William Lyttelton was said by Dr. Johnson to have more chaff than grain in him, as everything had that grew to such a prodigious length. After a foreign tour with Henry Thrale, the brewer, whose father paid all expenses,1Thraliana, i. 200, 300. he persuaded his father, with the eloquent support of William Pitt, to allow him to give up the bar and to bring him in for an impending vacancy at Bewdley, not far from Hagley.
I have long seen in his mind [Pitt wrote to Sir Thomas Lyttelton] the promise of very particular talents for the business of the world, accompanied with a sound judgement; and particularly have always marked and loved in him the strong seeds of honour and virtue in his heart. All these, Sir Thomas, are now ripening, or rather ripened for action, and it would be ten thousand pities should they be stifled, for a long time at least, and perhaps entirely lost, in the inglorious and unprofitable labours of Westminster Hall.
He added
Nothing can be kinder and more flattering to me than your thinking of putting him under, as you are pleased to call it, my protection. If I can be of any little use to him at his beginning in our parliamentary warfare, be assured it will be a most sensible pleasure to me. Should he on any occasion want direction, he will always find the surest and best in his brother Lyttelton. The director and pupil are most worthy of each other, and you, dear Sir Thomas, of the comfort of both.2M. Wyndham, Chrons. of 18th Cent. ii. 1-3.
Lyttelton’s only recorded speech in his first Parliament was in answer to Sir John Hynde Cotton’s motion on 27 Nov. 1751 to reduce the army to 15,000.3Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 213. He died 14 Sept. 1808.