known as ‘Malagrida,’ a nickname given him for the first time in the ‘Public Advertiser’ for 16 Sept. 1767 (Woodfall, Junius, 1814, ii. 473), while caricatures represented him as Guy Fawkes in the act of blowing up his comrades. Henry Fox denounced him as ‘a perfidious and infamous liar’ (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 203). George III spoke of him as ‘the jesuit of Berkeley Square’ (Correspondence of King George III with Lord North, 1867, ii. 234). Horace Walpole declared that ‘his falsehood was so constant and notorious that it was rather his profession than his instrument. … A Cataline and a Borgia were his models in age when half their wickedness would have suited his purposes better’ (Journal of the Reign of George III, 1859, ii. 566–7). Burke frequently expressed the most extravagant detestation of him. ‘If Lord Shelburne was not a Cataline or a Borgia in morals,’ he said on one occasion, ‘it must not be ascribed to anything but his understanding’ (Parl. Hist. xxiii. 183). Even as late as 1793 many of the leading whigs had ‘not only a distrust, but an unwarrantable hatred of his very name’ (Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party, 1852, i. 45). Two familiar anecdotes well illustrate the general belief in his insincerity. The one is Goldsmith's unfortunate though well-meant remark to Lansdowne, ‘Do you know that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man’ (Hardy, Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, 1810, p. 177). The other, the story of Gainsborough flinging away his pencil after a second attempt to draw a likeness of Lansdowne, and exclaiming, ‘D——it! I never could see through varnish, and there's an end’ (Autobiography of Mrs. Piozzi, 1861, i. 338). The same reproach is urged against him in the ‘Rolliad’ (1795, pt. i. p. 245):
A Noble Duke affirms I like his plan;
I never did, my Lords!—I never can!
Shame on the slanderous breath which dares instill,
That I, who now condemn, advis'd the ill.
Plain words, thank Heaven, are always understood;
I could approve, I said, but not I wou'd.
Judged by the standard of the time, nothing that Lansdowne did sufficiently accounts for his extreme unpopularity amongst his contemporaries. Much of it was doubtless due to his outspoken contempt for political parties, and his preference for measures to men; much also to his affected and obsequious manners, his extremely suspicious temper, and his cynical judgment of the motives of others. Though possessed of great abilities, Lansdowne was wanting in tact, and without any skill in the management of men. ‘His art,’ said Lord Loughborough, ‘had a strong twang of a boarding-school education. It resembles more a cunning woman's than an able man's address’ (Journal and Correspondence of Lord Auckland, 1861–2, i. 19). As a speaker he had few superiors in the House of Lords. Lord Camden is said to have ‘admired his debating powers above those of any other peer in his time, Lord Chatham alone excepted’ (George Hardinge quoted in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, 1846, v. 362); while Bentham, on the other hand, says that ‘his manner was very imposing, very dignified, and he talked his vague generalities in the House of Lords in a very emphatic way, as if something grand were at the bottom, when, in fact, there was nothing at all’ (The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, x. 116). Lord Holland, in his discriminating character of Lansdowne, says that ‘in his publick speeches he wanted method and perspicuity, and was deficient in justness of reason, in judgment, and in taste; but he had some imagination, some wit, great animation, and both in sarcasm and invective not unfrequently rose to eloquence’ (Memoirs of the Whig Party, i. 41). Deficient as he was in many of the requisite qualifications of a leader, Lansdowne was really more of a political philosopher than a statesman. In many of his views he was far in advance of his own times. He warmly supported the cause of parliamentary and economical reform. He was in favour of Roman catholic emancipation and complete religious equality. He was one of the earliest and most zealous advocates of free trade. He hailed the French revolution with enthusiasm, and persistently advocated a close alliance between England and France. He protested against the policy of maintaining the integrity of the Turkish empire, and was in favour of the neutral flag in time of war. Bentham always said that ‘he was the only minister he ever heard of who did not fear the people’ (ib. p. 41 n.). Disraeli, who calls Lansdowne ‘one of the suppressed characters of English history,’ says that he was ‘the first great minister who comprehended the rising importance of the middle class’ (Sybil, 1845, i. 34, 37).
Lansdowne was a munificent patron of literature and the fine arts. His house was the centre of the most cultivated and liberal society of the day. Bentham, Dumont, Franklin, Garrick, Johnson, Sir William Jones, Price, Priestley, Mirabeau, Morellet,
