aintance with business
in its principles and in its details; a complete mastery of the science
of politics as well theoretical as practical; of late years a perfect
familiarity with political economy, and a just appreciation of its
importance; an early and most extensive knowledge of classical
literature, which he improved instead of abandoning, down to the close
of his life; a taste formed upon these chaste models, and of which his
lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the
last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which
neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least
possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally
powerful with its reasoning and its statement. He was in this greatest
quality of a statesman pre-eminently distinguished, that, as he neither
would yield up his judgment to the clamour of the people, nor suffer
himself to be seduced by the influence of the Court, so would he never
submit his reason to the empire of prejudice, or own the supremacy of
authority or tradition." The character is accurately and justly
discriminated; but, however fully this searching panegyric is sustained
and justified by the public acts and recorded labours of Lord Grenville,
we must turn to his correspondence with Lord Temple for the complete
development of that sagacity and sound judgment, that intimate knowledge
of public affairs, and that remarkable comprehensiveness of view and
lucidity of statement, by which he was distinguished above his
contemporaries in an age of great political characters. This
correspondence, extending over a long period of years, is not less
remarkable for the constancy with which it was carried on than for the
minuteness of its details, and the freedom of its revelations. Written
with the ease of familiar intercourse, and in that confidential spirit
which was the exponent of one of the most touching attachments that ever
bound one man to another, it is no less valuable as a close, running
commentary on the events of the day, lighting up in its course the
hidden springs of parliamentary action and the policy of cabinets, than
it is fascinating from the teeming evidences with which it abounds of a
warm heart and a highly disciplined and accomplished mind.

The Correspondence commences in 1782, when Lord North, sinking under the
odium of the American war, found his small majorities rapidly
diminishing from 22 to