Born, at Walmer, 30 Jan. 1805. Matric., Ch. Ch., Oxford, 19 April 1823; B.A., 1827; Created D.C.L., 11 June 1834; M.A., 18 Dec. 1854; Hon. Student, Ch. Ch., 1858–75. M.P. for Wootton-Bassett, 1830–31; for Hertford, 1832–52. Under-Sec. of State for Foreign Affairs, 1834–35; Sec. to Board of Control, 1845–46. F.R.S., 1827. Married Emily Harriet Kerrison, 10 July 1834. F.S.A., 1841; Pres., 1846. Succeeded to Earldom, 1855. Founded Stanhope Modern History Prize at Oxford, 1855. Chairman of National Portrait Gallery, 1857. Lord Rector of Marischal Coll., Aberdeen, 1858. Hon. LL.D. Camb., 1864. Foreign Member of French Acad., 1872. Hon. Antiquary to Royal Academy. Governor of Wellington Coll. Trustee of British Museum. Died, at Bournemouth, 24 Dec. 1875. Works: “Life of Belisarius,” 1829; “History of the War of the Succession in Spain” (2 pts.), 1832–33; “Lord John Russell and Mr. Macaulay on the French Revolution” (anon.), 1833; “Letters from Switzerland” (anon.; priv. ptd.), 1834; “History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles” (7 vols.), 1836–54; “Speech … on the Law of Copyright,” 1842; “Essai sur la Vie du Grand Condé” (priv. ptd.), 1842 (English version, 1845); “Historical Essays” (from “Quarterly Rev.”), 1849; “The Forty-five,” 1851; “Letter to Jared Sparks,” 1852; “Secret Correspondence connected with Mr. Pitt’s return to Office in 1804” (priv. ptd.), 1852; “Lord Chatham at Chevening” (priv. ptd.), 1855; “Addresses delivered at Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham,” 1856; “Address delivered … as Lord Rector of Marischal Coll.,” 1858; “Life of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt” (4 vols.), 1861–62; “Miscellanies,” 1863; “History of England during the Reign of Queen Anne, until the Peace of Utrecht,” 1870 (2nd edn. same year); “Miscellanies, second series,” 1872. Posthumous: “The French Retreat from Moscow, etc.” (from “Quarterly Rev.”), 1876; “Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington,” 1888. He edited: Earl of Peterborough’s “Letters to General Stanhope,” 1834; Hon. A. Stanhope’s “Spain under Charles the Second,” 1840; “Extracts from Dispatches of the British Envoy at Florence” (priv. ptd. for Roxburghe Club), 1843; “Correspondence between … William Pitt and Charles Duke of Rutland,” 1842; Earl of Chesterfield’s “Letters,” 1845; “Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel” (with E. Cardwell), 1856–57.
Personal
He is a distinguished personage in the way of letters, science and art, and I found him particularly agreeable. He is a slender, thin man, with handsome features, curly hair, and spectacles.
General
He has undoubtedly [“History of the War of Succession in Spain”] some of the most valuable qualities of an historian—great diligence in examining authorities, great judgment in weighing testimony, and great impartiality in estimating characters…. His narrative is very perspicuous, and is also entitled to the praise, seldom, we grieve to say, deserved by modern writers, of being very concise. It must be admitted however, that, with many of the best qualities of a literary veteran, he has some of the faults of a literary novice. He has no great command of words. His style is seldom easy, and is sometimes unpleasantly stiff.
Lord Mahon’s “History” [“From the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles”] contains a great quantity of valuable and original information, acquired from authentic sources never before opened to the public. It is written in a lively, entertaining style…. It is, in short, a substantial and permanent acquisition to one of the most important departments of English Literature.
A judicious and accurate writer, whose faithfulness and good sense may be depended on, though he has not the animation and spirit of style which a work of this kind requires.
Lord Mahon’s excellent “History of the War of the Succession in Spain” leaves the same general impression on the mind of the reader as to the effect of that war on the Spanish character, that is left by the contemporary accounts of it. It is, no doubt, the true one.
An accurate, calmly-tempered, and attractive history, will be found in Lord Mahon’s “History of England” during an important part of the last century.
We are not going to comment on these agreeable volumes at large. We have read them with great interest and enjoyment;—not with satisfaction; that is more than we can say…. Lord Mahon is not only an upright historian, but a writer, in the main, competent and accomplished for his work. If he makes no parade of philosophical disquisition, his exhibition of events and actors is such that the reader easily gets at the lessons, with the added pleasure of seeming to make them his own discovery. His style is perspicuous and flowing. Though not distinguished by vigor or grace, it gets over the ground evenly, and with speed enough, without Gibbon’s stilts, or the grand and lofty tumbling of Carlyle. It has the great merit of a flexibility which makes it equal to dignified narrative, and which, at the same time, permits the introduction, without abruptness or jar, of personal anecdotes and illustrations of a lighter character.
Lord Mahon has brought to the arduous task of continuing Hume’s “History” through the eighteenth century, the taste of a scholar, the liberality of a gentleman, and the industry of an antiquarian.
There is no work that can be more safely put in the hands of the American historical student than Lord Mahon’s, not only for its tolerant and philosophic views of English affairs, but as enabling a reasonable American to feel and understand how his own history appears to a generous and friendly foreign observer. Such a process is very salutary in this self-complacent meridian.
Lord Stanhope’s “Life of Mr. Pitt” has both the excellences and the defects which we should expect from him, and neither of them are what we expect in a great historical writer of the present age…. He is not anxious to be original. He travels if possible in the worn track of previous historians; he tells a plain tale in an easy plain way; he shrinks from wonderful novelties; with the cautious skepticism of true common-sense, he is always glad to find that the conclusions at which he arrives coincide with those of former inquirers. His style is characteristic of his matter: he narrates with a gentle sense and languid accuracy, very different from the stimulating rhetoric and exciting brilliancy of his more renowned contemporaries.
Earl Stanhope has written from the best materials a most interesting biography of the younger Pitt, with whom he was connected by family ties, by sentiments of gratitude, and by the affinities of political principles; yet he has not hesitated to expose the very grave defects in his character and conduct, and has obtained approbation for candor.
Always writes with dignity and elegance, and inspires confidence in his candor if he does not transport the reader with enthusiasm for his brilliancy.
Lord Mahon is a zealous investigator, and a clear and impartial writer. His “History of England” contains an able account,—the best, perhaps, yet written by one not a native,—of the American War of Independence. Unfortunately, however, it involved him in two disputes with American historians. He had charged Sparks with altering Washington’s letters, and also with adding matter not contained in them. This charge was indignantly repelled and refuted, and was subsequently withdrawn by Lord Mahon himself. He had also characterized the execution of André as a “blot” upon Washington’s career. This led to an exhaustive investigation of the entire subject by Major Charles Biddle of Philadelphia, who showed conclusively “that Washington had no alternative; the prisoner was regularly tried before the proper tribunal, and received the fate which he had incurred.”
The very titles of most of Lord Stanhope’s works are enough to show that the writer was totally devoid of enthusiasm…. What he brought to his work were the qualities of calm sense and clear judgment, together with a thorough love of truth for its own sake. No one will probably even rise from the perusal of his history, or of the life of Pitt, which is properly its continuation, with a sense that he has gained any clear insight into the inner life of the times of which they treat. But neither will anyone have cause to complain that his feet have been entangled in the meshes of paradox, or that he has been beguiled with party politics under the name of history. The external facts will have been set clearly before the reader, and it will be for him to interpret the riddle as best he can.
The sympathies of Stanhope are with the Tories, and are therefore the very opposite of those of Macaulay. In point of style, too, the works are very dissimilar. Stanhope has shown great diligence in examining authorities, good judgment in weighing testimony, and great impartiality in estimating characters; but in the presentation of his results he is quite devoid of that literary skill which made his predecessor so famous. The style, though generally perspicuous, is formal and stiff, sometimes even incorrect.
Was an active historical writer of great diligence and impartiality, and possessed of a fair though not very distinguished style.
He does not reach distinction either of thought or style.
