for the display of these qualities, the audience is cold and unfriendly, and he has excited such a general feeling of personal animosity against himself, and has done such irreparable injury to his character--having convinced all the world that he is desperately ambitious, false, capricious, intriguing, and governed by no principle, and under the influence of no sentiment of honour--that his influence is exceedingly diminished. Those who are charitably disposed express their humane conviction that he is mad, and it probably is not very remote from the truth.[6] [6] [It is with pain and reluctance that I print these remarks on Lord Brougham, and several passages in the preceding pages of these Memoirs which are equally severe, and in some respects, I think, exaggerated. But I certainly do not feel myself justified in withholding them. They were all revised and corrected by the author himself with great care; and nothing but a true and full account of the sentiments which Lord Brougham's conduct had excited amongst his colleagues and contemporaries at that time can account for the catastrophe which awaited him, and which excluded him for the rest of his life from official life and employment.] Henry Taylor brought me a parcel of letters to frank to Southey the other day; they are from Newton, Cowper's nephew (I think to W. Thornton), and they are to supply Southey with materials for Cowper's Life, which he is writing. There is one curious fact revealed in these letters, which accounts for much of Cowper's morbid state of mind and fits of depression, as well as for the circumstance of his running away from his place in the House of Lords. It relates to some defect in his physical conformation; some body found out his secret, and probably threatened its exposure. September 19th, 1834 {p.135} [Page Head: CANNING AND LORD HOLLAND.]