It was a man of infinite genius. His taste was a standard to those, who
were most attached to the fine arts, and most uninterruptedly conversant
with them. His eloquence was splendid, animated, and engaging. Of all
the statesmen then existing in Europe, he was perhaps the individual,
who best understood the interests and the politics of all her courts.
But your lordship may probably find it somewhat more intelligible, if I
take the other side of the picture, and tell you what he was not. He was
not a man of fawning and servility. He did not rest his ambitious
pretensions upon any habitual adroitness, upon the arts of wheedling,
and the tones of insinuation. He rested them upon the most solid
talents, and the most brilliant accomplishments. He did not creep into
the closet of his sovereign uncalled, and endeavour to make himself of
consequence by assiduities and officiousness. He pleaded for years, in a
manly and ingenuous manner, the cause of the people in parliament. It
was by a popularity, great, and almost without exception, that he was
introduced into power. When defeated by the undermining and contemptible
art of his rivals; when convinced that it was impossible for him, to
employ his abilities with success in the service of his country, he
retired.
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