Note 325 — PREFACE TO CANTOS VI., VII., AND VIII.

From this number must be excepted Canning. Canning is a genius, almost a universal one, an orator, a wit, a poet, a statesman; and no man of talent can long pursue the path of his late predecessor, Lord C. If ever man saved his country, Canning can, but will he? I for one, hope so.

[The phrase, "great moral lesson," was employed by the Duke of Wellington, à propos of the restoration of pictures and statues to their "rightful owners," in a despatch addressed to Castlereagh, under date, Paris, September 19, 1815 (The Dispatches, etc. (ed. by Colonel Gurwood), 1847, viii. 270). The words, "moral lesson," as applied to the French generally, are to be found in Scott's Field of Waterloo (conclusion, stanza vi. line 3), which was written about the same time as the despatch. Byron quotes them in his "Ode from the French," stanza iv. line 8 (see Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 434, note 1). There is a satirical allusion to the Duke's "assumption of the didactic" about teaching a "great moral lesson" in the Preface to the first number of the Liberal (1822, p. xi.).]