Detached Thoughts
:
"At the Opposition meeting of the peers, in 1812, at Lord Grenville's, when Lord Grey and he read to us the correspondence upon Moira's negociation, I sate next to the present Duke of Grafton. When it was over, I turned to him and said, 'What is to be done next?' 'Wake the Duke of Norfolk' (who was snoring away near us), replied he. 'I don't think the Negociators have left anything else for us to do this turn.'"
"In the debate, or rather discussion, afterwards, in the House of Lords, upon that very question, I sate immediately behind Lord Moira, who was extremely annoyed at G.'s speech upon the subject, and while G. was speaking, turned round to me repeatedly and asked me whether I agreed with him? It was an awkward question to me, who had not heard both sides. Moira kept repeating to me, 'It was not so, it was so and so,' etc. I did not know very well what to think, but I sympathized with the acuteness of his feelings upon the subject."
"Lord Eldon affects an Imitation of two very different Chancellors—Thurlow and Loughborough—and can indulge in an oath now and then. On one of the debates on the Catholic question, when we were either equal or within one (I forget which), I had been sent for in great haste from a Ball, which I quitted, I confess somewhat reluctantly, to emancipate five Millions of people. I came in late, and did not go immediately into the body of the house, but stood just behind the Woolsack. Eldon turned round, and, catching my eye, immediately said to a peer (who had come to him for a few minutes on the Woolsack, as is the custom of his friends), 'Damn them! they'll have it now, by God!—the vote that is just come in will give it them.'"
Horace,
Odes
, III. iii. 7.