  Jan. 29, 1798. The following Ode[A] was dropped into the letterbox in our Publisher’s window. From its title—“A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox”—we were led to imagine there was some mistake in the business, and that it was meant to have been conveyed to Mr. Wright’s neighbour, Mr. Debrett, whom we recollected to have been the Publisher of the “Half of a Letter” to the same gentleman, which occasioned so much noise (of horse-laughing) in the world. Our politics certainly do not entitle us to the honourable distinction of being made the channel for communicating such a production to the public. But, for our parts, as we are “not at war with genius,” on whatever side we find it, we are happy to give this Poem the earliest place in our Paper; and shall be equally ready to pay the same attention to any future favours of the same kind, and from the same quarter. The Poem is a free translation, or rather, perhaps, imitation, of the twentieth Ode of the second Book of Horace. We have taken the liberty to subjoin the passages of which the parallel is the most striking. A BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX.[82] On [83] grey goose quills sublime I’ll soar To metaphors unreach’d before, That scare the vulgar reader: With style well form’d from Burke’s best books— From rules of grammar (e’en Horne Tooke’s) A bold and free Seceder. I [84] whom, dear Fox, you condescend To call your “Honourable Friend,” Shall live for everlasting: That [85] Stygian Gallery I’ll quit, Where printers crowd me, as I sit Half-dead with rage and fasting. I [86] feel! the growing down descends, Like goose-skin, to my fingers’ ends— Each nail becomes a feather: My cropp’d head [87] waves with sudden plumes, Which erst (like Bedford’s, or his groom’s) Unpowder’d, braved the weather. [88] I mount, I mount into the sky, “Sweet [89] bird,” to [90] Petersburg I’ll fly; Or, if you bid, to Paris; Fresh missions of the Fox and Goose Successful Treaties may produce; Though Pitt in all miscarries. Scotch, [91] English, Irish Whigs shall read The Pamphlets, Letters, Odes I breed, Charm’d with each bright endeavour: Alarmists[92] tremble at my strain, E’en [93] Pitt, made candid by champaign, Shall hail Adair “the clever”. Though criticism assail my name, And luckless blunders blot my fame, [94]O! [95] make no needless bustle; As vain and idle it would be To waste one pitying thought on me, [LYRICS OF HORACE, BOOK II., ODE XX. TRANSLATED BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM. Borne on no weak or vulgar wing, Upward through air, two-form’d, I’ll spring; Nor longer grovel here, but soar Where Envy shall pursue no more. Not I, from humble lineage sprung, Not I, dear Patron, whom thy tongue Summons to fame, will fear to die, Or bound by Styx’s fetters lie. A rougher skin my legs assume; My upward limbs the cygnet’s plume Invests; my shoulders, fingers feel The feathery softness o’er them steal. Fleeter than Icarus now I’ll haste, A tuneful swan, to Libya’s waste, And heaving sands, where Bospor’s wave Tosses, or Arctic tempests rave. Me Colchis, Dacia me shall learn, Who hides her fear of Marsian stern; Me Scythia’s hordes, the well-trained son Of Spain, and he who quaffs the Rhone. From my mock bier be far away The loud lament, the funeral lay; And, tribute to my fancied doom, Far the vain honours of the tomb!—Ed.] [The charge of Fox’s having sent Adair to St. Petersburg, to counteract the measures of Pitt’s government, first broached in Mr. Burke’s “Letter on the Conduct of the Minority,” has been vigorously contradicted, yet so late as April, 1854, it was alluded to as a fact by Lord Malmesbury in the House of Peers. It was, however, on this occasion again authoritatively denied by Lord Campbell, who took occasion to observe that Sir Robert Adair was “now in his 90th year, and for many years had served his country with great assiduity and fidelity. He had been sent by successive ministers [Mr. Fox, Lord Grey, Mr. Canning (who assisted in libelling him so often in the pages of the present work), Lord Wellesley, Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Wellington] to Vienna, to Constantinople, to Brussels, and to Berlin, and had represented the Crown of England upon some occasions of very great importance, in which he had uniformly acquitted himself to the satisfaction of the Government and for the benefit of his country. He believed a more honourable man had not lived in this country at any time.” The following denial by Sir Robert Adair himself is copied from his autograph statement, prefixed to the Life of Wilberforce, published in 1838:—“This idle story is here accredited by Mr. Wilberforce, and inserted by his sons, without due examination. It was grounded on a journey I made to Vienna and St. Petersburg in 1791. Doctor Prettyman [sic], Bishop of Winchester, in a work entitled The Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, published by him in 1823, brought forward the fact of my having gone upon this journey as a criminal charge against Mr. Fox, who, as he pretends, sent me upon it with the intent of counteracting some negociations then carrying on between Great Britain and Russia at St. Petersburg. I answered his accusation, I trust successfully, in two letters published by Longman & Co. [Two Letters from Mr. Adair to the Bp. of Winchester, in answer to the charge of a High Treasonable Misdemeanour brought by his Lordship against Mr. Fox and himself in his Life of the Rt. Hon. W. Pitt, 8vo., 1821], and explained the circumstances which induced me in my travels in 1791 to visit the two capitals above mentioned.—Robert Adair: 1838.” The “Mission” was, however, firmly believed in, and Pitt was urged, but in vain, by the Duke of Richmond and others of the Government, to arrest Fox for high treason. The following extract from the Political Memoranda of Francis, fifth Duke of Leeds, now first printed from the Originals in the British Museum; edited by Oscar Browning, for the Camden Society, 1884, is an illustration of the rumours current at the time, and many years after. “Saty. 24 Novr. 1792. Lord St. Helens dined with me. After the Ladies were gone upstairs we conversed, for some time on Foreign affairs.... Speaking of the Russian business of last year he reprobated in the strongest terms the conduct of Fox in sending an agent, Mr. Adair, to Petersburg to counteract the negociations of this Court at that of Russia. He told me he knew for certain that Mr. Adair had shewn to some English merchants at Petersburg the Empress’ Picture set in diamonds which had been given to him. That it was not one of the sort usually given, but of much greater value, being set round with large Brilliants, and the whole Picture covered with a Table Diamond instead of Chrystal. That this was a present seldom made but on some very particular occasion or to some great favorite (I remember to have seen such a one in the possession of P. Orlow). Ld. St. H. thought it must have been worth six or seven thousand pounds, and of too much value probably to have been meant for Mr. Adair. The conclusion we both very naturally drew from this circumstance was not very favorable to Mr. Fox.” The following additional particulars relating to the connection between Fox and Adair may not be thought out of place here. They are extracted from the highly interesting and important Croker Papers, being the Correspondence and Diaries, 1809–1830, of the Rt. Hon. J. W. Croker, M.P., Edited by Louis J. Jennings. M.P., 3 vols., 8vo., 1884. The first is in these terms: “When Adair, whose father was a surgeon, went as Fox’s Ambassador to Russia, Lord Whitworth, then the King’s Minister, made a good joke, which tended not a little to lower Adair, and defeat his object. ‘Est-ce un homme trÈs considÉrable, ce M. d’Adair?’ asked the Empress. ‘Pas trop, Madame,’ replied Lord Whitworth, ‘quoique son pÈre Était grand seigneur [saigneur].’” The other is taken from a very long statement on various matters, made by K. George IV., when Prince of Wales, to Croker personally. Adair’s wife, the Prince said, was a Frenchwoman with whom Andreossi, when here as Buonaparte’s Minister, intrigued. The Duchess of Devonshire told him—the Prince of Wales—that Mrs. Adair had offered her a bribe of £10,000 down, and as much more whenever she might want it, if she would communicate the Cabinet secrets, with which the French thought she could not fail to be acquainted, through her intimacy with all the leaders of the Government. This caused a breach between Fox and Adair. But the former could only tell Adair that an obstacle—which he could neither reveal nor overcome, but which did not affect or alter Fox’s personal regard for him—prevented his appointment to be Fox’s Under-Secretary of State.—Croker Papers, i. 293.—Ed.]
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