PISAREV
PITT
Mazzini s army. When the Roman
Republic fell, he fled to Switzerland, and
then to England. He wrote in Mazzini s
Italia del Popolo. In 1857 he led a small
and desperate venture against the re
actionary Neapolitan power ; but it failed,
and Pisacane fell in the fight. He dis
sented strongly from Mazzini s Theism,
and was a complete Agnostic and scornful
of all religion (Jessie White Mario s Birth
of Modem Italy, 1909, pp. 197-98)." D.
1857.
PISAREY, Dmitri Ivanovich, Russian critic. B. 1840. Ed. St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium and University. Son of a wealthy landowner and very pre cocious, Pisarev was admitted to the uni versity at the age of fifteen and made brilliant progress. Ho was devoted to literature and philology, and in 1860 he translated Heine s Atta Troll and became assistant editor of the Eussian World. The authorities suppressed it, and Pisarev, though still a young man, republished the article of his which had offended. He was condemned to five years in the Schlussel- berg Fortress, and much of his finest literary criticism was written in jail. He was the idol of the " young Russians," who particularly admired his Scholastics of the Nineteenth Century. Pisarev followed the English Utilitarians and had no place for religion, towards which he held a Nietz- chean attitude. He was released in 1867, but was drowned in the Black Sea many say with the connivance of the authorities in July, 1868. Although he died in his twenty-ninth year, his remarkable writings fill ten volumes (1870).
PITT, William, first Earl of Chatham, statesman. B. Nov. 15, 1708. Ed. Eton and Oxford (Trinity College). He obtained a cornetcy in Lord Cobham s Horse, and in 1735 entered Parliament. One of his earliest speeches (1736) was so offensive to the King that he was dismissed from the army, and he was appointed to the house hold of the Prince of Wales. In the 605
House of Commons his oratory soon made
a mark, and it was frequently employed in
the cause of reform. In 1746 he became
joint Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. Paymaster
General of the Forces, and Privy Councillor.
In 1756 he was nominated a Secretary of
State, and he led the House of Commons.
By 1760 Pitt" the Great Commoner," as
he was called was the most powerful man
in England ; and he had the honourable
distinction, in a profoundly corrupt age,
that he never took a single penny beyond
his due salaries, although he was not a
man of wealth. In 1766 he became Lord
Privy Seal and Earl of Chatham. He
eloquently opposed the American War,
especially denouncing the use of Indians
against the Colonists ; and his death was
brought about by his insisting on delivering
a last oration against what he regarded as
a great crime. It has often been said that
Pitt was the author of a more than Deistic
Letter on Superstition, which appeared in
the London Journal in 1733, and was re-
published under his name by Austin
Holyoake in 1873. It pleads for "a
religion of reason," and closes with the
statement that " the only true divinity is
humanity." In his careful Life of
William Pitt (2 vols., 1913) Mr. Basil
Williams objects that a cornet in the army
(as Pitt was in 1733) would hardly take
that risk. But, beside that the article was
not signed, it is recorded above that Pitt
was actually dismissed from the army for
a bold speech two years later. On the
other hand, Mr. Williams proves that the
Diary of Lord Egmont, at the year 1733,
ascribes the article to a civil servant
named "Pit" who then wrote in the
Journal ; and it seems highly probable that
it has been wrongly ascribed to William
Pitt. Yet the biographer gives (i, 216-17)
ample evidence that Pitt really was a
Deist, and had only " a simple faith in
God." From an unpublished document he
quotes Pitt writing a " fierce denunciation "
of those who " converted a reverential
awe into a superstitious fear of God
and ran into one of those extremes : 606
