Tom Campbell lived at Minto, but it was in a state of dependence which he brooked very ill.  He was kindly treated, but would not see it in the right view, and suspected slights, and so on, where no such thing was meant.  There was a turn of Savage about Tom though without his blackguardism—­a kind of waywardness of mind and irritability that must have made a man of his genius truly unhappy.  Lord Minto, with the mildest manners, was very tenacious of his opinions, although he changed them twice in the crisis of politics.  He was the early friend of Fox, and made a figure towards the end of the American war, or during the struggles betwixt Fox and Pitt.  Then came the Revolution, and he joined the Anti-Gallican party so keenly, that he declared against Addington’s peace with France, and was for a time, I believe, a Wyndhamite.  He was reconciled to the Whigs on the Fox and Grenville coalition; but I have heard that Fox, contrary to his wont, retained such personal feelings as made him object to Sir Gilbert Elliot’s having a seat in the Cabinet; so he was sent as Governor-General to India—­a better thing, I take it, for his fortune.  He died shortly after his return,[93] at Hatfield or Barnet, on his way down to his native country.  He was a most pleasing and amiable man.  I was very sorry for his death, though I do not know how we should have met, for the contested election in 1805 [in Roxburghshire] had placed some coldness betwixt the present Lord and me.  I was certainly anxious for Sir Alexander Don, both as friend of my most kind friend Charles, Duke of Buccleuch, and on political accounts; and those thwartings are what men in public life do not like to endure.  After a cessation of friendship for some years, we have come about again.  We never had the slightest personal dispute or disagreement.  But politics are the blowpipe beneath whose influence the best cemented friendships too often dissever; and ours, after all, was only a very familiar acquaintance.

It is very odd that the common people at Minto and the neighbourhood will not believe to this hour that the first Earl is dead.  They think he had done something in India which he could not answer for—­that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap, and long white beard.  The circumstance of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the vulgar are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble.  I have seen people who could read, write, and cipher, shrug their shoulders and look mysterious when this subject was mentioned.  One very absurd addition was made on occasion of a great ball at Minto House, which it was said was given to draw all people away from the grounds, that the concealed Earl might have leisure for his exercise.  This was on the principle in the German play,[94] where, to hide their conspiracy, the associates join in a chorus song.