A youth who boasts no common share of head.
What plenteous stores of knowledge may contain
The spacious tenement of Grenville’s brain!
Nature, in all her dispensations wise,
Who formed his head-piece of so vast a size,
Hath not, ’tis true, neglected to bestow
Its due proportion to the part below.
Unfortunately, though Grenville could manage business, he could not manage men; and at this point he failed to make good a defect in the political panoply of Pitt. On neither of the cousins had nature bestowed the social tact which might have smoothed the rubs of diplomatic discussion, say, in those with the French envoy, Chauvelin, in 1792. That fervid royalist, Hyde de Neuville, complained bitterly of the freezing powers of Downing Street. The enthusiastic young Canning found it impossible to work with Grenville, who was also on strained terms with Dundas. The “inner Cabinet,” composed of Pitt, Grenville, Dundas, must have been the scene of many triangular duels; and it needed all the mental and moral superiority of Pitt (as to which every one bears witness) to preserve even the appearance of harmony between seconds who were alike opinionated, obstinate, and covetous of patronage.[386] On the whole, the personality of Grenville must rank among the dullest of that age. I have found no striking phrase which glitters amidst the leaden mass of his speeches and correspondence. His life has never been written. He would be a very conscientious zealot who would undertake it.
* * * * *
Turning to the central figure of the group, we have once more to mourn the lack of information about those smaller details which light up traits of character. Few of Pitt’s letters refer to his private affairs in the years 1784–86; and the knowledge which we have of them is largely inferential. Even the secondary sources fared badly; for it seems that Pitt’s housemaid made a holocaust of the many letters which Wilberforce wrote to him during his foreign tour in 1785.[387] In the Pitt Papers there is only one letter of Wilberforce of this period; and as it throws light on their friendship and the anxiety felt by Pitt’s friends at the time of the Irish Propositions, I print it here almost in extenso.[388]