He left three sons, George, Thomas, and William Wyndham, who variously distinguished themselves in the public service, and whose letters, chiefly those of the last, in all respects the ablest and most celebrated, constitute the bulk of the following pages.
George Grenville succeeded to the title of Earl Temple on the death of his uncle, and was afterwards created Marquis of Buckingham, and was father of the late Duke of Buckingham. He twice filled the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
Thomas Grenville, who died recently at an advanced age, filled several high offices in the State, and accumulated one of the most splendid libraries in the kingdom.
William Wyndham Grenville, afterwards Lord Grenville, was one of the most eminent statesmen of the reign of George III., and, surviving all his great contemporaries, died in 1834. "The endowments of his mind," observes Lord Brougham, "were all of a useful and commanding sort--sound sense, steady memory, vast industry. His acquirements were in the same proportion valuable and lasting--a thorough acquaintance with business in its principles and in its details; a complete mastery of the science of politics as well theoretical as practical; of late years a perfect familiarity with political economy, and a just appreciation of its importance; an early and most extensive knowledge of classical literature, which he improved instead of abandoning, down to the close of his life; a taste formed upon these chaste models, and of which his lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally powerful with its reasoning and its statement. He was in this greatest quality of a statesman pre-eminently distinguished, that, as he neither would yield up his judgment to the clamour of the people, nor suffer himself to be seduced by the influence of the Court, so would he never submit his reason to the empire of prejudice, or own the supremacy of authority or tradition." The character is accurately and justly discriminated; but, however fully this searching panegyric is sustained and justified by the public acts and recorded labours of Lord Grenville, we must turn to his correspondence with Lord Temple for the complete development of that sagacity and sound judgment, that intimate knowledge of public affairs, and that remarkable comprehensiveness of view and lucidity of statement, by which he was distinguished above his contemporaries in an age of great political characters. This correspondence, extending over a long period of years, is not less remarkable for the constancy with which it was carried on than for the minuteness of its details, and the freedom of its revelations. Written with the ease of familiar intercourse, and in that confidential spirit which was the exponent of one of the most touching attachments that ever bound one man to another, it is no less valuable as a close, running commentary on the events of the day, lighting up in its course the hidden springs of parliamentary action and the policy of cabinets, than it is fascinating from the teeming evidences with which it abounds of a warm heart and a highly disciplined and accomplished mind.