[19] A contemporary epigram thus expressed the general feeling:

"For fifty years he listened at the door,

And heard some scandal, but invented more.

This he wrote down; and statesmen, queens, and kings,

Appear before us quite as common things.

Most now are dead; yet some few still remain

To whom these 'Memoirs' give a needless pain;

For though they laugh, and say ''Tis only Greville,'

They wish him and his 'Memoirs' at the D—l."