mouths by saying that he wished to hear nothing of the sort: she was indispensable to his happiness. He was not at all so to hers. Seeing Mr. Fox reading in the library of Houghton, he said: 'You can read. It is a great happiness. I totally neglected it while I was in business, which has been the whole of my life, and to such a degree that I cannot now read a page—a warning to all Ministers.'
"Sir Edward Bayntun was the successful candidate at Chippenham, and, according to the prejudices of the times, decided the fate of that Ministry.[1] Lord Melcombe said that, in one of the jumbles of a division in the House of Commons, he happened to find himself near to Sir Robert, who told him: 'Young man, I will tell you the history of all your friends as they come in, one by one. Such an one, I saved his brother from being hanged; such another, from starving; such another, I advanced both his sons,' &c., in short, a history of perfidy and ingratitude—the experience of twenty years of power. By all that I have been able to learn Sir Robert Walpole was, out of sight, the ablest man of his time and the most capable. His letters about Wood's halfpence do him great honour. More critical times might have produced an abler man, and there is no doubt that many faults may be found in his manners and character, but comparing him with all the other men who presented themselves as candidates for power, he was the first, and most calculated to carry on the mode of Government adopted by the Hanover family, of 'King' and 'no King' or 'the House of Commons for ever.'
"I ought to be partial to one of his rivals, if not his principal rival—the House of Commons apart—Lord Carteret, whose daughter I afterwards married. He was a fine person, of commanding beauty, the best Greek scholar of the age, overflowing with wit, not so much a diseur de bons-mots like Lord Chesterfield, as a man of true, comprehensive ready wit, which at once saw to the bottom, and whose imagination never failed him, and
- ↑ The Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole fell on the question of the Chippingham election petition in 1742.
