Odder still, the letters, poems, and remains of Hallam throw no light on the hypnotic effect he produced; they are turgid, elaborate, and wholly uninteresting; nor does he seem to have been entirely amiable.  Lord Dudley told Francis Hare that he had dined with Henry Hallam, the historian, who was Arthur Hallam’s father, in the company of the son, in Italy, adding, “It did my heart good to sit by and hear how the son snubbed the father, remembering how often the father had unmercifully snubbed me.”

There is a hint of beauty in the dark eyes and the down-dropped curve of the mobile lip in the portrait, and one need not quote “In Memoriam” to prove how utterly the charm of Hallam subjugated the Tennyson circle.  Wit, swiftness of insight, beauty, lovableness—­ all seem to have been there; and it remains that Arthur Hallam was worshipped and adored by his contemporaries with a fierce jealousy of devotion.  Nothing but the presence of an overmastering charm can explain this conspiracy of praise; and perhaps there is no better proof of it than that his friends could detect genius in letters and poems which seem alike destitute of promise and performance.

There is another figure of earlier date who seems to have had the same magnetic gift in an even more pre-eminent degree.  There is a portrait by Lawrence of Lord Melbourne that certainly gives a hint, and more than a hint, of the extraordinary charm which enveloped him; the thick, wavy hair, the fine nose, the full, but firmly moulded, lips, are attractive enough.  But the large, dark eyes under strongly marked eyebrows, which are at once pathetic, passionate, ironical, and mournful, evoke a singular emotion.  Every gift that men hold to be advantageous was showered upon Melbourne.  He was well born, wealthy, able; he was full of humour, quick to grasp a subject, an omnivorous reader and student, a famous sportsman.  He won the devotion of both men and women.  His marriage with the lovely and brilliant Lady Caroline Ponsonby, whose heart was broken and mind shattered by her hopeless passion for Byron, showed how he could win hearts.  There is no figure of all that period of whom one would rather possess a personal memoir.  Yet despite all his fame and political prestige, he was an unhappy, dissatisfied man, who tasted every experience and joy of life, and found that there was nothing in it.

The dicta of his that are preserved vibrate between cynicism, shrewdness, wisdom, and tenderness.  “Stop a bit,” he said, as the cabinet went downstairs after a dinner to discuss the corn laws.  “Is it to lower the price of bread or isn’t it?  It doesn’t much matter which, but we must all say the same thing.”  Yet, after all, it is the letters and diaries of Queen Victoria that reveal the true secret of Melbourne’s charm.  His relation to his girl-sovereign is one of the most beautiful things in latter-day history.  Melbourne loved her half paternally, half chivalrously, while it is evident that the Queen’s affection for her gallant and attractive premier was of a quality which escaped her own perception.  He humoured her, advised her, watched over her; in return, she idolised him, noted down his smallest sayings, permitted him to behave and talk just as he would.  She lovingly records his little ways and fancies—­how he fell asleep after dinner, how he always took two apples, and hid one in his lap while he ate the other.