For Lyttelton, in his new office, gave the amplest opportunity for the wreaking of their revenge. He was, as we have seen, grotesque as a diplomatist. He was even more unfit to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lyttelton had been a promising young man, but promising young men frequently fail to mature, and he became a minor politician, a minor poet, a minor historian. As a politician, he was principally known for the delivery of pompous prepared harangues. He wrote a pathetic and not wholly forgotten monody on the death of his first wife, to which he could have added a new and poignant emphasis after his second marriage. He wrote a treatise on the conversion of St. Paul, which earned the commendation of Dr. Johnson. He wrote some 'Dialogues of the Dead,' which Dr. Johnson was not able to commend. He was now writing an elaborate History of Henry the Second, on the printer's corrections in which he spent a thousand pounds, and was soon to publish with a score of pages of errata. But his literary renown rests on the dedication of 'Tom Jones.' He was, however, best known to the public at large by his eccentric appearance and demeanour. 'Extremely tall and extremely thin, he bent under his own weight,' says his nephew Camelford. 'His face was so ugly,' says Hervey, 'his person so ill-made, and his carriage so awkward, that every feature was a blemish, every limb an incumbrance, and every motion a disgrace.' Horace Walpole says of him that he had the figure of a spectre and the gesticulations of a puppet. Chesterfield portrays him as the embodiment of all in manner and deportment that was to be avoided. His legs and arms, said the urbane peer, seem to have undergone the rack, his head hanging limp on his shoulder the first stroke of the axe. As absent as a Laputan, he leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes, if unfastened, in a third. 'Who's dat!' wrote the satirist, 'Who's dat who ride astride de pony, So long, so lank, so lean and bony? Oh! he be de great orator Little-toney.' He was obviously something of a butt from his physical peculiarities and awkwardness, and a butt is ill placed in high office. Gawky, fussy, pedantic, he was what in these days we should call a prig; a kindly prig, with a warm heart, some literary ability, and strong religious feeling; but for all that an unmistakable, inveterate, incurable prig. The word 'prig' is untranslatable and uncommunicable. It denotes nothing unamiable, nothing distasteful. It marks only a strange flaw; partly of intellect, partly of character, partly of accent. And one feels that it was impossible not to like Lyttelton, for he was full of friendliness and virtue. With Pitt he was reconciled within a decade, and mourned his death with a sincere sorrow which was not then abundant.