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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 157
between Oglethorpe himself and the trustees touching financial matters.
Because of this estrangement, Oglethorpe ceased to manifest' the same
interest in the affairs of the trust and to attend with anything like his
former regularity upon its meetings; but he retained his commissions
as governor down to 1752, when the charter of Georgia w.as formally
surrendered to the Crown. The nature of these frictional troubles be
tween Oglethorpe and the Trustees will be given more at length in a
subsequent chapter. The illustrious founder returned no more to Geor
gia but in England he continued to mold events. For more than a
decade, we find him a power in Parliament. His marriage in 1745 to
an heiress, Elizabeth Wright, daughter of Sir Nathan Wright, a baro
net, brought him a long rent roll and served to enlarge his influential
family connections. Ten years later he became the official head of the
Royal Army, with the full rank of general. In the most brilliant coterie
of the Eighteenth Century, a group of intellects which included the
great lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson, with Boswell at his elbow;
the renowned artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds; the celebrated poet, Dr. Oliver
Goldsmith; and the foremost orator of his time, Edmund Burke; we find
in this select company of immortals the tall figure of General Ogle
thorpe. He was too old, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary struggle,
to accept the command of the British forces in America, but he was the
ranking soldier of Great Britain.* It is also a fact of some interest to
note that his sympathies were upon the side.of the Colonies. Boswell,
in his "Life of Johnson," makes frequent allusion to General Ogle
thorpe, and the great soldier's biography was to have been written by
no less renowned a pen than Doctor Johnson's, but for some reason the
author of "Rasselas" failed to execute this task. The portrait of Ogle
thorpe painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds was lost in the destruction by
fire of his famous country seat, Cranham Hall. Alexander Pope, in a
famous couplet, extolled the great philanthropist. Hannah More, in a
gossipy letter, refers to him with some degree of gusto as her new ad
mirer. Thomson, in his poem on "Liberty," pays him a fine tribute,
and, in his most famous production, "The Seasons," he alludes still
further to his humane experiment. The hardships of the Georgia col
onists are also rehearsed at some length in Goldsmith's "Deserted Vil
lage." The friend of Bishop Berkley, the patron of John Wesley, and
the colleague of Horace Walpole, the great man who founded Georgia
was a personality of Titanic proportions. Royal favor was not bestowed
upon Oglethorpe because of the well-known attachment of his ancestors
to the House of Stuart. According to an old account, he was himself a
foster-brother to the pretender. This explains why England failed to
knight the first man of his age. But there was little need for England
to lay the accolade of her chivalry upon one of God's noblemen.f Gen-
* '' The assertion has frequently been made, though the authority for it is not
conclusive, that being the senior of Sir William Howe there was offered to him the
command of the forces to subjugate America in the "War of the Revolution, but that
he declined the appointment, assuring the ministry that he knew the Americans well,
that they would never be subdued by force of arms, but that obedience would be
secured by doing them justice." History of Georgia, by Wm. B. Stevens, p. 207,
New York, 1847.
t The following Oglethorpe bibliography may be helpful to students: '' Memoirs of
General James Edward Oglethorpe," by Robert Wright, Londbn, 1867; "Life of