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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 23

That Chatham's language was his mother tongue
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with Ms own."

Yet ill his incidental treatment of public events
he has about as much ' high seriousness' as a George
Selwyn. One can compare his tone about them only
to a smile, in which there is nothing either very glad
or very sad; and yet no indifference or apathy. He
smiles in '46 over the defeat of Hawley at Falkirk;

" [At Cambridge] we talk of war, famine, and
pestilence, with no more apprehension than of a
broken head, or of a coach overturned between York
and Edinburgh."

Writing about the rebel Scotch Peers in the same
year, he is diverting and graphic over Balmerino and
Lovat and gently sympathetic over Cromartie; but I
question-whether here or anywhere in his account of
contemporary politics the reader could separate his
manner or spirit from that of Walpole, by any generic
difference. He smiles again in '56 over Byng's loss
of Minorca;

*⁽The British Flag, I fear, has behaved itself like
a trained-band pair of colours in Bunhill Fields...I
congratulate you on o\u glorious successes in the
Mediterranean. Shall we go in time, and hire a house
together in Switzerland? it is a fine poetical country
to look at, and nobody there will understand a word
we say or write."

Again, Wolfe, floating down the St Lawrence in



	INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 23 That Chatham's language was his mother tongue And Wolfe's great name compatriot with Ms own." Yet ill his incidental treatment of public events he has about as much ' high seriousness' as a George Selwyn. One can compare his tone about them only to a smile, in which there is nothing either very glad or very sad; and yet no indifference or apathy. He smiles in '46 over the defeat of Hawley at Falkirk; " [At Cambridge] we talk of war, famine, and pestilence, with no more apprehension than of a broken head, or of a coach overturned between York and Edinburgh." Writing about the rebel Scotch Peers in the same year, he is diverting and graphic over Balmerino and Lovat and gently sympathetic over Cromartie; but I question-whether here or anywhere in his account of contemporary politics the reader could separate his manner or spirit from that of Walpole, by any generic difference. He smiles again in '56 over Byng's loss of Minorca; ⁽The British Flag, I fear, has behaved itself like a trained-band pair of colours in Bunhill Fields...I congratulate you on o\u* glorious successes in the Mediterranean. Shall we go in time, and hire a house together in Switzerland? it is a fine poetical country to look at, and nobody there will understand a word we say or write." Again, Wolfe, floating down the St Lawrence in