions, skipping alternately the odd and even numbers; he loved the Constitution, to which he would cling and grapple; and he was clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature; he would apply to the present French rulers (particularly Barras and Reubel) the words of the poet:
“‘Be to their faults a little blind;
Be to their virtues ever kind,
Let all their ways be unconfined,
And clap the padlock on their mind!’
and for these reasons, thanking the gentlemen who had done him the honour to drink his health, he should propose ‘Merlin, the late Minister of Justice, under the Directory, and Trial by Jury.’”
I refer those who wish to know more of the literary merits of Mr. Canning to an article, July, 1858, in the “Edinburgh Review,” in which article the accomplished writer has exhausted the subject he undertook to treat.
Nor was Mr. Canning’s reputation for wit, at this time, gained solely by his pen. Living with few, though much the fashion, who could be more charming in his own accomplished circle—when, the pleasant thought lighting up his eye, playing about his mouth, and giving an indescribable charm to his handsome countenance, he abandoned himself to the inspiration of some happy moment, and planned a practical joke, or quizzed an incorrigible bore, or related some humorous anecdote? No one’s society was so much prized by associates; no one’s talents so highly estimated by friends; and his fame in the drawing-room, or at the dining-table, was at least as brilliant as that which he subsequently acquired in the senate.
This, indeed, was the epoch in his life at which perhaps he had the most real enjoyment; for though he felt conscious that his success in Parliament had not yet been complete, the feeling of certainty that it would become so, now began to dawn upon him, and the triumphs that his ardent nature anticipated went probably even beyond those which his maturer career accomplished.