“19th.—. . . Went into the House of Lords, and up comes my Lord Grey with a tender squeeze of my hand, to tell me with the utmost animation an excellent story of Wellesley. He has written to Lord Grenville to tell him he is sick, and begging him not to agitate the question of taking the 30,000 Portuguese troops into our pay to-day in his absence. In addition to this (conceiving himself unworthy of credit, I suppose) he encloses an opinion or certificate of his physician—four sides of paper upon the nature of his constitution! The physician’s name is Dr. Knighton, accoucheur (as Grey says) to Poll Raffle, Wellesley’s Cyprian.
“My Lord Grey came to me again to tell me of ‘a damned job’ by Bishop Mansel’s brother. . . . When I saw him cast his canvassing eyes about him to bow to every member of the Commons he barely knew, and then thought of what I had seen of his pride and tyranny at Howick a few months ago, I knew not whether one ought to laugh or cry at such folly in a person who might be so powerful if he was right.”
