weakness of his character, without disclosing it, or suffering his particular intimacy to be discovered, while it was supposed there was no secret amongst the whole set, but that everything was shared in common.[1] Lord Lyttleton was a fine poet, a good scholar, a dull historian, an amiable man, but a miserable politician. He was the most absent creature living. Among a thousand good qualities he had great filial piety, and made a necessity of informing his father in the country of the most secret purposes of his party. They had formed, it seems, a project of opposition before Mr. Pelham's death; it was of the utmost importance to keep it secret; Lord Lyttleton would not trust his letter giving an account of it to the post, but desired a trusty friend going into the country to call upon him for it, but when he did so gave him a trifling letter which he had written at the same time, and afterwards sent the letter intended for his father to the post without a direction. It was opened there, of course, as all such letters necessarily are. The office immediately sent it to Mr. Pelham; Mr. Pelham, after some consideration, desired Mr. Nugent, a common friend of his and Sir G. Lyttleton's, to give it to him, explaining exactly how the matter happened. Mr. Nugent opened the matter with as much delicacy as he could, but shunned Sir George most excessively, whose chief complaint in the first moments of his distraction was, that William Pitt, with his unreasonable temper, would call it absence, and repeatedly asked Mr. Nugent, as a reasonable man, whether he saw any absence in it? It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was violent, impetuous, romantick, a despiser of money, intrigue, and patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying
- ↑ Sir George Lyttleton was created a Peer in 1756, on retiring from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, to which he had been appointed in 1755. Lord Chesterfield describes him as "wrapped up like a Laputan in intense thought, or possibly in no thought at all," and expresses a fear that if his son, who was also "inattentive, awkward, and distrait," should meet Sir George at dinner the pair would "run their heads against each other, cut each other's fingers instead of the meat, or die by the precipitate infusion of scalding soup."—Letters (ed. Bradshaw), i. 245, 273.
