time of his death. He desired Mansfield and me to introduce him into the House of Lords, telling every one as he went up the House that he asked one to get him into every scrape, the other to get him out. His bon mots were numberless, if they had been collected; I should not be surprised if he had collected them himself, for he was a perpetual writer and collector of political anecdote. He read me several of his speeches, which might in every sense of the word be termed the speeches of the day. They were very fairly written over, and I have no doubt were preserved among his papers. He was a man of excellent parts but of no kind of judgment. Unsteady, treacherous, vain, with no regard to truth whenever any purpose was to be answered by it; otherways accurate, good-natured, officious, and not without something like public principle, which appeared to be more the result of opposition habits than of a sound judgment or honest determination. He was one of those people—and it is common enough—whom you see living in the world, desiring to know everything and knowing nothing, while there are others who live quite out of the world and yet know everything. He came into the world with uncommon advantages, well educated, and had travelled further and with greater observation than was usual at that time. He told me that, coming home through Brussels, he was presented to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, after her disgrace. She said to him, 'Young man, you come from Italy, they tell me of a new invention there called caricature drawing. Can you find me somebody that will make me a caricature of Lady Masham, describing her covered with running sores and ulcers, that I may send it to the Queen to give her a right idea of her new favourite.' His accuracy is to be depended upon, though his judgment is not. He relates many things the tendency of which he does not comprehend. If he had, he might probably have disfigured them. All that I have said of Lord Melcombe will be found fully confirmed by an attentive perusal of his own account of what passed between him and Sir Robert Walpole, which gives a very
