To his portraits it will be objected, that in general they incline to severity, and though he professed, and probably intended the strictest impartiality in his delineations of character, it cannot be denied that they are sometimes heightened by friendship, and more frequently discoloured by resentment; and on many occasions it is evident, that they are dictated by the conduct of the persons he describes in the last occurrence that brought them before his eyes, rather than by a steady and comprehensive view of their merits and defects. His observations on the Cavendishes may be taken as an illustration of this remark. He seldom mentions the two Dukes of Devonshire, who flourished in his time, without some sneer or malignant reflection. The truth was, that notwithstanding his Whiggism, he held all the members of that family in detestation, on account of the part they had taken against him on his breach with his uncle Lord Walpole. Yet, within a few years after the conclusion of these Memoirs, when William, fourth Duke of Devonshire, had bequeathed five thousand pounds to his friend Mr. Conway, in approbation of his public conduct, he uses the following exaggerated expressions in speaking of the legacy. “You might despise,” he writes to Mr. Conway,[9] “the acquisition of five thousand pounds simply; but when that sum is a public testimonial to your virtue, and bequeathed _by a man so virtuous_, it is worth a million. Who says virtue is not rewarded in this world? It is rewarded by virtue, and persecuted by the bad: can greater honour be paid to it?”