Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2

[48] appear very steady. He does not think of visiting America; but he said that he should be willing to be there without a penny in his pocket, and he would simply say, ‘I am Tom Campbell.’ He enforces most all that he says by an oath. His brother, as he informed me, married a daughter of Patrick Henry. He told some stories that were none of the purest, with a good deal of humor. Jerdan you well know as the editor of the ‘Literary Gazette.’ He is a tall, vulgar Scotchman, who annoyed me by proposing my health in a long rigmarole speech. He has a good deal of humor. Of the rest at table I have not time to write you. A diary has just been brought to light, kept by the vicar of the church at Stratford-on-Avon during the time of Shakspeare, and in which the name of Shakspeare is several times mentioned. What is said of him I do not know. One of our guests to-night was Dr. Severn, in whose hands the manuscript has been placed, and who will edit it.

You will doubtless read the ‘Edinburgh Review’ just published, and the brilliant article by Lord Brougham on ‘Foreign Relations.’¹ Admire, I pray you, the epigram by Johnny Williams on Napoleon. After reading it, I took down the ‘Greek Anthology,’ and compared it with the famous one on Themistocles and with several others, and I must say that I think Williams's the best; it is a wonderful feat in the Greek language. Lord B. repeated it to me at table, before it appeared in print. I have also heard Baron Parke repeat it. Williams is said to know ‘Virgil’ and several other classics by heart. In society he is very dull; but he does write beautiful Greek. Lord Brougham's work will not be published till next week. It is on Natural Theology, in two volumes, and embraces an analysis of Cuvier, Newton's ‘Principia,’ and Laplace's ‘Mecanique Celeste.’ I saw him in his study yesterday; he had a printer's devil on one side and his private secretary on the other. Mirabile dictu, he did not use an oath! He thanked me for Rev. Dr. Young's discourse on Dr. Bowditch, which I had given him some days before, and said that it was very good,—just what was wanted. (I received two copies of Young's discourse, —one I gave to Lord B., the other to Sir David Brewster.) He told me that he had received a long letter of eight pages from his mother, giving him an account of the late tremendous hurricane that had passed over Brougham Hall; that the letter was a capital one, and that every line contained a fact. Truly his Lordship is a wonderful man; and, I am disposed to believe, the most eloquent one in English history. I think I have already told you that Earl Grey said to Lord Wharncliffe, on the evening of B.'s speech on the Reform Bill, that it was the greatest speech he ever heard in his life; and his life covered the period of Pitt and Fox. In this judgment Lord W. concurred. Mr. Rogers has told me that Sir Robert Peel said he never knew what eloquence was till he heard B.'s speech on the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. Do not listen to the articles and the reports that Lord B. is no speaker. He is most eloquent; and his voice,