s that required a hundred men to lift, and helmets which could only
fit the champion whose single strength could wield such a weapon, the
style was lively and attractive, and the dialogue was eminently dramatic
and sparkling.

But the interest of all these works has passed away. The "Memoirs" have
served their turn as a guide and aid to more regular historians, and the
composition which still keeps its author's fame alive is his
Correspondence with some of his numerous friends, male and female, in
England or abroad, which he maintained with an assiduity which showed
how pleasurable he found the task, while the care with which he secured
the preservation of his letters, begging his correspondents to retain
them, in case at any future time he should desire their return, proves
that he anticipated the possibility that they might hereafter be found
interesting by other readers than to those to whom they were addressed.

But he did not suffer either his writings or the enrichment of
"Strawberry" with antiquarian treasures to engross the whole of his
attention. For the first thirty years and more of his public life he was
a zealous politician. And it is no slight proof how high was the
reputation for sagacity and soundness of judgement which he enjoyed,
that in the ministerial difficulties caused by Lord Chatham's illness,
he was consulted by the leaders of more than one section of the Whig
party, by Conway, the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Grafton, Lord
Holland, and others; that his advice more than once influenced their
determinations; and that he himself drew more than one of the letters
which passed between them. Even the King himself was not ignorant of the
weight he had in their counsels, and, on one occasion at least,
condescended to avail himself of it for a solution of some of the
embarrassments with which their negotiations were beset.

But after a time his attendance in Parliament, which had never been very
regular, grew wearisome and distasteful to him. At the General Election
of 1768 he declined to offer himself again as a candidate for Lynn,
which he had represented for several years. And henceforth his mornings
were chiefly occupied with literature; the continuation of his Memoirs;
discussion of literary subjects with Gibbon, Voltaire, Mason, and
others, while his evenings were passed in the society of his friends, a
mode of enjoying his time in which he was eminently calculated to shine,
since abundant testi