Among men of such various complexion, Lord Weymouth was not the least singular. He was tall, handsome, and, from a German education, solemn and formal in his outward deportment. His look spoke absence, and nothing in his ostensible appearance discovered a symptom of the quickness, cunning, and dissoluteness within. A perfect insensibility produced constant and facile good humour; yet his bent brow and constitutional pride indicated no pleasantry or social mirth. His parts were strong, his conception ready, his reasoning acute, his delivery short and perspicuous. His parts must have been very strong to be capable of emerging from his constant drunkenness and dissipation; for though he had been well instructed, had a retentive memory, and a head admirably turned to astronomy and mechanics, he abandoned all improvement so entirely, that it was wonderful how he had gleaned so much common knowledge of politics as embellished his short speeches, and for a quarter of an hour in every debate infused into him aptness and propriety. The becoming decency and dignity of his appearance was all the homage he paid to public opinion. He neither had nor affected any solid virtue. He was too proud to court the people, and too mean not to choose to owe his preferments to the favour of the Court or the cabals of faction. He wasted the whole night in drinking, and the morning in sleep, even when Secretary of State. No kind of principle entered into his plan or practice; nor shame for want of it. He ruined his tradesmen without remorse, and, if that was an excuse, without thought; and with equal indifference frequently saw bailiffs in his house: for pride is a constitutional stoicism, independent of circumstances. With as little sense of fashionable as of real honour, he had often received letters with demands of gaming debts, written in a style that even such gentlemen seldom endure without resentment. Taciturnity, except with his bacchanalian companions, was his favourite habit, because it harmonized with his prodigious indolence; and ambition, though his only passion, could not surmount his laziness,--though his vanity made him trust that his abilities, by making him necessary, could reconcile intrigue and inactivity. His timidity was womanish, and the only thing he did not fear was the ill opinion of mankind.[136]