But Grattan's assertion that the man who, as his
sister said of him, knew but two books, the "AEneid" and the "Faerie
Queene," was superior in scholarship to one who, with the exception of
his rival, Fox, had probably no equal for knowledge of the great authors
of antiquity in either House of Parliament, is little short of a
palpable absurdity. We may, however, suspect that Grattan's estimate of
the two men was in some degree colored by his personal feelings. With
Lord Chatham he had never been in antagonism. On one great subject, the
dispute with America, he had been his follower and ally, advocating in
the Irish House of Commons the same course which Chatham upheld in the
English House of Peers. But to Pitt he had been almost constantly
opposed. By Pitt he and his party, whether in the English, or, so long
as it lasted, in the Irish Parliament, had been repeatedly defeated. The
Union, of which he had been the indefatigable opponent, and to which he
was never entirely reconciled, had been carried in his despite; and it
was hardly unnatural that the recollection of his long and unsuccessful
warfare should in some degree bias his judgment, and prompt him to an
undeserved disparagement of the minister by whose wisdom and firmness he
had been so often overborne.]
[Footnote 112: Massey's "History of England," iii.
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