The Earl of Chatham (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Earl of Chatham His mind was saturated with the literature of the eighteenth century not only with the productions of the best minds, but also with the ephemeral rubbish which has no other merit than that of recording the changes in plublic opinion. Every actor who appeared, in however umble a capacity, upon the stage of politics from the beginnings of Bolingbroke to the end of William Pitt the younger, had a place in the portrait gallery of his imagination. He understood the work ings of their minds. Their ideas on every subject of importance were familiar to him, and, what was more, congenial to his own robust and concrete intellect. The political game which absorbed so many of them was one which he himself had played and never ceased to relish and few writers have ever threaded the maze of party intrigue, or fathomed the depths of political morality, with a more hearty zest. For the motives which make traitors or turncoats he had that fineness of scent which is more common among satirists than historians. And like the satirist he took delight in unmasking the inconsistencies, the hypocrisies, the little falsehoods, tricks and turns to which men other wise respectable are driven by the lust of place and power. Nowhere could these special tastes and a ti tudes be more pleasantly indulged or more profita 1y applied than in portraying the age of Walpole and the Pelhams, of Lord North and George III. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.