Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/150

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. FEB. 21, wu.

"I will now submit to your Grace if there was not something peculiarly b'ase and perfidious in Mr. Pitt's calling me a blasphemer of my God for those very verses at a time when I was absent and dan- gerously ill from an affair of honour [the duel with Martin]."

Now, what does Potter say in the letter alluded to ? Writing on Sunday night, 27 Oct., 1754, to Willies, he begins :

" But I am in no good humour no, though I

have this morning read your parody for the 99th time and have laughed as heartily as I did at the

first Mr. Pitt will be in town next Saturday.

You will grieve when I tell you a circumstance

relating to P which hastens his journey." He then, in a strain too much in the Wilkes- Potter vein to endure repetition, proceeds to allude to the great Commoner's forth- coming marriage to " Ly H. Gr." (Hester Grenville), which took place on 16 Nov. Potter prophesied ill of the union which gave our country its second Pitt, and con- tinued :

" At dinner yesterday we read over your parody. He bid me tell you he found with great concern you was as wicked and agreeable as ever. In my conscience I think you exceed yourself. I have made a few verbal [he had first written " literal"] amendments If I happen to see him [Dr. Web- ster, a regular correspondent of Wilkes] I shall show him the parody." Add. MS.. 30,867, f. 103.

Now, what were " those very verses " but these parodies ? At the time when Wilkes was lying wounded after his encounter with Martin, Pitt in a debate which, we learn from Cobbett, took place on 24 Nov., 1763, inveighed so bitterly against these parodies that Walpole, describing the final debate on the expulsion carried against the demagogue on 19 Jan., 1764, says that the " warmest sticklers for him " had been " discountenanced and discouraged by the harsh epithets bestowed on him by Pitt " (' Mem. of Geo. III.,' i. 278).

Pitt's furious rhetoric the result, accord- ing to Von Ruville ('Chatham,' iii. 131), of an interview with George III., who was bent on the patriot's destruction at any cost is preserved for us in Cobbett's ' Par- liamentary History,' xv. 1364 :

" The author did not deserve to be ranked among the human species he was the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of his King. He had no con- nexion with any such writer. He neither associated

nor communicated with any such He knew

nothing of any connexion with the writer of the libel."

Yet on 20 July, 1757, Pitt had written to Wilkes the warmest letter of congratulation on his entry into public life the proper sphere, in his opinion, for his friend's " great and shining talents " ; and on 16 Oct., 1759, Pitt had concluded a letter very flattering to

the feelings of its recipient with the words (Add. MS. 30,877, tf. 5, 14) :

Be assured that I shall always be extremely glad to promote your desires (always meaning your virtuous ones) and believe rne with great truth and regard, Dear Sir,

Your humble obedient servant,

WM : PITT.

Whether or not " one of those strange fits ... .of extravagant deference to Royalty " is the explanation of Pitt's dissembling, we cannot blame Wilkes for his subsequent attitude to his former intimate.

It is difficult in the face of this evidence to accept Earl Stanhope's view that Pitt neither saw nor commended the parodies (' Hist.,' v. 75), or Von Ruville's, that " how much truth there was in this asser- tion it is impossible to discover " (' Chatham, iii. 131).

Nor will the impartial critic, ptunaps, echo either of these observations :

" No evidence was then adduced, nor has any yet been adduced, proving him [Wilkes] to have written the poem. It is almost certain that its author was Potter." Rae, Fort. Rev., Sept., 1868.

" What authority there may be that the poem had remained in manuscript and lain in Wilkes's

desk until it was delivered to Curry to be printed

I cannot imagine." Dilke, 'N. & Q.,' 2 S. iv. 21.

No weight is to be allowed to Wilkes's remark to Maltby recorded by Dyce that Potter wrote the parodies, nor to any state- ments by Wilkites to that effect, for Wilkes plainly paltered with the truth after convic- tion. He not only gave different and dis- ingenuous accounts of what the parodies were, but he was not even consistent as to the extent to which he published them. We have just seen him write of Pitt and Potter as praising them ; earlier he had asserted that only Dashwood and Sandwich ever saw them (Walpole to Mann, 17 Nov., 1763); and he apparently instructed his attorney that "it had been read publickly. . . .years before by the very Lord who moved against it " (Add. MS. 30,885, f. 155).

While agreeing with Dilke that " the poem was written by one person," I regard as insoluble and unprofitable a discussion as to how far Potter either suggested the parodies (as Walpole wrote) or had any further hand in their composition than his letter admits. And it is significant that during the debates on the ' Essay ' in the Commons' in January, 1769 (1 Cavendish), no Wilkite disowned the authorship of the patriot, himself present in the House.

Curry, in a part of his evidence to which Dilke particularly demurs, informed the Lords that Wilkes had told him " that it