e of Pitt?

The other enthusiastic friend was typically Irish in temperament. Celtic
in vivacity and charm, feminine in sensitiveness, Canning was dowered
with virile persistence and pugnacity. In histrionic and versifying
power he rivalled his countryman, Sheridan, who never forgave him for
deserting the Whigs and going over to Pitt. The loss was indeed serious;
for the young orator was far more than a _frondeur_. As editor of the
"Anti-Jacobin," conjointly with Hookham Frere, he covered with ridicule
the detractors of their country, and helped on the revival of national
spirit which began in 1798. But he also possessed great administrative
talents, displaying as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs an insight
into character in which his chief, Grenville, was signally lacking.
Canning's letters to Pitt on the negotiation at Lille in 1797 show signs
of those inductive powers which appear at their zenith in his
brilliantly correct inference ten years later that the Danish fleet must
be snatched from the clutch of Napoleon.

The statuesque calm of Pitt's personality charmed and overawed this
impressionable Irishman from the time of their first interview in the
summer of 1792. Always versatile and sometimes shifty, he seems
instinctively to have felt in him the needed counterpart. As the Czar
Alexander leaned on the rock-like Stein in the crisis of 1812, so
Canning gained strength and confidence from reliance on Pitt. He on his
side took a keen interest in his disciple, discerning in him the
propagator of the Pitt doctrine and tradition. At times the fostering
care became fatherly. A case in point was Canning's marriage with a
wealthy Scottish heiress (July 1800). Pitt regarded this event as
essential to his success as the future leader of the party. Indeed, so
absorbed was he in his own thoughts during the ride to the church as not
to notice a pert remark of Canning's friend, Hookham Frere. The
clergyman, Frere, and he were in a coach driving along Swallow Street
towards Brook Street when a carter who saw them called out: "What! Billy
Pitt! and with a parson too!" Thereupon Frere burst out with the daring
jest, "He thinks you are going to Tyburn to be hanged privately!" But
Pitt was too pre-occupied to notice the gibe. Again, after the
ceremony, in the vestry Pitt was so nervous as to be unable to sign as a
witness, and Canning had to whisper to Frere to sign without waiting for
him.[622] They ascribed his strange inactio