179^' LOUD CHATHAM. 8^' 



could convey a precife meaning ; he would flutter, and 

 foar, and fing like a (ky-lark, and come down uponycu 

 unawares with a vigour and efFecfl that was quite allo- 

 nifhing and inexplicable, while he was all the time 

 watching for your opinions and fecrets as a cat watches 

 in a bufli for a bird ; and when he had got his prey, he 

 played with it and dandled it with a grace and manner 

 that furpafled all defcription. His old fecretary Wood 

 faw much of this, and often attempted to defcribe it ; 

 but thefe oral authorities, on which true hiftory is fo 

 dependent, are too fugitive, and too difficult to be af- 

 certained, to admit of much weight with the public. 

 I confider Lord Chatham's real death to have taken 

 place in the month of March 1767. After that period 

 his body was no longer able to maintain the greatnefs of 

 its inhabitant : and his fiUy fpeech in the Houfe of 

 Lords, in anfwer to the Duke of Richmond, where he 

 talked of America as a part of the unalienable portion 

 of the Princefs Sophia, was more like the cant of an 

 old nurfery maid, than the mafculine fenfe of an in- 

 formed ftatefman. Yet this foolifh fpeech was the 

 luckiell for his family he ever made ; and I am per- 

 fuaded, that had not this accident coll him his life, he 

 would have died out like an airy meteor, and left no 

 trace behind him more than Pou'.teny, and other 

 Would-be patriots, who had gone before him. For- 

 tune, not pi'udcnce or forefight, regulates the affairs of 

 this world. A man who had been for many years the 

 execration of adminiftration, and by no means the fa- 

 vourite of oppofition, is after his death immediately 

 held up as a dcmi-god, at the defire of a king v/ho 

 would not employ him, and buried by the nation with 

 the funeral pomp of a prince ; giving to his family, to 

 the lateft pofterity, more than he had ever enjoyed 

 in his life-time. Ail this Reafon fays is folly, nonfenfe, 

 and contradiction. But Fortune fays all was perfectly 

 as it outfit to he. 



