and good taste. It is therefore not impossible that there may
have been some small foundation for the extravagant stories with
which malecontent pamphleteers amused the leisure of malecontent
squires. In such stories Montague played a conspicuous part. He
contrived, it was said, to be at once as rich as Croesus and as
riotous as Mark Antony. His stud and his cellar were beyond all
price. His very lacqueys turned up their noses at claret. He and
his confederates were described as spending the immense sums of
which they had plundered the public in banquets of four courses,
such as Lucullus might have eaten in the Hall of Apollo. A supper
for twelve Whigs, enriched by jobs, grants, bribes, lucky
purchases and lucky sales of stock, was cheap at eighty pounds.
At the end of every course all the fine linen on the table was
changed. Those who saw the pyramids of choice wild fowl imagined
that the entertainment had been prepared for fifty epicures at
the least. Only six birds' nests from the Nicobar islands were to
be had in London; and all the six, bought at an enormous price,
were smoking in soup on the board. These fables were destitute
alike of probability and of evidence. But Grub Street could
devise no fable injurious to Montague which was not certain to
find credence in more than half the manor houses and vicarages of
England.

It may seem strange that a man who loved literature passionately,
and rewarded literary merit munificently, should have been more
savagely reviled both in prose and verse than almost any other
politician in our history. But there is really no cause for
wonder. A powerful, liberal and discerning protector of genius
is very likely to be mentioned with honour long after his death,
but is very likely also to be most brutally libelled during his