[Footnote 129: Malcolm's Political India, vol. ii. p. 32.]
Lord Clive landed at Portsmouth on the 14th of July, 1767, and reached London on the following day. Though the sea-voyage probably preserved his life, it still left his constitution very much shattered; and, on his arrival in London, his physicians immediately recommended that he should repair to Bath, for the purpose of drinking the waters. He remained in town, therefore, only a few days to be presented to their Majesties, to whom he had brought letters and presents from the Nabob of Arcot; and, in the first days of August, he set out for Bath, taking in his way Wotton, the seat of his friend Mr. George Grenville. His disorder was a severe bilious complaint, attended with spasms, loss of appetite, and indigestion; a continuation or consequence of that derangement of the liver from which he had already suffered so much in Bengal.
On his arrival, he was warmly welcomed, not only by his family and numerous private friends, but by the men most distinguished for rank and talent in England, and by the Court of Directors, who owed him so much. While conducting the affairs of his country with such distinguished honour and success in India, he had not been forgotten in Europe, where his name occupied a high rank among those of the illustrious men, who had raised the fame of England to so high an eminence at that glorious period. His statue, with those of Admiral Sir George Pocock, and of General Lawrence, had been placed in the India House.[130] The first part of Orme's "History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan," had appeared in 1763, and had spread the renown of the hero of the story wherever the English language is read. When Clive, during his second government, had enlarged so much his own fame, and the fame and power of his country, he felt a natural desire that the elegant historian should continue his work, and commemorate these great events; and accordingly he furnished him with all the materials that he possessed for aiding his progress. "What think you," says he, with a just pride, in a letter to Orme, "of closing the third volume of your history with an account of the King (of Delhi's) being at last placed in a situation of affluence and grandeur, the Vizier Sujah-u-Dowlah being obliged to sue for peace, which was granted upon very honourable terms, and the Company being in possession of the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, amounting to 4,000,000_l._ sterling per annum, and the country in a state of perfect tranquillity?"[131] The subject was a fine one, every way worthy of the historian's talents; and the proposed enlargement would have given a suitable close and unity to his former labours. But Orme did not delight in bold and rapid sketches; and the perhaps excessive detail in which he indulged in his most interesting historical work, prevented him from at all entering on the history of these memorable transactions; so that, at the close of his third volume, he had not advanced beyond the year 1760, the time when Clive left the country after his first government. At the same time, it is not to be supposed that Clive escaped a large share of that envy, and of the consequent abuse, that generally attend the triumph of a fortunate commander. The many enemies whom he had made, filled the public papers, to a more than ordinary degree, with acrimonious attacks; and scattered pamphlets, full of misstatements and personalities, which affected his sensitive mind more than they deserved.