who feared the historian would have been disgraced by confessing total insensibility to what the English nation has so long and so justly admired.—(From Mr. Boswell, who had it from Lord Kames.)
Mr. Burke told me a few days ago that the first Lord Lyttleton informed him, that Lord Bolingbroke never wrote down any of his works, but dictated them to a secretary. This may account for their endless tautology. In company, according to Lord Lyttleton, he was very eloquent, speaking with great fluency and authority on every subject, and generally in the form of harangue rather than colloquial table talk. His company all looked up to him, and very few dared to interrupt or contradict him.—Dec. 1787.
Mr. Soame Jenyns, who died a few days ago, had (as Mr. Wm. Gerard Hamilton, who sat for six years at the Board of Trade with him, informed me) no notion of ratiocination, no rectitude of mind; nor could he be made without much labour to comprehend an argument. If however there was anything weak, or defective, or ridiculous in what another said, he always laid hold of it and played upon it with success. He looked at everything with a view to pleasantry alone. This being his grand object, and he being no reasoner, his best friends were at a loss to know whether his book upon Christianity was serious or ironical.
He twice endeavoured to speak in the House of Commons, and every one was prepared with a half-grin
