Language less ecstatic would better have become a great man accepting a serious pecuniary obligation. In truth Pitt never had any scrupulous idea of personal independence. He had accepted a borough from Newcastle, whom he then suspected and despised. Now it was an allowance from Temple, whom, from close intimacy and kinship, he must have known to be an intriguing politician, who was not likely to give without expecting return. A few years hence it was to be a pension from the Crown.
With regard to money indeed he had no very careful or exalted standard. In such matters he was indifferent, reckless, and heedless of any nicety of scruple, except as regards the public. He never seems to have considered how important solvency is to character. He was always, after his marriage, quite unnecessarily, in desperate straits for money. Indifference to the fact that pecuniary independence is a main though not necessary base of moral independence was a flaw in his own life, and was the worst inheritance that he transmitted to his illustrious son.
The announcement of Legge's successor at the Exchequer provoked universal hilarity. It was Lyttelton. We have seen that in the last debate Pitt had turned with fierce scorn on his former ally. No doubt he was aware of Lyttelton's approaching elevation. But their historic friendship had been dissolved for a year. In November 1754, at the heedless or mischievous instance of the younger Horace Walpole, Lyttelton, with the best intentions and the most inane execution possible, had hurried off, without consultation with his friend, to effect a reconciliation between Newcastle, Pitt's enemy, and Bedford, who was allied to Pitt by a common hatred of the Minister. Newcastle received the negotiator with his wonted effervescence, and gave or appeared to give full powers. Away sped Lyttelton, bursting with the importance of an amateur diplomatist. But at the mere mention of his mission the other Duke nearly kicked the messenger of peace downstairs, and at once communicated the secret overture to Pitt. The result to Lyttelton was for the moment unmixed disaster. Pitt publicly broke with him, Newcastle of course disowned him, he indeed disowned himself. Henceforth he was banned by the Cousinhood, and incurred a wrath and vengeance as implacable as that of the Carbonari. Now, however, he had his reward, for it can scarcely be doubted that his elevation to the Exchequer was intended partly as a plaster for his diplomatic wounds, partly as an annoyance to the party of Pitt. Any motive indeed but fitness for the office can be suggested for his promotion, to which he was lured by the promise of a peerage.[306] If, however, the annoyance it would cause to his late friends was a reason, it failed in its object. For Lyttelton, in his new office, gave the amplest opportunity for the wreaking of their revenge. He was, as we have seen, grotesque as a diplomatist. He was even more unfit to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lyttelton had been a promising young man, but promising young men frequently fail to mature, and he became a minor politician, a minor poet, a minor historian. As a politician, he was principally known for the delivery of pompous prepared harangues. He wrote a pathetic and not wholly forgotten monody on the death of his first wife, to which he could have added a new and poignant emphasis after his second marriage. He wrote a treatise on the conversion of St. Paul, which earned the commendation of Dr. Johnson. He wrote some 'Dialogues of the Dead,' which Dr. Johnson was not able to commend. He was now writing an elaborate History of Henry the Second, on the printer's corrections in which he spent a thousand pounds, and was soon to publish with a score of pages of errata. But his literary renown rests on the dedication of 'Tom Jones.'
He was, however, best known to the public at large by his eccentric appearance and demeanour. 'Extremely tall and extremely thin, he bent under his own weight,' says his nephew Camelford. 'His face was so ugly,' says Hervey, 'his person so ill-made, and his carriage so awkward, that every feature was a blemish, every limb an incumbrance, and every motion a disgrace.' Horace Walpole says of him that he had the figure of a spectre and the gesticulations of a puppet. Chesterfield portrays him as the embodiment of all in manner and deportment that was to be avoided. His legs and arms, said the urbane peer, seem to have undergone the rack, his head hanging limp on his shoulder the first stroke of the axe. As absent as a Laputan, he leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes, if unfastened, in a third. 'Who's dat!' wrote the satirist,
'Who's dat who ride astride de pony,
So long, so lank, so lean and bony?
Oh! he be de great orator Little-toney.'
He was obviously something of a butt from his physical peculiarities and awkwardness, and a butt is ill placed in high office.
Gawky, fussy, pedantic, he was what in these days we should call a prig; a kindly prig, with a warm heart, some literary ability, and strong religious feeling; but for all that an unmistakable, inveterate, incurable prig. The word 'prig' is untranslatable and uncommunicable. It denotes nothing unamiable, nothing distasteful. It marks only a strange flaw; partly of intellect, partly of character, partly of accent. And one feels that it was impossible not to like Lyttelton, for he was full of friendliness and virtue. With Pitt he was reconciled within a decade, and mourned his death with a sincere sorrow which was not then abundant.
But the Exchequer is a peculiar office requiring peculiar gifts. A dull man may succeed in it if he possess them; without them the greatest talents will fail. Lyttelton possessed none of them. He was unable, it was alleged, to work out the simplest sum in arithmetic. He was ignorant of the first principles of finance. The Exchequer never had a more preposterous Chancellor, till Dashwood appeared. He had better have left it alone.