arraigned the wild incapacity of Lord Chatham,[9] he excited such murmurs of wonder, admiration, applause, laughter, pity, and scorn, that nothing was so true as the sentence with which he concluded, when speaking of Government; he said, it was become what he himself had often been called, a weathercock. Such was the wit, abundance, and impropriety of this speech, that for some days men could talk or inquire of nothing else. “Did you hear Charles Townshend’s champagne speech?” was the universal question. For myself, I protest it was the most singular pleasure of the kind I ever tasted. The bacchanalian enthusiasm of Pindar flowed in torrents less rapid and less eloquent, and inspires less delight, than Townshend’s imagery, which conveyed meaning in every sentence. It was Garrick writing and acting extempore scenes of Congreve. A light circumstance increased the mirth of the audience. In the fervour of speaking Townshend rubbed off the patch from his eye, which he had represented as grievously cut three days before: no mark was discernible, but to the nearest spectators a scratch so slight, that he might have made, and perhaps had made it himself with a pin.[10] To me the entertainment of the day was complete. He went to supper with us at Mr. Conway’s, where, the flood of his gaiety not being exhausted, he kept the table in a roar till two in the morning, by various sallies and pictures, the last of which was a scene in which he mimicked inimitably his own wife, and another great lady with whom he fancied himself in love, and both whose foibles and manner he counterfeited to the life. Mere lassitude closed his lips at last, not the want of wit and new ideas. To solve the contrast of such parts and absurdity in the same composition, one is almost tempted to have recourse to that system of fairy manicheism, wherein no sooner has one benevolent being endowed the hero of the tale with supernatural excellence, but a spiteful hag of equal omnipotence dashes the irrevocable gift with some counter qualification, which serves to render the accomplished prince a monster of contradictions. It was not less worth reflection, that, while this phenomenon of genius was, perniciously to himself, and uselessly to his country, lavishing an unexampled profusion of parts on wanton buffoonery, only to excite transient and barren applause; the restorer of his country was lurking in darkness and shrouding a haughty sterility of talents from the public eye, under the veil of frenzy or untractable obstinacy. The simplicity of a great character was wanting both to Lord Chatham and Townshend. CHAPTER II.