92 



LIFE OF MYTTON. 



If, instead of having been prostrated to the excess of 

 wine, and its concomitant dissipation, they had been 

 cultivated and improved to the utmost, they might 

 have enabled him to have cut a figure in the senate 

 or as a scholar. He read with unusual rapidity, and 

 evidently retained what he did read ; for his literary 

 acquisitions were surprising, considering the life of 

 tumult he had led. He had always a quotation at 

 hand from a Greek or Latin author, and there was a 

 conscious feeling of ability about him, which he was 

 somewhat wont to display. But what says the poet ? 



"Without a genius learning; soars in vain, 

 And without learning, genius sinks again; 

 Their force united crowns the sprightly reign ; " 



and here was this union wanting. He also wrote his 

 letters, to use a sporting figure, at the rate of twenty 

 miles in the hour, generally at his dinner-table, send- 

 ing them out by his butler to be sealed, and very 

 often to be directed, for he never had a secret in his 

 life ; and the letters he received remained for general 

 inspection. I regret not having one of them to tran- 

 scribe, but his off-hand addresses to his constituents, 

 during his first contest for Shrewsbury in i8 19, were 

 particularly neat and appropriate, and were sent to the 

 press before the ink with which they were written 



