Dr Johnson said once of Chesterfield, 'I thought him a lord among wits, but I find him to be only a wit among lords.' And so we may say of Lord Lyttelton, 'He is a poet among lords, if not a lord among poets.' He was the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in Worcestershire, and was born in 1709. He went to Eton and Oxford, where he distinguished himself. Having gone the usual grand tour, he entered Parliament, and became an opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. He was made secretary to the Prince of Wales, and was in this capacity useful to Mallett and Thomson. In 1741, he married Lucy Fortescue, of Devonshire, who died five years afterwards. Lyttelton grieved sincerely for her, and wrote his affecting 'Monody' on the subject. When his party triumphed, he was created a Lord of the Treasury, and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a peerage. He employed much of his leisure in literary composition, writing a good little book on the Conversion of St Paul, a laboured History of Henry II., and some verses, including the stanza in the 'Castle of Indolence' describing Thomson—
'A bard there dwelt, more fat than bard beseems,' &c.—
and a very spirited prologue to Thomson's 'Coriolanus,' which was written after that author's death, and says of him,
—'His chaste muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire:
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying he could wish to blot.'
Lyttelton himself died August 22, 1773, aged sixty-four. His History is now little read. It took him, it is said, thirty years to write it, and he employed another man to point it—a fact recalling what is told of Macaulay, that he sent the first volume of his 'History of England' to Lord Jeffrey, who overlooked the punctuation and criticised the style. Of a series of Dialogues issued by this writer, Dr Johnson remarked, with his usual pointed severity, 'Here is a man telling the world what the world had all his life been telling him.' His 'Monody' expresses real grief in an artificial style, but has some stanzas as natural in the expression as they are pathetic in the feeling.
FROM THE 'MONODY.'
At length escaped from every human eye,
From every duty, every care,
That in my mournful thoughts might claim a share,
Or force my tears their flowing stream to dry;
Beneath the gloom of this embowering shade,
This lone retreat, for tender sorrow made,
I now may give my burdened heart relief,
And pour forth all my stores of grief;
Of grief surpassing every other woe,
Far as the purest bliss, the happiest love
Can on the ennobled mind bestow,
Exceeds the vulgar joys that move
Our gross desires, inelegant and low.
* * * * *
In vain I look around
O'er all the well-known ground,
My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry;
Where oft we used to walk,
Where oft in tender talk
We saw the summer sun go down the sky;
Nor by yon fountain's side,
Nor where its waters glide
Along the valley, can she now be found:
In all the wide-stretched prospect's ample bound
No more my mournful eye
Can aught of her espy,
But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie.
* * * * *
Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns,
Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns
By your delighted mother's side:
Who now your infant steps shall guide?
Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care
To every virtue would have formed your youth,
And strewed with flowers the thorny ways of truth?
O loss beyond repair!
O wretched father! left alone,
To weep their dire misfortune and thy own:
How shall thy weakened mind, oppressed with woe,
And drooping o'er thy Lucy's grave,
Perform the duties that you doubly owe!
Now she, alas! is gone,
From folly and from vice their helpless age to save?
* * * * *
O best of wives! O dearer far to me
Than when thy virgin charms
Were yielded to my arms:
How can my soul endure the loss of thee?
How in the world, to me a desert grown,
Abandoned and alone,
Without my sweet companion can I live?
Without thy lovely smile,
The dear reward of every virtuous toil,
What pleasures now can palled ambition give?
Even the delightful sense of well-earned praise,
Unshared by thee, no more my lifeless thoughts could raise.
For my distracted mind
What succour can I find?
On whom for consolation shall I call?
Support me, every friend;
Your kind assistance lend,
To bear the weight of this oppressive woe.
Alas! each friend of mine,
My dear departed love, so much was thine,
That none has any comfort to bestow.
My books, the best relief
In every other grief,
Are now with your idea saddened all:
Each favourite author we together read
My tortured memory wounds, and speaks of Lucy dead.
We were the happiest pair of human kind;
The rolling year its varying course performed,
And back returned again;
Another and another smiling came,
And saw our happiness unchanged remain:
Still in her golden chain
Harmonious concord did our wishes bind:
Our studies, pleasures, taste, the same.
O fatal, fatal stroke,
That all this pleasing fabric love had raised
Of rare felicity,
On which even wanton vice with envy gazed,
And every scheme of bliss our hearts had formed,
With soothing hope, for many a future day,
In one sad moment broke!—
Yet, O my soul, thy rising murmurs stay;
Nor dare the all-wise Disposer to arraign,
Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain;
That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade,
Was his most righteous will—and be that will obeyed.
