The circumstances that influenced his pique are sometimes of the most trivial character. Under date September 3, 1833, he notes that the king complained that no one was present to administer the oath to a new member of the Privy Council whom Brougham had introduced. “And what is unpleasant,” he says, “the king desires a clerk of the council to be present when anything is going on.” Inde iræ. A few days afterwards, in a notice of the prorogation of Parliament, he thus revenges himself for the king’s implied censure:
“He (William IV.) was coolly received; for there is no doubt there never was a king less respected. George IV., with all his occasional popularity, could always revive the external appearance of loyalty when he gave himself the trouble.” Thus one master, who was a “dog,” is made to do duty on occasion against an other who was an “ass.” But this is not all he has to say of the same monarch. At page 520, vol. ii., summing up his character after his death, he says:
“After his (William IV.’s) accession he always continued to be something of a blackguard and something more of a buffoon. It is but fair to his memory at the same time to say that he was a good-natured, kind-hearted, and well-meaning man, and that he always acted an honorable and straightforward, if not always a sound and discreet, part.”
That this statement, that “never was there a king less respected,” was false, it needs hardly the popular verdict about William IV. to prove. Mr. Greville contradicts himself on page 251 of the same volume, where he notes the “strong expressions of personal regard and esteem” entertained for the king by such competent witnesses as two of his ministers, Wellington and Lord Grey. Even their testimony is not needed. Whatever may have been William IV.’s private weakness and foibles, the regret felt for him was general, and the esteem for his character as a popular sovereign publicly expressed. In any case, the indecency in Mr. Greville’s mouth of the expressions he makes use of is too plain to need argument. Speaking, in one place, of Lord Brougham and referring to the chancellor’s habit of sarcasm, he says:
“He reminds me of the man in Jonathan Wild who couldn’t keep his hand out of his neighbor’s pocket, although there was nothing in it, nor refrain from cheating at cards, although there were no stakes on the table.”
This description is true enough, in another sense, of Mr. Greville himself. A Sir Fretful Plagiary, he could see no man succeed without carping at him, nor resist criticising another’s performance for the sole reason that he had no hand in it. Noting the appearance of a political letter by Lord Redesdale, he says: “There is very little in it.” This single phrase gives the key to his character and the tone of his journal. At page 69, vol. ii., he sums up the whole subject of Irish national education in the profoundly-disgusted remark that there is nothing more in it than “whether the brats at school shall read the whole Bible or only parts of it.”
Page 105, vol. ii.: “O’Connell is supposed to be horribly afraid of the cholera.” “He dodges between London and Dublin” to avoid it, “shuns the House of Commons,” and neglects his duties. On pages 414-15: “He (O’Connell) is an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and feelings of honor”—a high-toned remark, coming from a man of such delicate honor that, according to his own confession, he had no scruple in greasing the palm of a king’s valet for the secrets of his master’s bed-chamber; who avows without a blush that he deliberately led Lord Mount Charles, and Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence into confidences he there and then meant to betray; who in these Memoirs is continually invading the privacy of homes in which he was a guest; and who, finally, takes advantage of his official position under oath to disclose the conversations of the Privy Council! Surely, no juster piece of self-satire was ever written!
“’Tis a man of universal knowledge,” says La Bruyère. His familiarity with constitutional law would lead him to unseat the bench. Judges Park and Aldersen, famous lawyers, known to all the courts, are “nonsensical” in a decision they come to about the sheriff’s lists. Mr. Justice Park is “peevish and foolish.”
His loose way of damaging private character is not less remarkable. To give a single instance: he gives a bon mot about a certain Mr. Wakley, a parliamentary candidate of the day, who was forced to bring an action against an insurance company, which resisted the claim on the ground that the plaintiff was concerned in the fire. No further information is given—the verdict of the jury or the judgment. But Mr. Greville thus coolly concludes:
“I forget what was the result of the trial; but that of the evidence was a conviction of his instrumentality.” A “conviction” by whom? By Mr. Greville—who “forgets the result of the trial”! There is nothing to show that the friends or family of this Mr. Wakley are not still living to suffer from this unsupported libel. “Jesters,” says a French humorist, “are wretched creatures; that has been said before. But those who injure the reputation or the fortunes of others rather than lose a bon mot, merit an infamous punishment; this has not been said, and I dare say it.”