This terrible pamphleteer was one of those men who exist to prove the distinction between a biography and a life.

From his biographies you will learn that he was a Radical who had once been a Tory.

From his life, if there were one, you would learn that he was always a Radical because he was always a Tory.

Few men changed less; it was round him that the politicians like Pitt chopped and changed, like fakirs dancing round a sacred rock.

His secret is buried with him; it is that he really cared about the English people.