we must perforce respect him with Lord Chesterfield for his honesty and his religion. In his home and his relations with his immediate family circle, his wife and his children, he appears to have been a devoted husband and father, bent on raising himself and, like his ancestor, the Speaker, 'doing well' for his children. In the political world he was a perfect courtier '—the 'ancient and most domestic ornament of the court'-and to his courtier spirit was added an absorbing love of wealth. William Coombe, in his satire The Diaboliad, tells how Satan sent his ministers to find an heir to the throne of Hell before he resigned it himself through old age. Some of the ministers searched for his successor in the English court. "The rest of Hell's industrious Band resort To the corrupted purlieus of the court To lure the statesman from his deep-laid scheme, To wake the Courtier from his golden dream, And make the C-b-l-n [Lord Hertford, the Lord Chamberlain] desire to hold Hell's mighty Sceptre, for 'tis made of gold. Sure he'd resign for such a tempting fee! Hell's sceptre far outweighs the Golden Key! But cautious* * * * * [Hertford] shrinks when risks are run, We have seen in his life how he was cautious, reserved, selfish and mean, a place-seeker, trimming his political opinions to meet the views of the party in power. Coombe tells that his family was held in universal disgust,' and that when Charles Fox proposed to introduce his second son, Henry Seymour Conway,1 into one of the fashionable clubs, he was almost universally blackballed. Fox thereupon proposed him again, declaring, on his honour, that young Mr. Henry Conway had not one quality in common with any of his family, and in the second ballot not a single 1 After the death of their father the family dropped the name of Conway, so that he is generally known as Henry Seymour. black ball appeared against him. At the same time, it is due to Lord Hertford to remember, in the first place, that his work in Paris and Ireland was intelligent and useful, and served more than his own ends, and, in the second place, that the facts of his life, as we know them, are mostly from the pen of Walpole, whose statements were necessarily biassed in favour of his idol, General Conway. Passing on to consider General Conway himself, we have seen how he was the half-conscious instrument of Walpole's caprices; we have seen how, because of the workings of his mind, he was brave and fearless, yet no strong man ; a brilliant speaker, yet no statesman; a capable soldier, yet no general. Fearless, except of wounding the feelings of others, he dared, at the bidding of his friends, to carry their opinions into practical issue and to logical conclusions before which even the thoughts of their originators paled, yet he was powerless to formulate, enforce, or adhere to opinions of his own. With the skill of a scholar and an artist in words, he spoke often and well in Parliament, yet, being without the knowledge and strength of a statesman, it was chance rather than foresight and power that made him more than once a successful leader of the Opposition. Stern yet diffident, brave yet hesitating, he was a lover of discipline, yet a too generous master; a fighter of battles, but an impossible general. Kindly, charming, and lovable in person, he yet had no commanding personality, and was only a hero to one man-Horace Walpole. Finally, he was unfortunate in that this dearest friend and worshipper was certainly his evil genius, who tricked out personal grievances in the garb of political wrongs, and, showing him shadowy cities built by his own intriguing, taught him that the possession of these was, or should be the raison d'être of his every thought and action. CHAPTER X 6 THE THIRD MARQUESS OF HERTFORD, WHISKERS,' 'RED HERRINGS,' OR 'BLOATERS': HIS PARENTAGE AND LIFE 'This was a man who might have turned A Heaven unto himself have earned: Trusted, and damned himself to madness.' 1 -SHELLEY. SEVERE as he had been in his estimate of Lord Hertford in the Diaboliad, William Coombe was still more severe to Lord Hertford's son, Viscount Beauchamp, who became second Marquess of Hertford on the death of his father in 1794. He appears before Satan to plead his fitness for office as Lord of Hell : 'Without one virtue that can grace a name, The despicable***[Beauchamp] next appears, His bosom panting with its usual fears. He strives in vain-and fruitless proves the art— To hide with vacant smile the treacherous heart. The faithful Harry [Hon. Henry Seymour 2] stands not by his side 1 Coombe had married a discarded mistress of Viscount Beauchamp, and possibly gained some of his information from her. 2 His younger brother, second son of Lord and Lady Hertford. Walpole, writing of him in 1762 to his uncle, General Conway, says, 'Lord Beauchamp showed me two of his letters, which have more natural humour and cleverness than is conceivable. They have the ease and drollery of a man of parts who has lived long in the world, Who for an hard-earn'd narrow competence Supplies his tongue with words, his head with sense.1 He, stammering, reads the speech he did not write— I hate all human beings but myself, Cross and perplex my wife because she prov'd, And though to earth's extremes my feet I bend I'm scoff'd by those who from my hand have prov'd Are proud of their Ingratitude to me; But without friends on earth I humbly sue To find, my gracious Liege, a Friend in you. To your Imperial State!" The king replied: Could form pretensions to this sov'reign chair; and he is only seventeen' (Walpole, Letters, v. 252). Seymour died, unmarried, in 1830. This Henry 1 According to Coombe, Lord Hertford, like an ' avaricious father,' had saddled the younger brother for a maintenance on the elder, who, possessing an hereditary baseness,' insisted that his younger brother should give him' the use of his understanding' in return for maintenance. 'It too often happens,' he adds, that the elder brothers want spirit and understanding, and that the younger ones, who have both in an eminent degree, stand in need of a provision. It is hard that worth and genius should be so situated.' His second wife, Isabella Anne Ingram Shepherd, daughter and co-heir of Charles, ninth and last Viscount Irvine. She became very rich, by the death of her mother, in 1807. But meanness is a vice which Devils disdain ! Such minds as thine-observe the truth I tell Find neither Friends on Earth nor Friends in Hell.” And harpies kiss'd him to the realms of Day.' 6 'Several of my friends,' the author comments on his own lines, seemed to think that I had frustrated my intention of marking the insignificance of this character by giving so many lines to the delineation of it. But as the bold strokes are more easily imitated than the finer pencillings of nature, these colourless bad qualities, which have not sufficient strength or spirit to rise into daring manly vice, require a great length of description to impress them properly on the attention of the Reader.' This man's life, he goes on to declare, is a striking example of a mean spirit, a low, sneaking, base, fixed propensity to what is bad which it loves, driven by its fears to assume the semblance of good which it hates.' Much of this satire is undoubtedly the result of the personal hatred of the author directed against Lord Beauchamp, yet his character certainly appears to have been colourless, and not only colourless but mean, for he inherited his father's capacity for serving his own ends, trimming his political opinions, and bowing himself down before any of the gods set up by the king and court. Yet, though it is difficult to say whether or no he owed his words and his sense to his brother Henry, he does not seem to have been lacking in understanding, as William Coombe would have us believe. Wraxall, who described his person as 'elegantly formed,' and his manners as 'noble yet ingratiating,' notes that whenever he addressed the House of Commons he spoke if not with eloquence, |