if he were the weak man capable of nothing else. The Eton
boys all prophesied his future fame. At Oxford, where he entered
Hertford College, he was one of the best men of his time, and one of the
wildest. A clergyman, strong in Greek, was arguing with young Fox
against the genuineness of a verse of the Iliad because its measure was
unusual. Fox at once quoted from memory some twenty parallels.

From college he went on the usual tour of Europe, spending lavishly,
incurring heavy debts, and sending home large bills for his father to
pay. One bill alone, paid by his father to a creditor at Naples, was for
sixteen thousand pounds. He came back in raiment of the highest fashion,
and was put into Parliament in 1768, not yet twenty years old, as member
for Midhurst. He began his political life with the family opinions,
defended the Ministry against John Wilkes, and was provided promptly with
a place as Paymaster of the Pensions to the Widows of Land Officers, and
then, when he had reached the age of twenty-one, there was a seat found
for him at the Board of Admiralty.

At once Fox made his mark in the House as a brilliant debater with an
intellectual power and an industry that made him master of the subjects
he discussed. Still also he was scattering money, and incurring debt,
training race-horses, and staking heavily at gambling tables. When a
noble friend, who was not a gambler, offered to bet fifty pounds upon a
throw, Fox declined, saying, "I never play for pence."

After a few years of impatient submission to Lord North, Fox broke from
him, and it was not long before he had broken from Lord North's opinions
and taken the side of the people in all leading questions. He became the
friend of Burke; and joined in the attack upon the policy of Coercion
that destroyed the union between England and her American colonies. In
1774, at the age of twenty-five, Fox lost by death his father, his
mother, and his elder brother, who had succeeded to the title, and who
had left a little son to be his heir. In February of that year Lord
North had finally broken with Fox by causing a letter to be handed to him
in the House of Commons while he was sitting by his side on the Treasury
Bench.

"His Majesty has thought proper to order a new commission of the
Treasury to be made out, in which I do not perceive your name. NORTH."

By the end of the year he was member for Malmesbury, and one of the
chiefs in opposition. Whe