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Nightfall found the position unchanged, save that another pontoon bridge had been constructed during the day. Over this Hildyard's Brigade marched to relieve Lyttelton's, who came back for a rest under the cover of the Swartz Kop guns. Their losses in the two days had been under two hundred and fifty, a trifle if any aim were to be gained, but excessive for a mere demonstration.
His Majesty then asked him what he thought of Lord Lyttelton's History, which was then just published. Johnson said, he thought his style pretty good, but that he had blamed Henry the Second rather too much. The King then asked him what he thought of Dr. Hill.
In the interval between General Lyttelton's brigade and General Wauchope's, which stood next to it, were two Maxims. Then came the Warwicks, Camerons, Seaforths, and Lincolns. To the Lincolns' right, where the trenches began and the line faced nearly west, was Colonel Maxwell's brigade.
The remaining four batteries of field artillery were intended at the proper moment to concentrate their fire upon the Wylie kopjes, preparing the way for the crucial charge of the 2nd Brigade. For this object, two followed Lyttelton's 4th Brigade, and two the 6th; the last, under Colonel Long, being accompanied by six naval 12-pounders.
The infantry of Lyttelton's Brigade, however, endured patiently throughout the day, in spite of the galling cross-fire and severe losses. At about four in the afternoon the Boers made a sudden attack on the hill, creeping to within short range, and then opened a quick fire. The Vickers-Maxim guns supported this vigorously.
Such is a plain, dry, statistical account of the most extraordinary event that happened in Dr. Johnson's day. However, the story does not end here. On the fatal night, 27th November, 1779, Mr. Andrews, M.P., a friend of Lyttelton's was awakened by finding Lord Lyttelton drawing his curtains. Suspecting a practical joke, he hunted for his lordship both in his house and in the garden.
One of the most objectionable passages in Lord Lyttelton's book is, in my opinion, his apologising for the moderate government of Augustus. A man who had exhausted tyranny in the most lawless and unjustifiable excesses is to be excused, because, out of weariness or policy, he grows less sanguinary at last! There is a little book coming out, that will amuse you.
"Cicero," says Plutarch, "used to give them private advice, keeping up a correspondence with Cæsar, and urging many things upon Pompey himself, soothing and persuading each of them." But such criticism on Cicero as Lyttelton's proceeds on an entire misconception of the design and purpose with which the ancients prosecuted philosophical studies.
In Edward Lyttelton's admirable monograph of his brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train, sucking an orange, "a small, grubby Italian, leaning on his walking-stick, smoking a cheroot at the station," was looked upon, not only by Alfred but by his biographer, as an "irresistible challenge to fling the juicy, but substantial, fragment full at the unsuspecting foreigner's cheek."
Our journal for the year 1767, under the title of Memoires Literaires de la Grand Bretagne, was soon finished, and sent to the press. For the first article, Lord Lyttelton's History of Henry II., I must own myself responsible; but the public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of genius.
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