Chapter 13

"Oh yes, I remember you told me you were going. You have lost every thing by it! To-day will be nothing, he is all rage! On Tuesday he was great indeed. You should have heard him then. And Burke, You should have heard the conclusion of Burke's speech; 'twas the noblest ever uttered by man!"

"So I have been told."

"To-day you will hear nothing--know nothing,--there will be no opportunity,- Fox is all fury."

I told him he almost frightened me; for he spoke in a tremor himself that was really unpleasant.

"Oh!" cried he, looking at me half reproachfully, half goodhumouredly, "Fox's fury is with the Lords--not there!" pointing to Mr. Hastings.

I saw by this he entered into my feelings in the midst of his irritability, and that gave me courage to cry out, "I am glad of that at least!:

Mr. Fox spoke five hours, and with a violence that did not make me forget what I had heard of his being in such a fury but I shall never give any account of these speeches, as they will all be printed. I shall only say a word of the speakers as far as relates to my own feelings about them, and that briefly will be to say that I adhere to Mr. Burke, whose oratorical powers appear to me far more gentleman-like, scholar-like, and fraught with true genius than those of Mr. Fox. it may be I am prejudiced by old kindnesses of Mr. Burke, and it may be that the countenance of Mr. Fox may have turned me against him, for it struck me to have a boldness in it quite hard and callous. However, it is little matter how much my judgment in this point may err. With you, my dear friends, I have Page 129

nothing further to do than simply to give it ; and even should it be wrong, it will not very essentially injure you in your politics.

MRS. CREWE, MR. BURKE, AND MR. WINDHAM.

Again, on the fourth time of my attendance at Westminster Hall, honest James was my esquire.

We were so late from divers accidents that we did not enter till the same moment with the prisoner. In descending the steps I heard my name exclaimed with surprise, and looking before me, I saw myself recognised by Mrs. Crewe. "Miss Burney," she cried, "who could have thought of seeing you here!"

Very obligingly she made me join her immediately, which, as I was with no lady, was a very desirable circumstance; and though her political principles are well known, and, of course, lead her to side with the enemies of Mr. Hastings, she had the good sense to conclude me on the other side, and the delicacy never once to distress me by any discussion of the prosecution.

I was much disappointed to find nothing intended for this day's trial but hearing evidence; no speaker was preparing; all the attention was devoted to the witnesses.

Mr. Adam, Mr. Dudley Long, and others that I know not, Came from the committee to chat with Mrs. Crewe; but soon after one came not so unknown to me--Mr. Burke; and Mrs. Crewe, seeing him ascend, named him to me, but was herself a little surprised to see it was his purpose to name himself, for he immediately made up to me, and with an air of such frank kindness that, could I have forgot his errand in that Hall, would have made me receive him as formerly, when I was almost fascinated with him. But far other were my sensations. I trembled as he approached me, with conscious change of sentiments, and with a dread of his pressing from me a disapprobation he might resent, but which I knew not how to disguise.

"Near-sighted as I am," cried he, "I knew you immediately. I knew you from our box the moment I looked up; yet how long it is, except for an instant here, since I have seen you!"

"Yes," I hesitatingly answered, "I live in a monastery now."

He said nothing to this. He felt, perhaps, it was meant to express my inaccessibility.

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I inquired after Mrs. Burke. He recounted to me the particulars of his sudden seizure when he spoke last, from the cramp in his stomach, owing to a draught of cold water which he drank in the midst of the heat of his oration.

I could not even wear a semblance of being sorry for him on this occasion; and my cold answers made him soon bend down to speak with Mrs. Crewe.

I was seated in the next row to her, just above.

Mr. Windham was now talking with her. My whole curiosity and desire being to hear him, which had induced me to make a point of coming this time, I was eager to know if my chance was wholly gone. "You are aware," I cried, when he spoke to me, "what brings me here this morning

No;" he protested he knew not.

Mrs. Crewe, again a little surprised, I believe, at this second opposition acquaintance, began questioning how often I had attended this trial.

Mr. Windham, with much warmth of regret, told her very seldom, and that I had lost Mr. Burke on his best day.

I then turned to speak to Mr. Burke, that I might not seem listening, for they interspersed various civilities upon my peculiar right to have heard all the great speeches, but Mr. Burke was in so profound a reverie he did not hear me.

I wished Mr. Windham had not either, for he called upon him aloud, "Mr. Burke, Miss Burney speaks to you!"

He gave me his immediate attention with an air so full of respect that it quite shamed me.

"Indeed," I cried, " I had never meant to speak to Mr. Burke again after hearing him in Westminster Hall. I had meant to keep at least that " geographical timidity."

I alluded to an expression in his great speech of "geographical morality" which had struck me very much.

He laughed heartily, instantly comprehending me, and assured me it was an idea that had occurred to him on the moment he had uttered it, wholly without study.

A little general talk followed; and then, one of the lords rising to question some of the evidence, he said he must return to his committee and business,-very flatteringly saying, in quitting his post, "This is the first time I have played truant from the manager's box."

However I might be obliged to him, which sincerely I felt, I was yet glad to have him go. My total ill will to all he was about made his conversation merely a pain to me.

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I did not feel the same With regard to Mr. Windham. He is not the prosecutor, and seems endowed with so much liberality and candour that it not Only encourages me to speak to him what I think, but leads me to believe he will one day or other reflect upon joining a party so violent as a stain to the independence of his character.

Almost instantly he came forward, to the place Mr. Burke had vacated.

"Are you approaching," I cried, "to hear my upbraidings?"

"Why--I don't know," cried he, looking half alarmed.

"Oh! I give you warning, if you come you must expect them; so my invitation is almost as pleasant as the man's in 'Measure for Measure,' who calls to Master Barnardine, 'Won't you come down to be hanged?'"

"But how," cried he, "have I incurred your upbraidings?" " By bringing me here," I answered, "only to disappoint me."

"Did I bring you here?"

"Yes, by telling me you were to speak to-day."

He protested he could never have made such an assertion. I explained myself, reminding him he had told me he was certainly to speak before the recess; and that, therefore, when I was informed this was to be the last day of trial till after the recess, I concluded I should be right, but found myself so utterly wrong as to hear nothing but such evidence as I Could not even understand, because it was so uninteresting I could not even listen to it.

"How strangely," he exclaimed, "are we all moulded, that nothing ever in this mortal life, however pleasant in itself, and however desirable from its circumstances, can come to us without alloy-- not even flattery; for here, at this moment, all the high gratification I should feel, and I am well disposed to feel it thoroughly in supposing you could think it worth your while to come hither in order to hear me, is kept down and subdued by the consciousness how much I must disappoint you."

"Not at all," cried I; "the worse you speak, the better for my side of the question."

He laughed, but confessed the agitation of his spirits was so great in the thought of that speech, whenever he was to make it, that it haunted him in fiery dreams in his sleep.

"Sleep!" cried I; "do you ever sleep?"

He stared a little, but I added with pretended dryness, "Do any of you that live down there in that prosecutor's den ever sleep in your beds? I should have imagined that, had you

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even attempted it, the anticipating ghost of Mr. Hastings would have appeared to you in the dead of the night, and have drawn your curtains, and glared ghastly in your eyes. I do heartily wish Mr. Tickell would send You that 'Anticipation' at once!"

This idea furnished us with sundry images, till, looking down upon Mr. Hastings, with an air a little moved, he said, "I am afraid the most insulting thing we do by him is coming up hither to show ourselves so easy and disengaged, and to enter into conversation with the ladies."

"But I hope," cried I, alarmed, "he does not see that."

"Why your caps," cried he, "are much in your favour for concealment; they are excellent screens to all but the first row!"

I saw him, however, again look at the poor, and, I sincerely believe, much-injured prisoner, and as I saw also he still bore With my open opposition, I could not but again seize a favourable moment for being more serious With him.

"Ah, Mr. Windham," I cried, "I have not forgot what dropped from you on the first day of this trial."

He looked a little surprised. "You," I continued, "probably have no remembrance of it, for you have been living ever since down there; but I was more touched with what you said then, than with all I have since heard from all the others, and probably than with all I shall hear even from you again when you mount the rostrum."

"You conclude," cried he, looking very sharp, "I shall then be better steeled against that fatal candour?"

"In fact," cried I, "Mr. Windham, I do really believe your steeling to he factitious; notwithstanding you took pains to assure me your candour was but the deeper malice; and yet I will own, when once I have heard your speech, I have little expectation of ever having the honour of conversing with you again."

"And why?" cried- he, starting back "what am I to say that you denounce such a forfeit beforehand?"

I could not explain; I left him to imagine; for, should he prove as violent and as personal as the rest, I had no objection to his previously understanding I could have no future pleasure in discoursing with him.

"I think, however," I continued, with a laugh, "that since I have settled this future taciturnity, I have a fair right in the meanwhile to say whatever comes uppermost."

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He agreed to this with great approvance.

"Molière, you know, in order to obtain a natural opinion of his plays, applied to an old woman: you upon the same principle, to obtain a natural opinion of political matters, should apply to an ignorant one--for you will never, I am sure, gain it down there."

He smiled, whether he would or not, but protested this was the severest stricture upon his committee that had ever yet been uttered.

MISS BURNEY'S UNBIASED SENTIMENTS.

I told him as it was the last time he was likely to hear unbiased sentiments upon this subject, it was right they should be spoken very intelligibly. " And permit me," I said, " to begin with what strikes me the most. Were Mr. Hastings really the culprit he is represented, he would never stand there."

"Certainly," cried he, with a candour he could not suppress, "there seems something favourable in that; it has a Pod look; but assure yourself he never expected to see this day."

"But would he, if guilty, have waited its chance? Was not all the world before him? Could he not have chosen any other place of residence ?"

"Yes--but the shame, the disgrace of a flight?"

"What is it all to the shame and disgrace of convicted guilt?" He made no answer.

"And now," I continued, "shall I tell you, just in the same simple style, how I have been struck with the speakers and speeches I have yet heard?" He eagerly begged me to go on.

"The whole of this public speaking is quite new to me. I was never in the House of Commons. It is all a new creation to me."

"And what a creation it is he exclaimed. "how noble, how elevating! and what an inhabitant for it!"

I received his compliment with great courtesy, as an encouragement. for me to proceed. I then began upon Mr. Burke; but I must give you a very brief summary of my speech, as it could only be intelligible at full length from your having heard his. I told him that his opening had struck me with the highest admiration of his powers, from the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the diversity of expression, and the ready flow of language, with which he seemed gifted, in a most superior manner, for any and every purpose to which rhetoric

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could lead. "And when he came to his two narratives," I continued, "whence he related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost. I Could hardly keep on my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favour remained. But When from this narration Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments and declamation--when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation, and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration; then there appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective than of justice; and, in short, so little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way they looked, or what object caught them; and before I was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke's powers over my feelings, I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it, with my opera-glass in my hand."

His eyes sought the ground on hearing this, and with no other comment than a rather uncomfortable shrug of the shoulders, he expressively and concisely said--"I comprehend you perfectly!"

This was a hearing too favourable to stop me; and Mr. Hastings constantly before me was an animation to my spirits which nothing less could have given me, to a manager of such a committee.

I next, therefore, began upon Mr. Fox; and I ran through the general matter of his speech, with such observations as had occurred to me in hearing it. "His violence," I said, "had that sort of monotony that seemed to result from its being factitious, and I felt less pardon for that than for any extravagance in Mr. Burke, whose excesses seemed at least to be unaffected, and, if they spoke against his judgment, spared his probity. Mr. Fox appeared to have no such excuse; he looked all good humour and negligent ease the instant before he began a speech of uninterrupted passion and vehemence, and he wore the same careless and disengaged air the very instant he had finished. A display of talents in which the inward man took so little share could have no powers of persuasion to those who saw them in that light and therefore.

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however their brilliancy might be admired, they were useless to their cause, for they left the mind of the hearer in the same state that they found it."

After a short vindication of his friends, he said, "You have never heard Pitt? You would like him beyond any other competitor."

And then he made his panegyric in very strong terms, allowing him to be equal, ready, splendid, wonderful!--he was in constant astonishment himself at his powers and success;--his youth and inexperience never seemed against him: though he mounted to his present height after and in opposition to such a vortex of splendid abilities, yet, alone and unsupported, he coped with them all! And then, with conscious generosity, he finished a most noble éloge with these words: "Take--you may take--the testimony of an enemy--a very confirmed enemy of Mr. Pitt's!"

Not very confirmed, I hope! A man so liberal can harbour no enmity of that dreadful malignancy that sets mitigation at defiance for ever.

He then asked me if I had heard Mr. Grey?

" No," I answered ; " I can come but seldom, and therefore I reserved myself for to-day."

"You really fill me with compunction," he cried. "But if, indeed, I have drawn you into so cruel a waste of your time, the only compensation I can make you will be carefully to keep from you the day when I shall really speak."

"No," I answered, "I must hear you; for that is all I now wait for to make up my final opinion."

"And does it all rest with me?--'Dreadful responsibility'--as Mr. Hastings powerfully enough expresses himself in his narrative."

"And can you allow an expression of Mr. Hastings's to be powerful?--That is not like Mr. Fox, who, in acknowledging some one small thing to be right, in his speech, checked himself for the acknowledgment by hastily saying 'Though I am no great admirer of the genius and abilities of the gentleman at the bar;'--as if he had pronounced a sentence in a parenthesis, between hooks,--so rapidly he flew off to what he could positively censure."

" And hooks they were indeed he cried.

"Do not inform against me," I continued, "and I will give you a little more of Molière's old woman."

He gave me his parole, and looked very curious,

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"Well then,--amongst the things most striking to an unbiased spectator was that action of the orator that led him to look full at the prisoner upon every hard part of the charge. There was no courage in it, since the accused is so situated he must make no answer; and, not being courage, to Molière's old woman it could only seem cruelty!"

He quite gave up this point without a defence, except telling me it was from the habit of the House of Commons, as Fox, who chiefly had done this, was a most good-humoured man, and by nothing but habit would have been betrayed into such an error.

"And another thing," I cried, "which strikes those ignorant of senatorial licence, is this,--that those perpetual repetitions, from all the speakers, of inveighing against the power, the rapacity, the tyranny, the despotism of the gentleman at the bar, being uttered now, when we see him without any power, without even liberty-con fined to that spot, and the only person in this large assembly who may not leave it when he will--when we see such a contrast to all we hear we think the simplest relation would be sufficient for all purposes of justice, as all that goes beyond plain narrative, instead of sharpening indignation, only calls to mind the greatness of the fall, and raises involuntary commiseration!"

"And you wish," he cried, "to hear me? How you add to my difficulties!--for now, instead of thinking of Lords, Commons, bishops, and judges before me, and of the delinquent and his counsel at my side, I shall have every thought and faculty swallowed up in thinking of who is behind me!"

This civil speech put an end to Molière's old woman and her comments; and not to have him wonder at her unnecessarily, I said, "Now, then, Mr. Windham, shall I tell you fairly what it is that induced me to say all this to you?--Dr. Johnson!--what I have heard from him of Mr. Windham has been the cause of all this hazardous openness."

"'Twas a noble cause," cried he, well pleased, "and noble has been its effect! I loved him, indeed, sincerely. He has left a chasm in my heart-a chasm in the world ! There was in him what I never saw before, what I never shall find again! I lament every moment as lost, that I might have spent in his society, and yet gave to any other."

How it delighted me to hear this just praise, thus warmly uttered!--I could speak from this moment upon no other subject. I told him how much it gratified me; and we agreed

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in comparing notes upon the very few opportunities his real remaining friends could now meet with of a similar indulgence, since so little was his intrinsic worth understood, while so deeply all his foibles had been felt, that in general it was merely a matter of pain to hear him even named.

How did we then emulate each other in calling to mind all his excellences!

"His abilities," cried Mr. Windham, "were gigantic, and always at hand no matter for the subject, he had information ready for everything. He was fertile,--he was universal."

My praise of him was of a still more solid kind,--his principles, his piety, his kind heart under all its rough coating: but I need not repeat what I said,--my dear friends know every word.

I reminded him of the airings, in which he gave his time with his carriage for the benefit of Dr. Johnson's health. "What an advantage!" he cried, "was all that to myself! I had not merely an admiration, but a tenderness for him,--the more I knew him, the stronger it became. We never disagreed ; even in politics, I found it rather words than things in which we differed."

"And if you could so love him," cried I, "knowing him only in a general way, what would you have felt for him had you known him at Streatham?"

I then gave him a little history of his manners and way of life, there,--his good humour, his sport, his kindness, his sociability, and all the many excellent qualities that, in the world at large, were by so many means obscured.

He was extremely interested in all I told him, and regrettingly said he had only known him in his worst days, when his health was upon its decline, and infirmities were crowding- fast upon him.

"Had he lived longer," he cried, "I am satisfied I should have taken to him almost wholly. I should have taken him to my heart! have looked up to him, applied to him, advised with him in all the most essential occurrences of my life! I am sure, too,-- though it is a proud assertion,--he would have liked me, also, better, had we mingled more. I felt a mixed fondness and reverence growing so strong upon me, that I am satisfied the closest union would have followed his longer life."

I then mentioned how kindly he had taken his visit to him at Lichfield during a severe illness, "And he left you," I said, "a book ? "

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"Yes," he answered, "and he gave me one, also, just before he died. 'You will look into this Sometimes,' he said, 'and not refuse to remember whence you had it.' "(271)

And then he added he had heard him speak of me,--and with so much kindness, that I was forced not to press a recapitulation: yet now I wish I had heard it.

just before we broke up, "There Is nothing," he cried, with energy, "for which I look back upon myself with severer discipline than the time I have thrown away in other pursuits, that might else have been devoted to that wonderful man!" He then said he must be gone,--he was one in a committee of the House, and could keep away no longer.

BURKE AND SHERIDAN MEET WITH COLD RECEPTIONS. I then again joined in with Mrs. Crewe, who, meantime, had had managers without end to converse with her. But, very soon after, Mr. Burke mounted to the House of Commons(272) again, and took the place left by Mr. Windham. I inquired very much after Mrs. Burke, and we talked of the spectacle, and its fine effect; and I ventured to mention, allusively, some of the digressive parts of the great speech in which I had heard him: but I saw him anxious for speaking more to the point, and as I could not talk to him--the leading prosecutor--with that frankness of opposing sentiments which I used to Mr. Windham, I was anxious only to avoid talking at all; and so brief was my speech, and so long my silences, that, of course, he was soon wearied into a retreat. Had he not acted such a part, with what pleasure should I have exerted myself to lengthen his stay!