MELBOURNE, ma'bern, William Lamb, VISCOUNT, English statesman: b. 15 March 1779; d. 24 Nov. 1848. Carefully trained by his mother, he entered Eton in 1790, Trinity Col lege, Cambridge, in 1796, and Lincoln's Inn in 1797; studied law in Glasgow ; was called to the bar in 1804; and in 1805 was elected to the House of Commons, where he followed Fox, leader of the opposition. He lost his seat in 1812 because of his vote for Catholic emancipa tion; was returned in 1816; served as chief secretary in Ireland in 1827; and in 1828 entered the House of Lords upon his father's death. Only then did he begin to figure in politics, and that only because of his popularity, for he had no official ability, being neither diligent nor brilliant. As home secretary under Grey in 1830 he was a failure; but in July 1834 the king induced him to form a ministry, and again in 1835, in spite of the king's effort to foist Peel on the country in November 1834, he became Premier. He remained in office until
August 1841, thus covering the early years of the reign of Victoria, whom Melbourne ably instructed in the duties of her position. His tuition of the young queen seems, however, the only event of his long administration, and he must be classed rather as a politician than as a great statesman, since he was scarcely more than indifferent to the reform measures of the day. He was a man of much learning, of a rather attractive, though coarse and habitually profane, wit and of a strange admixture of con stitutional conservatism and political liberalism. His wife. Ladv Caroline Ponsonby, whom he married in 1805, was separated from him in 1825; she wrote several novels and was a friend of Lord Byron. See NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZA BETH ; and consult Torrens, W. M., (Memoirs.)