1779–1848 · British Prime Minister and Queen Victoria’s first political mentor
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne was a Whig statesman who served as Prime Minister briefly in 1834 and again from 1835 to 1841, and who spent hours a day tutoring the young Queen Victoria in statecraft. He was a famous sceptic in an age of enthusiasts — languid, worldly, allergic to certainty — which is exactly why the jibe fits him. His one lasting contribution to the dictionary of quotations is a complaint about somebody else’s confidence, and even that survives only secondhand, in other people’s memoirs and prefaces.