^T. 27.] WILLIAM PITT. 321 



him, and pointing out the grace and felicity of the 

 expressions. 



Mr Pitt used to come home to dinner after his 

 Cabinet work a good deal exhausted, and requiring 

 port wine, of which he generally drank a bottle 

 during dinner in a rapid succession of glasses; but 

 as soon as this stimulus restored his strength, he 

 drank no more. His conversation then became gay, 

 good-natured, and humorous, and he would tell all 

 sorts of amusing stories : some of them about the 

 colonel of Napier's regiment the 43d. This was 

 General Smith, an uncle of Sir Sidney; and certainly 

 a humorist, as appeared by the stories Mr Pitt used 

 to relate of him. One was, that during the fears 

 produced by the apprehension of the French invasion, 

 the general sent by extraordinary express a parcel 

 supposed to contain important news, but which turned 

 out to be the nightcap of a member of the Govern- 

 ment, who had left it behind when on a visit to the 

 general. Another story was that, when he com- 

 manded on the south coast, he sent a despatch to Pitt 

 announcing that two French ships were then actually 

 landing troops in three places ! 



Mr Pitt liked practical fun, and used to encourage 

 it. One instance, which Napier gives, shows Pitt in 

 a point of view singular, and little to be anticipated 

 of so generally solemn a personage. They Lady 

 Hester, James Stanhope, and Napier had resolved 

 to blacken his face with burnt cork, which he most 

 strenuously resisted. Early in the fray, a servant 



VOL. T. x 



