Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/158

132 conduct made him afraid of the publick, if he was not naturally so, which however there is the greatest reason to believe. He was proud to a great degree, envious even to bitterness, and revengeful, which, if well considered, will be found perfectly agreeable to his other qualities, and both of them illustrated by every action of his life. He had, however, an extraordinary degree of shrewdness and sagacity.

"As to foreign affairs, Mr. Fox had always entirely trusted to, first Envoy in Saxony, afterwards in Russia. He was a man of wit, but nothing else. He was bred up the same as Mr. Fox, in the profligate school of Lord Hervey, and lost his senses while abroad in the midst of negotiations without anybody in England knowing it. His ingenuity and wit rather increased than lessened with his madness, so that he deceived all sides. Mr. Fox put an entire confidence in him, by which way he was enabled to spend immense sums under pretence of Secret Service, which no one knows how he disposed of. His dispatches which remain in the Secretary's Office are a series of romances stating favours and bonnes fortunes which he never had, all which he pretended to turn to political account. Mr. Fox's private letters to him and many others were lately discovered by a singular accident in Wales. Mr. Hanbury, who inherits his family estate, wanted to fit up a room, and looking for a chimney-piece opened some deal boxes which he had conceived an idea contained one, having laid for a long time in some storehouse; and proved instead of what was wanted to contain all Sir Charles's papers, which it seems had been left in the possession of some French mistress, who returned them very honestly to the family; a proof that there is more honesty in the world that may be expected among a description which are very unjustly branded with everything that is bad, because they originally believed too readily the honesty of others.