e name of Charles
James Fox.

It would not be easy to imagine a worse training for a youth intended
for the service of his country and destined to contend for the honors
of the State than the life that was lived by Charles James Fox from
early boyhood to early manhood. It was not in the power of his father,
Henry Fox, Lord Holland, to set before his son the example of a parent
whose public life was pure, admirable, and honorable. But in the
domestic circle Lord Holland was {142} a very different man from the
corrupt and juggling politician known to the world. In the domestic
circle his affections and his tendernesses were his most conspicuous
traits, and in the domestic circle he was as unfortunate for his
children through his very virtues as outside it he was unfortunate by
reason of his vices. Fox was a loving husband, but he was an adoring
father, and the extremest zeal and warmth of his adoration was given to
his son Charles James. The child was from the first precocious, alert,
and gifted beyond his years, and the father fostered and flattered the
precocity with a kind of worship that proved, as it was bound to prove,
disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that
the best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to
gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to every
passion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teem
with tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires and
moods of his imperious infant. He made him his companion while he was
still in the nursery; he allowed him to be his master before he had
fairly left it. Never was the creed of Thelema acted upon more
consistently and persistently than by Lord Holland towards Charles
James Fox. It is an astonishing proof of the strength and innate
goodness of the childish nature that it was not ruined outright,
hopelessly and helplessly, by the worst training ever given to a son by
a father. That it did Fox infinite harm cannot be denied and was only
to be expected. That it failed entirely to unbalance his mind and
destroy his character only serves to show the sterling temper of Fox's
metal. His youth was like his childhood, petted, spoiled, wayward,
capricious, and captivating. Every one loved him, his father, his
father's friends, the school companions with whom he wrote Latin verses
in praise of lovely ladies with lovely names. All through his life the
love of men