William Prideaux Courtney

“ The rapid rise of Marlborough to the highest position in the State was due to his singular tact and his diplomatic skill in the management of men. In an age remarkable for grace of manner and for adroitness of compliment, his courteous demeanour and the art with which he refused or granted a favour extorted the admiration of every one with whom he came in contact. Through his consideration for the welfare of his soldiers he held together for years an army drawn from every nation in Christendom. ”

“ Francis Baring was born at Larkbear 18 April 1740, and sent to London to study commerce in the firm of Boehm. Though deaf from his youth, his indomitable energy enabled him to overcome all obstacles, and to establish his business on the firmest foundations. At the time of his death it was calculated that he had earned nearly seven millions of money; and Sir Francis Baring stood forth, in the words of Lord Erskine, as ‘the first merchant in Europe.’ His advice was often sought on financial questions connected with the government of India. ”

“ Warner lay on the surface. They were open to the gaze of the least curious in his circle and even if he possessed the power, he had not the desire to conceal them. His virtues lay beneath the surface, and only his most intimate friends possessed the means of discovering them. His portrait has been painted by two masters of description who were wont to dwell with especial keenness on the weaknesses of English nature. ”

“ Marlborough was made commander-in-chief of the united armies of England and Holland, but throughout the war his plans were impeded by the jealousy of the commanders who were nominally his inferiors, and by the opposite aims of the various countries that were striving to break the power of France. He himself wished to penetrate into the French lines; the anxiety of the Dutch was for the maintenance of their frontier and for an augmentation of their territory; the desire of the Austrian emperor was to secure that his son the Archduke Charles should rule over Spain. ”

“ Henderson accordingly matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 6 April 1781, and occupied the rooms which had been tenanted by Dr. Johnson. He was an omnivorous student, and endowed with a marvellous memory. As a linguist he was skilled in Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and among European languages he knew Spanish, Italian, and German. Every branch of knowledge fascinated him. His temper was unruffled, and his benevolence led him, after he had acquired a knowledge of medicine, and an epidemic of fever was raging in Oxford, to practise gratuitously among its poor. ”

“ From the general election of 1734 until his elevation to the peerage Pulteney sat for Middlesex. For some years after this election the minister’s assailants made little progress in their attack, but in 1738 the troubles with Spain supplied them with the opportunity which they desired. Walpole long argued for peace, but he was feebly supported in his own cabinet, and the frenzy of the people for war knew no bounds. In an evil moment for his own reputation he consented to remain in office and to gratify popular passion with a war against Spain. ”

“ Famous Englishmen in all ages are chronicled in the pages of Sir George Murray Smith's costly Dictionary of national biography, and Mr. Frederic Boase in his noble volumes of Modern English biography has summarised, with patient and protracted labour, the lives of everyone of any importance who passed away in the half-century beginning with 1850. But even after this vast increase in the biographical literature of our country many persons conspicuous in their time still want a chronicler. ”

“ The commerce of America was so much extended under his direction that he was sometimes styled the ‘Father of the Colonies,’ and the town of Halifax in Nova Scotia was called after him in 1749, in commemoration of his energy in aiding the foundation of the colony. In June 1751 he tried, says Horace Walpole, to get the West Indies entirely placed under the rule of the board of trade, and to secure his own nomination as ‘third secretary of state for that quarter of the world,’ but the king refused his consent to the scheme. ”

“ By the end of the year Brabant was again subject to the rule of the allies. The suffering in France at this time weighed so heavily upon the people that its proud king humbled himself to sue for peace. Each of the allies in turn did he supplicate, and Torcy his minister endeavoured by promises of large sums of money to obtain the support of Marlborough to his proposals. These attempts were in vain, and when the winter passed away a French army of one hundred and ten thousand, under the command of Villars, took the field. ”

“ For cool, and sustained declaration he stood unrivalled in Parliament, and his readiness in debate was universally acknowledged. In social life, in the company of the wits and writers of his day, his faculties seemed to desert him. He was not only dull, but the cause of dulness in others, and even Alexander Carlyle confesses that in conversation his illustrious countryman was “stiff and pompous.” In Wedderburn’s character ambition banished all rectitude of principle, but the love of money for money’s sake was not among his faults. ”

“ Bright indeed might jeer at the liberal malcontents as dwelling in the ‘political cave of Adullam,’ and might liken the party of two, Horsman and Lowe, to the ‘Scotch terrier that was so covered with hair that they could not tell the head from the tail,’ but to unprejudiced minds there could be no doubt that to Lowe's eloquence the defeat of the bill should be attributed. ”

“ Biographical details of such men as David Garrick can be found in a score of separate memoirs and in the general dictionaries of the literature or the biography of our kingdom, but information on the career of the poetaster whose lines were engraved on Garrick's monument in Westminster Abbey can be looked for with certainty in one authority only. It is in the memoirs of the more obscure of our countrymen that the value of our great biographical dictionary lies, and even within its ample folds five out of the eight lives described in these pages are not to be found. ”