The next in point of effect was young C--- G---. He evidently languished
under the influence of indisposition, which, while it added to the
natural gentleness of his manners, diminished the impression his
accomplishments would otherwise have made. I was greatly struck with the
modesty with which he offered his opinions, and could scarcely credit
that he was the same individual whose eloquence in Parliament is by many
compared even to Mr. Canning's, and whose firmness of principle is so
universally acknowledged, that no one ever suspects him of being liable
to change. You may have heard of his poem "On the Restoration of
Learning in the East," the most magnificent prize essay that the English
Universities have produced for many years. The passage in which he
describes the talents, the researches, and learning of Sir William Jones,
is worthy of the imagination of Burke; and yet, with all this oriental
splendour of fancy, he has the reputation of being a patient and
methodical man of business. He looks, however, much more like a poet or
a student, than an orator and a statesman; and were statesmen the sort of
personages which the spirit of the age attempts to represent them, I, for
one, should lament that a young man, possessed of so many amiable
qualities, all so tinted with the bright lights of a fine enthusiasm,
should ever have been removed from the moon-lighted groves and peaceful
cloisters of Magdalen College, to the lamp-smelling passages and factious
debates of St. Stephen's Chapel. Mr. G--- certainly belongs to that high
class of gifted men who, to the honour of the age, have redeemed the
literary character from the charge of unfitness for the concerns of
public business; and he has shown that talents for affairs of state,
connected with literary predilections, are not limited to mere reviewers,
as some of your old class-fellows would have the world to believe. When
I contrast the quiet unobtrusive development of Mr. G---'s character with
that bustling and obstreperous elbowing into notice of some of those to
whom the Edinburgh Review owes half its fame, and compare the pure and
steady lustre of his elevation, to the rocket-like aberrations and
perturbed blaze of their still uncertain course, I cannot but think that
we have overrated, if not their ability, at least their wisdom in the
management of public affairs.
The third of the party was a little Yorkshire baronet. He was formerly
in Parliament, but left it, as he says, on account of its irregularities,
and the bad hours it kept. He is a Whig, I understand, in politics, and
indeed one might guess as much by looking at him; for I have always
remarked, that your Whigs have something odd and particular about them.
On making the same sort of remark to Argent, who, by the way, is a high
ministerial man, he observed, the thing was not to be wondered at,
considering that the Whigs are exceptions to the generality of mankind,
which naturally accounts for their being always in the minority. Mr.
T---, the saddler's son, who overheard us, said slyly, "That it might be
so; but if it be true that the wise are few compared to the multitude of
the foolish, things would be better managed by the minority than as they
are at present."