a year. Let then the commentators against
whom I am providing, abjure the name of Briton, or let them pay the
veneration that is due to a character, in every view of the subject, so
exalted as that of your lordship.
I have the honour to be,
MY LORD,
with the most unfeigned respect,
your lordship's
most obedient,
most devoted servant.
INSTRUCTIONS
TO A
STATESMAN.
MY LORD,
I have long considered as the greatest happiness of my life, the having
so promising a pupil as your lordship. Though your abilities are
certainly of the very first impression, they are not however of that
vague and indefinite species, which we often meet with in persons, who,
if providence had so pleased, would have figured with equal adroitness
in the character of a shoe-black or a link-boy, as they now flatter
themselves they can do in that of a minister of state. You, my lord,
were born with that accomplishment of secrecy and retentiveness, which
the archbishop of Cambray represents Telemachus as having possessed in
so high a degree in consequence of the mode of his education. You were
always distinguished by that art, never to be sufficiently valued, of
talking much and saying nothing. I cannot recollect, and yet my memory
is as great, as my opportunity for observation has been considerable,
that your lordship, when a boy, ever betrayed a single fact that chanced
to fall within your notice, unless indeed it had some tendency to
procure a school-fellow a whipping.
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