280
NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. i. A. 2, imo.
worth to read the manuscript. " On meeting his
host at dinner on the second evening of his stay,
Colburn said, ' I must be back in London early
to-morrow.' ' You don't see your way then to
it ? ' interrogatingly murmured the master of
Knebworth. ' On the contrary,' rejoined Colburn,
' My object in leaving you is to lose not a day in
getting it out.' " ' The New Timon ' contains
the first prediction that Peel would before long
abandon Protection altogether. - In ' N. & Q.' for
the 27th of May, 1893 (8 S. iii. 415), Mr. Walter
Hamilton supplies the reference to Tennyson
in the poem, and also mentions the satire by
Tennyson which appeared in Punch on the 28th
of February, 1846, signed " Alcibiades," followed
by an ' After Thought ' on the 7th of March,
Tennyson's son in the Life of his father states
that " About these poems he left a note" which
includes the words : "I never sent my lines to
Punch. John Forster did. They were too bitter.
I do not think that I should ever have pub-
lished them."
In reference to ' Eugene Aram,' Mr. Escott relates that 'the Eugene Aram in real life had been engaged by Bulwer's grandfather (the " Justice ") to give his daughters occasional instruction in their schoolroom at Heydon Hall. Moreover, among the pupils at the King's Lynn school where Aram was usher had been a boy after- wards distinguished as Admiral Burney. With him Bulwer, perhaps on Thomas Hood's sugges- tion, placed himself in communication. The whole account of Eugene Aram's relations with the Lester family in the romance was taken word for word, fact for fact, from Burney's notes. In the edition published by Chapman & Hall in 1849 Lytton states that, " on going with maturer judg- ment over all the evidence on which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself that, though an accomplice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the premeditated design and the actual deed of murder." Bulwer " accordingly so shaped Aram's confession to Walter."
In The Leeds Mercury of 11 Nov., 1899, appeared a long defence of Eugene Aram from the pen of Mr. J. M. Richardson, who styles Eugene Aram
- ' the Dreyfus of the eighteenth century."
Mr. Escott, with his wide knowledge of politics, does not allow the fame of Lytton to rest on his writings, but does justice to his public services. In 1831 he was elected member for St. Ives, and in the following year he protested against the law which restricted theatrical performances to the two patent theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane. On the 14th of June, 1832, he submitted to the House a resolution for cheap postage on newspapers and other periodicals. He also waged war upon the stamp duties on newspapers, and took part in debates on factory reform. His successful plea for the West Indian negro brought him votes of thanks from the opponents of slavery on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr. Escott states that the general temper of Sir Edward Lytton's colonial administration expressed itself in his specific acts of policy. He had not been in power a fortnight when a stroke of his pen abolished the old mail contract with Australia a blunder in its origin, and a disaster in its results. After this came the removal of a long-standing cause of quarrel between France and England in their African relationships. Then came the relief of the West Indian planters by an
Encumbered Estates Bill. These, among many
other good things, Lytton worked to secure, and
although ' N. & Q.' does not touch on politics, no
record of Lytton's life would be complete without
this reference.
Lytton died in harness. The inflammation in the ear which had long troubled him brought on an epileptic fit, and in a few hours all was over. Still more sudden was the death, eighteen years later, of his gifted son, who died in Paris on 24 Nov., 1891, with his pen in his hand.
Lytton was full of kindness of heart to the rank and file of literary workers. Among instances of this cited by Mr. Escott one must suffice that of Antonio Gallenga, from whose lips the account is given, When Saunders & Ottley published Gallenga's ' Italy Past and Present,' of those who received presentation copies Lytton alone acknow- ledged the book, and he " further took the trouble of ascertaining how he could best serve the author, then an obscure and needy exile in the squalid streets abutting on Leicester Square ; he lost not a day getting Gallenga to dine with him at his house in Mayfair. After an expression of delight at seeing an Italian able so effectively to plead the cause of his country and awaken Euro- pean interest on its behalf, ' I have never,' he said, ' known a foreigner to attain such a style, as beautiful in form as in thought. ' ' ' Lytton offered Gallenga the post of his private secretary at a substantial salary, and sent him with letters to Delane and Mowbray Morris, thus beginning his connexion with The Times.
We close our notice with Dickens 's tribute as far back as 1851 : " There cannot now be, or ever have been, among the followers of literature a man so entirely without the grudging little jealousies that too often disparage its brightness as Sir Edward Lytton."
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G. Y. BALDOCK (" Priestley and the Birmingham Riots of 1791 "). See the notice of Priestley in the <D.N.B.,'xlvi. 363-4.
