Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/86

60 mined to use it. He had had a fine voice and very happy articulation. He passed his time studying words and expressions, always with a view to throw the responsibility of every measure upon some other, while he held a high pompous unmeaning language. Yet good as his parts were, he was afraid to trust to them, and was a complete artificial character. It gave him great advantages to serve a turn, by enabling him to change like lightning from one set of principles to another, for which to do him justice, he had an extraordinary quick eye, which enabled him to judge mankind en masse, what would do and not do: by nature insolent and overbearing, at the same time so versatile that he could bend to anything. What took much from his character was that he was always acting, always made up, and never natural, in a perpetual state of exertion, incapable of friendship, or of any act which tended to it, and constantly upon the watch, and never unbent. He told me that, independent of the consideration of his health and circumstances, he should for reasons of policy have always lived as he did a few miles out of town. I was in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time that I was Secretary of State included, he Minister, and necessarily was with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the way of business. I went to see him afterwards in Somersetshire, where I fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head, thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well bred, and preserved all the manners of the vieille cour, with a degree of pedantry however in his conversation, especially when he affected levity. I never found him when I have gone to him, which was always by appointment, with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone in a drawing-room