a number of favours obtained of the King through him, yet whether it was owing to his neglect of them afterwards, or his not improving that groundwork of kindnesses into real friendship or attachment by living with them and communicating with them, which he scarce did at all, or to the ill choice he had made, this is certain: that they were all separated into little cabals and different ways of thinking quite independent of him; perpetually hearkening to each other's fears, which of course left their minds very unfit to take measures, which though right and necessary, might reasonably be expected to be attended with the greatest odium and the most severe abuse. The Duke of Bedford, however, whose rage for peace continued, and whose opinion carried weight with it in Council because he was determined it should do so, facilitated everything to a great degree. Mr. Grenville too, luckily, was ill some part of the time.
"It is not easy to give a just idea of the character of the Earl of Bute, as it consisted of several real contradictions and more apparent ones, with no small mixture of madness in it.[1] His bottom was that of any Scotch Nobleman, proud, aristocratical, pompous, imposing, with a great deal of superficial knowledge such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of Natural Philosophy, Mines, Fossils, a smattering of Mechanicks, a little Metaphysicks, and a very false taste in everything.[2] Added to this he had a gloomy sort of madness which had made him affect living alone, particularly in Scotland, where he resided some years in the Isle of Bute, with as much pomp and as much uncomfortableness in his little domestick circle, as if he had been King of the Island, Lady Bute a forlorn queen, and his children slaves of a despotick tyrant. He read a great deal, but it was chiefly out of the way books of Science
- ↑ This character was written many years after the events to which the chapter relates (probably in 1803) which accounts for the bitterness of some of the expressions used, Bute and Fox having both long since quarrelled with Shelburne.
- ↑ "Your reading," Lord Chesterfield observes in one of his letters to his son, "should be chiefly historical; I do not mean of remote, dark, and fabulous history of fossils, minerals, plants, etc., but I mean the useful, political, and constitutional history of Europe."—Letters, ed. Bradshaw, i. 387.
