n, I grant, might pleasing be;
And Ros'mond was as sweet as shee.

Some, the quicke eye commends;
Some, swelling lips and red;
Pale lookes have many friends,
Through sacred sweetnesse bred.
Medowes have flowres that pleasure move,
Though Roses are the flowres of love.

Free beauty is not bound
To one unmoved clime:
She visits ev'ry ground,
And favours ev'ry time.
Let the old loves with mine compare,
My Sov'raigne is as sweet and fair.

GEORGE CANNING

(1770-1827)

[Illustration: GEORGE CANNING]

The political history of this famous British statesman is told by
Robert Bell (1846), by F.H. Hill (English Worthies Series), and in
detail by Stapleton (his private secretary) in 'Political Life of
Canning.' He became a friend of Pitt in 1793, entered the House of
Commons in 1794, was made Under-Secretary of State in 1796, was
Treasurer of the Navy from 1804 to 1806, Minister for Foreign Affairs
from 1807 till 1809, Ambassador to Lisbon from 1814 to 1816, again at
the head of foreign affairs in 1822, and was made Premier in 1827,
dying under the labor of forming his Cabinet.

Soon after his birth in London, April 11th, 1770, his disinherited
father died in poverty, and his mother became an unsuccessful actress.
An Irish actor, Moody, took young Canning to his uncle, Stratford
Canning, in London, who adopted him and sent him to Eton, where he
distinguished himself for his wit and literary talent. With his
friends John and Robert Smith, John Hookham Frere, and Charles Ellis,
he published a school magazine called The Microcosm, which attracted
so much attention that Knight the publisher paid Canning L50 for the
copyright. It was modeled on the Spectator, ridiculed modes and
customs, and was a unique specimen of juvenile essay-writing. A fifth
edition of the Microcosm was published in 1825. Subsequently Canning
studied at Oxford. He died August 8th, 1827, at Chiswick (the
residence of the Duke of Devonshire), in the same room and at the same
age as Fox, and under similar circumstances; and he was buried in
Westminster Abbey by the side of William Pitt.

It was not until 1798 that he obtained his great reputation as a
statesman and orator. Every one agrees that his literary eloquence,
wit, beauty of imagery, taste, and clearness of reasoning, were
extraordinary. Byron calls him "a genius--almost a universal one; an
orator, a wit, a poet, and a statesman." As a