Note 111 — Chapter XI

Jeffery Amherst, afterwards made Knight of the Bath, a Baron of England, and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of Great Britain, from which post he was removed in 1782, was one of those men who, in particular circumstances, in one period of their life have performed not only great actions, but have conducted them with consummate sense and address, and who in the rest of their lives have been able to display no symptoms of genius. Amherst, who terminated the war in America with so much ability, being afterwards raised to the command of the Army at home, was discovered and universally allowed to be a man of incapacity, or neglectful of the most common details of his office. Whether conscious of his own defects, and of being incompetent to converse with men whom he knew enlightened, he seemed determined to bury his deficiency in obstinate silence; or else his pride and vanity, of which he had a tolerable share, made him disdain to communicate his paucity of ideas. No satisfaction could be extorted from him on whatever business he was consulted; nor was it much easier to obtain from him the necessary orders in his department. In 1779, when the French Fleet arrived off Plymouth, he could not have given more absurd directions had he meant to betray the place; and, when every part of the coast was open to expected invasion, he was nowhere prepared with the common necessaries for taking the field. When reproached in Parliament with his negligence and insufficiency, he confirmed them by the sullen and inadequate brevity of his reply. When at last he was removed by the preponderance of the Opposition in 1782, he fell as unregretted as he had remained in place despised.

General Monk had been another of those temporary brilliants. All the depths of refined policy had seemed to have conducted and ensured his success. After the Restoration, not a gleam of genius appeared, though he proved just the reverse of Amherst. Monk had observed the most profound secrecy and dissimulation in conducting the re-establishment of the King. He seems to have thrown off all disguise in the rest of his life; though his activity remained, whenever called out. Amherst assumed reserve when he had nothing to conceal, and laid aside industry when it would have sufficed to communicate vigour to others. When men shine but once, it is probable that fortune has the chief merit in their success; and that others impute to their foresight the lucky combinations of chance in their favour.

In different parts of these Memoirs I am well aware that I have given very different characters of some of the principal actors. The reason is, that, having observed them well for a long series of years, I have seen cause to change my opinions—perhaps the persons themselves altered, for who is consistent? I choose to leave the portraits with their variations; I think they were just at each period in which they were drawn—the reader must judge from the conduct of the persons; for he will observe, that, if I vary my accounts, I produce the instances in which the actors appear different from themselves. Lord Chatham I have described in all the lights in which he appeared—sometimes a capital statesman, and sometimes an empiric. The Duke of Cumberland I have shown to have become a most wise, philosophic, and respectable, from a haughty and insolent Prince. Lord George Sackville I have spoken of with admiration of his parts, with great indecision on his spirit, with scorn of his want of judgment, and of his want of abilities in the latter part of his time. Lord Amherst was allowed for many years to have deserved the encomiums I have given to his conduct in America. The contempt conceived for him afterwards was so general, that, even while he retained his power, he had not an advocate.—A.

The author’s notes were generally written many years after the text. The above unfavourable portrait of Lord Amherst was probably annexed to the MS. at the close of the American war, when political animosities obscured every impartial view of living characters. The panegyric in text was composed in 1763, Horace Walpole being then more than ever disposed to magnify the events and extol the tactics of the seven-years’ war. Allowance must be made for these circumstances. We may abate something of the warmth of encomium in the text, but we must also mitigate the bitterness which forms so large an ingredient in the note.—E.