be'--Charles James Fox, a master of
assemblies, and, according to Burke, perhaps the greatest debater whom
the world has ever seen. The books in question are entitled 'Memorials
and Correspondence,' which was published in four volumes at intervals
between the years 1853 and 1857, and the more important 'Life and Times
of Charles James Fox,' which appeared in three volumes between the years
1859 and 1866. This task, like so many others which Lord John
accomplished, came unsought at the death of his old friend, Lady
Holland, in 1845. It was the ambition of Lord Holland, 'nephew of Fox
and friend of Grey,' as he used proudly to style himself, to edit the
papers and write the life of his brilliant kinsman. Politics and society
and the stately house at Kensington, which, from the end of last century
until the opening years of the Queen's reign, was the chief _salon_ of
the Whig party, combined, with an easy procrastinating temperament, to
block the way, until death ended, in the autumn of 1840, the career of
the gracious master of Holland House. The materials which Lord Holland
and his physician, librarian, and friend, Dr. John Allen, had
accumulated, and which, by the way, passed under the scrutiny of Lord
Grey and Rogers, the poet, were edited by Lord John, with the result
that he grew fascinated with the subject, and formed the resolution, in
consequence, to write 'The Life and Times' of the great Whig statesman.
He declared that it was well to have a hero, and a hero with a good many
faults and failings.

[Sidenote: FOX AND MOORE]

Fox did more than any other statesman in the dull reign of George II. to
prepare the way for the epoch of Reform, and it was therefore fitting
that the statesman who more than any other bore the brunt of the battle
in 1830-32 should write his biography. Lord Russell's biography of Fox,
though by no means so skilfully written as Sir George Otto Trevelyan's
vivacious description of 'The Early History of Charles James Fox,' is on
a more extended scale than the latter. Students of the political annals
of the eighteenth century are aware of its value as an original and
suggestive contribution to the facts and forces which have shaped the
relations of the Crown and the Cabinet in modern history. Fox, in Lord
John's opinion, gave his life to the defence of English freedom, and
hastened his death by his exertion to abolish the African Slave Trade.
He lays stress, not only on the great qualities whi