Poet and statesman, a grandson of the Parliamentary general, the Earl of Manchester, was born at Horton, Northamptonshire, 16th April 1661, and from Westminster passed in 1679 to Trinity College, Cambridge. His most notable poetical achievement was a parody on Dryden’s “Hind and Panther,” entitled “The Town and Country Mouse” (1687), of which he was joint-author with Matthew Prior. M.P. for Maldon (1688) and a lord of the treasury (1692), he in that year proposed to raise a million sterling by way of loan—so the National Debt was established. In 1694 money was again wanted, and Montagu supplied it by originating the Bank of England, as proposed by William Paterson three years earlier. For this service Montagu was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. His next work was the recoinage in 1695, appointing his friend Newton warden of the Mint, and raising a tax on windows to pay the expense; and now he first introduced exchequer bills. In 1697 he became premier, but his arrogance and vanity soon made him unpopular, and on the Tories coming into power in 1699 he was obliged to accept the auditorship of the exchequer and withdraw from the Commons as Baron Halifax. He was impeached for breach of trust in 1701, and again in 1703, but the proceedings fell to the ground. He strongly supported the union with Scotland and the Hanoverian succession. On the queen’s death he was appointed a member of the council of regency, and on George I.’s arrival be came an earl and prime-minister. He died 19th May 1715.

Personal

  A certain minister, renowned for wit, and called a poet by all the poets (for fathering a copy of verses, by whomever wrote); the Mecenas of the age, an honour acquired with little expense, when few or none are found to contest it with him.

  I agree with you, Lord Halifax has no other principle but his ambition; so that he would put all in distraction rather than not gain his point.

  Your patronage had produced those arts, which before shunned the commerce of the world, into the service of life; and it is to you we owe, that the man of wit has turned himself to be a man of business…. Your own studies have been diverted from being the highest ornament, to the highest use to mankind; and the capacities which would have rendered you the greatest poet of your age, have to the advantage of Great Britain been employed in pursuits which have made you the most able and unbiased patriot.

  The brilliancy of Montague’s genius was such, that his works as a poet had been read, admired, and patronised, by Dorset. Cambridge left her accustomed precision to honour him: in the senate he commanded the utmost attention; and in the palace he was trusted, promoted, and ennobled. He was the active principle that moved the council, the exchequer, and the treasury. His mind pervaded every department of the state. The king valued him as his chief support; queen Anne’s prejudices gave way to applause; and George I. created him earl of Halifax, and gave him the garter. This nobleman, whom the Commons had recommended as “deserving William’s favour,” persecuted him afterwards with a virulence that disgraced them;—a strange retribution this for restoring the credit of the national bank; for completing a new coinage of the silver money in two years, which was judged impossible; for his first proposing and affecting the union of the British kingdoms; and his earnestly promoting the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line.

  Those who have written on the life of Newton have touched with the utmost reserve upon the connexion which existed between his half-niece Catherine Barton, and his friend Charles Montague, who died Earl of Halifax. They seem as if they were afraid that, by going fairly into the matter, they should find something they would rather not tell. The consequence is, that when a writer at home or abroad, Voltaire or another, hints with a sneer that a pretty niece had more to do with Newton’s appointment to the Mint than the theory of gravitation, those who would like to know as much as can be known of the whole truth find nothing in any attainable biography except either total silence or a very awkward and hesitating account of half something.

  My own belief is that Mrs. Barton was neither Halifax’s mistress nor his wife, and that the liaison between them was of the same sort with that between Congreve and Mrs. Bracegirdle, with that between Swift and Stella, and that between Pope and Martha Blount, with that between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin.

General

  Considered as a poet his lordship makes a less considerable figure than the earl of Dorset: there is a languor in his verses which seems to indicate that he was not born with a poetical genius. That he was a lover of the Muses there is not the least doubt, as we find him patronizing the poets so warmly; but there is some difference between a propensity to poetry and a power of excelling in it.

  Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never have known, had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told, that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.

  Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially of Mulgrave and of Spart, it may be said that his fame has suffered from the folly of those editors who, down to our own time, have persisted in reprinting his rhymes among the works of the British poets. There is not a year in which hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever wrote, are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford, and for the Chancellor’s medal at Cambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or odes: and it is most unjust to him that his “Man of Honour” and his “Epistle on the Battle of the Boyne” should be placed side by side with “Comus” and “Alexander’s Feast.” Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpole, Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But fortunately for them, their metrical compositions were never thought worthy to be admitted into any collection of our national classics.