a peerage, and
the refusal produced his revolt. He then went over to the Opposition,
and flattered the prince. But the prince had a favourite already; and
Doddington failed again. He then returned to Walpole, who made him a
lord of the treasury. But Walpole himself was soon to feel the chances
of power; and Doddington, who was never inclined to prop a sinking
cause, crossed the House again. There he was left for a while, to suffer
the penalties of a placeman's purgatory, but without being purified;
and, after some continuance in opposition, a state for which he was as
unfitted as a shark upon the sea-shore, he crossed over again to the
court, and was made treasurer of the navy. But he was now rapidly
falling into ridicule; and, determining to obtain power at all risks, he
bowed down before the prince. At this mimic court he obtained a mimic
office, was endured without respect, and consulted without confidence.
Even there he had not secured a final refuge.

The prince suddenly died; and Doddington's hopes, though not his
follies, were extinguished in his grave. Such was the fate of a man of
ability, of indefatigable labour, of affluent means, and confessedly
accomplished in all the habits and knowledge of public life. He wanted,
as Walpole observes, "nothing for power but constancy." Under a foreign
government he might have been minister for life. But in the free spirit
and restless parties of an English legislature, though such a man might
float, he must be at the mercy of every wave.

We then have the most extraordinary man in England in his day, under
review, the well-known Duke of Newcastle, minister, or possessing
ministerial influence, for nearly a quarter of a century! Of all the
public characters of his time, or perhaps of any other, the Duke of
Newcastle was the most ridiculed. Every act of his life, every speech
which he uttered, nay, almost every look and gesture, became instantly
food for burlesque. All the scribblers of the empire, with some of the
higher class, as Smollett, were pecking at him day by day; yet, in a
Parliament where Chatham, with his powerful eloquence, Bedford with his
subtle argument, Townshend with his wit, and the elder Fox with his
indefatigable intrigue, were all contending for the mastery; this man,
who seemed sometimes half-frenzied, and at other times half-idiotic,
retained power, as if it belonged to him by right, and resigned it, as
if he had given it away.

Walpole thus descr