Mr. Pitt's intellectual powers were of the highest order, and in private no less than in public, when he was explaining his sentiments in any complicated question and stating the arguments on both sides, it was impossible not to admire the clearness of his conceptions, the precision with which he contemplated every particular object, and a variety of objects, without confusion. They who have had occasion to discuss political questions with him in private will acknowledge that there never was a fairer reasoner, never anyone more promptly recognising, and allowing its full weight to every consideration and argument which was urged against the opinion he had embraced. You always saw _where_ you differed from him and _why_. The difference arose commonly from his sanguine temper leading him to give credit to information which others might distrust, and to expect that doubtful contingencies would have a more favourable issue than others might venture to anticipate. I never met with any man who combined in an equal degree this extraordinary precision of understanding with the same intuitive apprehension of every shade of opinion, or of feeling, which might be indicated by those with whom he was conversant. In taking an estimate of Mr. Pitt's intellectual powers, his extraordinary memory ought to be specially noticed. It was indeed remarkable for two excellencies which are seldom found united in the same person--a facility of receiving impressions, and a firmness and precision in retaining them. His great rival, Mr. Fox, was also endowed with a memory which to myself used to appear perfectly wonderful. Often in the earlier part of my Parliamentary life I have heard him (Fox) at a very late hour speak, without having taken any notes, for two or three hours, noticing every material argument that had been urged by every speaker of the opposite party: this he commonly did in the order in which those arguments had been delivered, whereas it was rather Mr. Pitt's habit to form the plan of a speech in his mind while the debate was going forward, and to distribute his comments on the various statements and remarks of his opponents according to the arrangement which he had made. Such was his (Pitt's) recollection of the great classical authors of antiquity that scarcely a passage could be quoted of their works, whether in verse or prose, with which he was not so familiar as to be able to take up the clue and go on with what immediately followed. This was particularly the case in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, and I am assured that he was also scarcely less familiar with Homer and Thucydides.