April 30. 1832
Asgill and Defoe
I know no genuine Saxon English superior to Asgill’s. I think his and Defoe’s irony often finer than Swift’s.
May 1. 1832
Horne Tooke — Fox and Pitt
Horne Tooke’s advice to the Friends of the People was profound:—“If you wish to be powerful, pretend to be powerful.”
Fox and Pitt constantly played into each other’s hands. Mr. Stuart, of the Courier, who was very knowing in the politics of the day, soon found out the gross lies and impostures of that club as to its numbers, and told Fox so. Yet, instead of disclaiming them and exposing the pretence, as he ought to have done, Fox absolutely exaggerated their numbers and sinister intentions; and Pitt, who also knew the lie, took him at his word, and argued against him triumphantly on his own premisses.
Fox’s Gallicism, too, was a treasury of weapons to Pitt. He could never conceive the French right without making the English wrong. Ah! I remember—
—it vex’d my soul to see
So grand a cause, so proud a realm
With Goose and Goody at the helm;
Who long ago had fall’n asunder
But for their rivals’ baser blunder,
The coward whine and Frenchified
Slaver and slang of the other side!