In the progress of life mind changes often, and body almost always. Both these rules, however, he lived to contradict; for his talents and his qualities retained their virtue; and when a boy he was as tall as when a man, and apparently the same. Capel Loft. In the language of Eton the word gig comprehended all that was ridiculous, all that was to be laughed at, and plagued to death; and of all gigs that was, or ever will be, this gentleman, while a boy, was the greatest. He was like nothing, "in the heavens above, or the waters under the earth;" and therefore he was surrounded by a mob of boys whenever he appeared. These days of popularity were not pleasant. Luckily, however, for himself, he found some refuge from persecution in his scholarship. This scholarship was much above the rate, and out of the manner of common boys. As a poet, he possessed fluency and facility, but not the strongest imagination. As a classic, he was admirable; and his prose themes upon different subjects displayed an acquaintance with the Latin idiom and phraseology seldom acquired even by scholastic life, and the practice of later years. Beyond this, he read much of everything that appeared, knew every thing, and was acquainted with every better publication of the times. Even then he studied law, politics, divinity; and could have written well upon those subjects. These talents have served him since more effectually than they did then; more as man than boy: For at school he was a kind of Gray Beard: he neither ran, played, jumped, swam, or fought, as ~86~~ other boys do. The descriptions of puerile years, so beautifully given by _Gray_, in his ode: "Who, foremost, now delight to cleave, With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthrall? What idle progeny succeed, To chase the rolling circle's speed, Or urge the flying ball?" All these would have been, and were, as non-descriptive of him as they would have been of the lord chancellor of England, with a dark brow and commanding mien, determining a cause of the first interest to this country. Added to this, in personal appearance he was most unfavored; and exemplified the Irish definition of an open countenance--a mouth from ear to ear. Lord Hinchinbroke, from the earliest period of infancy, had all the marks of the Montagu family. He had a good head, and a red head, and a Roman nose, and a turn to the _ars amatoria_ of Ovid, and all the writers who may have written on love. As it was in the beginning--may be said now. Though in point of scholarship he was not in the very first line, the descendant of Lord Sandwich could not but have ability, and he had it; but this was so mixed with the wanderings of the heart, the vivacity of youthful imagination, and a turn to pleasure, that a steady pursuit of any one object of a literary turn could not be expected.