He is the parasite incarnate, vilely obsequious to the great man his patron, truculently offensive to everybody else. He has allowed Lord Monmouth to buy him body and soul, "with his clear head, his indefatigable industry, his audacious tongue, and his ready and unscrupulous pen; with all his dates, all his lampoons, all his private memoirs, and all his political intrigues." There is no office too menial for his performance, if only his master require it, and a word or a dinner is enough to atone for the degradation of the most odious service. At his lordship's command he is always ready with a "slashing" article, and who is so good at a slashing article as Rigby? Or he will bore a country audience with the French Revolution, which is his forte, or he will cheerfully denounce as un- English all the views wherewith he is not in agreement. So, incapable of dignity, strange to honour, ignorant of generosity, he scales the height of his ambition and becomes his patron's executor. Here is his apotheosis, here is the halo placed upon his head, at the expense of good feeling and independence. In most transactions "there is some portion which no one cares to accomplish, and which everybody wishes to be achieved." And this is Rigby's portion, which he achieves without a murmur of complaint, and for which he is rewarded by a comfortable legacy and much scandal.

Now, the venom of this portrait lies in its halftruth.

Croker was as good at a "slashing article"

as Rigby himself; he, too, was the obliging friend of the great; he, too, took the keenest delight in political intrigue. But while all that Rigby accomplished is turned to his dishonour, Croker was a useful public servant, a sound man of letters, and a politician of keen though narrow intelligence. His gift of organisation was conspicuous. He proved himself an excellent Secretary to the Admiralty; he helped to establish The Quarterly Review; and he was the effective founder of the Athenæum Club. Noscitur a sociis, and he cannot be wholly bad who is the associate of Wellington, Peel, Scott, and Lockhart. The great Duke, indeed, regarded Croker as his oldest and closest friend, and there is no great man of that age whose house and society Croker did not frequent. His friendship with Hertford was of old standing, and on Croker's side disinterested; and since Hertford was a man of cultivation as well as of pleasure,

1 It was in The Quarterly that Croker did his best work, and though his judgment in politics was generally sound, it was marred by an habitual violence of expression. Malevolence was so deeply ingrained in him, that he was unconscious of its use, and, in truth, it was a fault of style rather than a depravation of thought. At the same time, The Quarterly would have been better without him. Sir Walter Scott, who loved the man, saw at the very outset how great a danger he was to The Quarterly. Yet after thirty years he was still supplying sixty-four pages to each number, and sprinkling the articles of others from the pepper-box of his abuse. Lockhart resigned himself humbly to be “over-Crokered." It took the courage of Elwin, a country parson, to get rid of him, and even Elwin allowed that he had "fine and generous elements in his nature."

Moreover,

the friend of poets and of Ministers, his acquaintance was not of itself a disgrace to any one. for many years the Secretary of the Admiralty managed the Marquis's estates, and took not a penny for his trouble. Even the prosecution of Suisse, the blackguardly valet who, with the aid of one of Hertford's cast-off mistresses, Angeline Borel, had stolen many thousands of pounds, was an act of courage. Croker could not profit by the case, which inevitably involved him in an ugly scandal. Yet he did not shrink from an executor's duty, and has stood in the pillory ever since.

He has been attacked by common consent. Nor is party spite enough to explain the malevolence of his critics.1 Macaulay, of course, attacked him because he did not like his political views, and made no attempt to hide his malice. "See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of Blue and Yellow," he wrote, before the Boswell appeared; "I detest him more than cold boiled veal." But Disraeli was not influenced by public animosity, "Croker,"

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1 At least one political opponent has sung his praises. wrote Lord Brougham, was a most important person in Opposition. Nothing could exceed his ability and his thorough knowledge of his subject. . . His talents were of a very high order, and have not, I think, been sufficiently allowed. He was also a man of great personal kindness to his friends, though a good hater of his enemies, and so much devoted to his opinions that he voluntarily retired from Parliament as soon as the Reform Bill passed, and he never returned." In this tribute there is nothing to suggest either Wenham or Rigby.

and Thackeray (maybe) did no more than follow Disraeli's lead. What, then, is the cause of this fierce and various hostility? The Quarterly is partly to blame. For many years it was the world's habit to ascribe all harsh criticisms to the single pen of Croker. It is an old trick, as common now as then, but assuredly it put upon Croker many an undeserved. affront. But The Quarterly, at its bitterest, was insufficient to arouse the cloud of obloquy which enveloped Croker. It must be confessed also that his

temperament was unsympathetic. He liked to have a finger in everybody's pie, and he possessed a curious talent for making himself indispensable to the great. Not that he was subservient. In fact his independence of spirit shines clearly in every page of his Memoirs. But he found himself more at ease and proved himself more agreeable among his superiors than among his equals, and it was this faculty more than any other that rendered him unpopular. But in face of odium he betrayed no resentment. When Thackeray was not elected to the Athenæum, Croker interfered in his favour, and when the libel of Coningsby was pointed out to him many years after its publication, he declared that he never read novels, and heard of Rigby for the first time!

Thus, chiefly because he was contemptuous and morose, Croker has been held up by two novelists as the vilest of men. Thackeray's Wenham, like Thackeray's Steyne, is but a partial portrait, which

reproduces no more than one imagined trait. It suggests neither slashing articles nor political fidelity. It suggests neither undigested learning nor a taste for the French Revolution, and it must be confessed that Rigby, like Monmouth, is far closer to the original. And this enables us to contrast Disraeli's method with Thackeray's. Disraeli, when he drew a character from life, drew it with his eye unrelentingly fixed upon the object. Thackeray, on the other hand, was content with a suggestion, and declared that "he never consciously copied anybody." Yet with Coningsby before him, he cannot evade the responsibility of Steyne and Wenham, though these, to be sure, are remote enough to be innocuous.