time was now coming when hardly
any choice was left him but to take Canning back into his service again,
and under conditions that gave Canning a greater influence over public
affairs than he had ever had before.

[Sidenote: 1720-87--The early life of Canning]

[Transcriber's note: see the note on page 31.]

After the group of illustrious men, which included the elder and the
younger Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, had disappeared from English
public life, Canning was through the whole of his career the greatest
Parliamentary orator and leader in England. Up to the time at which we
have now arrived, he had not yet won his highest reputation as a
statesman. He was born under conditions which might have been depressing
and disheartening to one of different mould. His father was a man of old
family and well connected, who had in his earlier years developed some
taste for literature, and was regarded by most of his relatives as one
who merely brought discredit on his kindred by his mean ambition to
devote himself to the profession of letters. The elder Canning does not
seem, however, to have had a capacity for making a real success in that
way, and, indeed, it would appear as if he had too much of the often
fatal gift of the amateur in his composition to allow him to concentrate
his energies on any one pursuit. He sought for success in various fields
and never found it, and he died soon after his son, George Canning, was
born. The mother of the future statesman was thus left a widow while she
was still young, and, as she had great beauty and believed that she had a
vocation for the stage, she did her best to make a living for herself and
her child by becoming a professional actress. She was not much of an
actress, however, and, being unable to make any mark in London, she
passed for a time into the provinces, and at last married an actor and
disappeared from historical notice.

Meanwhile, the education of George Canning the son had been provided for
by his uncle, a wealthy merchant and banker, Stratford Canning, whose son
was afterwards famous as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the "great Elchi"
of Kinglake. This uncle seemed anxious to make reparation for the manner
in which his dead brother had been {33} treated by the family in general.
The young Canning was sent to Eton and to Oxford, and began to study for
the bar, but he displayed such distinct talents for literature and for
politics that there seemed little