General Wolfe. The brilliancy of his conduct as an officer, his figure, his address, the circumstances of the times, his being taken up by Mr. Pitt, his victory at Quebec, his death, will give him a considerable place in history. He was handsome in his person, thin, tall, well-made, with blue eyes, which rather marked life than penetration. He asked me what allowance my father gave me, and, upon finding it did not exceed £600 a year, he told me I must borrow, and not touch my pay, but give it among distressed officers as occasion offered. I told him my father set the Duke of Richmond as an example before me. He said I should be the most unpopular man in England if I attempted to imitate him, that he had a line under his forehead, which marked neither greatness nor goodness, and he was a miser. He said this from no resentment, for he was well with the Duke of Richmond, who always looked up to him.
"General Wolfe had had no education. He was the son of a dull Irishman, who was Colonel of the Guards, and saved Sir Robert Walpole's life, or at least Sir Robert thought so, in some of the riots about the House of Commons in the last years of his Ministry. Whether he was upon duty or no, I do not know. Sir Robert offered him anything; he considered, and desired leave to ride through the park; Sir Robert desired him to consider again, and proposed an Irish peerage to him, but he still kept to his first request. He carried Colonel Wolfe with him when a boy to Flanders, which took him out of the way of all school learning. He was so sensible of this defect that when a Captain and the regiment was quartered at Glasgow, he learned Latin, and read with a Scotch professor there; he learned to dance afterwards at Paris; he was always reading Pope's Homer, Marcus Aurelius, &c., and I must do him the justice to say that the trouble he took about me was more from principle and elevation of mind than any particular liking; he behaved very nobly, forgave and preferred his enemies, and bore their ingratitude afterwards with great manliness; he did not regard money; he was animated and amiable
