[324] [Mr. Joseph Carttar, of Deptford, coroner for the County of Kent, addressed the jury at some length. The following sentences are taken from the report of the inquest, contained in _The Annual Biography and Obituary for the year 1823_, vol. vii. p. 57: "As a public man, it is impossible for me to weigh his character in any scales that I can hold. In private life I believe the world will admit that a more amiable man could not be found.... If it should unfortunately appear that there is not sufficient evidence to prove what is generally considered the indication of a disordered mind, I trust that the jury will pay some attention to my humble opinion, which is, that no man can be in his proper senses at the moment he commits so rash an act as self-murder. ...The Bible declares that a man clings to nothing so strongly as his own life, I therefore view it as an axiom, and an abstract principle, that a man must necessarily be out of his mind at the moment of destroying himself." Byron, probably, read the report of the inquest in Cobbett's _Weekly Register_ (August 17, 1822, vol. 43, pp. 389-425). The "eulogy" was in perfectly good taste, but there can be little doubt that if "Waddington or Watson" had cut _their_ "carotid arteries," the verdict would have been different.] [325] From this number must be excepted Canning. Canning is a genius, almost a universal one, an orator, a wit, a poet, a statesman; and no man of talent can long pursue the path of his late predecessor, Lord C. If ever man saved his country, Canning _can_, but _will_ he? I for one, hope so. [The phrase, "great moral lesson," was employed by the Duke of Wellington, _à propos_ of the restoration of pictures and statues to their "rightful owners," in a despatch addressed to Castlereagh, under date, Paris, September 19, 1815 (_The Dispatches, etc._ (ed. by Colonel Gurwood), 1847, viii. 270). The words, "moral lesson," as applied to the French generally, are to be found in Scott's _Field of Waterloo_ (conclusion, stanza vi. line 3), which was written about the same time as the despatch. Byron quotes them in his "Ode from the French," stanza iv. line 8 (see _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 434, note 1). There is a satirical allusion to the Duke's "assumption of the didactic" about teaching a "great moral lesson" in the Preface to the first number of the _Liberal_ (1822, p. xi.).] {267}[326] When Lord Sandwich said "he did not know the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy," Warburton, the bishop, replied, "Orthodoxy, my lord, is _my doxy_, and heterodoxy is _another man's_ doxy." A prelate of the present day has discovered, it seems, a _third_ kind of doxy, which has not greatly exalted in the eyes of the elect that which Bentham calls "Church-of-Englandism." [For the "prelate," see _Letters_, 1902, vi. 101, note 2.] [327] [For the Duke of Wellington and the Holy Alliance, see the Introduction to _The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 538, 561.]