Fleeter than Icarus now I’ll haste, A tuneful swan, to Libya’s waste, And heaving sands, where Bospor’s wave Tosses, or Arctic tempests rave. Me Colchis, Dacia me shall learn, Who hides her fear of Marsian stern; Me Scythia’s hordes, the well-trained son Of Spain, and he who quaffs the Rhone. From my mock bier be far away The loud lament, the funeral lay; And, tribute to my fancied doom, Far the vain honours of the tomb!—ED.] [The charge of FOX’S having sent ADAIR to St. Petersburg, to counteract the measures of PITT’S government, first broached in Mr. Burke’s “Letter on the Conduct of the Minority,” has been vigorously contradicted, yet so late as April, 1854, it was alluded to as a fact by Lord Malmesbury in the House of Peers. It was, however, on this occasion again authoritatively denied by LORD CAMPBELL, who took occasion to observe that SIR ROBERT ADAIR was “now in his 90th year, and for many years had served his country with great assiduity and fidelity. He had been sent by successive ministers [Mr. Fox, Lord Grey, _Mr. Canning_ (who assisted in libelling him so often in the pages of the present work), Lord Wellesley, Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Wellington] to Vienna, to Constantinople, to Brussels, and to Berlin, and had represented the Crown of England upon some occasions of very great importance, in which he had uniformly acquitted himself to the satisfaction of the Government and for the benefit of his country. He believed a more honourable man had not lived in this country at any time.” The following denial by Sir Robert Adair himself is copied from his autograph statement, prefixed to the _Life of Wilberforce_, published in 1838:—“This idle story is here accredited by Mr. Wilberforce, and inserted by his sons, without due examination. It was grounded on a journey I made to Vienna and St. Petersburg in 1791. Doctor Prettyman [_sic_], Bishop of Winchester, in a work entitled _The Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt_, published by him in 1823, brought forward the fact of my having gone upon this journey as a criminal charge against Mr. Fox, who, as he pretends, sent me upon it with the intent of counteracting some negociations then carrying on between Great Britain and Russia at St. Petersburg. I answered his accusation, I trust successfully, in two letters published by Longman & Co. [_Two Letters from Mr. Adair to the Bp. of Winchester, in answer to the charge of a High Treasonable Misdemeanour brought by his Lordship against Mr. Fox and himself in his Life of the Rt. Hon. W. Pitt_, 8vo., 1821], and explained the circumstances which induced me in my travels in 1791 to visit the two capitals above mentioned.—ROBERT ADAIR: 1838.”