ice, he
entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get rid
of. He had a black riband over one of his eyes that day, having
tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy; and this added to
the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy. Whereas, it was
a speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by
accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty,
because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with
him, and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner; General
Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the
House."

This brings the miracle down to the human standard, yet that standard
was high, and the man who could excite this admiration, in a House
which contained so great a number of eminent speakers, and which could
charm the caustic spirit of Walpole into the acknowledgment that his
speech "was the most singular pleasure of the kind he had ever
tasted," must have been an extraordinary performance, even if his
instrument was not of the highest tone of oratory. A note from the
Duke of Grafton's manuscript memoirs also contradicts, on Townshend's
own authority, his opinion of the "wild incapacity of Lord Chatham."
The note says:--

"On the night preceding Lord Chatham's first journey to Bath, Mr
Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet.
The business was on a general view and statement of the actual
situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord
Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a
manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to
co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr Townshend was
particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in
my carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what
inferior animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him
before, he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be
so transcendant."

Walpole writes with habitual bitterness of the great Lord Chatham. The
recollection of his early opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, seems to
have made him an unfaithful historian, wherever this extraordinary
man's name comes within his page; but at the period of those
discussions, it seems not improbable that the vigour of Chatham's
understanding had in some degree given way to the tortures of his
disease. He had suffered from gout