No reproaches, even when pointed and barbed with the sharpest wit, appeared to give him pain.
Great satirists, animated by a deadly personal aversion, exhausted all their strength in attacks upon him.

They assailed him with keen invective; they assailed him with still keener irony; but they found that neither invective nor irony could move him to any thing but an unforced smile and a goodhumoured curse; and they at length threw down the lash, acknowledging that it was impossible to make him feel.

That, with such vices, he should have played a great part in life, should have carried numerous elections against the most formidable opposition by his personal popularity, should have had a large following in Parliament, should have risen to the highest offices of the State, seems extraordinary.

But he lived in times when faction was almost a madness; and he possessed in an eminent degree the qualities of the leader of a faction.

There was a single tie which he respected.