calculation, was weak against the intoxicating influence of success and fame.  He became proud even to insolence.  Old companions, who, a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him in garrets, had dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had lent him some silver to pay his seamstress’s bill, hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a Regent of the kingdom, that he had founded the Bank of England and the new East India Company, that he had restored the currency, that he had invented the Exchequer Bills, that he had planned the General Mortgage, and that he had been pronounced, by a solemn vote of the Commons, to have deserved all the favours which he had received from the Crown.  It was said that admiration of himself and contempt of others were indicated by all his gestures and written in all the lines of his face.  The very way in which the little jackanapes, as the hostile pamphleteers loved to call him, strutted through the lobby, making the most of his small figure, rising on his toe, and perking up his chin, made him enemies.  Rash and arrogant sayings were imputed to him, and perhaps invented for him.  He was accused of boasting that there was nothing that he could not carry through the House of Commons, that he could turn the majority round his finger.  A crowd of libellers assailed him with much more than political hatred.  Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to his charge.  He was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for three years’ purchase.  The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened on him.  His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate than his avarice.  There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians and their allies, the great moneyed men of the City, a cry much resembling the cry which, seventy or eighty years later, was raised against the English Nabobs.  Great wealth, suddenly acquired, is not often enjoyed with moderation, dignity and good taste.  It is therefore not impossible that there may have been some small foundation for the extravagant stories with which malecontent pamphleteers amused the leisure of malecontent squires.  In such stories Montague played a conspicuous part.  He contrived, it was said, to be at once as rich as Croesus and as riotous as Mark Antony.  His stud and his cellar were beyond all price.  His very lacqueys turned up their noses at claret.  He and his confederates were described as spending the immense sums of which they had plundered the public in banquets of four courses, such as Lucullus might have eaten in the Hall of Apollo.  A supper for twelve Whigs, enriched by jobs, grants, bribes, lucky purchases and lucky sales of stock, was cheap at eighty pounds.  At the end of every course all the fine linen on the table was changed.  Those who saw the pyramids