George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[101] but now that he was at that period of life when the

CHAP. VI.} 1761 April.

gentler passions are quiet, and ambition rules without restraint, he was so much like the bird that croaks whilst enjoying the fullest meal, that towards those even who had benefited him most, there remained in his heart something like a harsh willingness to utter reproach for their not having succeeded in doing more. And when he looked back upon the line of his predecessors in office; upon Bute, Newcastle, Devonshire, Waldegrave, and even Pelham, under whom he had been trained, it was easy for him to esteem himself superior to them all. Yet Grenville wanted the elements of true statesmanship and greatness: he had neither a creative mind to devise a system of policy, nor active powers to guide an administration. His nature inclined him not to originate measures, but to amend, and alter, and regulate. He had neither salient traits nor general comprehensiveness of mind; neither the warm imagination, which can arrange and vivify various masses of business, nor sagacity to penetrate the springs of public action and the consequences of measures. In a word, he was a dull, plodding pedant in politics; a painstaking, exact man of business, capable of counting¹ the Manilla ransom if it had ever been paid. In his frequent, long, and tedious speeches, it has been said that a trope² never passed his lips; but he abounded in repetitions and explanatory self-justification. He would have made a laborious and an upright judge,