authority, Sir George Colebrook, in his Memoirs. "Mr Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution; which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed, for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with great levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office, he entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get rid of. He had a black riband over one of his eyes that day, having tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy; and this added to the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy. Whereas, it was a speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty, because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him, and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner; General Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House." This brings the miracle down to the human standard, yet that standard was high, and the man who could excite this admiration, in a House which contained so great a number of eminent speakers, and which could charm the caustic spirit of Walpole into the acknowledgment that his speech "was the most singular pleasure of the kind he had ever tasted," must have been an extraordinary performance, even if his instrument was not of the highest tone of oratory. A note from the Duke of Grafton's manuscript memoirs also contradicts, on Townshend's own authority, his opinion of the "wild incapacity of Lord Chatham." The note says:-- "On the night preceding Lord Chatham's first journey to Bath, Mr Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr Townshend was particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in my carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him before, he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so transcendant."