of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke;
but no member of the government held these opinions so strongly as
George Grenville, the Treasurer of the Navy. George Grenville was
brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt's
personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men
of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his
sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Faery Queen.
He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was
a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of
that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied
public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole
subject that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly
that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the
direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed
by high and rare gifts, by a strange power of inspiring great masses of
men with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which not only
delighted the ear, but stirred the blood, and brought tears into the
eyes, by originality in devising plans, by vigor in executing them.
Grenville, on the other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details.
He had been bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness
of the Temple into official and parliamentary life. He was supposed to
be intimately acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He
had paid especial attention to the law of Parliament, and was so learned
in all things relating to the privileges and orders of the House of
Commons that those who loved him least pronounced him the only person
competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches were generally
instructive, and sometimes, from the gravity and earnestness with which
he spoke, even impressive, but never brilliant, and generally tedious.
Indeed, even when he was at the head of affairs, he sometimes found it
difficult to obtain the ear of the House. In disposition as well as in
intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly
regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it;
and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville,
though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man
of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and
popularity, keenly sensible of in