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Royal and aristocratical patronage, holding five ecclesiastical preferments (two of which were wholly, and two others nearly sinecure) affecting a high strain of purity and public spirit, and conspiring to bring both Church and State, the authority of the Government, and even the person of the Sovereign, into odium and contempt: and all with no other, or at least no better motive on Walpole's part certainly, and we believe on Mason's-than their personal vexation at being disappointed of some additional favours, and frustrated in the accomplishment of some additional jobs.

We have heretofore proved from his own evidence, and the reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry, that the clue to all the intricacies of Walpole's political feelings lay in those five sinecure places, one of which, humble in rank, but producing above 4000l. a-year, he wished to render what he called 'more independent;' and another of 14007., which, holding for his brother's life, he wanted to have for his own. These were very natural wishes on his part, though it would have been indecent on the part of any minister to have granted them; but it is beyond all patience to see the rancour generated by their rejection assuming so impudent a mask of purity and patriotism. Of Mason's motives we have no such direct evidence; but enough appears to justify a suspicion that the vanity' and 'ambition' which Gray early remarked in him, having been stimulated by the rapidity of his first preferments (through the patronage of Lord Holderness), he grew dissatisfied with remaining for some years only Rector of Aston and of Driffield, Canon and Precentor of York, and King's Chaplain !

'A canon!-that's a place too mean-
No, Doctor, you shall be a dean!
A dozen canons round your stall
And you the tyrant of them all.'

Nay, we doubt whether a deanery would have satisfied Mason-for we find him very severe on the bench of bishops, and so indignant at the appointment of Dr. Markham to the archbishopric of York, in 1776, that he soon after preached a sermon in that cathedral in which he had the impertinence to intimate that he would not accept a bishopric, and this foolish bravado was accompanied with so much intemperance and faction, that Walpole, not over squeamish in such matters, persuaded him to suppress it. No one can doubt that this nolo episcopari may be well translated sour grapes. When, by and by-as in the due course of such a friendship was sure to happen-these associates quarrelled, Walpole jeered Mason with his nolo episcopari pledge, and hoped his antipathy to a bishopric had subsided; while Mason-whether

slyly

slyly or simply we know not (for the letter itself is not given)— condoled with Walpole on the loss of one of those sinecures the tenure of which had been so long the object of his solicitude. It was, we suspect, some dissatisfaction with Lord Holderness for not being sufficiently zealous in pushing him still higher, that occasioned Mason's quarrel with his early patron, to whom he dedicated the first edition of his poems in a very fulsome panegyric, but had subsequently become so hostile that he abstained from frequenting Strawberry Hill, lest he should be obliged to meet the Peer, who had a villa in the neighbourhood, and whose face he wished never to see again.' Walpole reciprocates this amiable feeling by giving him hopes that the impediment was likely to be soon removed

Your old friend passes by me very often airing, and I am told looks ghastly and going.'-i. 139.

When at last Lord Holderness goes, Walpole congratulates Mason that

The talisman is removed that prohibited your access to this part of the world.'-i. 377.

And the pious Mason congratulates himself that his quarrel with his old friend' dispenses him from the trouble which under former circumstances would have fallen on him' of following him to the family vault-which he now sends his curate to do, while he himself remains, he says, 'contentedly '—where? -in the parsonage-house which Lord Holderness's patronage had enabled him to render an elegant and even luxurious residence! (i. 375.) We doubt the content, but we can have no doubt about the good feeling of the writer.

It is evident that it was prior to the composition of the Heroic Epistle that Mason had received some serious discouragement in his professional ambition; for in May 1772, before he had seen Sir William Chambers's book, he writes to Walpole :

I hear (for I have not seen the paper) that it has been printed as a piece of news, that I have resigned my chaplainship, and a cause assigned for it, which I fear will offend Lord Hertford [Walpole's cousin, then Lord Chamberlain]. I could wish, therefore, if it came easily into conversation, that you would assure his Lordship that my intention of resigning (for it is at present only intention) arises merely from my resolution of not aiming at any further ecclesiastical preferment, but to sit down uti conviva satur in a parsonage which I have built for that purpose.'-vol. i. pp. 25, 26.

To this Walpole replies:

'I have told Lord Hertford of the injurious manner in which your thoughts of resigning the chaplainship have been represented in the

newspapers,

newspapers, and of the obliging expressions you have used towards him in offering to give it up. For myself, I assure you, dear Sir, that next to the pleasure I should have if it was in my power to do you service, the greatest satisfaction I can enjoy is to assist in delivering you from attendance on a court: a station below your sentiments and merit.'— vol. i. p. 27.

And it happens singularly enough that the very next sentence of this letter is Walpole's announcement to Mason of Chambers's work :

'I have read Chambers's book. It is more extravagant than the worst Chinese paper, and is written in wild revenge against Brown [Capability Brown]; the only surprising consequence is, that it is laughed at, and it is not likely to be adopted, as I expected; for nothing is so tempting to fools as advice to deprave taste.'-Ibid.

As to the resignation of the Chaplaincy, the foregoing extract gives us a stronger impression of disappointed appetite, than of a conviva satur; and in the Walpoliana, we find a much more probable explanation of that event, which we shall produce by and by.

But whether Mason resigned his Chaplaincy from happy contentment as he writes, or from keen mortification as Walpole believed, thus much is certain, that within a month or two after the resignation he commenced his long series of bitter lampoons on the Court.

We cannot without wonder and shame look back on the state of the public mind at that period, when Wilkes had brawled and Junius thundered, and Mason and Walpole squibbed (it is their own phrase) the whole nation into a ferment and we may say, a frenzy of alarm for its liberties—which never had been in less danger-and of distrust against a sovereign who was not only by personal character unambitious and unenterprising, but from his lively appreciation of the very title by which he held his crown, and his scrupulous reverence for legality, was less inclined, we believe, than any prince that ever reigned, to encroach on the rights of his people. How flimsy, how false were all the pretences; how ridiculous, how contemptible all the bugbears with which greedy and unprincipled factions succeeded, each for its season, in disordering the public intellect !-that England was in danger of being subjugated by a standing army of Scotch Jacobites!—that great Brunswick' was, if not a Jacobite, planning, and actually pursuing a scheme of despotism more arbitrary and complete than James himself had contemplated!--that juries were to be suppressed!-parliaments abrogated-and what not?-Nay, the mania rose to such a height that the House of Commons was induced to pass the most flagrantly absurd and inconsistent vote--the merest

Irish bull that ever was made-that the power of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished;' and this Resolution was the crowning work of a period of faction during which the King might reasonably have trembled for his Crown-when we know that he even contemplated the possibility of being forced to retire to his German dominions, when all his public acts were thwarted, his personal friends and servants proscribed, his private life ridiculed and insulted, and the influence and power which the Crown had formerly derived from its American colonies not only lost, but lost through the prevalence, the establishment, the triumph of the anti-monarchical and republican principle. The very act of passing such a Resolution was the most notorious and indisputable proof of its utter falsehood. Little susceptible of shame as public assemblies are, the House that had passed this Resolution in opposition and defiance to all their own former votes, seemed to feel its inconsistency, and in a few days after contritely passed new votes in opposition and defiance to it. Such are the effects of faction. In all that multitudinous clamour there was not we believe one really sincere opinion that the Constitution was in danger, or that any, the wildest or most slavish courtier, contemplated the slightest infraction of it. It was a struggle on the part of the parliamentary gladiators to get into place; while their anonymous allies were-besides whatever party zeal they might feel instigated by the keener spur of personal offence and private animosity. We confidently believe that so it was as to Junius; we long since knew it was so with Walpole-and we have now strong evidence that so it was with Mason.

Of Walpole's motives, touched on in a preceding page, we have given a detailed explanation in former Numbers, and particularly in our review of his Memoirs of George III., to which we beg leave to refer any one who may wish to form an accurate estimate of the historical value of his testimony as to either the persons or the events of this reign; but as there is no part of his writings where his partiality and malevolence break out more strongly than in these letters to Mason, we think it our duty to bring again before our readers the extraordinary and, we repeat, morbid influence which the peculiar circumstances of his chief sinecures exercised on his whole political, and indeed private life. Believing as we do that Walpole is likely to be considered as the historian of his own times, it is especially necessary to show with how many — not grains but - bushels of allowance his evidence must be seasoned.

The income of his great place in the Exchequer, amounting latterly

4

latterly to at least 42007. a-year, was made up of profits on the supply of a vast number of small articles, chiefly official stationery. The bills for these articles were always subject to examination and check by the Treasury, and, even when allowed, to delay in the payments. To free himself from this check, or at least to secure liberal and prompt payment, and thus make himself what he calls 'independent,' was the grand object of his policy; for it we find that he endeavoured to propitiate every new minister (we believe without exception); and we know that in many instances, and we have reason to believe that in all, the failure of these unreasonable solicitations was followed by the most malignant antipathy to the reluctant parties. Even his near relation, and best, if not only, beloved friend Conway, became the object of his disgust when, on coming into office, he declined to force from his colleagues the accomplishment of this job. On this point he broke with George Grenville and Lord Bute. When in the beginning of the reign of George III., the reversion of this office was granted to Mr. Martin which, though it could do him no possible injury, he stomached it as an unpardonable injury and affront; and all his subsequent letters are full of sarcasms and sometimes calumnies against his unfortunate reversioner-unfortunate in every way, for Walpole not only traduced but out-lived him. So sharp was this enmity that Walpole was anxious that in a new edition of the Epistle Mason should find a niche for his expectant heir.' The other great sinecure place was in the Customs, admittedly of 14007. a-year, but we suspect a good deal more; this, however, he held, as we have before said, only for his brother Edward's life, who was eleven years older than he.

Walpole endeavoured as early as Mr. Pelham's time to have his own life added to the patent, and, on being refused, broke with the Pelhams, and set about revenging himself on them by writing his calumnious Memoirs of George II.; but he still lived in hopes of obtaining this addition, or at all events of having the office regranted to him if his brother should die. He himself tells us how these hopes were annihilated:—

The place in the Customs held by my brother, but the far greater share of which had been bequeathed to me by my father's will for my brother's life, was granted in reversion to Jenkinson, private secretary to Lord Bute. I was, I confess, much provoked at this grant, and took occasion of fomenting the ill-humour against the FAVOURITE, who had thus excluded me from the possibility of obtaining the continuance of that place to myself in case of my brother's death.'- Memoirs of George III., vol. i. p. 265.

And as on his disappointment from Pelham he took his revenge by writing his Memoirs of George II., so on this disappoint

ment

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