Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/70

Mitchell  government of the world, in which Frederick did not believe, while Mitchell advocated the orthodox view. In the intervals of campaigning Mitchell learnt German, one of his earliest teachers being Gottsched, whose attack on Shakespeare for neglecting the unities he repelled with considerable wit (, vii. 317). Mitchell's acquaintance with the rising German literature of the time was much greater than that of Frederick, on whom he urged its claims to royal recognition (ib. ix. 154).

Lord Bute, on becoming prime minister in 1762, aimed at bringing the seven years' war to an end, and discontinued the subsidies to Frederick, who wrote in that year to one of his correspondents: ‘Messieurs the English continue to betray. Poor M. Mitchell has had a stroke of apoplexy on hearing of it.’ There was now a diminution of the king's confidential intercourse with Mitchell, who had become the envoy of a government unfriendly to Frederick. In 1764, peace having been restored to Europe, Mitchell revisited England. He had been re-elected for the Elgin burghs in 1761, and continued to represent them, at least nominally, until his death. In 1765 he was invested, but not installed, a knight of the Bath (, p. 252). In the following year he returned as envoy to Berlin. But as Frederick rejected Chatham's proposal of a triple alliance between England, Prussia, and Russia, which Mitchell was instructed to urge on him, the old intimacy of the king and Mitchell remained in abeyance. Mitchell's later despatches contain severe animadversions on Frederick's debasement of the coinage and general fiscal policy.

Mitchell died at Berlin on 28 Jan. 1771, and Frederick is said to have shed tears as he witnessed from a balcony the funeral procession. He was buried in a Berlin church, in which a year or so afterwards a bust of him was placed at the instance of Prince Henry, Frederick's brother. Mitchell is described as strongly built, and rather above the middle height. His portrait at Thurnston is that of a bold, straightforward, and most sagacious man. He is said to have been taking in his manner, but rather blunt. Carlyle speaks of him as ‘an Aberdeen Scotchman creditable to his country; hard-headed, sagacious, sceptical of shows, but capable of recognising substances withal and of standing loyal to them, stubbornly if needful … whose Letters are among the perennially valuable Documents on Friedrich's History.’ The anecdotes of Mitchell, given by Thiébault, some of which are often quoted, are not to be relied on when Thiébault is repeating the gossip of others. Mitchell himself, however, told him, he asserts, that when Frederick was least satisfied with England, Mitchell was reproached by the government at home with not reporting Frederick's bitter sarcasms on their policy, and that in reply he declared his determination to resign rather than play the part of tale-bearer.

[Mitchell's Diplomatic and Private Correspondence, in sixty-nine volumes, is in the British Museum, Addit. MSS. 6804-72. Copious and interesting extracts from them form the basis of Mr. Andrew Bisset's Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell (2 vols. 1850), which is the chief printed authority for Mitchell's biography. Mr. Bisset has also made use of a considerable number of Mitchell's letters in the possession of his heirs, and not included in the Museum collection. Lord Glenbervie began for publication a selection from the Mitchell Papers in the Museum, but was stopped by order of George III. Those which he did select constitute the volumes of Addit. MSS. 11260-2. There are a number of Mitchell's letters printed in the Culloden Papers (1815), and several in the Chatham Correspondence (1838-40), and in Von Eaumer's Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte aus dem Britischen Museum und Reichsarchive (1836-7, English translation 1837). The references in the preceding article are to Carlyle's History of Friedrich II, library ed. 1870; Horace Walpole's Letters (1857-9); Foster's Members of Parliament, Scotland (2nd edit. 1882); Thiébault's Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de Séjour à Berlin (2nd edit. 1805), tom. iii., ‘Les Ministres Etrangers à la Cour de Berlin: Légation d'Angleterre.’]  MITCHELL, ANDREW (1757–1806), admiral, second son of Charles Mitchell of Baldridge, near Dunfermline in Fife, born in 1757, was educated at the high school, Edinburgh. He entered the navy in 1771 on board the Deal Castle. After serving in different ships on the home station, in 1776 he went out to the East Indies in the Ripon with Sir Edward Vernon [q. v.], by whom he was promoted to be lieutenant of the Coventry frigate, 11 Oct. 1777, and to be captain, also of the Coventry, after the skirmish off Pondicherry on 10 Aug. 1778. His post rank was confirmed by the admiralty to 25 Oct. 1778. Mitchell continued in the Coventry after Sir Edward Hughes [q. v.] took command of the station; and on 12 Aug. 1782 fought a severe but indecisive action with the French 40-gun frigate Bellona off Friar's Hood in Ceylon. In September Hughes appointed him to the Sultan, in which he took part in the fight off Cuddalore on 20 June 1783. After the peace Mitchell remained on the station as commodore of a small squadron (, Naval and Mil. Memoirs, vi. 360), with his broad pennant in the Defence. He