The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 3 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852Greville, Charles
History
The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 3 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852
Greville, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901
I have always thought that his conduct in selling his stud all at one
swoop, and at once giving up the turf, to which he had just before
seemed so devoted, was never sufficiently appreciated and praised. It
was a great sacrifice both of pleasure and profit, and it was made to
what he had persuaded himself was a great public duty. It is true that
he had taken up his new vocation with an ardour and a zeal which
absorbed his old one, but still it was a very fine act, and excessively
creditable to him. He never did anything by halves, and having accepted
the responsible post of leader of his party, he resolved to devote
himself to their service, and he did so without stint or reserve; and
when he had ceased to be nominally their leader, a transaction in which
his behaviour was honourable and manly, he still voluntarily and
gratuitously imposed upon himself an amount of labour and anxiety on
particular questions, which beyond all doubt contributed to the accident
which terminated his life. Notwithstanding his arrogance and his
violence, his constant quarrels and the intolerable language he indulged
in, he was popular in the House of Commons, and was liked more or less
wherever he went. He was extremely good-looking and particularly
distinguished and high-bred; then he was gay, agreeable, obliging, and
good-natured, charming with those he liked, and by whom he was not
thwarted and opposed. His undaunted courage and the confident and
haughty audacity with which he attacked or stood up against all
opponents, being afraid of no man, inspired a general sentiment of
admiration and respect, and his lofty assumption of superior integrity
and his resolute determination to expose and punish every breach of
public honour and morality were quietly acquiesced in, and treated with
great deference by the multitude who knew no better, and were imposed on
by his specious pretensions. The sensation caused by his death, the
encomiums pronounced on his character, and the honours paid to his
memory, have been unexampled in a man whose career has been so short,
and who did not do greater things than he had it in his power to
accomplish. He had become, however, the advocate of powerful interests,
and of vast numbers of people whose united voices make a great noise in
the world, and there is something in the appalling suddenness of the
catastrophe which excites general sympathy and pity, and makes people
more inclined to think of his virtues, his powers, and his promise, than
of his defects. Of the latter perhaps the greatest was his constant
disposition to ascribe the worst motives to all those to whom he found
himself opposed;
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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