; but Lord
Grey was not to be prevailed upon to accept such an invitation, and
William had to gulp down his personal objections and invite Lord
Melbourne to come back once more and take charge of the Government of
the country.

{251}

Lord Melbourne had no difficulty in forming an Administration, and it
was on the whole very much the same in its composition as that which
King William had so rudely dismissed only a few months before. But
there were some new names in the list, and there was one very
remarkable omission. Lord Brougham was not one of the members of the
new Government. Lord Melbourne had made up his mind that if, perhaps,
there could be no living without such a colleague, there certainly
could be no living with him, and he preferred the chance to the
certainty. The greatest sensation was produced all over the country
when it was found that Lord Brougham was to have nothing to do with the
new Administration. In and out of Parliament the question became a
subject of keen and vehement discussion. The energy and the eloquence
of Brougham had held a commanding place among the forces by which
Parliamentary reform had been effected, and the wonder was how any
Reform Ministry could venture to carry on the work of government, not
merely without the co-operation of such a man, but with every
likelihood of his active and bitter hostility. At one time the report
went abroad, and found many ready believers, that there were periods in
Brougham's life when his great intellect became clouded, as Chatham's
had been at one time, and that the Liberal Ministry found it therefore
impossible to avail themselves of his fitful services. Lord Melbourne
himself once made an emphatic appeal to his audience in the House of
Lords, after Lord Brougham had delivered a speech there of
characteristic power and eloquence. Melbourne invited the House to
consider calmly how overmastering must have been the reasons which
compelled any body of rational statesmen to deprive themselves of such
a man's co-operation. It would appear, however, that the reasons which
influenced Melbourne and his colleagues were given by Brougham's own
passionate and ungovernable temper, his impatience of all discipline,
his sudden changes of mood and purpose, his overmastering egotism, and
his frequent impulse to strike out for himself and to disregard all
considerations of convenience or compromise, all {252} calculations as
to the effect of an individua