Maria Edgeworth

“ I much enjoy the sight of Lady Lansdowne's happiness with her husband and her children: beauty, fortune, cultivated society, in short, everything that the most reasonable or unreasonable could wish. She is so amiable and so desirous to make others happy, that it is impossible not to love her; and the most envious of mortals, I think, would have the heart opened to sympathy with her. Then Lord and Lady Lansdowne are so fond of each other, and show it, and don't show it, in the most agreeable manner. ”

“ In point of ability, Lord Grenville is, I think, far superior to any one I have seen here. Lord Lansdowne, with whom I had a delightful tête-à-tête walk yesterday, told me that Lord Grenville can be fully known only when people come to do political business with him: there he excels. You know his preface to Lord Chatham's Letters. His manner of speaking in the House is not pleasing, Lord Lansdowne says: from being very near-sighted he has a look of austerity and haughtiness, and as he cannot see all he wants to see, he throws himself back with his chin up, determined to look at none. ”

“ In one of Cowper's letters there is an absurd character of Lord Grenville, in which he is represented as a petit-maître. This arose from Lord Grenville taking up his near-sighted glass several times during his visit. There cannot, in nature or art, be a man further from a petit-maître. ”