George Canning, an English statesman, born in London, Apr. 11, 1770, educated at Oxford, and in 1793 returned to Parliament as a supporter of Pitt, then premier. He was an under secretary of state in 1796. Pitt resigning in 1801, Canning joined the opposition against the ministry of Addington. In 1807 a ministry was formed under the Duke of Portland, and Canning became secretary of foreign affairs. In 1809 he fought a duel with his colleague, Lord Castlereagh, which led to his retirement from the ministry. In 1812 he was returned to Parliament from Liverpool, and was one of the most eloquent orators in the House. In 1822 he became secretary of foreign affairs in the ministry of Lord Liverpool, upon whose disablement, in Apr. 1827, he was made premier, forming a cabinet composed of both Tories and Whigs. Died Aug. 8, 1827.

Personal

  His funeral took place at Westminster Abbey, where he was buried at the foot of Mr. Pitt’s tomb, on the 16th of August. It was attended by the members of the royal family, the cabinet ministers, the foreign ambassadors, and a number of political and personal friends. The morning after his funeral the king conferred a peerage on his widow. Other no less gratifying marks of public estimation were showered upon his memory, abroad and at home—statues, medals, and monuments. But the most grateful of all was the profound and universal sorrow of the people. All jealousies and animosities were extinguished in the common grief; and Faction, herself, wept upon his grave.

  Canning was one of whom it might be said, according to ordinary notions, that he ought to have been a nobleman. High-spirited, confident, gay, genial, chivalrous, and most accomplished—he had the attributes of nobility, as they are commonly conceived of; and a nobleman he was—for he had genius. He held high rank in Nature’s peerage. But this was not distinction enough in the eyes of some of his colleagues, and the majority of their party. His father had been poor, though of gentlemanly birth; and after his father’s death, his mother had become an actress. Not only was there an abiding sense of these facts in the minds of his colleagues, his party, and his opponents, but some spread a rumour, which met him from time to time in his life, that his birth was illegitimate. The same was said in the case of Mr. Huskisson; and in both cases it was false.

  At the early hour of his death, crowds (which subsequently amounted to between three and four thousand persons) had congregated outside the lodge at Chiswick. Sorrow, deep and universal, fell upon them when the fatal termination became known. On the day of the funeral, the whole way from Downing Street to the Abbey was lined with spectators, and the large space in front of the great western door was densely covered with people. The short duration of his illness had prevented men’s minds being prepared for the worst. He had just attained the highest object of a subject’s ambition, and great results were expected; but it pleased God to bring his days suddenly to an end. The hopes of millions were buried in his grave: many and bitter were the tears of those numerous friends and admirers who had come from all parts to witness the sad ceremony. The funeral was a private one; there was no choral service; the solemn silence was more impressive than the organ’s peal.

  No imaginative artist, fresh from studying his career, would sit down to paint this minister with the broad and deep forehead—the stern compressed lip—the deep, thoughtful, concentrated air of Napoleon Bonaparte. As little would the idea of his eloquence or ambition call to our recollection the swart and iron features—the bold and haughty dignity of Strafford. We cannot fancy in his eye the volumed depth of Richelieu’s—the volcanic flash of Mirabeau’s—the offended majesty of Chatham’s. Sketching him from our fancy, it would be as a few still living remember him, with a visage rather marked by humour and intelligence than by meditation or sternness; with something of the petulant mingling in its expression with the proud; with much of the playful overruling the profound. His nature, in short, exhibited more of the genial fancy and the quick irritability of the poet and the speaker, than of the inflexible will of the dictator who puts his foot on a nation’s neck, or the fiery passions of the tribune who rouses a people against its oppressors. Still, Mr. Canning, such as he was, will remain one of the most brilliant and striking personages in our historical annals. As a statesman, the latter passages of his life cannot be too deeply studied; as an orator, his speeches will aways be models of their kind; and as a man, there was something so graceful, so fascinating, so spirited in his bearing, that even when we condemn his faults, we cannot avoid feeling affection for his memory, and a sympathetic admiration for his genius.

  On the 8th of August he passed away, in the Fox chamber, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and only four months after attaining the pinnacle of his earthly greatness…. His enemies had been chiefly in Parliament; outside it he was popular in his lifetime, and deplored after his decease.

  There was a charm in his fine countenance enhancing that of his conversation, and felt by all who knew him. His voice well harmonised with these endowments—an influence itself always powerful, in private even more than in public life, surpassing that of mere beauty, and often surviving when all beauty is gone…. The wit of Mr. Canning was of rarer and more refined workmanship, and drew larger ornament from classical sources. The “Anti-Jacobin” shows Mr. Canning’s power in its youthful exuberance. When I knew him it had been sobered, perhaps saddened, by the political contrarieties and other incidents of more advanced life, but had lost none of its refinement of irony. Less obvious than the common wit of the world, it excited thought and refined it.

  The advantage of a fine presence and of a natural delivery are great in public speaking. They came to Canning unbidden, and were even observed in boyhood. It is open to anyone to linger near that monument in Westminster Abbey, and trace the high forehead and erect figure which stands near the grave of England’s great Foreign Minister, and so convince themselves of the nobility which belonged naturally to his person.

  Some of Mr. Canning’s “fads,” I well remember. For instance, he knew the French language well, but nothing could induce him to pronounce it properly; he pronounced all the words as if they were English. I know not what reason he gave for this, or whether he gave any: it was his way and he would not alter it. He had also some queer ideas about spelling: he was greatly averse to the letter f, and I have seen notes to my father in which the word fat was spelt phat, and other words in a similar manner. He asserted that this was the correct method of spelling…. I well remember how he was attired one evening in the summer time; nankeen tights, narrowed towards the ankle, and fastened there somehow; nankeen waistcoat, blue, perhaps about a shade darker than Oxford blue; tail coat; a broad pleated cambric frill all down the shirtfront; his watch in a “fob” or little pocket in the trousers, with his chain and seals dangling.

Statesman

  Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit who is always giving such hard knocks. He should have put on an ass’s skin before he went into Parliament.

  What first and most struck me in the House of Commons, was the extreme rarity, not only of great and eloquent speakers, but even of moderately good ones, and the number of those whose delivery was not only bad, but execrable. Canning was the only one who could be said to speak with a polished eloquence; and he did not then speak often, and his speeches were at that time (1812–18) too much studied.

  The witty, the accomplished, the ambitious;—he who had toiled thirty years, and involved himself in the most harassing discussions, to attain this dizzy height; he who had held it for three months of intrigue and obloquy—and now a heap of dust, and that is all. He was an early and familiar friend of mine, through my intimacy with George Ellis. No man possessed a gayer and more playful wit in society; no one, since Pitt’s time, had more commanding sarcasm in debate; in the House of Commons he was the terror of that specie of orators called the Yelpers. His lash fetched away both skin and flesh, and would have penetrated the hide of a rhinoceros. In his conduct as a statesman he had a great fault: he lent himself too willingly to intrigue. Thus he got into his quarrel with Lord Castlereagh, and lost credit with the country for want of openness. Thus, too, he got involved with the Queen’s party to such an extent, that it fettered him upon that miserable occasion, and obliged him to butter Sir Robert Wilson with dear friend, and gallant general, and so forth. The last composition with the Whigs was a sacrifice of principle on both sides.

  But his declamation, though often powerful, always beautifully ornate, never deficient in admirable diction, was certainly not of the highest class. It wanted depth; it came from the mouth, not from the heart; and it tickled or even filled the ear rather than penetrated the bosom of the listener. The orator never seemed to forget himself, and to be absorbed by his theme; he was not carried away by his passions, and he carried not his audience along with him. An actor stood before us—a first-rate one no doubt, but still an actor; and we never forgot that it was a representation we were witnessing, not a real scene.

  He was a man of elegant gifts, of easy fluency, capable of embellishing anything; with a nice wit, gliding swiftly over the most delicate topics; passing from topic to topic like the raconteur of the dinner table, touching easily on them all, letting them all go as easily, confusing you as to whether he knows nothing or knows everything. The peculiar irritation which Mr. Canning excited through life was—at least in part—owing to the natural wrath with which you hear the changing talk of the practised talker running away about all the universe; never saying anything which indicates real knowledge, never saying anything which at the very moment can be shown to be a blunder; ever on the surface, and ever ingratiating itself with the superficial. When Mr. Canning was alive, sound men of all political persuasions—the Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey—ever disliked him; you may hear old Liberals to this day declaring he was the greatest charlatan who ever lived, angry to imagine that his very ghost exists; and when you read his speeches yourself, you are at once conscious of a certain dexterous insincerity which seems to lurk in the very felicities of expression, and to be made finer with the very refinements of the phraseology.

  At the risk of startling many of our readers, we avow our conviction that the Right Hon. George Canning has never been fairly judged or duly appreciated by his countrymen. In Europe and America, he symbolises a policy; in England, he is little better than a name. “There died the last of the rhetoricians,” was the exclamation of a great northern critic and man of genius. Yet the brilliant effusions, the “purple patches,” of this so-called rhetorician were underlaid and elevated by more thought and argument than would suffice to set up a host of the “practical men,” who complacently repeat and dwell upon the sneer.

  The graceful, finished, well-prepared speeches of Canning, sparkling with classical quotation, happy illustration, and refined wit, were delightful to all who heard him. Sometimes, indeed, the purpurei panni did not well combine with the plain broadcloth of a business argument, but, on the whole, the effect was entrancing and attractive to all the young members, who cared rather to support a cause well defended than to examine the solidity of the defences themselves. Mr. Ward, himself an orator of no mean rank, said once to me, “I like what is polished and perfect—I admire Virgil, Racine, and Pitt.” To such men the eloquence of Canning was irresistible.

  By dint of continual labor and unsparing self-correction, Canning gradually reached the perfection of his own style, the distinguishing qualities of which were rapidity, polish, and ornament.

  It may be well said with truth that when he was finally called to the helm, he owed that well-earned elevation to the united confidence of his sovereign and the people. Nor is it less true that his premature death a few months later was not only a cause of deep sorrow throughout his own country, but was felt as a loss by every nation capable of appreciating high qualities of mind, sound principles of conduct, and resolution to confront every kind of difficulty for the honour and welfare of his native land.

  Of Canning as an orator conflicting accounts have been handed down to us; but they all agree in this, that in what may be called literary eloquence he has had few rivals. His manner, his aspect, his voice, his elocution, the selection of his words, the beauty of his imagery, and, when the subject called for it, the closeness and clearness of his reasoning, combined to make him the foremost man in the English parliament after the death of Fox. But he does not seem to have possessed in an equal degree what Aristotle calls ἠθική πίστις, that quality in virtue of which the orator impresses every one who hears him with an absolute conviction of his sincerity. Many who listened to Canning thought him only a consummate actor, nothing doubting his intellectual belief in the doctrines he was enforcing, but uncertain only whether his feelings were engaged to the extent which his language would imply.

  Lord Russell said that of all the orators whom he had heard the most eloquent was Plunket, the most agreeable and captivating was Canning, the most formidable as an opponent in debate was Peel. Oratory can never be really appreciated without the man, his voice and manner, the occasion and the audience. There is not very much in Canning’s speeches of what would commonly be called eloquence. The well-known passage in the Liverpool speech comparing England’s power in peaceful repose to the man-of-war with its sails furled and its thunder sleeping, may be said almost to stand alone. There are sometimes epigrams, such as the warning to prosecute war with vigour lest a war too like peace might be followed by a peace too like war. There is humour occasionally, and there is sarcasm, which probably gained much by the delivery. But there is little thunder. Lucid, lively, and effective reasoning is the principal characteristic.

General

  I can only say, that I have listened to him long, and often, with the greatest attention; I have used every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, and it appears to me impossible to hear him upon any arduous topic without perceiving that he is eminently deficient in those solid and serious qualities, upon which, and upon which alone, the confidence of a great country can properly repose. He sweats, and labours, and works for sense, and Mr. Ellis seems always to think it is coming, but it does not come; the machine can’t draw up what is not to be found in the spring; Providence has made him a light, jesting paragraph-writing man, and that he will remain to his dying day. When he is jocular he is strong, when he is serious he is like Sampson in a wig: any ordinary person is a match for him: a song, an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper upon Nicoll’s eye, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent language, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half information picked up in Pall Mall in the morning: these are your friend’s natural weapons; all these things he can do: here I allow him to be truly great: nay, I will be just, and go still farther, if he would confine himself to these things, and consider the facete and the playful to be the basis of his character, he would, for that species of man, be universally considered as a person of very good understanding; call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey.

  Canning was at that time [1807] at the head of foreign affairs in England. History will not form the same judgment of him as that formed by contemporaries. He had great talents, but was not a great statesman; he was one of those persons who distinguished themselves as the squires of political heroes. He was highly accomplished in the two classical languages, but without being a learned scholar. He was especially conversant with Greek writers. He had likewise poetical talent, but only for satire…. He joined the Society of the Anti-Jacobins, which defended everything connected with existing institutions. This society published a journal, in which the most honoured names of foreign countries were attacked in the most scandalous manner. German literature was at that time little known in England, and it was associated there with the ideas of Jacobinism and revolution. Canning then published in the “Anti-Jacobin” the most shameful pasquinade which was ever written against Germany, under the title of “Matilda Pottingen.” Göttingen is described in it as the sink of all infamy; professors and students as a gang of miscreants; licentiousness, incest, and atheism as the character of the German people. Such was Canning’s beginning; he was at all events useful; a sort of political Cossack.

  Canning’s fame is too great, and his historical position too important, to permit him to linger here, in the stiller regions of the literary world. The sudden smiling onslaught of the young statesman, fresh from the academical career which he had passed through so brilliantly, and still new to the larger sphere that had received him so early, is as interesting as it is daring and effective. We feel like spectators in a crowd when an unforeseen accident happens, and the throng closes round to see what the wonder is. It is as if in an ordinary game some agile young prince should spring in and take the bat for an innings, and send the ball high over everybody’s head in a long-celebrated hit, hereafter to be talked of among the traditions of the gods. Such was Canning’s appearance in our world of letters. It was the best of jokes, the most delightful, ready, and telling stroke which a chance combatant ever made. But he had no time to linger upon it or repeat it, which was all the better for its fame.

  Canning’s literary tastes remained with him through life. When he and Pitt met they were soon buried in some classic. His correspondence with Sir Walter Scott turned mainly upon bookish topics; and he had literature as much as politics in his mind in promoting the foundation of the “Quarterly Review.” His political antagonism with Chateaubriand, for whom he responded at a dinner of the Literary Fund, was softened by common intellectual tastes, though, unlike Chateaubriand, he was a man of action first and a man of letters second. Like one of the most illustrious of his successors in the Premiership, he lived in—probably he could not have lived out of—an atmosphere of contention, and the noisiest brawls with Brougham or Hobhouse were more to his mind than Fox’s book under a tree. Two articles in the “Quarterly Review”—one on Gifford’s “Life of Pitt” and another in ridicule of Sir John Sinclair’s bullion pamphlets—form, so far as I know, together with his verses of occasion, the complete works of Canning. In contrast with his theory, and especially with his master-passion for Dryden, his style was a little over ornate—the purple patch and the tinsel are in excess.

  Canning was a remarkable man, and had he not been a statesman would have distinguished himself greatly in literature. But, as it was, the world rather underestimated his talents on account of his versatility and lightness of hand in literature. Somehow the idea of statesmanship is connected with that of seriousness, despite of Canning and Lord Palmerston.

  Had he not given himself to politics Canning could have won a high place in literature as a writer both of verse and prose. There is no doubt a lack of good-humour in the “Anti-Jacobin” lampoons; the satire is as cold as it is keen. But the writers are honest and thoroughly in earnest. Canning’s victims were selected, not at the bidding of personal dislike or caprice, but as representatives of opinions which he firmly believed to be subversive of healthy morality and the national welfare. Although his scorn of wild revolutionary theories certainly carried him too far, he showed sound sense as well as robust, if somewhat narrow, patriotism in many of his antipathies. The “Anti-Jacobin” was not written by free-lances. Its contributors had a set of clearly-defined principles, and were consistent in their likings and their hatreds. Canning detested the atheism, the extreme republicanism, the cosmopolitanism and “theophilanthropy” which were then in the air, and assailed them with all his powers of sarcasm and invective.