The career of Pitt is concerned with only two of these Grenvilles, Richard and George. These two men had this at least in common, an amazing opinion of themselves. They were in their own estimation as good as or better than any one else. They resented the slightest idea of any disparity between themselves and Pitt. On what this prodigious estimate was founded we shall never know; we can only conjecture that it was the combination of fortune and family with some ability that made them deem their position at least equal to his. When Pitt had raised Britain from abasement to the first position in the world, when he was indisputably the greatest orator and the greatest power in the country, the Grenvilles considered themselves at the least as Pitt's equals, and him as only one and not the first of a triumvirate. In 1769, when Pitt was reconciled to them, Temple trumpeted the 'union of the three brothers' as the greatest fact in contemporary history. As the alliance of a man of genius with great parliamentary influence and powers of intrigue it was undoubtedly a political fact of note. But any disparity between the three personalities never occurs to Temple. In 1766, he writes: 'If a lead of superiority was claimed (on the part of Pitt) it was rejected on my part with an assertion of my pretensions to an equality.' And again: 'I claimed an equality, and have no idea of yielding to him ... a superiority which I think it would be unbecoming in me to give.' Poor forgotten Temple! With such superb scorn did he reject the offer of the First Lordship of the Treasury, with the nomination of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the whole Board of Treasury, when offered by the first man in Europe. An hallucination of the same kind was observed in the brothers of Napoleon. But in that case it was only noted by cynical contemporaries, in this it was proclaimed on the housetops.