Exceeding wise, fairspoken, and persuading;
Crabbed, mayhap, to them that loved him not;
But to those men that sought him, sweet as Summer.’—
Henry VIII.
‘If a man be not permitted to change his political opinions—when he has arrived at years of discretion—he must be born a Solomon.’—
W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, (vol. viii, p. 237).
The Grenvilles and their Influence on the Political Aspect of the Georgian Reigns.—The Public and Literary Life of the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville.—History of the Grenville Library.
It was the singular fortune of Thomas Grenville to belong to a family which has given almost half a score of ministers to England; to possess in himself large diplomatic ability; and to have been gifted—his political opponents themselves being judges—with considerable talents for administration; and yet, in the course of a life protracted to more than ninety years, to have been an active diplomatist during less than one year, and to have been a Minister of State less than half a year. It is true that he was of that happy temperament which both enables and tempts a man to carve out delightful occupation for himself. He had, too, those rarely combined gifts of taste, fortune, and public spirit, which inspire their possessor with the will, and confer upon him the power, to make his personal enjoyments largely contribute (both in his own time and after it) to the enjoyments of his fellow-countrymen. It might be true, therefore, to say that Thomas Grenville was the happier and the better for his exclusion, during almost forty-nine-fiftieths of his long life, from the public service. |What was it that kept Thomas Grenville aloof from political office?| But it can hardly be rash to say that England must needs have been somewhat the worse for that exclusion.
Nor was it altogether a self-imposed exclusion. There was among its causes a curious conjunction of outward accidents and of philosophic self-resignation to their results. Untoward chances abroad twice broke off the foreign embassies of this eminent man. Unforeseen political complications amongst Whigs and semi-Whigs twice deprived him of cabinet office at home. But, no doubt, neither shipwreck at sea nor party intrigue on land would have been potent enough to keep Thomas Grenville out of high State employment, but for the personal fastidiousness which withheld him from stretching out his hand, with any eagerness, to grasp it.
The political influence of the Grenville Family; its duration and its peculiar characteristics.