.
When Lord Grey's Ministry was formed in 1830 to carry Reform, Lord John
was the author of several books, grave and gay, and had been seventeen
years in Parliament, winning already a considerable reputation within
and without its walls. It was a surprise at the moment, and it is not
even yet quite clear why Russell was excluded from the Cabinet. Mr.
Disraeli has left on record his interpretation of the mystery: 'Lord
John Russell was a man of letters, and it is a common opinion that a man
cannot at the same time be successful both in meditation and in action.'
If this surmise is correct, Lord John's fondness for printer's ink kept
him out of Downing Street until he made by force his merit known as a
champion of popular rights in the House of Commons. Literature often
claimed his pen, for, besides many contributions in prose and verse to
periodicals, to say nothing of writings which still remain in manuscript
and prefaces to the books of other people, he published about twenty
works, great and small. Yet, his strength lay elsewhere.

His literary pursuits, with scarcely an exception, represent his hours
of relaxation and the manner in which he sought relief from the cares of
State. In the pages of 'William, Lord Russell,' which was published in
1819, when political corruption was supreme and social progress all but
impossible, Lord John gave forth no uncertain sound. 'In these times,
when love of liberty is too generally supposed to be allied with rash
innovation, impiety, and anarchy, it seems to me desirable to exhibit to
the world at full length the portrait of a man who, heir to wealth and
title, was foremost in defending the privileges of the people; who, when
busily occupied in the affairs of public life, was revered in his own
family as the best of husbands and of fathers; who joined the truest
sense of religion with the unqualified assertion of freedom; who, after
an honest perseverance in a good cause, at length attested, on the
scaffold, his attachment to the ancient principles of the Constitution
and the inalienable right of resistance.' The interest of the book
consists not merely in its account--gathered in part at least from
family papers at Woburn and original letters at Longleat--of Lord
Russell, but also in the light which is cast on the period of the
Restoration, and the policy of Charles II. and the Duke of York.

[Sidenote: A CONFIDENT WHIG]

Two years later, Lord John published an 'Essay on the