YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Bought with the income of the EDWARD WELLS SOUTHWORTH FUND ana &c JJ?-&?*;e/iw, his .'<'/sh?rs . ENGRAVED BY P£Thf,TrsslON FROM £HE ORIGINAL PICTURE B5T TVOn.KKl- 115 ITT HEH MAJE3TVS PRIVATE ATARTM3SWTS AT WlHD:;OR CABTLE London. Published ty Richard Bentley;'ie43 MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND REVOLUTION IN 1688 DEATH OF GEORGE THE SECOND. BY JOHN HENEAGE JESSE. AUTHOR OF ' MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND DURING THE REIGN OF THE STUARTS." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. If. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, PuMutljev in ©rtrtrrarg to John, fifth Earl Rivers, the earl- uom became extinct. EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 193 Tyburn Dick for many years. The other was Lord Peterborough, a man who, to the same vile- ness of soul, had joined a sort of knight-errantry, that made up a very odd sort of composition ; one, who had wasted his fortune and worn out his credit, and had nothing left but so much reso lution and so little honour, as made him capable of anything they had to put upon him."* Even after the death of Queen Anne, when the interests of Peterborough and her husband no longer clashed, and when both of these celebrated men were treated with equal indifference by the new monarch, the Duchess expresses herself not a little provoked at the Earl entering her drawing- room with the same ease and unconcernedness, as if their interests had ever been the same, and as if he had never been the opponent of her illustrious lord. For instance, on one of his early letters to her, we find the following very curious endorse ment in her own hand-writing : — " This Lord made speeches against the Duke of Marlborough in parliament, when he served my Lord Oxford's Abigail,^ and since the Queen's death he comes to me and talks as if he had always been of our interest and of our opinion.":): It wrould seem, by this passage, that the rancour of the Duchess ori ginated quite as much in his having espoused the cause of Mrs. Masham, as in his having been the maligner of the Duke. To have been the enemy * Marlborough Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 137. + Abigail Hill, the celebrated Mrs. Masham. £ Marlborough Correspondence, vol. i, p. 5. VOL. II. O 194 CHARLES MORDAUNT, of her husband might have been forgiven; but to have been the confidant of her detested rival, was, in the mind of the acrimonious Duchess, a crime the most heinous that could possibly have been committed. An anecdote is recorded of Lord Peterborough, which, while it displays the quickness of his wit, shows how ready he was to exercise it at the expense of his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Marlborough. At the time when the latter was in the height of his unpopularity, a mob, mistaking Lord Peterborough for the Duke, gathered rather tumultuously round his chair, and began to threaten him with personal violence. " Gentlemen," said the Earl, " I can convince you, for two reasons, that I am not the Duke of Marl borough. In the first place, I have only five guineas in my pocket ; and, in the second, they are heartily at your service." In a letter, dated the 23rd of January, 1697, from James Vernon, Secretary of State to King William, to the Duke of Shrewsbury, there is an amusing account of one of Lord Peterborough's early adventures : — " Sir John Talbot," says Vernon, " came to me last night, upon a very remarkable occasion which he had in the morning communicated to my Lord Keeper: and it is thus:— One Talbot tells him he has had a pretty long acquaintance with one Brown, whom he knew a student in the Temple, where his father made him reasonable allowance, till his estate came to be forfeited ; and since that EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 195 time, he has lived by play, sharping, and a little on the highway. This man, with three or four more, set upon my Lord Monmouth last summer. The account he gives of it is, that they took from him his hat, sword, periwig, a ring he had on his finger, and six shillings in money, which was all he had. " My Lord, making them a compliment, that by their behaviour they looked like gentlemen, and to take that course only out of necessity, and therefore desired to know how he might place ten guineas upon them. They immediately gave him all his things again, except the six shillings which he would not take. The guard from Chelsea college coming to the hedge-side about that time, and firing upon them, they told my Lord they should be obliged to mischief him, if he did not call to the guard that there were none but friends, which he did, and bid his coach drive on. " Some time after this, Brown made my Lord a visit and told him his errand. My Lord asked him, how he durst venture himself in coming thither. He returned my Lord his compliment, that he knew he was a man of honour, he came with as surance of what he had said to them, and those who were necessitated to lead his life ran great dangers elsewhere. My Lord gave him a guinea or two, and encouraged his coming again, and after that he had frequent meetings with his Lordship at some mistress's lodgings."* * Letters Illustrative of the Reign of William III. vol. i. pp. 179. 180. o 2 196 CHARLES MORDAUNT, Of the hearty manner in which Lord Peter borough enjoyed a joke, the following anecdote is related by the younger Richardson : " The great Earl of Peterborough," he says, "who had much sense, much wit, and much whim, leaped out of his chariot one day on seeing a dancing-master with pearl-coloured silk stocking slightly stepping over the broad stones, and picking his way, in ex tremely dirty weather : he ran after him, — who soon took to his heels, — with his drawn sword, in order to drive him into the mud, but into which he of course followed himself." From the period when Lord Peterborough ceased to figure as a soldier and a statesman, — or rather from the time when he was unable to ob tain employment from the State, — we find him solacing himself with the society of the wits of the period, and assuming a character for that kind of philosophy which affects a superiority to the common evils of life, and delights in laughing at coxcombs and fools. His utter contempt of the fops of the day, and of all outward appearances, seems to have carried him into the opposite ex treme, slovenliness, and into a disregard for the decencies of life. His personal eccentricities, and, especially, his indifference to the common obser vances of society, are frequently alluded to by his contemporaries. Lady Hervey, writes to Lady Suffolk from Bath, on the 7th of June, 1725,— " Lord Peterborough is here, and has been so some time, though, by his dress, one would be lieve he had not designed to make any stay ; for EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 197 he wears boots" all day, and, as I hear, must do so, having brought no shoes with him. It is a comical sight to see him with his blue ribbon and star, and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he himself has purchased at market, he carries home for his dinner."* The change which had taken place in Lord Peterborough's character, — a change from the indulgence in headstrong passions to philosophical pursuits, — is dwelt upon by him, apparently with much satisfaction, in one of his letters to Pope ; — " I must give you some good news," he writes, "with relation to myself, because I know you wish me well. I am cured of some diseases in my old age, which tormented me very much in my youth. I was possessed with violent and uneasy passions, such as a peevish concern for truth, and a saucy love for my country. When a Christian priest preached against the spirit of the Gospel ; when an English judge determined against Magna Charta ; when a minister acted against common sense, I used to fret. Now, Sir, let what will happen, I keep myself in temper. As I have no flattering hopes, I banish all useless fears." Notwithstanding the anxiety which he pro fesses in this passage that Christianity should be preached in its true spirit, Lord Peterborough is well known to have been a Deist. He once paid a visit to the amiable Fenelon at the episcopal palace at Cambrai. After prolonging his stay for * Letters to and from the Countess of Suffolk, vol. i. p. 183. 198 CHARLES MORDAUNT, some weeks, he one day observed to the Chevalier Ramsay, — "Upon my word, I must quit the Archbishop as soon as I can ; for if I stay a week longer, I shall be made a Christian of in spite of myself." He remarked on another occasion, in conversation with Pope,—" One morning, I went to hear Penn preach ; for 'tis my way to be civil to all religions." Such was his admiration of Penn, that he once accompanied the philanthro pist across the Atlantic for the purpose of visiting his new colony of Pennsylvania, from whence he returned, highly gratified with its primitive en joyments and admirable laws. Horace Walpole observes of Lord Peterbo rough that he was " One of those men of careless wit and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-mots and idle verses, which we painful com pilers gather and hoard, till the owners stare to find themselves authors." The poetry of Lord Peterborough, however, is now deservedly for gotten, and his letters, for which he was once famous, have also been stripped of their celebrity. According to Pope, — " He would say pretty and lively things in his letters, but they would be rather too gay and wandering." Swift also re marks on a letter which he had received from him, — "He writes so well, I have no mind to answer him ; and so kind that I must answer him." Even Walpole has condescended to praise his epistolary talents, observing that "four very genteel letters of his are printed among Pope's." Posterity, however, has recently had access to EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 199 many private collections, and among the corres pondence of the last century, several letters of Lord Peterborough have seen the light.* These, for the most part, are in the highest degree dis appointing. Occasionally, indeed, we find a caus tic remark ; a well-turned though elaborate sen tence ; and something like an approach to hu mour. Whenever he addresses a woman, how ever, his compliments out-herod even the stately nonsense of the day ; while his love-letters, — of which several, addressed to Mrs Howard, are in serted in the "Suffolk Correspondence," — are, without a single exception, turgid, and often absurd. Notwithstanding the slender claims of Lord Peterborough to the reputation of a poet, his character is in every respect so remarkable, that a single specimen of his poetical powers may not be unacceptable to the reader. The following verses, indeed, which he addressed to Mrs. Howard, the celebrated mistress of George the Second, are not without the merit which such trifles may claim, and are at least superior to the ponderous prose eulogiums which he addressed to the same lady : — " I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking, ' Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching, What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation, By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation ?' * See " Pope's Letters ;" the " Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough ;" and " Letters to and from the Countess of Suffolk." 200 CHARLES MORDAUNT, Thus accused, the wild thing gave this sober reply :— • See, the heart without motion, though Celia pass by ! Not the beauty she has, not the wit that she borrows, Give the eye any joys, or the heart any sorrows. When our Sappho appears, — she, whose wit so refined I am forced to applaud with the rest of mankind — Whatever she says is with spirit and fire ; Every word I attend, but I only admire. Prudentia as vainly would put in her claim, Ever gazing on Heaven, though man is her aim : 'Tis love, not devotion, that turns up her eyes — Those stars of this world are too good for the skies. But Chloe, so lively, so easy, so fair, Her wit so genteel, without art, without care ; When she comes in my way — the motion, the pain, The leapings, the achings, return all again.' O wonderful creature I a woman of reason 1 Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season ; When so easy to guess who this angel should be, Would one think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she ?" There are two rather curious circumstances connected with these verses. In the first place, at the period when Lord Peterborough was thus addressing Mrs. Howard in the language of a lover, the one had attained to his sixty-fifth, and the other to her fortieth, year. In the next place, Horace Walpole, (whom we have seen speaking of himself as a "painful compiler" in regard to the "bon-mots and idle verses" of Lord Peter borough,) falls into a strange error in recording the verses to Mrs. Howard. "This lord," he EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 201 says, " wrote a ballad beginning, — ' I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking.' He was also the author of those well-known lines, — ' Who'd have thought Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she?'" The reader will have seen that Walpole has manufactured two poems out of one ; having quoted the first and last line of the verses to Mrs. Howard, as the initial lines of two separate productions. Lord Peterborough lived on the most intimate terms with Swift, Pope, Gay, and the many celebrated men who have immortalized the reign of Queen Anne as the Augustan age of England. By his contemporaries, he seems to have been both loved and admired ; and it was no slight compliment to his talents, that, though Pope spoke of him as "not near so great a genius" as Lord Bolingbroke ; yet that he should for a moment have thought of coupling his idol and Peterborough in the same breath, thus indirectly implying that a comparison was possible. " I love the hang-dog dearly," was the remarkable encomium of Swift ; and Pope once observed of him, — " He has too much wit as well as courage to make a solid general." Early in life Lord Peterborough had united himself to Carey, daughter of Sir Alexander Fraser, of Dotes, in Scotland. By this lady he had two sons, who seem to have shared the im petuous valour of their father, and who distin guished themselves in the service of their coun try : he had also one daughter, Henrietta, mar- 202 CHARLES MORDAUNT, ried to Alexander, second Duke of Gordon, the grandfather of the last Duke of that title. Lady Peterborough died in May, 1709, and within ele ven months from that event her husband had also occasion to bewail the loss of his two gallant sons. John, Lord Mordaunt, his eldest son, died of the small-pox on the 6th of April, 1710; surviving his younger brother, Henry, who died of the same disease, about six weeks. In 1735, more than a quarter of a century after the death of his first wife, Lord Peterborough, at the age of seventy-seven, acknowledged his mar riage with a beautiful singer, Anastasia Robinson. She was the daughter of a Mr. Robinson, a painter, whom she supported, in his old age, by singing at the Opera and teaching music and the Italian lan guage. Gay celebrates her vocal powers : — " O soothe me with some soft Italian air, Let harmony compose my tortured ear ! When Anastasia's voice commands the strain, The melting warble thrills through every vein. Thought stands suspended, silence pleased attends, While in her notes the heavenly choir descends."* Of the year in which they were married we have no record ; indeed, it was only when broken down by disease, and when harassed by her repeated re fusals to live under the same roof with him, un less he acknowledged her as his wife, that he was induced to make the confession to the world. When he proclaimed his weakness, it was in a * Gay, "Epistle to William Pulteney." EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 203 very characteristic manner, by calling aloud, in the rooms at Bath, " for Lady Peterborough's chair," when the company immediately arose and con gratulated her on her marriage. Their intercourse, however, must have been long notorious, for, as many as twelve years before, Lord Peterborough had horsewhipped a foreign singer, Senesino, at a rehearsal, for some offence which he had given to Miss Robinson.* For some years previous to his death, Lord Peterborough appears to have suffered acutely from disease in an aggravated form. Yet if mor- * Lady Mary W. Montagu writes to her sister, the Countess of Mar, in 1723, — "Would any one believe that Mrs. Robinson is, at the same time, a prude and a kept mistress ? She has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera ; and her condescension in her accepting of Lord Peterborough for a champion, who has signalized both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea. Poor Senesino, like a van quished giant, was forced to confess upon his knees that Anas tasia was a nonpareil of virtue and beauty. Lord Stanhope, as dwarf to the said giant, joked on his side, and was challenged for his pains. Lord Delawar was Lord Peterborough's second ; my Lady miscarried, — the whole town divided into parties on this important point. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two sexes on so great an account, besides half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By the providence of Heaven, and the wise cares of his Majesty, no bloodshed en sued. However, things are now tolerably accommodated, and the fair lady rides through the town in triumph, in the shining merlin of her hero, not to reckon the more solid advantage of 100/. a month, which 'tis said he allows her." — Lady M. W. Montagu's Letters, vol. ii, p. 167. 204 CHARLES MORDAUNT, tal ever was superior to pain, it was this extraor dinary man. " I am not afraid," he once observed, " I never saw occasion to fear." In October 1730, at the age of seventy-two, he writes to Lady Suf folk, with something of his former gallantry,—" It is certain you or none must have the credit of my recovery. The doctors have told me mine is an inward pain ; if so, I can have no cure from any other person. You blame me for seeking no re medies, and yet you know vain attempts of any kind are ridiculous. I have, some time since, made a bargain with fate to submit with patience to all her freaks ; some accidents have given me a great contempt, almost a distaste of life. Shak- speare shall tell you my opinion of it:— ' Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. Life is a walking shadow, — a poor player That frets and struts his hour upon the stage, And then is seen no more.' Do not wonder then, if the world is become so indifferent to me, that I can even amuse myself with the thoughts of going out of it. I was writ ing, some days ago, a dialogue betwixt me and one that is departed before me ; one that would have kept his promise to you, if possible. When the case falls out, Mr. Pope shall give it to you."* Pope has bequeathed us some very curious par ticulars respecting the last days of Lord Peter borough. "'Tis amazing," he says, "how Lord * Suffolk Correspondence, v. i, p. 389. EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 205 Peterborough keeps up his spirits under so pain ful and violent an illness as that he is afflicted with. . When I went down to see him in Hamp shire, a few weeks ago, I did not get to him till the dusk of the evening; he was sitting on his couch, and entertained all the company with as much life and sprightliness of conversation, as if he had been perfectly well ; and when the candles were brought in, I was amazed to see that he looked more like a ghost than a living creature. Dying as he was, he went from thence to Bristol; and it was there that it was declared, that he had no chance for a recovery, but by going through the torture of a very uncommon chirurgical ope ration ; and that, even with it, there were a great many more chances against him than for him. However, he would go through it ; and the very day after set out from Bristol for Bath, in spite of all that St. Andre and the physicians could say to him." " It was some time after this," adds Spence, who continues the narrative, " that I saw him at Kensington ; I was admitted into his ruelle, for he kept his bed, and everybody thought he would not last above five or six days longer : and yet his first speech to me was, — ' Sir, you have travelled, and know the places ; I am resolved to go to Lisbon or Naples,' That very day, he would rise to sit at dinner with us, and, in a little time after, actually went to Lisbon."* Pope informs us that he seriously contemplated accompanying him, and * Spence's Anecdotes, p. 171- 206 CHARLES MORDAUNT, when Spence remonstrated that it must be a me lancholy thing to be constantly with a person in so distressing a condition, " That is true," he said ; " but if you consider how I should have been employed in nursing and attending a sick friend, that thought would have made it agree able."* During his illness, Lady Peterborough is said to have attended him with unwearying kindness. The chirurgical operation alluded to by Pope was the very painful one of being cut for the stone. He refused to be bound during the opera tion, and when the surgeon remonstrated with him on his obstinacy, " No, Sir," he said, " it shall never be reported that a Mordaunt was seen bound : do your best, Sir." He then desired to be placed in the position most favourable for using the knife, and underwent the agony with out flinching. Three weeks afterwards, he was at his own seat at Bevis Mount. It was about this period that, at the age of seventy-seven, he addressed the following singular letter to Lady Suffolk, — a lady whom he had for merly addressed in the language of a lover, and with whom he still corresponded as a friend : — " Bevis Mount,f July, 1735. " Madam, — I return you a thousand thanks for your obliging inquiry after my health. I strug- * Spence's Anecdotes, p. 13. ™+, T,hC SGat °f Lord Peterborough, in Hampshire. Horace Walpole writes to Richard Bentley, Esq. on the 18th of Sep- EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 207 gle on with doubtful success : one of my strongest motives to do so is, the hopes of seeing you at my cottage before I die, when you either go to Bath or to Mrs. Herbert's. " In my most uneasy moments I find amusement in a book, which I therefore send you ; * it is one of the most interesting I ever read. I had ga thered to myself some notions of the character from pieces of history written in both extremes, but I never expected so agreeable and so fair an account from a priest. In one quarter of an hour, we love and hate the same person without incon stancy. One moment, the Emperor is in posses sion of our whole heart, and the philosopher fully possessed of our soul ; within four or five pages, we blush for our hero, and are ashamed of our philosopher. " What courage, what presence of mind in tember, 1735: — "Going in to Southampton, I passed Bevismount, where my Lord Peterborough ' Hung his trophies o'er his garden gate ;' but General Mordaunt was there, and we could not see it : we walked long by moonlight on the terrace along the beach." — Walpole's Letters, v. iii, 149. Walpole's quotation, though somewhat mangled, is from a couplet of Pope, in which the poet was thought to allude to the entrance of Lord Peterbo rough's lawn at Bevismount : — " Our generals now, retired to their estate, Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gate." * Apparently, the Life of Julian the Apostate, by the Abbe de la Bleterie, published in 1735. 208 CHARLES MORDAUNT, danger! the first and bravest man in a Roman army; sharing with every soldier the fatigue and danger! The same animal hunting after fortune-tellers, gazing upon the flight of birds, lookino- into the entrails of beasts with vain curiosity ; seeking for cunning women (as we call them) and silly men to give him an account of his destiny, and, if it can be believed, consent ing to the highest inhumanities in pursuit of ma gical experiments. " Yet, when we come to the last scene, the most prejudiced heart must be softened. With what majesty does the emperor meet his fate! showing how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk's ought, — only with juster notions of the Deity, — to die. " The lady, the book, or both together, have brought me almost into a raving way : I want to make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few friends more, to meet upon the summit of my Bevis hill, and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds, as Julian expresses it, to mix amongst the stars; but I make my bargain for a very fine day, that you may see my last amusements to advantage. " Wherever be the place, and whenever the time, I shall remain to the utmost possibility, &c. " Peterborough."* It was observed of Lord Peterborough by * Suffolk Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 129. EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. 209 Pope, that " he would neither live nor die like any other mortal." In his last illness he said, alluding to " Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time," which had recently been published, — " I would willingly live to give that rascal the lie in half his history." - The work in question he carried with him when he departed for Lisbon ; having already illustrated it with several marginal notes, which, unfortunately, have never been per mitted to see the light. Lord Peterborough died on his passage to Portugal on the 25th day of October, 1735, in his seventy-eighth year. His remains were brought to England, and interred at the ancient seat of his family, Turvey, in Bedfordshire. He was succeeded in his titles by his grandson, Charles Mordaunt, in whose son, Charles Henry Mordaunt, fifth Earl of Peterborough, the earl doms of Peterborough and Mordaunt became extinct. In person, Lord Peterborough was above the common height, but was so thin that Swift called him a skeleton. " He is a well-shaped thin man," says Macky, " with a very brisk look." The same writer adds: — "He affects popularity, and loves to preach in coffee-houses, and public places ; is an open enemy to revealed religion ; brave in his person ; hath a good estate ; does not seem expensive, yet always in debt, and very poor." There is extant a fine portrait of Lord Peterborough by Kneller. The great Lord Peterborough, in addition to vol. n. p 210 MORDAUNT, EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. other literary compositions, was the author of his own Memoirs, which his widow, unfortu nately, suppressed. Literature must ever regret the loss of such a treasure. Lady Suffolk told Horace Walpole that Lord Peterborough had himself shown her as many as three volumes of his autobiography. 211 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. Educated at Westminster and Oxford. — His literary attain ments. — Assists his pupil, C. Boyle, in his dispute with Bentley. — His Jacobitism. — His letter to his father. — His scepticism in early life. — Enters into holy orders. — Marries a lady of fortune — Appointed chaplain in ordinary to King William. — Enters into a controversy with Dr. Wake. — Created Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester. — His polemical controversies. — The reputed author of the speech made by Sacheverel on his trial. — George the First's accession fatal to Atterbury's ambitious hopes. — His disaffec tion. — Committal to the Tower. — Speaker Onslow's character of him. — Public sympathy for Atterbury. — His harsh treat ment in the Tower. — His letter to Pope. — His eloquent speech on his trial. — Sentence passed on him. — Trial of strength between Atterbury and Sir R. Walpole during the proceedings against the former. — Atterbury quits England and resides chiefly in Paris till his death. — Death of his favourite daughter. — The Duke of Wharton's poetical ad dress to Atterbury. — Atterbury's letter to Dicconson on his daughter's death. — His last meeting with her at Toulouse. — His death at Paris in 1731. — His body brought to England, and the coffin opened by order of Government. — His inter ment in Westminster Abbey. This elegant scholar and ambitious churchman was born on the 6th of March, 1662, at his father's rectory at Milton-Keynes, near Newport-Pagnel, in Buckinghamshire. He was educated at West- p 2 212 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, minster school, from whence he was removed, in 1680, to Christ-Church college, Oxford, where he was indefatigable in his pursuit after knowledge, and very shortly distinguished himself by his classical attainments. As early as 1632, when only in his twenty-first year, he published a Latin version of Dryden's poem of " Absalom and Ahithophel." He translated, also, about the same period, the two exquisite odes of Horace, — " Donee gratus eram tibi" and " Quern tu Melpo mene semel," of which odes Scaliger said, that he would sooner have been their author than be King of Arragon. Like all others who have attempted the impossible task of translating Horace, Atter bury has, unquestionably, failed. His versifica tion, however, is not without merit, and, as he is little known as a poet, a single specimen of his muse may not be unacceptable. We prefer giving the following trifle, which he is said to have addressed to the lady whom he afterwards married : — " On a Lady's Fan. " Flavia, the least and slightest toy, Can with resistless art employ. This fan, in meaner hands, would prove The engine of small force in love ; Yet she, with graceful air and mien, Not to be told, or safely seen, Directs its wanton motions so, That it wounds more than Cupid's bow ; Gives coolness to the matchless dame, — To every other breast a flame." In 1684, Atterbury took his degree of Bachelor BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 213 of Arts, and in 1687, that of Master of Arts. In the latter year, he published his " Considerations on the spirit of Martin Luther, and the original of the Reformation," and is said also to have materially assisted his pupil, Charles Boyle, after wards, Earl of Orrery, in his spirited dispute with Bentley, as to the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris. Atterbury appears to have instilled into the mind of his pupil, not only his classical taste, but his Jacobite principles. When the Bishop was committed a prisoner to the Tower, in 1722, on account of his presumed intrigues in the cause of the Pretender, he was, shortly after wards, joined by his old pupil, who was incarce rated on the same charge. The change which had taken place in their habits and principles could not fail to suggest very striking reflections to each of them. The academical seclusion of Christ-Church was exchanged for the dangerous solitude of the Tower; the champion of Martin Luther, and of the principles of the Reform ation, had enlisted in the cause of a Roman Catholic Prince; while both tutor and pupil, instead of engaging in classical discussions on the bulls of Phalaris, found themselves far more deeply interested in the proceedings of the Pre tender and the bulls of the Pope. Restless, turbulent, and ambitious ; dissatisfied with the small credit to be derived by academical pre-eminence ; wearied with conventual rules and habits, and with a society necessarily restricted to the narrow understandings, proverbially gene- 214 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, rated by a collegiate life, the spirit of Atterbury fretted within the narrow limits of a cloister, and he looked about him for a wider sphere on which to exercise his talents, and for a communion with men whose intellectual faculties were more con genial with his own. After a residence at the University of about ten years, he writes to his father from Oxford, 14th October, 1690,—" My pupil (Mr. Boyle) I never had a thought of parting with till I left Oxford. I wish I could part with him to-mor row on that score; for I am perfectly wearied with the nauseous circle of small affairs, that can now neither divert nor instruct me. I was made, I am sure, for another scene and another sort of conversation ; though it has been my hard luck to be pinned down to this. I have thought and thought again, Sir, and for some years : now I have never been able to think otherwise, than that I am losing time every minute I stay here. The only benefit I ever propose to myself by the place, is studying ; and that I am not able to compass. Mr. Boyle takes up half my time ; and I grudge it him not, for he is a fine gentle man ; and while I am with him, I will do what I can to make him a man. College and Uni versity business take up a great deal more ; and I am forced to be useful to the Dean in a thou sand particulars ; so that I have very little time." Judging from the contents of the foregoing letter, it is, perhaps, not uncharitable to presume that, when Atterbury entered into holy orders BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 215 the following year, the step was taken rather with a view to temporal aggrandizement, and as offering the means of escaping from the tedious thraldom of a college life, than from any lauda ble zeal for the sacred profession. We have the authority, indeed, of his friend Pope, that though religion was afterwards the boasted solace of At terbury in his misfortunes, yet that in early life he was a sceptic. His scepticism, however, seems, at this time, to have been confined to his own breast, for it certainly proved no bar to his preferment. No sooner, indeed, did he appear in the metropolis, — whither he seems to have hastened as offering the best stage on which to display his talents, — than his extraordinary elo quence in the pulpit rapidly brought him into no tice and repute. About this period, with the view of advancing his worldly interests, he married a lady named Osborne, a relation of the Duke of Leeds, with whom he received a fortune of 7000/. ' The first step of any importance which At terbury obtained in his profession, was the ap pointment of chaplain in ordinary to King Wil liam and Queen Mary ; shortly after which he was elected preacher at Bridewell, and lecturer of St. Bride's. A sermon On the Power of Cha rity to cover Sin, which he preached before the governors of Bridewell in 1694, brought him into further notice. It was attacked by Hoadley, afterwards, Bishop of Winchester ; while another sermon which he preached the same year, before 21G FRANCIS ATTERBURY, Queen Mary at Whitehall, entitled the Scorner incapable of true Wisdom, was no less severely commented upon by an anonymous writer. These attacks, added to the fame of his eloquence and to his acknowledged powers as a writer, brought him into great repute ; while his celebrity was by no means diminished by a controversy which he entered into, in 1700, with Dr. Wake, after wards Archbishop of Canterbury, On the Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocations. Such was the learning and ingenuity which he displayed during this celebrated dispute, that the Lower House of Convocation voted him their solemn thanks for his " learned pains in asserting and vindicating the rights of convocation," while the University of Oxford conferred on him the de gree of Doctor in Divinity. The same year he was installed in the Archdeaconry of Tot- ness. On the accession of Queen Anne, the conti nued zeal with which Atterbury had advocated the doctrines of the High-Church, procured him the honours and preferment at which he aimed. He was immediately appointed one of the Queen's chaplains ; in October 1 704, he was raised to the Deanery of Carlisle ;* in 1712, he was appointed Dean of Christ Church, and in June, the follow ing year, was advanced to the Deanery of West- In 1709, Sir John Trevor made him preacher of the Rolls Chapel, entirely from the admiration which he had conceived of his talents, and the delight with which he had listened to his eloquence in the pulpit. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 217 minster and Bishopric of Rochester. During the few years which preceded this last step, his busy and contentious spirit appears to have been sel dom at rest. In 1706, he entered into a fresh dispute with Hoadley, concerning the advan tages of virtue with regard to the present life, which, in 1707, was followed by another contro versy respecting passive obedience. Neither was his pen solely employed in polemical discussions. He was one of the divines engaged to revise an intended edition of the Greek Testament ; and, besides being the reputed author of the cele brated speech delivered by Dr. Sacheverel on his trial, he had the principal share in drawing up a once famous document, the " Representa tion on the present state of the Church and Re ligion." The elegant taste of Atterbury led him to seek the society, and to become the friend of the wits. He was the intimate companion of Pope, Bolingbroke, Swift, and Gay, and by his social wit and intellectual powers shone forth not the least brilliant luminary in that hemisphere of genius. Gay celebrates him in his Epistle to Pope, — " See Rochester approving nods his head, And ranks one modern with the mighty dead." And Pope exclaims in his Epistle to Arbuth not, — " How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour ; How shines his soul unconquered in the Tower ! 218 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, It would be interesting to search into the secret history of remarkable friendships. For instance, Atterbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope, were pro fessedly, and are now historically, spoken of as friends. And yet we find Bolingbroke observing of Atterbury, that there is " no man living whom he has less reason to trust :" and when Atter bury had once an opportunity of defending the character of Pope, he chose to shake his head significantly ; — " Mens curva," he said, " in cor- pore curvo :" — "He has a crooked mind in a crooked body." The former anecdote will be found in the Townshend Papers, the latter in Horace Walpole's Letters. Of Atterbury's conversational talent and wit, more than one specimen has been recorded. " In 1715," says Dr. King, " I dined with the Duke of Ormond at Richmond. We were fourteen at table. There was my Lord Marr, my Lord Jersey, my Lord Arran, my Lord Lansdowne, Sir William Wyndham, Sir Redmond Everard, and Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. The rest of the company I do not exactly remember. During the dinner there was a jocular dispute (I forget how it was introduced) concerning short prayers. Sir William Wyndham told us, that • the shortest prayer he had ever heard was the prayer of a common soldier, just before the bat tle of Blenheim, ' O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul !' This was fol lowed by a general laugh. I immediately reflected that such a treatment of the subject was too ludi- BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 219 crous, at least very improper, where a learned and religious prelate was one of the company. But I had soon an opportunity of making a different reflection. Atterbury, seeming to join, and ap plying himself to Sir William Wyndham, said, ' Your prayer, Sir William, is indeed very short: but I remember another as short, and a much better, offered up likewise by a poor soldier in the same circumstances, ' O God, if in the day of battle I forget thee, do thou not forget me ! ' This, as Atterbury pronounced it with his usual grace and dignity, was a very gentle and polite reproof, and was immediately felt by the whole company. And the Duke of Ormond, who was the best bred man of his age, suddenly turned the discourse to another subject."* The author imagined, on first meeting with this anecdote, that the retort of Atterbury was merely a happy invention of the moment. He has since disco vered, however, that it was actually the prayer of a gallant cavalier, Sir Jacob Astley, before the battle of Edgehill, " O Lord," he said, " thou knowest how busy I must be this day: If I forget thee, do not thou forget me." He then rose from his knees, and exclaiming to his men, — " March on, my boys !" led them on to battle, f Of the ready wit of Atterbury, a still more pleasing instance is related by Dr. King. " Atter bury, when a certain bill was brought into the House of Lords, said, among other things, ' that * Dr. King's Anecdotes of His own Time, p. 7. f Echard's History of England, vol. ii. p. 351. 220 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, he prophesied last winter this bill would be at tempted in the present session, and he was sorry to find that he had proved a true prophet.' My Lord Coningsby, who spoke after the bishop, and always spoke in a passion, desired the house to remark, 'that one of the Right Reverend Bishops had set himself forth as a prophet ; but for his part he did not know what prophet to liken him to, unless to that furious prophet Balaam, who was reproved by his own ass.' The bishop in reply, with great wit and calmness, exposed this rude attack, concluding thus: — 'since the noble Lord hath discovered in our manner such a similitude, I am well content to be compared to the prophet Balaam : but, my Lords, I am at a loss how to make out the other part of the parallel : I am sure that I have been reproved by nobody but his Lordship.'"* Dr. King in forms us, that such was the elegance and pro priety of Atterbury's language, that if everything which he let fall in common conversation had been committed to writing, it would have been regarded as the model of a beautiful style. The decease of Queen Anne, and the accession of George the First to the throne, proved a death blow to the ambitious hopes of Atterbury. He was well-known to be attached to the exiled House of Stuart, and, consequently, his dangerous principles and high rank in the church, rendered him peculiarly an object of dislike and distrust. His disaffection, indeed, is said to have proceeded * Dr. King's Anecdotes, p. 129. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 221 to such lengths, that, on the death of Queen Anne, when statesmen and soldiers alike held back for fear of the consequences, the churchman was the only adherent of the exiled family who boldly proposed to proclaim the Pretender as King of England. Among others whom he en deavoured to gain over to his views was the Lord Chancellor, Simon, Lord Harcourt. Ac cording to the statement of that personage, as related in Birch's papers, Atterbury paid him a a visit on the Queen's death, and gave as his opinion, in the present juncture of affairs, that nothing remained but immediately to proclaim King James. He further added that they had only to give him a guard, and he would put on his lawn sleeves and head the procession. " Never," he afterwards exclaimed to a friend, " was a better cause lost for want of spirit." Some curious evidence in support of these facts was brought forward by Dean Lockier in con versation with Spence. The latter informs us on the authority of the Dean : — " Upon the death of the Queen, the Duke of Ormond, Atterbury and Lord Mareshal, held a private conversation together; in which Atterbury desired the latter to go out immediately, and to proclaim the Pre tender in form. Ormond, who was more afraid of consequences, desired to communicate it first to the council. ' Damn it,' says Atterbury, in a great heat, for he did not value swearing, ' you very well know that things have not been con certed enough for that yet, and that we have 222 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, not a moment to lose.' Indeed it was the only thing they could have done. Such a bold step would have made people believe that they were stronger than they really were, and might have taken strangely. The late King, I am fully per suaded, would not have stirred a foot, if there had been a strong opposition : indeed, the family did not expect this crown ; at least nobody in it but the old Princess Sophia."* Sir Robert Walpole, in a speech delivered some years afterwards in the House of Commons, — ob served " Evident proofs will appear of a meeting having been held by some considerable persons, one of whom is not far off, wherein it was pro posed to proclaim the Pretender at the Royal Exchange." The person to whom allusion is made as not far off, was, unquestionably, the Bishop of Rochester, who was referred to as being in his seat in the House of Lords. The neglect which Atterbury encountered from George the First and his ministry, tended not a little to increase his disaffection to the govern ment. Accordingly, when, — on the landing of the Pretender in Scotland in 1715, — the Archbishop of Canterbury called on the Bishops in and near London to testify their abhorrence of the Re bellion, and to exhort the clergy and people, under * Mother of George the First. She was the daughter of Frederick, King of Bohemia, by Elizabeth daughter of James the First, King of England. Had she survived Queen Anne, the crown would have descended to her by the act of suc cession. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 223 their care, to be zealous in the discharge of their duties towards King George, Atterbury boldly opposed himself to the wishes of the Pri mate, and indeed positively refused to sign the declaration of the Bishops, of their attachment to the crown. At length, after he had secretly intrigued against the existing government for about eight years, the ministry, affirming that they had obtained certain information of his being engaged in a plot in favour of the Pretender, caused him to be apprehended on the charge of high treason. He was seated in his dressing- gown in the Deanery at Westminster, when the Under-Secretary of State, accompanied by one of the messengers of his office, suddenly entered his apartment, and declared him a prisoner of the State. His papers were immediately seized, and Atter bury himself was hurried before the Privy Coun cil at the Cock-pit, by whom, however, he is said to have been treated with the utmost respect. During his examination, he is reported to have replied to a question put to him in the words of our Saviour, — "If I tell you, ye will not believe, and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go."* The investigation lasted three quar ters of an hour, and at its conclusion he was ordered to be conveyed to the Tower in his own coach. The ambition of Wolsey and the High-Church principles of Laud, appear to have centred in the breast of Atterbury. Speaker Onslow ob- * St. Luke xxii. 67, 68. 224 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, serves : — " Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was a man of great parts, and of a most restless and turbulent spirit ; daring and enterprising, though then very infirm, and capable of any artifice; but proud and passionate, and not of judgment enough for the undertakings he engaged in. His views were not only to be the first Churchman, but the first man also in the State — not less than Wolsey, whom he admired and thought to imi tate ; and found he could only succeed in this, by the merit of his overturning the present go vernment, and advancing that of the Pretender in its stead." The plot, of which he was accused, is believed to have been communicated to the English government by the Regent Duke of Or leans, who, however, is said to have stipulated that no one should suffer on the scaffold through his means. The committal of Atterbury to the Tower appears to have excited in the strongest degree the commiseration of the public. On the ground of his being in ill-health, — and it appears that he was really suffering acutely from the gout, — he was publicly prayed for by the clergy in most of the churches of London and West minster : a print of him also was in circulation, wherein he was represented as looking through the bars of a prison, holding in his hand a portrait of Archbishop Laud, to which were added some verses describing him as, — -a second Laud, Whose Christian courage nothing fears but God." BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 225 With reference to the arrest of Atterbury, the following anecdote has been related : — Shortly after the committal of the Bishop to the Tower, some of the leading Whigs discussing in the drawing-room the best means of disposing of him, Lord Cadogan observed, somewhat brutally, — " Fling him to the lions." " The Bishop," says Spence, " was told of this, and soon after, in a letter to Mr. Pope, said that he had fallen upon some verses by chance in his room, which he must copy out for him to read. These were four ex tremely severe lines against Lord Cadogan ; and, in the last in particular, he called him, — ' A bold, bad, boisterous, blustering, bloody booby.' " The four lines in question, (a sufficiently fierce tirade considering the author was a Bishop,) are said to have been as follows : — " By fear ummoved, by shame unawed, Offspring of hangman and of bawd, Ungrateful to th' ungrateful man he grew by, A bold, bad, boisterous, blustering, bloody booby." Notwithstanding the respect with which At terbury had been personally treated, when under going his examination before the Privy Council, the usage which he afterwards experienced, when a prisoner in the Tower, was, to say the least, disgraceful to the ministry who authorized such cowardly oppression.* Atterbury himself says, * Coxe, in his Life of Sir Robert Walpole, endeavours to exculpate the ministry from the charge of cruelty towards At terbury : his defence, however, amounts to little more than VOL. II. ,Q 226 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, in his celebrated trial-speech in the House of Lords, " I have been under a very long and close confinement, and have been treated with such severity, and so great indignity, as I believe no prisoner in the Tower, of my age and function and rank, ever was; by which means, what strength and use of my limbs I had when I was first committed in August last, is now so far declined, that I am very unfit to make my de fence against a bill of such an extraordinary na ture. The great weakness of body and mind under which I labour ; such usage, such hard ships, such insults, as I have undergone, might have broken a more resolute spirit, and much stronger constitution, than falls to my share." This eloquent description of his sufferings and ill- usage, there is no reason to believe exaggerated. It has even been asserted that he was encouraged to write private letters, in order that the con tents might afterwards be employed to support the accusation against jrim. At all events, his favourite daughter was for some time refused admission to him, and even when the restriction was withdrawn, their free communion was inter rupted, and all expression of natural feeling re pressed, by the presence of one of the underlings of the administration. Moreover, during the early visits paid him by his son-in-law, Mr. Morrice, who came to assist him in preparing his defence, the relation of a single act of leniency on their part, and in no degree exonerates them from the harshness of which they have been accused. Life of Walpole, vol. i. p. 171. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 227 the Bishop was only allowed to communicate with him from a distance : Atterbury, during their interviews, was compelled to give his di rection from a two-pair of stairs window, while Mr. Morrice was standing in an open area below. Among further evidences of the strictness with which he was guarded, and of the precautions taken to prevent his communicating with his friends, it may be mentioned that even some pigeon-pies, which he was in the habit of receiving for his dinner, underwent a rigid examination by order of the government. " It is the first time," writes Pope to Gay, " that dead pigeons have been suspected of carrying intelligence." The following letter, addressed by Atterbury to his friend Pope, during the period of his im prisonment, is not only interesting, owing to the peculiar circumstances under which it was written, but may also be received as a fair specimen of the Bishop's epistolary style : — " Tower, 10 April, 1723. " Dear Sir,— I thank you for all the instances of your friendship, both before and since my mis fortunes. A little time will complete them, and separate you and me for ever. But in what part of the world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere kindness to me ; and will please my self with the thought, that I still live in your es teem and affection as much as ever I did ; and that no accidents of life, no distance of time or place, will alter you in that respect. It never can a 2 228 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, me, who have loved and valued you ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it when I am not allowed to tell you so, as the case will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr. Arbuthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, which was much to the purpose, if anything can be said to be to the purpose in a case that is already determined. Let him know my defence will be such, that neither my friends shall blush for me, nor will my enemies have great occasion of triumph, though sure of the victory. I shall want his ad vice before I go abroad, in many things. But I question whether I shall be permitted to see him, or anybody, but such as are absolutely necessary towards the dispatch of my private affairs. If so, God bless you both ! and may no part of the ill- fortune that attends me ever pursue either of you ! I know not but I may call upon you, at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way of spending my time at the Deanery, which did not seem calculated towards managing plots and con spiracies. But of that I shall consider. You and I have spent many hours together upon much pleasanter subjects ; and that I may preserve the old custom, I shall not part with you now till I have closed this letter with three lines of Milton, which you will, I know, readily, and not without some degree of concern, apply to your ever affec tionate, &c. " ' Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon, The world was all before him where to choose His place of rest, and Providence his guide.'" BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 229 On the 9th of April, 1723, a bill passed the House of Commons, proposing the infliction of certain pains and penalties on Francis, Lord Bishop of Rochester, which the same day was carried up to the House of Lords for their concurrence. On the sixth of May, the day fixed upon by the Lords for the first reading of the bill, Atterbury was brought from the Tower to Westminster. The proceedings lasted altogether about a week, at the expiration of which time, the Bishop re ceived permission to plead for himself. It was then that he delivered that celebrated oration, which even the counsel for the prosecution ad mitted to be almost unrivalled for eloquence, and which, with the exception of Strafford's me morable appeal before a similar tribunal, was, per haps, the most brilliant and forcible appeal that was ever addressed by a state criminal to his peers. The principal evidence adduced against Atter bury, and that which had been particularly insist ed upon by Pulteney, who drew up the report of the secret committee, was derived from a trifling but somewhat singular incident. The govern ment, it seems, had obtained possession of some treasonable letters, written under the fictitious names of Illington and Jones, in several of which there were allusions to a little dog, about to be sent to Mrs. Illington from France. It was by this means that the ministry obtained a clue to the real authors of the correspondence. The animal was traced to the house of a Mrs. Barnes, 230 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, who, subsequently, underwent an examination before the Privy Council. It appeared by the evidence of this person, that " a spotted little dog, called Harlequin, which was brought from France, and had a leg broken, was left with her to be cured ; that the said dog was not for her, but for the Bishop of Rochester; and that one Kelly, who had sent over the dog, had promised to get it of the Bishop of Rochester for her, in case it did not recover of its lameness." This would clearly identify the Bishop and Illington as the same person, and though Atterbury did not con descend to take notice of the circumstance in his defence, it is said to have made no little impression on the minds of his judges. Swift has agreeably ridiculed it in his verses " On the horrid plot dis covered by the Bishop of Rochester's French dog:"- " Now let me tell you plainly, sir, Our witness is a real cur, A dog of spirit for his years ; Has twice two legs, two hanging ears. His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot : Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education ; His correspondence, plainly dated, Was all deciphered and translated : His answers were exceeding pretty Before the secret wise committee ; Confessed as plain as he could bark, Then with his fore foot set his mark." At the period when the House of Lords sen tenced Atterbury as a criminal, it may reasonably BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 231 be questioned whether they had sufficient evi dence before them to justify their decision, and whether, if the sentence were a just one, it was, in fact, strictly legal. Documents, indeed, have since been brought to light which sufficiently establish Atterbury's guilt, but still the evidence which they contain was not in the possession of his judges, and, consequently, could in no degree have influenced their decision. It is, principally, on account of the light which they throw on Atterbury's conduct, that these documents are now of value. Considering, indeed, what un questionable evidence they contain of his crimi nality, we are not a little startled at the passionate protestations which at his trial he made of his innocence, and the solemnity with which he ap pealed to heaven for their truth. A single extract from Atterbury's famous de fence may, perhaps, not be unacceptable to the reader. After affecting to ridicule the very ex istence of the plot, in which he was accused of having been engaged, — " What could tempt me," he says, " to step thus out of my way ? Was it ambition, and a desire of climbing into an higher station in the Church ? There is not a man in my office farther removed from this than I am. Was money my aim ? I always despised it too much, considering what occasion I am now like to have for it ; for out of a poor bishopric of five hundred pounds per annum, I have laid out no less than a thousand pounds towards the repairs of the church and episcopal palace; nor did I 232 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, take one shilling for dilapidations. The rest of my little income has been spent as is necessary, as I am a Bishop. Was I influenced by any dislike of the established religion, and secretly inclined towards a Church of greater pomp and power? I have, my Lords, ever since I knew what Popery was, opposed it ; and the better I knew it, the more I opposed it. I began my study in divinity when the Popish controversy grew hot, with that immortal book of Tillotson's, when he undertook the Protestant cause in general; and as such, I esteemed him above all. You will pardon me, my Lords, if I mention one thing : thirty years ago I wrote in defence of Martin Luther, and have preached, expressed, and wrote to that pur pose from my infancy ; and, whatever happens to me, I will suffer anything, and, by God's grace, burn at the stake, rather than depart from any material point of the Protestant religion, as pro fessed in the Church of England."* The Bishop concludes his appeal as follows : — " If, on any account, there shall still be thought by your Lordships to be any seeming strength in * Even the worst enemies of Atterbury admit that he never swerved from the principles of the Reformed religion. " He reprobated with warmth," says Coxe, " the conduct of the Duke of Wharton, Lords North and Grey, and others, who had sacrificed their religion with a view to obtain the Pretender's favour; he even quarrelled with the Duke of Berwick, who proposed giving a Catholic preceptor to the young Duke of Buckingham, and used his influence over the Duchess to place none but Protestants about the person of her son." — Coxe's Life of Sir Robert Walpole, v. i, p. 1 74. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 233 the proofs against me, — if, by your Lordship's judgments, springing from unknown motives, — if, for any reasons or necessity of state, of the wis dom and justice of which I am no competent judge, — your Lordships shall proceed to pass this bill against me, I shall dispose myself quietly and tacitly to submit to what you do. God's will be done : naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return ; and whether he gives or takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord !" The bishop's speech, according to his own com putation and that of Pope, lasted two hours. On the following Monday, he was again brought from the Tower, to hear the rejoinder of the King's counsel, and three days afterwards, on the 16th of May, after a vehement opposition from his own party, the Bill, declaring him guilty of high treason, passed the House of Lords, by a majority of eighty-three to forty-three. Agree ably with its provisions, he was deprived of all his benefices ; declared incapable of exercising any office, and enjoying any dignity, within the King's dominions ; and sentenced to be exiled for life. He was even debarred from the society of his countrymen residing abroad ; the Bill pro viding, that whoever should hold any corre spondence with him, unless licensed under the King's sign manual, should be adjudged felons, without the benefit of clergy. The following interesting anecdote, which has reference both to Atterbury's imprisonment in the Tower, and to his presumed scepticism in regard 234 FRANCIS ATrERBURY, to revealed religion, was frequently related by Lord Chesterfield, in conversation with his friends : — " I went," he said, " to Mr. Pope, one morning, at Twickenham, and found a large folio Bible, with gilt clasps, lying before him upon his table ; and, as I knew his way of thinking upon that book, I asked him jocosely, if he was going to write an answer to it ? It is a present, said he, or rather a legacy, from my old friend, the Bishop of Rochester. I went to take my leave of him yesterday in the Tower, where I saw this Bible upon his table. After the first compli ments, the bishop said to me, — ' My friend, Pope, considering your infirmities, and my age and exile, it is not likely that we should ever meet again ; and, therefore, I give you this legacy to remember me by it. Take it home with you, and let me advise you to abide by it.' — 'Does your lordship abide by it yourself V — ' I do.' — ' If you do, my lord, it is but lately. May I beg to know what new light or arguments have pre vailed with you now, to entertain an opinion so contrary to that which you entertained of that book all the former part of your life?' The bishop replied : ' We have not time to talk of these things ; but take home the book, I will abide by it ; and I will recommend to you to do so too, and so God bless you !' "* Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Pope, incidentally mentions Atter bury presenting the poet with a Bible, at their last interview in the Tower, but seems to have * Lord Chesterfield's Works, by Maty, vol. i, p. 279. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 235 been ignorant of the interesting circumstances connected with the gift. Pope once said of At terbury in a moment of unusual tenderness, — "Perhaps it is not only in this world that I may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester." We have already seen Atterbury writing to his friend Pope, intimating that he might pos sibly require his evidence at his trial. The poet, it seems, was actually summoned as a witness ; a circumstance which appears to have caused him some embarrassment. Alluding, sometime after wards, to his having been present at the trial, — " I never could speak in public," he says, " and I do not believe that, if it was a set thing, I could give an account of any story to twelve friends together ; though I could tell it to any three of them with a great deal of pleasure. When I was to appear for the Bishop of Roches ter on his trial, though I had but ten words to say, and that on a plain, easy point, — how that bishop spent his time while I was with him at Bromley, — I made two or three blunders in it ; and that, notwithstanding the first row of Lords, which were all I could see, were mostly of my acquaintance."* But, perhaps, the most remarkable event which took place during the proceedings against Atter bury, was a trial of strength between the bishop and the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole ; the latter, probably by his own contrivance, having 1 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 11. 236 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, been summoned as a witness for the prosecution. Speaker Onslow observes in his "Remarks on various parts of Sir Robert Walpole's conduct" « The bishop used all the art his guilt would admit of, to perplex and make Walpole contra dict himself; but he was too hard for the bishop upon every turn, although a greater trial of skill this way, scarce ever happened between two such combatants. The one, fighting for his reputation, the other for his acquittal. The expectation of people in it, as they were differently inclined to the parties, and the cause and solemnity of it, from the place and the audience it was in, made it look like a listed field for a combat of another sort, and the joy of victory as great as there." On the 18th of June, 1723, Atterbury bade farewell for ever to his country. Accompanied by his favourite daughter, Mrs. Morrice, he em barked on board the " Aldborough," man-of-war, from which vessel he was landed at Calais. Sir Robert Walpole writes to Townshend on the 20th of the month, — " The Bishop of Rochester went away on Tuesday. The crowd that at tended him before his embarkation, was not more than was expected ; but great numbers of boats attended him to the ship's-side. Nothing very extraordinary, but the Duke of Wharton's be haviour, who went on board the vessel with him ; and a free conversation betwixt his holiness and Williamson ;* with menaces of a day of ven- * The Governor of the Tower. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 237 geance." A popular commotion, it seems, had been apprehended by the ministry, but the affair passed off quietly, and without the slightest tumult. The Duke of Wharton, it may be remarked, in addition to defending Atterbury in a magni ficent speech in the House of Lords, commemo rated his exile in a copyr of verses of some merit, — " Farewell I renowned in arts farewell ! Thus conquered by thy foe ; Of honours and of friends deprived, In exile must thou go s Yet go content ; thy look, thy will sedate, Thy soul superior to the shocks of state. Thy wisdom was thy only guilt, Thy virtue thy offence ; With god-like zeal thou didst espouse Thy country's just defence ; Nor sordid hopes could charm thy steady soul, Nor fears nor guilty numbers could control." From Calais, Atterbury proceeded, in the first instance, to Brussels and thence to Paris, in which capital he continued principally to reside till his death. Here, he formed acquaintance with the most distinguished men of letters in France ; in whose society he was enabled at times to forget that he was an exile, and to escape from a melancholy communion with his own thoughts. The turbulent spirit of Atter bury was, indeed, far from being at rest. Like his friend, Bolingbroke, he boasted a serenity of 238 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, mind which he did not experience, and preached a philosophy which he was unable to practise. At the very time, when he was vaunting the consolation which he derived from religion and books, and when his loyalty to King George, and his respect for the existing institutions of his native country, formed the topics on which he prin cipally dwelt in his private letters to his friends, we have now certain evidence to prove that he was secretly corresponding with the partisans of the Pretender, and devoting his whole energies to advance the cause of that unfortunate Prince.* Atterbury, notwithstanding his many faults, was a person of strong affections, and, latterly, all the tenderness of his nature was centred in his beloved daughter, Mrs. Morrice, who accompa nied him in his exile, and tended him in his old age. The death of this amiable woman, who expired in his arms, in the latter part of 1729, affected him in the most sensible manner. Sepa rated from his own family, and debarred from * These facts are proved, 1st, by the Bishop's correspond ence with the rebels in Scotland, published by Sir David Dalrymple : 2ndly, by the accounts received by the English government, from their spies at Paris : Srdly, from Atterbury's private letters to his son-in-law, Mr. Morrice, published by Coxe, in his supplementary volumes of the Life of Sir Robert Walpole ; and, lastly, from a particular letter, addressed by the Bishop to Mr. Morrice, in which, in 1728, he mentions that he has quitted the service of the Pretender, not from principle, but from disgust. See, also, some very curious letters, tran scribed from the Stuart Papers, in Lord Mahon's Hist, of Eng. vol. ii. Appendix. BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 239 the society of his countrymen, the once splendid* and admired Atterbury was left, by this bereave ment, almost alone among strangers, and was condemned to pass the brief remainder of his long life in a manner which might have excited the commiseration of even his enemies. It is impossible to read, without emotion, the following passage, in which Atterbury commu nicates to his friend, Mr. Dicconson, the tidings of his daughter's decease. The passage in question occurs in a letter dated Montpelier, 4th December, 1729. "I have your letter of the 15th November, and am much obliged to you for the friendly concern you express in it. As to the article of my poor daughter, of whom, seven days before the date of it, God was pleased to deprive me, upon a melancholy but comfortable meeting I had with her at Toulouse, where she survived her arrival twenty-four hours, and spent that little time that was left her in such a manner as will make her memory ever dear and valuable to me. I thought nothing could have added to the affection and esteem I had for her, but I found myself mis taken in those last moments when, she took her leave of me. She is gone and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end be like hers ! It was my business to have taught her to die ; instead of it, she has taught me. I am not ashamed, and I wish I may be able, to learn that lesson of her. What I feel upon her loss, is not to be expressed, but the reflection on the manner of it makes me some amends. God has tempered 240 FRANCIS ATTERBURY, the severity of the one by the circumstances of the other, and has dealt with me, as in the rest of his inflictions, so as, together with the great burden he laid on me, to enable me at the same time in some measure to bear it." In a letter from a Mr. Evans, who had accom panied Mrs. Morrice and her husband from Eng land, we find the following passage : — " It was well worth my while to have taken so long a voyage, though I was immediately to return home again, and reap no other benefit from it than seeing what passed in the last hours of Mrs. Morrice." The fact is a striking and painful one, that not only did the last melancholy meeting between Atter bury and his expiring daughter take place in a land of strangers, but the permission granted them to meet once more was wrung from the English ministry only by the most humble solicitations on the part of the exiled prelate, and on payment of very large and inconvenient fees of office. When Mrs. Morrice obtained permission to embrace her father for the last time, consumption had made such terrible ravages in her constitution that she was unable to under go the fatigues of a land journey. She pro ceeded as far as Bourdeaux by sea, (the Bishop being then at Toulouse expecting her,) but was so exhausted on reaching the land, that it seemed unlikely she would be reserved for further exer tions. It had been her earnest prayer that she might be permitted to behold her father once more, and that prayer was granted. Ill as she was, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 241 she ventured all night up the river Garonne, and the next morning was in the presence of her father at Toulouse. Twenty-four hours afterwards she expired in his arms. The Bishop, it may be remarked, in addition to the misfortunes of proscription and exile, had al ready had occasion to lament the loss of a wife and three children. His only remaining issue was the Rev. Osborne Atterbury, Rector of Ox- hill, in Warwickshire. Atterbury expired at Paris on the 15th of Fe bruary, 1731, in his sixty-ninth year, surviving the loss of his beloved daughter only fifteen months. His body was brought to England, and it may be mentioned as a curious circumstance, that the hearse which contained his remains was stopped in its progress to the metropolis, and the coffin opened by order of the Government. The circum stance occasioned a great outcry at the time. It was affirmed, however, by the partisans of the ministry, that the outrage was solely the act of the custom-house officers, who had obtained informa tion that some brocades, and other prohibited articles of foreign manufacture, were concealed in the coffin. The remains of Atterbury were in terred, on the 12th of May, 1731, in the sacred re pository of departed genius, Westminster Abbey. The country, which had rejected him when living, seemed proud to receive his ashes when dead. VOL. II. 242 MRS. MASHAM. Abigail Hill, afterwards Mrs. Masham, daughter of Mr. Hill, a Turkey merchant. — Placed as a waiting-woman with Lady Rivers. — Her relationship to the Duchess of Marlborough, who places her in the Queen's household. — Anecdote of her related by the Duchess. — The latter's communication to Bishop Burnet. — Extract from the Duchess's memoirs. — Her kindness to the Hill family. — Abigail Hill's marriage to Mr. Masham, Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber to Prince George of Denmark. — Queen Anne present at the ceremony. — Ex tracts from the Duchess of Marlborough's ¦ memoirs. — The Duke's remarks on Mrs. Masham's influence.-i-His letter to the Queen. — Brief account of Mr. Masham. — He is created Baron Masham of Otes. — Lord Dartmouth's and Swift's opi nions of Mrs. Masham. — She retires with her husband, on the death of the Queen, to her seat at Otes. — John Locke their guest for two years. — Mrs. Masham's death in 1784. It is remarkable how little is known of this celebrated woman, — who, from an almost menial situation, rose to be the favourite of her sove reign, — who governed both Queen Anne and her counsels, — who expelled ministries, and gave birth to others almost at her will, — and who, with out positive talent, or, apparently, merit of any sort, could boast that she had on more than one occasion changed the destinies of Europe. The maiden name of Mrs. Masham was Hill. She was the daughter of a Mr. Hill, a MRS. MASHAM. 243 Turkey merchant ; and, according to Lord Dart mouth, who was well acquainted with her, had originally been a " waiting-woman " to a Lady Rivers, in Kent. * She was an indigent relation of the Duchess of Marlborough ; a circumstance which, added to the general propriety of her con duct, her apparent humility, and a character which she had obtained of being a peculiarly trustworthy person, appear to have induced the Duchess to place her relative near the Queen. It was an act of good nature which she very shortly had reason to repent ; and, in after years, any al lusion to the " incurable baseness " of Mrs. Mash am, — almost the very mention of the name of the aspiring bedchamber-woman, — was sufficient to throw the Duchess into a tempest of rage. " After I brought this woman into the Court," observes her Grace, " she always had a shy, reserved behaviour towards me ; always avoided entering into a free conversation, and made excuses when I asked her to go abroad with me. And what I thought, then, ill-breeding, or surly honesty, has since proved to be a design deeply laid, as she had always the artifice to hide very carefully the power * Burnet's History of his Own Time, note by Lord Dart mouth, vol. vi. p. 36. The assertion that Mrs. Masham had been a " waiting-woman " to Lady Rivers, is corroborated by a state ment of Coxe. " Abigail," he says, " was so reduced, as to enter into the service of Lady Rivers, wife of Sir John Rivers, Bart., of Chafford, in Kent, as I was informed by the late John Rivers, Esq. She was raised from her humble situation by the Duchess." — Coxe's Life of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. ii. p. 257, note. r2 244 MRS. MASHAM. and influence she had over the Queen, an in stance of which I remember, when I was with the Queen at Windsor, and went through my own lodgings a private way and unexpected. She un locked the door in a loud familiar manner, and was tripping across the room with a gay air, but upon seeing me, she immediately stopped short, and act ing a part like a player, dropped a grave curtsey, and when she had gone a good way without mak ing any, and, in a faint, low voice, cried, — ' Did your Majesty ring, pray ? ' " * The reflection, in deed, must have been not a little provoking to the imperious Duchess, that she had not only been out-manceuvred by her humble kinswoman, but owed her own fall, and that of her husband, to the machinations of a woman whom she affected to have raised from the dirt. Amongst the mass of acrimonious abuse with which the Duchess, alike in her memoirs and her private letters, invariably loads the name of her rival, we occasionally find some curious particulars relating to Mrs. Masham. To Bishop Burnet, who had apparently applied to her for some addition to the stock of agreeable scandal which he was preparing for posterity, the Duchess, — anxious, on all occasions, that her name should stand well with posterity, — thus eagerly replies ; — " You inquire into the ground of favour to the Hills. I can only tell you, that I did not know there were such people till about twenty years * Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, vol. ii. p. 112. MRS. MASHAM. 245 ago, when I was told by an acquaintance that I had relations that were in want; and that this woman was a daughter of my father's sister. * My father had in all two and twenty brothers and sis ters, and though I am very little concerned about pedigrees or family, I know not why I should not tell you that his was reckoned a good one, and that he had in Somersetshire, Kent, and St. Albans, four thousand pounds a year. However, it was not strange, that when the children were so many, their portions were small, and that one of them married this Mr. Hill, who had some business in the city, rather as a merchant or proprietor, and was someway related to Mr. Harley, and by pro fession an Anabaptist. From the time I knew their condition, I helped them every way as much as I could, to which I had no motive but charity and relationship." f The Duchess, in her Memoirs, introduces some further, and no less interesting particulars respect ing the early history of Mrs. Masham, and her own share in establishing the fortunes of the future favourite. After again adverting to their relationship, she adds, that she has been informed, on good authority, that her uncle Hill " lived very well " in the city, till he turned projector, when his indiscretions entailed ruin on his family. " But," proceeds the Duchess, " as this was long before I was born, I never knew there were such * It appears by this statement that the Duchess of Marl borough and Mrs. Masham were first cousins. t Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, v. ii. p.lll. 246 MRS. MASHAM. people in the world till after the Princess Anne was married, and when she lived at the Cock-pit, at which time an acquaintance of mine came to me, and said she believed I did not know that I had relations who were in want, and she gave me an account of them. When she had finished her story, I answered, that indeed I had never heard before of any such relations, and immediately gave her out of my purse ten guineas for their present relief, saying I would do what I could for them." If the statements of the Duchess are to be re lied upon, (and, though her pictures are, occasion ally, highly coloured, there is no reason for ques tioning the truth of her assertions,) she behaved in the most exemplary manner towards her poor rela tions, and extended to them the kindness of which they stood so greatly in need. She appears to have frequently relieved the necessities of Mrs. Hill ; while the subject of the present memoir, then a young and unmarried woman, appears to have been particularly honoured by her notice and regard. " The elder daughter, afterwards Mrs. Masham," says the Duchess, " was a grown wo man. I took her to St. Albans, where she lived with me and my children ; and I treated her with as great kindness as if she had been my sister. After some time, a bedchamber-woman of the Princess of Denmark's died, and as, in that reign, after the Princesses were grown up, rockers, though not gentlewomen, had been advanced to be bedchamber-women, I thought I might ask MRS. MASHAM. 247 the Princess to give the vacant place to Mrs. Hill. At first, indeed, I had some scruple about it ; but this being removed by persons I thought wiser, with whom I consulted, I made the request to the Princess, and it was granted." Neither did her charity stop here. For an elder brother of Mrs. Masham she procured a place in the Custom House, and even induced a relation of the Duke of Marlborough to become security for him to the amount of two thousand pounds. A younger brother, afterwards well known among his contemporaries as " Jack Hill," she placed at a school at St. Albans, and though the Duchess ad mits, or rather affirms, that he was "good for nothing," she persuaded the Duke of Marlborough to take him as his aide-de-camp, and subsequently to confer on him a regiment. There now remained but one of her uncle's children to provide for. This was a younger daughter, for whom she pro cured an appointment as laundress in the house hold of the young Duke of Gloucester; and on the death of that promising scion of royalty, ob tained for her a pension of two hundred a year. These were no trifling benefits to confer on one family. The account, indeed, is taken from the statement of the Duchess herself, but there exists no reason to believe that she has exaggerated her philanthropy. Coxe, indeed, informs us, that there are preserved among the Marlborough Papers several letters from Mrs. Hill, the mother of Mrs. Masham, which teem with the warmest expressions of gratitude for the kindness of the Duchess, and 248 MRS. MASHAM. prove, beyond doubt, that she procured places or establishments for the children of her widowed aunt. * Among the letters of expostulation which, after her loss of power, the Duchess frequently addressed to her royal mistress, there is one in which she particularly vaunts the favours con ferred by her on her rival. Speaking of her " cousin Hill," she says, — " I have several letters under her hand to acknowledge that never any family had received such benefits as hers had done from me ; which I will keep to show the world what returns she has made for obligations that she was sensible of." As the Queen was certain to display this passage to her new favourite, it is needless to add, that unless the Duchess had really conferred many important benefits on her ungrate ful kinswoman, she would scarcely have boasted of them in so confident a manner. On the other hand, it must be observed in jus tice to Mrs. Masham, that the account which the Duchess gives of her own munificence, and the picture which she draws of the ingratitude of her relative, constitute after all but an ex-parte state ment. Admitting even the correctness of her Grace's assertion ; allowing her the credit of hav ing freely administered to the wants of a suffer ing family, and of having raised its members from comparative indigence and obscurity ; it still becomes a question how far the haughty Duchess * Coxe's Life of the Duke of Marlborough, v. ii. p. 257, note, MRS. MASHAM. 249 may have been influenced by family pride, and whether she may not have cancelled the obli gation by subsequent unkindness, or by the proud and patronizing manner in which her fa vours were conferred. From the insight which we possess into the character of the Duchess, it is far from improbable that she assumed the part of a " Lady Bountiful," — that she exacted on all occasions a due equivalent for her charity, and by treating her cousin, (at the time when she was a member of her household) rather as a de pendant than a friend, purchased for herself the hatred, instead of the gratitude, of her future rival. Mrs. Masham, it appears, had for many months been gradually undermining the Duchess of Marlborough in the affections of their royal mistress, long before the Duchess conceived the remotest suspicion that her influence was in danger. At length a particular circumstance served to enlighten her on the subject. Mrs. Masham, who, up to this period (1707), was merely regarded as plain Abigail Hill, one of the Queen's dressers, had formed an attachment for Mr. Mash am, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark. Masham, it seems, from motives of self-interest, rather than from any feeling of regard for the lady's person, was in duced to make her an offer of his hand; more over, by the advice of the insidious Harley, the Queen was made the confidant of their amours, with the understanding that the Duchess of 250 MRS. MASHAM. Marlborough was to be excluded from all know ledge of the affair. Not, indeed, that there existed any reasonable ground for making a ma trimonial engagement between a gentleman of the bed-chamber and a royal waiting-woman a matter of state importance ; more especially as both par ties seem to have been very equally matched in rank and fortune; but Harley, at this juncture, was deep in female jealousies and intrigues; he was aware of the habitual awe, mingled with increasing dislike, with which the Queen regard ed the Duchess of Marlborough ; it was his object to accustom his royal mistress to resistance, in order to extricate her from the trammels in which she was entangled; and, with this object, he sought to implicate her in a private transaction, in which, for the first time since the commencement of her long intercourse with the Duchess, the Queen should be induced to engage without the knowledge of her domineering favourite. The re sult fully answered the expectations of the designing statesman ; Anne not only signified her approval of the marriage, but consented to be present at its celebration. The ceremony was performed in the apartments of Dr. Arbuthnot, in the most private manner ; no other person except the Queen being present. When, in the course of time, the report of this secret marriage became matter of Court gossip, the Duchess, who was as yet ignorant of the Queen's share in the transaction, immediately hastened with pretended congratulations to her MRS. MASHAM. 251 relative. " I went to her," says the Duchess, " and asked her if it were true : she owned it was, and begged my pardon for having concealed it from me. As much reason as I had to take ill this reserve in her behaviour, I was willing to im pute it to bashfulness and want of breeding, rather than to anything worse. I embraced her with my usual tenderness, and very heartily wished her joy ; and then, turning the discourse, entered into her concerns in as friendly a manner as possible. I then inquired of her, very kindly, whether the Queen knew of her marriage, and very innocently offered her my service, if she needed it, to make that matter easy. She had, by this time, learnt the art of dissimulation pretty well, and answered with an air of unconcerned- ness, that the bedchamber-women had already acquainted the Queen with it." The suspicions of the Duchess appear, by this time, to have been fully aroused. She immediately went to the Queen, and, warming probably into one of her not unfrequent paroxysms of rage, "expostulated" with her Majesty on the silence which she had maintained. "But," says the Duchess, "all the answer I could obtain from her Majesty was this, — ' I have a hundred times bid Mrs. Masham tell it you and she would not.' " "The conduct both of the Queen and Mrs. Masham," adds the Duchess, " convinced me that there was some mystery in the affair, and there upon I set myself to inquire as particularly as I could into it. And in less than a week's time, 252 MRS. MASHAM. I discovered that my cousin was become an abso lute favourite; that the Queen herself was present at her marriage in Dr. Arbuthnot's lodgings, at which time her Majesty had called for a round sum out of the Privy Purse ; that Mrs. Masham came often to the Queen, when the Prince was asleep, and was generally two hours every day in private with her. And I, likewise, then discover ed, beyond all dispute, Mr. Harley's correspon dence and interest at court by means of this woman. I was struck with astonishment at such an instance of ingratitude, and should not have be lieved it, if there had been any room left for doubt ing." No wonder that the Duchess was struck with astonishment and alarm. From the hour that the Queen first listened with complacency to the insinuating arguments of the humble dresser, the power of the haughty and insolent Duchess, of her illustrious husband, and of the entire Whig party, was virtually, if not actually, at an end. There is something almost amounting to sim plicity, in the manner in which the Duke of Marlborough replies to the representations of his Duchess, that Mrs. Masham was stealthily sup planting her in the affections of the Queen. Ap parently unable to conceive the possibility that one, whom he had as yet merely known as a poor dependant, could dream of jostling him in his career of greatness, he writes to his indignant Duchess, on the 3rd of June, 1707, — " If you are sure that Mrs. Masham speaks of business to the MRS. MASHAM. 253 Queen, I should think you might, with some cau tion, tell her of it, which would do good. For she certainly must be grateful and will mind what you say." As if a few words spoken in caution could stop a headstrong woman in her career of am bition and intrigue ! The Duke lived to trace his own fall and that of his party to the machinations of this apparently innocuous female ; indeed, only ten months after the date of the foregoing letter, we find his language in speaking of the favourite, of a very different character. In April, the fol lowing year, he writes to his Duchess from the Hague, — " The credit of Mrs. Masham occasions a good deal of disagreeable discourse in this coun try," and, again, in another letter he styles her, amusingly, a " viper." But a communication which he, subsequently, addressed to the Queen, (in which he haughtily deprecates the preference that she showed for her new favourite,) evinces how deeply wounded and how indignant were his feelings. Speaking of one of the numerous insults and injuries which he had experienced at the hands of Harley and Mrs. Masham, — " This,'' he observes, "is only one of a great many mortifications that I have met with ; and as I may not have many opportunities of writing to you, let me beg of your Majesty to reflect what your own people, and the rest of the world, must think, who have been witnesses of the love, zeal and duty, with which I have served you, when they shall see that, after all, I have 254 MRS. MASHAM. done, it has not been able to protect me against the malice of a bedchamber-woman."* It may be questioned whether, had the Queen lived, Mrs. Masham would have continued to retain her influence over her sovereign. Swift writes from Windsor in September, 1711 ; — "Mrs. Masham is better, and will be here in three or four days : she had need, for the Duchess of Somerset is thought to gain ground daily." f Lord Dartmouth says, — " She grew to be very rude and jealous, which I took no notice of; but the Queen had a suspicion that she, or her sister, listened at the door all the time I was with her ; which, with some disrespects shown to the Duchess of Somerset, gave her Majesty some thoughts of making of her a lady of the bedchamber, and laying of her down softly." " I was desired," adds Lord Dartmouth, " to propose her husband's being made a peer, which I found was not very acceptable. The Queen told me she never had any design to make a great lady of her, and should lose a useful ser vant about her person ; for it would give offence to have a peeress lie upon the floor, £ and do several other inferior offices ; but at last con sented, upon condition she remained a dresser, and did as she used to do." * Coxe's Life of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. iii. p. 153. f Journal to Stella, 20th Sept. 1711. X It is evident, from this passage, that the ancient custom of a person sleeping across the doorway of the royal bedchamber was continued even as late as the reign of Queen Anne. MRS. MASHAM. 255 Of the private character of Mrs. Masham, — whether her virtues or her vices preponderated, — we have, unfortunately, no faithful record. Lord Dartmouth (who, however, admits that he lived on bad terms with the favourite,) observes,-^-" She was exceeding mean and vulgar in her man ners ; of a very unequal temper ; childishly ex- ceptious, and passionate." Swift, on the other hand, draws a very pleasing portrait of Mrs. Masham ; — " She was a person," he says, " of a plain sound understanding, of great truth and sincerity, without the least mixture of falsehood or disguise ; of an honest boldness and courage to her sex ; firm and disinterested in her friend ship ; and full of love, duty, and veneration for the Queen, her mistress ; talents as seldom found as sought for in a Court, as unlikely to thrive while they are there."* Mesnager, also, in his " Minutes of the Negotiations at the Court of England," speaks of her in the highest terms, and adds that he knows no woman more worthy to be the favourite of a Queen. It seems to be questionable whether her person was ever agree able. Swift, in recording his first introduction to her, observes ; — "I dined to-day at Lord Treasurer's with Mrs. Masham, and she is ex tremely like one Mrs. Malolly, that was my landlady in Trim : she was used with mighty kindness and respect, like a favourite." From the numerous notices of her by Swift, who was af- * " Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Mi nistry." 25G MRS. MASHAM. terwards frequently thrown into her society, we o-lean little more than that she was an affec tionate mother to her children, and that she had no objection to a game of piquet with the Dean. On the death of Queen Anne, Lady Masham and her husband retired to their seat at Otes, where the immortal philosopher, John Locke, spent ten years of his life as their guest. Locke* it may be remarked, breathed his last at Otes, and, at his own desire, was buried in the church yard of that place. Of the husband of Mrs. Masham it may be necessary to say a few words. Samuel, younger son of Sir Francis Masham, Bart., had originally been a page of honour to Queen Anne, and sub sequently held the appointments of equerry and gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Denmark. He was related, not very distantly, to the Cromwells.* Prince George obtained for him the command of a regiment, and the rank of a brigadier-general, in addition to which, he was subsequently appointed cofferer of the house hold, and obtained a reversionary grant of the office of Remembrancer of the Exchequer, to which place he succeeded on the 23rd of Oc tober, 1716, on the death of Simon, Lord Fan- shawe. The influence of Mrs. Masham with the Queen procured her husband's elevation to the peerage. On the 31st of December, 1711, he was created * See Noble's Protectorate, vol. ii. p. 55. MRS. MASHAM. 257 Baron Masham of Otes, in Essex, having, a short time previously, succeeded his nephew as fourth Baronet. Lady Masham was the mother of four chil dren : — George, who died in the life-time of his father : — Samuel, who succeeded to the title, and at whose death, in 1776, the barony became ex tinct : — Francis, who died young; — and Anne, married to Henry Hoare, Esq., and mother of Susannah, Countess of Aylesbury. Lady Mash am died on the 6th December, 1734, having survived her husband about fourteen months. They were both buried at Otes. VOL. II. 258 ROBERT FIELDING, BEAU FIELDING. Beau Fielding, the " Orlando" of the Tatler. — Descended from an old Warwickshire family. — Sent to London to study the Law. — His great personal beauty and foppish habits. — His extraordinary popularity with the fair sex. — His success as a gambler. — Fantastic liveries of his servants. — Portraits of him by the three great Artists of the day. — His first wife, daughter and heiress of Lord Carlingford. — His second, the celebrated Duchess of Cleveland, Mistress of Charles the Second. — Their matrimonial unhappiness. — Duchess's dis covery that he had committed bigamy. — He is tried at the Old Bailey. — Singular evidence adduced at the trial re specting Fielding's intrigues to obtain the hand of a rich widow, Deleau. — Curious statement made by the Counsel for the prosecution. — Evidence of Mrs. Villars, and of Field ing's servant, Boucher. — Fielding found guilty, but after wards pardoned by Queen Anne. — His marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland annulled. The history of a fine gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne, as it throws an amusing light on the manners of the period, may not be un acceptable to the reader. Robert Fielding, the " Orlando" of the Tatler, was a cadet of a good family in Warwickshire, and, at an early age, was sent to London for the purpose of studying the law. Vanity, however, ROBERT FIELDING, BEAU FIELDING. 259 and a taste for dissipation, gradually weaned him from his professional pursuits, and when, on an occasion of his appearing at court, his sovereign spoke of him, par excellence, as "the handsome Fielding," the circumstance is said to have stamped him for ever as a fop. Granger speaks of him as " uncommonly beautiful," and if we are to judge from the notices of him by his contempo raries, the encomium scarcely appears to be ex aggerated. Popular with the fair sex, almost beyond pre cedent, the sums which he received for conferring his favours on the old, he is said to have lavished profusely on the young. The gaming-table also afforded him occasional means of subsistence, and, though a vice which rarely enriches its votaries, he is said, as a gamester, to have proved unusually successful. Whatever may have been the secret means of his subsistence, he figured for a series of years, in his proper sphere, the metropolis, in dazzling, though borrowed plumes; and, by the splendour of his dress, and the fantastic liveries of his servants, appears to have never failed in attracting public attention. His domestics are described as habited in yellow liveries, with black sashes, and black feathers in their hats. One circumstance is curious, and, moreover, affords tolerable evidence of Fielding's self-love, that he caused himself to be painted by the three great artists of their time, Lely, Wis- sing, and Kneller. All three of their portraits have been engraved. s 2 260 ROBERT FIELDING, The first wife of Fielding was the daughter and sole heiress of Barnham Swift, Lord Car- lingford. On the death of this lady, trusting, as usual, to retrieve his fortunes by his hand some person, he paid his addresses to the cele brated Duchess of Cleveland, formerly the daz zling and scornful mistress of Charles the Se cond, but who, at this period, must have been verging on her sixty-sixth year. They were married on the 25th of November, 1705, and, as is usually the case where there exists such glar ing disparities of age and character, their union proved unhappy in the extreme. The reflec tion, indeed, cannot fail to be a melancholy one, that a woman who (profligate and undeserving as she is admitted to have been,) had for merly enslaved a powerful sovereign, and made him subservient to her slightest caprice, should not only so far have demeaned herself as to be come the wife of a needy adventurer, but should eventually have been compelled to seek refuge from his violence in a court of law. Fortunately, the Duchess, under somewhat re markable circumstances, was afforded an oppor tunity of extricating herself from her matrimonial engagements. She had been united to her dis sipated husband about a year, when rumours, in the first instance, reached her that Fielding had already another wife alive, and, some time after wards, a female actually made her appearance at Cleveland House, who stoutly maintained the priority of her claim. An inquiry was imme- BEAU FIELDING. 261 diately instituted by the friends of the Duchess, of which the result was a determination to pro secute Fielding for bigamy. Accordingly, on the 4th of December, 1706, he was placed at the bar of the Old Bailey, charged, in a formal indict ment, with having intermarried Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, his former wife, Mary Wadsworth, being still alive. From the evidence elicited at the trial, there transpired the singular fact that Fielding, within the short space of sixteen days, had been united to two different women. His marriage with Mary Wadsworth took place on the 9th of November, 1705 ; his union with the Duchess of Cleveland on the 25th of the same month. The circumstances connected with the case render it not a little amusing, and perhaps will excuse our introducing them somewhat in detail. It appears, then, that a young widow, a Mrs. Deleau, had been left, or was reputed to have been left, a large fortune, and that Fielding, tempted by the rumours of her wealth, had con ceived the project of making her his wife. As yet he was unacquainted with even her person ; but having paid a visit to Doctors' Commons, and discovering that report had not exaggerated her fortune, he speedily concerted his plans for ob taining an interview. The next step of the fortune-hunter was to pay a visit to Mrs. Deleau's seat at Waddon, where, under a pretence of being desirous to inspect the house and gardens, he was politely admitted 262 ROBERT FIELDING, by the owner. It seems that he was disappointed in his object of obtaining an interview with the widow ; however, at the moment he was quitting the premises, observing a lady at the window, whom he conceived to be Mrs. Deleau, he gave her full opportunity of admiring his handsome person, and retired firmly persuaded he had made the impression he wished. On another occasion, we find him attending a horse-race on Banstead Downs, with a view of being formally presented to the widow, but, from some accident, Mrs. Deleau was prevented from being present. He even went so far as to address a letter to her ; but her servants, either aware of his character, or probably not having been softened by a bribe of sufficient magnitude, allowed it to pass no further than themselves. It appears by the evidence produced on Field ing's trial, that, in the first stage of the proceed ings, he applied to a Mrs. Streights for her as sistance as a go-between. Mrs. Streights, on her part, referred him to a Mrs. Charlotte Villars, whose only acquaintance with Mrs. Deleau, was having been sent for by her, on one occasion, to cut her hair. This latter fact, however, Mrs. Villars, (who appears to have been a woman of the worst character,) carefully concealed from Fielding, and pretending that, from her intimacy with the widow, she was able materially to assist him in his views, obtained from him a promise of five hundred pounds, in the event of Mrs. Deleau becoming his wife. BEAU FIELDING. 263 Such was the commencement of a very in genious plot, which was subsequently conducted with the most extraordinary success. Mrs. Vil lars having, in the first instance, procured the connivance of a young woman, named Mary Wadsworth, (whose morals appear to have been almost as indifferent as her own, but who, for tunately, somewhat resembled Mrs. Deleau in person,) she waited in due time on Fielding, and informed him that she had introduced the sub ject of his wishes to the widow. Mrs. Deleau, she said, had, in the first instance, refused to listen to her entreaties and arguments, but had latterly given them more favourable attention : to this she added her own conviction, that if the affair were managed with proper prudence, it would eventually terminate as he wished. Part of Mrs. Villars' plot, (and it is extraor dinary that she should have succeeded in so com pletely deluding and mystifying a man of the world,) was to obtain valuable presents from Fielding, which she persuaded him were duly delivered to Mrs. Deleau. She herself admits in her evidence at the trial, — " Diverse presents were sent from Mr. Fielding by me to the lady. The first present was a gold apron, stuck with green. That was the first present Mr. Fielding sent to Mrs. Wadsworth, whom he thought was Mrs. Deleau all the while ; but it was Mrs. Wads worth. I did not think Mrs. Deleau, who was a great fortune, would agree to marry a man of Mr. Fielding's character. Mr. Fielding kept 264 ROBERT FIELDING, sending of letters and presents from that time, from the latter end of Bartholomew-tide to my Lord Mayor's day : he sent her a suit of white satin knots, and gloves, and other things." At length, having wearied the patience, and probably, very nearly exhausted the finances, of the adventurer, Mrs. Villars informed hiin, to his great satisfaction, that Mrs. Deleau had at last consented to an interview, and that, in a few days, she would conduct her to his lodgings in Pall Mall. " He desired," she says, in her evi dence, " that I would bring her to his lodgings on Lord Mayor's day, at night, which I did about nine o'clock, in a mourning-coach. Mr. Fielding was not at home, but came immediately. When he came in, he fell down upon his knees, and kissed her, and expressed abundance of fond ex pressions. He asked her why she staid so long, — and whether she loved singing? He said he would send for Margaruita* to come up. When she came up, Mr. Fielding bid her sing the two songs he loved ; which she did : the one was, ' Charming Creature,' — and the other, ' Ianthe * A well-known singer at the Opera. According to Mrs. Manley, the Earl of Nottingham purchased her favours for four thousand pounds, and afterwards bought her silence for a si milar sum. — New Atalantis, vol. i. pp, 187, 188. Swift men tions her in a letter to Stella from Windsor, 1711 : "We have a music-meeting in our town to-night. I went to the rehearsal of it, and there was Margaruita and her sister, and another drab, and a parcel of fiddlers ; I was weary, and would not go to the meeting, which I am sorry for, because I heard it was a great assembly." — Journal to Stella, 6th of August, 1711. BEAU FIELDING. 265 the lovely.' After which Mr. Fielding sent for two pints of wine, and some plum-cakes." Mr. Montague, who had been retained as coun sel for the prosecution, in his opening speech at the trial, thus describes the interview and sub sequent proceedings : — " The prisoner was not within at the time they came there, but, being sent for, came in soon after, and was extremely complacent for some time ; but at length, though he had been cautioned not to let the lady know they were his lodgings, yet he could not forbear showing her his fine clothes, and what furniture he had ; and a little time after sent for Mrs. Margaruita to sing to her, and pretended he was so extremely taken with her, that nothing would satisfy him but being married that night. But she, with a seeming modesty, checked his forward behaviour, and made a show of going away in displeasure ; but, before they parted, he prevailed upon her to promise not to put off their marriage longer than Wednesday sennight. Mr. Fielding rightly judged by this conversation what an in terest he had fixed in the lady, and looking upon himself to be sure of her, he actually went to a goldsmith and bespoke a ring,* and directed him self what posie should be engraved. When the day came, which had first been agreed on, sham pretences were made, not to seem over hasty in so serious a matter, and the marriage was put off till the Friday following; at which time, Mrs. * At Fielding's express desire, the motto " tibi soli" was en graved on the wedding ring. 266 ROBERT FIELDING, Villars and the lady came again to Mr. Field ing's lodgings, where he received them with an extraordinary transport of joy, and the mar riage must immediately be proceeded on. But she for some time feigned several put-offs, and at length made an offer to have gone away, but Mr. Fielding would by no means permit her to go, without making her his own, which he was re solved should be done presently ; and, to make all things sure, he ran out and locked the cham ber-door, to keep her and Mrs. Villars in, whilst he went for a priest." This important personage was obtained by Fielding at the embassy of the Emperor, and he was married to the supposed Mrs. Deleau the same night. Mrs. Villars, in her evidence, affords some curious particulars respecting this extraordinary wedding. " The priest," she says, " called for water, salt, and rosemary, to make holy water. Boucher, (Fielding's man-servant,) brought up water and salt, but could get no rosemary. Mr. Fielding and I received it at the dining-room door. Then Mr. Fielding locked the door, and took the key on the inside. Mr. Fielding asked Mrs. Wadsworth, whether it should be done in the bed-chamber or dining-room ? Mrs. Wads worth agreed it should be in the bed-chamber. There were none present but Mr. Fielding, Mrs. Wadsworth, the priest, and myself. The priest made holy water, and blessed it. Then he set Mrs. Wadsworth at the right of Mr. Fielding. The priest stood before them, and read the cere- BEAU FIELDING. 267 mony in Latin, as I understood ; and Mrs. Wadsworth said she was not yet satisfied he was a priest. Says Mr. Fielding to her, — "Do you think my dear, that I would have anybody to do this business, but the holy father ? " Mrs. Wadsworth was well satisfied till he came to that part, — ' Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife ? ' She desired it might be spoke in English by him. He did so. He asked Mr. Fielding whether he would have this gentle woman to his wedded wife. He said, 'Yes, with all my heart.' He asked the lady then, whether she would have this gentleman for her husband. She said 'Yes,' faintly. 'But, says Mr. Fielding, you must speak it so earnestly as I do : you must say with all my heart and soul.' Which she did. Then the priest blessed the ring, and gave it to Mr. Fielding to put on the lady's finger. He said something in Latin, but what it was, I know not. Then we went into the dining-room. Boucher brought up wine, and when all had drank, the priest was dis charged." Boucher, Fielding's servant, corroborates in every respect Mrs. Villars' statement. "My master," he says, " ordered me to be at home, and get clean sheets, wax-candles, and sconces ; and fires in both the rooms. He told me some ladies would be there that night, and ordered, if he was not at home when they came, to tell them that he would be there presently. Accordingly they came, and he was not at home, but in a 268 ROBERT FIELDING, little time he came, and went up to them. Some time after that, he came down stairs, in great haste, and said,— ' Boucher, go and bespeak a dish of pickles.' I did so, and brought over a cloth, and the rest of the things, and left them in the window. I staid by the stairs till he came back in a hackney-coach, with a priest along with him, in a long gown, and long beard, and a fur cap. I knew him to belong to the Emperor's Envoy, and I heard Mr. Fielding call him Reverend Father. Then I was ordered to set the table, and glasses, and wine and things of that kind, upon the side-board. I waited at table all the while. When supper was over, Mr. Fielding ordered me to go down, and fetch water, salt and rosemary. I went and got water and salt, but could get no rosemary. Then I was ordered to go down, and they were locked in, about three-quarters of an hour. He then called — ' Boucher,' says he, 'will you fill some wine?' I did so, and perceived upon the thumb of this lady, upon her left hand, a plain gold ring which before supper she had not. When this was over, the priest went away. Presently after, says Mr. Fielding, — ' Take the sheets from my bed, and lay them on the other bed for Mrs. Villars, and see that none lie there.' I told my master it was done. Mrs. Villars, in the meantime put the lady to bed. When I came down to tell them of it, I saw the lady's clothes on a stool in the chamber, and Mrs. Villars folding them up, and laying them in another room. I then lighted BEAU FIELDING. 269 Mrs. Villars to bed, and then went to bed myself. In the morning I was called to make a fire. I then perceived Mr. Fielding and this lady in bed together. The fire being made, I was or dered to get a hackney-coach. Mrs. Villars dressed the lady hastily, and she was carried away in the hackney-coach." Under what circumstances Fielding was made aware of the impudent manner in which he had been duped, we have unfortunately not been made acquainted. As his marriage, however, with the Duchess of Cleveland took place within little more than a fortnight, the denouement could not long have been delayed. The ladies, on their part, grew, as might have been expected, exorbitant in their demands for money, to which Fielding not only turned a deaf ear, but insisted on his presents being returned. Their repeated visits to Cleveland House must have caused him not a little annoyance. At last, apparently wearied out with their importunities, he sent for Mrs. Villars, and on her refusing to deny his marriage with Mrs. Wadsworth, not only gave her a severe beating, but told her, if she still persisted in declining to comply with his demands he would slit her nose, and "get two blacks, one of whom should hold her on his back, and the other break her bones." Mrs. Wadsworth wras treated with scarcely more consideration. On her presenting herself at Cleveland House to claim him as her lawful husband, he beat her with a stick and made her nose bleed. 270 ROBERT FIELDING, BEAU FIELDING. Fielding was found guilty at his trial and sentenced to be burnt in the hand, though he was afterwards pardoned by Queen Anne. On the 23rd of May, 1707, his marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland was annulled in the Arches Court, and from henceforth we discover no men tion of either the fortune or the name of Robert Fielding. 271 BEAU WILSON. Beau Wilson's mysterious rise from poverty to affluence Serves a campaign in Flanders. — Is broken for cowardice, and returns to England with forty shillings in his pocket. — His extraordi nary show of wealth immediately after his return. — Various conjectures on the subject. — Extract from Madam Dunois' Memoirs. — Her belief that Wilson owed his good fortune to the favour of the Duchess of Cleveland. — Wilson engaged in a duel with Law, and killed. — Extract from Evelyn's Diary. — Law tried and condemned. — His escape from prison. — His death at Venice in 1729. The preceding memoir of Beau Fielding throws so curious a light on the manners and customs of the last century, that we are tempted to intro duce the portrait of another individual of the same stamp, who, though he figured a few years previously to his brother in dissipation, yet re sembles him not a little in the ephemeral splen dour of his existence, and the precarious sources from which his magnificence was derived. The person known as Beau Wilson, whose mysterious rise from extreme poverty to the greatest affluence, afforded our ancestors so wide a field for curiosity and conjecture, — was a younger brother, for whom his friends had pur chased a commission in the army. He served a campaign with the army in Flanders, but 272 BEAU WILSON. having been early broken for cowardice, — as some have asserted, — set out on his return to England with the small sum of forty shillings, which some charitable friend had lent him to pay the expenses of his passage. This obscure, and apparently degraded, indi vidual, had hardly made his appearance in the metropolis more than a few weeks, when, ac cording to a contemporary, " he appeared the brightest star in the hemisphere; his coaches, saddle, hunting, race-horses, equipage, dress, and table, being the admiration of the world." Cu riosity was eagerly at work to discover the secret source of this magnificence. It was questioned whether such extraordinary wealth could be de rived from any of the fair sex, for there were few able to sustain him in such lavish expendi ture. The manner in which he spent each day could always be accounted for, and, even when intoxicated, he was invariably on his guard against impertinent inquiries. Some believed that he had discovered the philosopher's stone ; others affirmed that he had robbed a mail from Holland of a large quantity of rough diamonds ; while an other report was prevalent, that he was supported by the Jews, though the motive of their liberality does not appear. Madame Dunois says in her Memoirs;— "He never played, or but inconsiderably ; entertained with profuseness all who visited him ; himself drank liberally; but in all hours, as well sober as otherwise, he kept a strict guard upon his BEAU WILSON. 273 words, though several were either employed, by the curiosity of others or their own, to take him at his looser moments, and persuade him to reveal his secret ; but he so inviolably preserved it, that even their guesses were but at random, and without probability or foundation. He was not known to be an admirer of ladies, though he might doubtless have had the good fortune to have pleased, his person being no ways despi cable. What adds to our surprise is, that he was at all times to be found, and ever with some of his people, seemingly open in conversa tion, free from spleen or chagrin ; in a word, he had that settled air, as if he was assured his good fortune would for ever continue. One of his friends advised him to purchase an estate whilst he had money. Mr. Wilson thanked him, and said that he did not forget the future in the present : he was obliged to him for his counsel; but whilst he lived it would be ever thus, for he was always certain to be master of such a sum of money." Such is the well-known history of Beau Wilson. Madame Dunois, however, informs us that he unquestionably owed his good fortune to the weakness of a certain great lady, by which in sinuation the Duchess of Cleveland is evidently meant. The Duchess, it would seem, seeing him stretched on the grass in some public gardens, conceived a predilection for his handsome person, and took pains to ascertain his history and name. She afterwards received him in private, though VOL. II. T 274 BEAU WILSON. their interviews, in order that he might remain ignorant to whom he owed his good fortune, invariably took place in the dark. We learn from the same authority, that Wilson, instead of contenting himself with his unexpected good fortune, persisted in teazing the Duchess to acquaint him to whom he was obliged. This fact he is said to have eventually discovered, by hear ing the voice of the Duchess as he passed her in Hyde Park, and subsequently perceiving a particular diamond ring on her finger. The Duchess was naturally exasperated at the dis covery, and sent him word, that if he disclosed her secret to any human being, she would adopt the promptest measures to have him dispatched ; while, on the other hand, if he consulted his own interests and security, he might depend upon receiving her bounty as before. Whether Wilson was imprudent enough to neglect the hint does not appear. Madame Dunois, however, informs us, that Law, the celebrated financier, received a sum of money from the Duchess for putting him out of the way, and that he effectually fulfilled his en gagement. That Wilson fell by the hands of Law there is no doubt. The former challenged him on some pretence about his sister, and in the encounter Wilson was killed. The duel took place at the close of 1694, and in the Gazette of the 3rd of January, 1695, a reward is offered for Law's apprehension. The procla mation describes him as a " black, lean man, BEAU WILSON. 275 six feet high, with large pock-marks in his face, big high nose, and speech broad and loud." Evelyn, in his Diary, gives a somewhat fuller account of the cause of the duel. Wilson's singular career, and the mysterious means by which he supported his magnificence, were suf ficient to excite the curiosity of even the sober- minded philosopher. " April 22, 1694 : — A young man, named Wilson, the younger son of one who had not above two hundred pounds a year estate, lived in the garb and equipage of the richest nobleman, for house, furniture, coaches, saddle- horses, and kept a table and all things accord ingly, redeemed his father's estate, and gave por tions to his sisters, being challenged by one Law, a Scotchman, was killed in a duel, not fairly. The quarrel arose from his taking away his own sister from lodging in a house where this Law had a mistress ; which the mistress of the house think ing a disparagement to it, and losing by it, insti gated Law to this duel. He was taken and con demned for murder. The mystery is, how this so young a gentleman, very sober and of good fame, could live in such an expensive manner; it could not be discovered by all possible industry, or entreaty of his friends to make him reveal it. It did not appear that he was kept by women, play, coining, padding, or dealing in chemistry ; but he would sometimes say, that, if he should live ever so long, he had wherewith to maintain himself in the same manner. This was a subject of much discourse." T 2 276 BEAU WILSON. With Wilson died his extraordinary secret. Law was apprehended, and subsequently tried and condemned; but having the good fortune to break out of prison, he escaped to the Low Countries, where his expensive manner of living so far exceeded his ostensible means of subsist ence, as to afford grounds for curiosity and sur mise. Law, it may be remarked, who mingled a life of pleasure with an application to more methodical pursuits, died at Venice in 1729, at the age of fifty-eight. 277 GEORGE THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. His birth. — His near relationship to the Stuarts. — Sketch of his mother. — Serves a campaign under his father, when in his fifteenth year. — Fights in the Imperial army against the Turks. — Accompanies King William during a series of cam paigns. — Created by him a Knight of the Garter. — Is sub sequently created by Queen Anne, Marquis and Duke of Cambridge, &c. with precedency of all the peers of Great Britain. — Visits England with a view to make overtures for the hand of the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen. — Recall ed by his father, and forced to marry the daughter of the Duke of Zell. — Story of Sophia Dorothea, of Zell. — Her com pulsory marriage with George the First in her sixteenth year. — Her beauty and intelligence. — Neglected and insult ed by her husband. — Count Coningsmark's avowed admi ration of her. — Indignation of her father-in-law. — Imprisoned in the Castle of Alden. — Divorced from her husband in 1694. — Her criminality doubtful. — Her son's affection for her. — ¦ Her dignified conduct during her imprisonment. — Her death in 1726 George the First's accession to the English throne. —His indifference on the subject. — His arrival at Greenwich. — Anecdote. — His person and habits. — Extracts from Horace Walpole, and Archdeacon Coxe. — The King's male favour ites — Their rapacity. — The King's aversion to the English. — His proflignte expenditure. George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, who, agreeably with the provisions of the Act of Set- 278 GEORGE THE FIRST. tlement, succeeded to the throne of these realms, as the head of the only Protestant branch of the House of Stuart, was born at Osnaburg, on the 28th of May, 1660. He was the eldest son of Er nest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, by Sophia the youngest daughter of Elizabeth, the amiable, and unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, only daughter of King James the First of England. King George was thus nearly related to the several members of the House of Stuart. He was great-grand son of King James I., nephew to King Charles I., first cousin to King Charles II. and James II., and first cousin, once removed, to Queen Mary, Queen Anne, and James Frederick Edward, com monly called the Pretender. Of Ernest Augustus, the father of King George, we know little but that he was a brave and bustling man, who expired in 1698, before the intended aggrandizement of his family, as insured by the Act of Settlement, could have been known to him. His consort, however, the Electress Sophia, as well from her close relation ship to the royal family of England as from her being one of the most extraordinary women of her time, claims to be particularly mentioned in a memoir of her son. The Electress Sophia, the youngest of the twelve children of Frederick, the titular King of Bohemia, and his interesting consort, was born the 13th of October, 1630, and at the age of eigh teen became the wife of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover. Beautiful in her person, refined in GEORGE THE FIRST. 279 her manners, and distinguished by the most cap tivating conversational powers, she mingled with these graceful accomplishments an almost mascu line strength of mind, and an honourable respect for literature and science.* She is said to have made the laws and constitution of England her chief study, and by severe application, to have mastered the languages of Holland, Germany, Italy, France and England, which she spoke with so much ease and correctness, that she might have passed for a native of any one of these countries. Promoting, by every means in her power, the happiness of those about her ; and always anxious, even in extreme old age, to ori ginate scenes of social mirth and harmless diver sion, she continued to unite with these en dearing qualities a taste for graver studies and pursuits, and, besides extending her patron age to several eminent men of learning and science, was for many years the friend and cor- ' respondent of the celebrated philosopher Leib nitz. Distinguished for her sense of justice, and a regard for the sufferings of others, which was not exhibited by either of her con tern po- * The Electress would seem to have been stricter in the per formance of her social than of her religious duties. " The Princess Sophia," says Dean Lockier, " was a woman of good sense, and excellent conversation. I was very well acquainted with her. She sat very loose in her religious principles, and used to take a particular pleasure in setting a heretic, when ever she could meet with such, and one of her chaplains a disputing together." — Spence's Anecdotes, p. 169. 280 GEORGE THE FIRST. raries Queen Mary, or Queen Anne; she con ceived a lively interest in the fortunes of the exiled branch of the Stuarts, and even en deavoured to persuade her relation, King Wil liam, to pass over her own claims, and to re store the unfortunate James to his hereditary rights* The Electress retained, even to a very late period of life, not only her early freshness of feeling, but the beauty for which she had once been so distinguished. Toland, who was intro duced to her at Hanover, when she was in her seventy-fourth year, describes her as reading with out spectacles, and as still conspicuous for her graceful manners and commanding figure; with- * Lord Dartmouth, who visited Hanover in the reign of William the Third, has bequeathed us the following interest ing notice of the Electress Sophia : " She sent a coach to bring me to dinner to Herenhausen every day as long as I stayed. She was very free in her discourse, and said, she held a constant correspondence with King James, and his daughter, our Queen, with many particulars of a very extra ordinary nature, that were great proofs of his being a very weak man, and her being a very good woman. She seemed piqued at the Princess Anne, and spoke of her with little kind ness. She told me the King and Queen had both invited her to make them a visit into England : but she was grown old, and could not leave the Elector and her family; otherwise, should be glad to see her own country (as she was pleased to call it) before she died, and should willingly have her bones laid by her mother's in the Abbey, at Westminster, whom she always mentioned with great veneration. She took it unkindly, that the Duke of Zell should have the Garter before her hus band, who, she thought, might have expected it upon her account ; and told me, she was once like to have been married to King Charles the Second, which would not have been worse GEORGE THE FIRST. 281 out the trace of a wrinkle or apparently the loss of a tooth. Burnet also describes her, at the age of seventy-five, as still possessing infinite vivacity, and as " the most knowing and entertaining woman of her age." The Electress lived to her eighty-fourth year, when she expired on the 8th of June, 1714. The circumstances attending her dissolution, are somewhat remarkable. She was walking in the orangery, in the garden of Heren- hausen, when, the rain suddenly descending, she hastened towards the electoral palace. An at tendant reminding her that she had recently been indisposed, and that the exercise which she was taking was too violent, — "I believe you are right,'' she said, and almost at the same in- for the nation, considering how many children she had brought, to which I most sincerely agreed." Burnet, Hist, of his Own Time, vol. iv. p. 203, note. The Electress was, in fact, a staunch Jacobite, and long maintained a secret correspondence with her cousin, King James, during the period he was an exile at St. Germains. A number of her letters, marked in King William's hand-writing, — "Letters of the Electress Sophia to the Court of St. Ger mains,'' was found in a chest belonging to .that monarch, after his death. Under what circumstances they came into Wil liam's possession ; whether by treachery, or whether they were transmitted to him by the Electress Sophia herself, as a proof of her change of sentiments, we have now, no means of ascer taining. In the second volume of Dalrymple's Memoirs will be found two interesting letters addressed by the Electress to King William, in which, while she thanks him for his endea vours to bring her family into the succession, she at the same time acknowledges a strong interest in the misfortunes of King James. 2«2 GEORGE THE FIRST. stant fell down and expired. The Electress died only fifty-three days before death closed the eyes of Queen Anne. Had she survived this period, this distinguished woman, would, agreeably with the provisions of the Act of Settle ment, have ascended the throne of these realms. She used to say, that she should die happy could she only live to have " Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," engraved upon her coffin. George Lewis, her only son, appears to have been afforded more favourable opportunities of acquiring an insight into human nature, and a knowledge of the world, than usually falls to the lot of sovereign princes. Inheriting the military taste of his father, he served under him, when only fifteen, during the successful campaign of 1675, and was present at the battle of Consar- bruck, and the capture of Treves. He served also at different periods in Hungary, the Morea, Germany, and Flanders, and after the peace of Nimeguen, in 1679, visited France, England and other countries. He subsequently fought in the Imperial army against the Turks ; was present at the signal defeat of the Infidels on the 12th of September, 1683 ; and distinguished himself by personal valour at the capture of Buda, in 1686. He accompanied King William during a series of campaigns, and was present at the bat tles of Steenkerke and Landen, and at the siege of Namur. On the 23rd of January, 1698, he succeeded his father as Duke of Hanover. King William created him a Knight of the Garter on GEORGE THE FIRST. 283 the 18th of June, 1701; and on the 9th of No vember, 1706, Queen Anne created him Baron of Tewkesbury, Viscount of Northallerton, Earl of Milford-Haven, and Marquis and Duke of Cambridge, with precedency of all the peers of Great Britain. Mention has already been made of a visit paid by the Electoral prince to England, after the peace of Nimeguen. It was his object, with the sanction of his father, to make overtures for the hand of the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen of England ; and he had already proceeded to some lengths in the negotiation, when he was suddenly recalled by his father to Hanover. Circum stances had changed the views of the old Elector in regard to his son, and he now sought to unite the dukedoms of Hanover and Zell, by marrying his eldest son to the daughter and sole heiress of George William, Duke of Zell. Unfortunate ly for the parties concerned, he succeeded in his project ; by which means, a young and very in teresting woman, was made the victim of politi cal expediency, and was compelled to give her hand to a man she could neither love nor esteem, and who, with the exception of his titles and wealth, could scarcely boast of a recommendation in his favour. The story of Sophia Dorothea, the first cousin of George the First, and afterwards his re pudiated wife, deserves a place in our pages. At the period of her marriage, which took place on the 11th of November, 1682, she had 284 GEORGE THE FIRST. only attained her sixteenth year. She was at this period, eminently beautiful, and is said to have been no less distinguished for the qualities of her mind. Besides these advantages, she was the sole heiress of the house of Zell, and with half the princes of Germany at her feet, might at least have expected as much happiness as usually falls to the lot of the daughters of royalty. At the period of her marriage, which can only be regarded as a compulsory one, the Princess, in addition to the misfortune of be coming the wife of George the First, had un happily formed a prior attachment for a young Prince of Wolfenbiittel, to whom she had plight ed her faith. This interesting and accomplished woman was neglected by her worthless husband within a few months after their marriage. He attached himself to undeserving mistresses, and even insulted his young wife by constantly introducing them into her presence. It was in the first years of her marriage, when her indignation was fully aroused by the insults to which she was daily exposed, that the young and handsome Count Coningsmark, — afterwards so celebrated for his share in the mur der of Thomas Thynne, — made his appearance at the Electoral court. It seems that he had for merly professed a passion for the Electoral Prin cess when she was Princess of Zell ; and now, according to Archdeacon Coxe, " at sight of her, his passion, which had been diminished by ab sence, broke out with increasing violence, and he GEORGE THE FIRST. 285 had the imprudence publicly to renew his atten tions."* Her husband happened, at this period, to be absent from Hanover, but his father, the old Elector, to whom the former attentions of Co ningsmark were communicated by the enemies of the Princess, hastened to revenge the injury pre sumed to have been inflicted on the honour of his son. The manner in which the old Elector ac complished his purpose, is thus related by Horace Walpole : " George the First," he says, " while Electoral Prince, had married his cousin, the Princess So phia Dorothea, only child of the Duke of Zell — a match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family. Though she was very handsome, the Prince, who was extremely amorous, had several mistresses ; which provocation, and his absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the Princess to indulge in some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful Count Coningsmark, the charms of whose person ought not to have obliterated the memory of his vile assassination of Mr. Thynne. His vanity, the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, en couraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly, and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too in discreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The Princess, * Life of Sir Robert Walpole, v. i, p. 267. 286 GEORGE THE FIRST. surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suf fer the Count to kiss her hand before his abrupt departure, and he was actually introduced by them into her bedchamber next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared, nor was it known what became of him, till the death of George the First. On his son the new King's first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Conings mark was discovered under the floor of the Elec toral Princess's dressing-room, the Count having, probably, been strangled there the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up. George the Second entrusted the secret to his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father ; but the King was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress, nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it till I inform ed her of it several years afterwards. The disap pearance of the Count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have, of late years, been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances." The spot on which Coningsmark was assassinated is said to be still pointed out in the Electoral palace at Hanover. The arrest of Sophia followed immediately on the murder of her lover. She was sent a prisoner to the castle of Alden, situated on the small river Aller, in the Duchy of Zell, where, under the name of the Duchess of Halle, she spent a miserable GEORGE THE FIRST. 287 captivity of thirty-two years, which was only ter minated by her death. Horace Walpole considers that, notwithstanding their separation, she was never actually divorced from George the First. " The King," he says, " seems not to have wholly dissolved their union ; for on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne's reign, the Duchess of Halle was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and retained her for a whole year, and implored, though in vain, that she might continue to reside with them. As her son, too, George the Second, had thoughts of bringing her over, and declaring her Queen-Dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had pass ed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty." Notwithstand ing, however, Walpole's scepticism on the subject, the fact is now placed beyond a doubt that the King obtained a divorce from the Ecclesiastical consistory in Hanover, by an edict passed on the 28th of December, 1694, almost immediately after the assassination of Coningsmark. Although George the First appears to have been convinced in his own mind of his wife's guilt, the fact of her criminality is not a little questionable. That a young and high-spirited woman like Sophia of Zell, — neglected as she was by her husband, insulted by the presence of his unworthy mistresses, and left an isolated being in a splendid circle, — may have been gratified at the evident devotion of a man like Coningsmark, and 288 GEORGE THE FIRST. even, in an unguarded moment, may have shown satisfaction at his addresses, is not at all improba ble. But, on the other hand, there is a want of reasonable evidence to establish her guilt, and, moreover, the conviction that she was innocent appears to have been general among the best-in formed Hanoverians of the time. It was remark ed, and with much reason, that had Coningsmark been really guilty, it was just as easy to punish him in a court of justice as to get rid of him by a foul assassination. George the Second, moreover, who loved his mother almost as much as he hated his father, was fully convinced of her innocence, and seized every opportunity of showing respect to his unhappy parent. Of his devotion to her more than one anecdote has been recorded. In contempt of his father's orders, who seems to have forbidden all intercourse between the mother and son, he, on one occasion, crossed the river A Her on horseback, opposite his mother's windows, and was only prevented from throwing himself at her feet by the determined opposition of the Baron de Bulow, to whose charge she was confided. On the day that George the Second ascended the throne, Lady Suffolk, for the first time, perceived the picture of a lady in his apartment, habited in the Electoral robes. This she afterwards disco vered to be a portrait of his mother, which the Prince had secretly kept in his possession, during the life-time of his father, and now seized the earliest opportunity of drawing from its hiding- place. GEORGE THE FIRST. 289 " Those," says Archdeacon Coxe, " who ex culpate Sophia, assert either that a common visit was construed into an act of criminality, or that the Countess of Platen, at a late hour, summon ed Count Coningsmark in the name of the Prin cess, though without her connivance; that on being introduced, Sophia was surprised at his intrusion ; that on quitting the apartment, he was discovered by Ernest Augustus, whom the Countess had placed in the gallery, and was in stantly assassinated by persons whom she had suborned for that purpose." Whether there be any reasonable foundation for this strange story, it is now impossible to decide. The same anec dote, however, is related elsewhere ; the only dif ference being that the Duchess of Kendal, and not the Countess of Platen, is asserted to have been the authoress of the plot.* Sophia displayed a becoming dignity during her long and melancholy incarceration, and de rived invaluable consolation from the exercise of her religious duties. It was her custom to receive the Sacrament once a week, on which occasions she never failed to make the most solemn protestations of her innocence. George the First, in the last years of his life, is said to have offered to restore his injured consort to her connubial rights. To this proposal she retorted with a * " Memoirs of Charles Seymour, late Duke of Somerset." It is needless to remark that both the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Platen were the acknowledged mistresses of George the First. VOL. II. U 290 GEORGE THE FIRST. noble indignation, — " If what I am accused of is true, I am unworthy of his bed, and if the ac cusation is false, he is unworthy of me : I will not accept his offers." According to Lady Suffolk, the circumstance which most sensibly affected the Princess in her misfortunes, was the dread that her own unfortunate position might reflect disgrace upon her children. We learn from the same authority, that when her husband renewed his overtures for a reconciliation, she positively refused to listen to them, unless he publicly solicited her pardon. The foregoing anecdotes of the Electress Sophia are not characteristic, either of the conduct or language of a guilty person. If she were in nocent, which there exists but slender reason to doubt, how cruel and unmerited was the treat ment which she experienced ! Condemned to a long captivity of thirty-two years ; deprived of the society of her children ; and snatched from the pleasures of life at the very period when she was best qualified to enjoy them ; the punish ment, even had she been guilty, would have been far too oppressive for the offence. But, presuming that her innocence be admitted, how much more deeply must we compassionate the sufferings of this ill-fated woman. We must re member that her persecutor was her own hus band ; the man who, by right, should have been her protector ; that he was in every respect her in ferior in all qualities of mind and person ; that he had first neglected, and afterwards tyrannized over GEORGE THE FIRST. 291 his high-spirited wife ; that by his insulting in difference, he had himself almost invited her to err; that he had incited his worthless concu bines to become the spies over her actions ; and in a word, that while daring to accuse and punish his victim for infidelity, he was himself the most notorious adulterer, and the most unscru pulous libertine in his dominions. It was the misfortune of Sophia, that she died before her son, George the Second, ascended the throne of Great Britain. Had she survived the death of her husband only seven months, she would probably have seen her rights asserted and her character cleared. Her death took place on the 13th of November, 1726, in the sixty-first year of her age. In the London Gazette, which announces the event, she is simply styled the Duchess-dowRger of Hanover. We must now turn from the almost romantic history of a persecuted woman, to the far less interesting character of her phlegmatic husband. The circumstances which elevated George the First to the throne of England have been noticed elsewhere. It is sufficient to say that he was indebted for his aggrandizement merely to the ac cidental circumstance of his having been educated in the Protestant faith, there being, at the period of his accession, as many as fifty-seven individu als of the blood-royal who possessed superior hereditary claims. Queen Anne expired on the 1st of August, 17H, and immediately afterwards King George u 2 292 GEORGE THE FIRST. was proclaimed with the usual ceremonies in the cities of London and Westminster, without a show of that opposition which had been antici pated from the adherents of the Stuarts. Craggs, the well-known secretary of state, had previously been despatched by the Tories to Hanover, with the tidings that the Queen was in an almost hopeless state. He presented himself at the Elec toral palace of Herenhausen, on the 27th of Au gust ; but the same night there arrived two other expresses from England, — one for the King, and the other for the English Envoy-extraordinary, the Earl of Clarendon, — announcing the actual demise of the Queen. Two hours after midnight Lord Clarendon, a staunch Tory, was admitted to the King's apartment, and formally congratu lated him on his accession to the throne of Eng land. His reception of the English minister is said to have been cold and mortifying in the extreme ; thus affording the earliest intimation of his preference for the Whigs — a preference which he had hitherto prudently concealed in his own breast. It has been affirmed, that if any popular de monstration had taken place in England in favour of the exiled Stuarts, George the First would have contented himself with retaining the sove reignty of his beloved Electorate, and would, not unwillingly, have relinquished his claims to the throne of Great Britain. That this was the prevalent opinion among the best-informed circles of the period is undoubted ; indeed Baron Pol- GEORGE THE FIRST. 293 nitz, who was in Hanover at the time, affirms, notwithstanding all was peaceable in Eng land, and that the Elector had no more reason to expect opposition than if his claims to the throne had been strictly hereditary, still that the love of Hanover, and of social ease, very nearly outweighed the temptation of becoming the pos sessor of a splendid crown. The circumstance which seems to have chiefly induced him to ac cept the proffered honour, was the satisfaction that he felt at having the Whigs on his side. When one of his friends, alluding to the death of Charles the First on the scaffold, remarked that the anti-monarchical party in England was not yet extinct, — " I have nothing to fear," he said, "for the king-killers are all my friends." About the same period, after fairly admitting that he knew little of the constitution and cus toms of England, — " I intend," he said " to put myself entirely in the hands of my ministers, for they will be completely answerable for every thing I do." King George quitted the palace of Heren hausen on the 31st of August, 1714. He em barked at the Hague on the 16th of September, and arrived, two days afterwards, at Greenwich, where he was received, on his landing, by a large concourse of influential persons. During his pro gress from that town to London, he mentioned a rather curious anecdote to Lord Dorset, who was in the same coach with him. Thirty-three years before, he said, he had arrived in England 294 GEORGE THE FIRST. as a suitor for the hand of Queen Anne, whom he now succeeded. On his return, he added, he was riding a common post-horse from London to Gravesend, from which latter place he in tended to take shipping for Holland, when, the roads and the horse being equally indifferent, he met with a severe fall, and arrived at Gravesend covered with mud. While relating this circum stance, the King suddenly recognized the spot where the accident happened, and pointed it out to Lord Dorset. George the First made his public entry into the metropolis on the 20th of the month, and on the 20th of October was crowned at Westminster with the usual solem nities. It must have required all the adventitious aid of sovereign dignity, and all the importance which is commonly attached to the name and office of a King, to have prevented the German Elector, not only from becoming extremely un popular with his new subjects, but from figuring in a very ridiculous light in their estimation. A foreigner, as he was, in all his tastes and habits ; ignorant, debauched, and illiterate ; inelegant in his person, and ungraceful in his manners ; he had never condescended to acquaint himself with the laws or customs of the English, and was, in deed, utterly unacquainted with their language. In addition to these drawbacks, though he was now in his fifty-fifth year, he had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of hideous German prostitutes, who rendered him GEORGE THE FIRST. 295 equally ludicrous by their absurdities, and un popular by their rapacity. Horace Walpole, after drawing a ridiculous picture of the King's German mistresses, ob serves, — " No wonder that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio. They were food for all the venom of the Jacobites ; and, indeed, nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vo mited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court. One of the German ladies being abused by the mob, was said to have put her head out of the coach, and cried in bad English, ' Good people, why you abuse us ? — we come for all your goods.' — ' Yes, damn ye,' answered a fellow in the crowd, •and for all our chattels too.'" The two principal ladies of this repulsive seraglio, the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington, are said to have been usually designated, in refer ence to a marked contrast in their personal ap pearance, as the " Maypole," and the " Elephant and Castle." In a letter in Mist's Journal, May 27, 1721, an anonymous writer observes, — " We are ruined by trulls ; nay, what is more vexatious, by old ugly trulls, such as could not find en tertainment in the most hospitable hundreds of Old Drury." It is remarkable that this passage was made the subject of Parliamentary debate. The House of Commons were very properly of fended at the liberty taken with the sovereign, and the debate terminated by Mist, the printer 296 GEORGE THE FIRST. of the Journal, being sentenced to imprisonment and fine. The Court of George the First was, in fact, a foreign family, consisting of German mistresses and German favourites. " Coming from a poor Electorate," says Archdeacon Coxe, " they con sidered England as a kind of land of promise, and, at the same time, so precarious a possession that they endeavoured to enrich themselves with all possible speed." In regard to the female part of the establishment, the two principal ladies were not only honoured with peerages, and loaded with pensions, but, according to Etough, they notoriously disposed of state appointments through their brokers.* So grasping was their avarice, that, on the Duke of Somerset resigning the post of Master of the Horse, the King was prevailed upon, instead of nominating a successor, to con fer the salary on the Duchess of Kendal, and to leave the place vacant. It may be remarked, that the profits, also, arising from the post of Master of the Buck-hounds, was conferred on an other German. The King's principal male favourites, were Baron Bothmar, Count Bernsdorf, and Robethon, of whom the two former are said to have aimed at a seat in the House of Lords, while the latter humbly contented himself with aspiring at a baronetcy. These individuals, not satisfied with enriching themselves at the expense of the Eng- * Letter to Dr. Birch, Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 4326. B. GEORGE THE FIRST. 297 lish nation, chose to interfere in every political transaction, and not only jostled and thwarted the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, when ever an opportunity offered, but, on more than one occasion, treated him with insufferable in solence. Among the persons who constituted the fo reign Court of George the First, there were two individuals who must not be passed over in si lence. These two were Turks, known by the names of Mustapha and Mahomet, Avho had been taken prisoners at the period when the King was serving in the Imperial army, and, for some reason, were admitted by him into his service. They had since served him with so much fidelity, that they were selected to accompany him from Hanover, on his accession to the English throne, and had since received the appointments of Pages of the Back-stairs. Apparently, the insignifi cance of these individuals renders any notice of them unnecessary ; but even the King's Turkish menials were not without their share of influence under the new rule. Instead of confining them selves to the duties of their situations, and con tenting themselves with their legitimate perqui sites, they closely imitated the example set them by the rapacious Germans, and not only derived large sums by the sale of minor offices, but in a letter from Count Broglio to the King of France, they are mentioned as exercising consi derable political influence over their royal master. 29S GEORGE THE FIRST. It is to one of these individuals that Pope al ludes in his " Essay on Women." " From peer or bishop 'tis no easy thing, To draw the man who loves his God or King ; Alas ! I copy, or my draught would fail, From honest Mahomet or plain parson Hale." Altogether, the rapacity of tne German ad venturers ; the ridiculous airs which they gave themselves ; and their unwarrantable interference in state affairs, excited the just indignation of the English. The King, on his part, so far from attempting to check the scandalous ve nality of his countrymen, appears to have en couraged them in their iniquitous robberies. On one occasion, a favourite cook having requested his permission to return to Hanover ; and giving, as his reason for desiring his discharge, the pro fligate expenditure of all articles of food in the royal kitchen, so different from the frugal eco nomy which he had been accustomed to see prac tised in the Hanoverian palaces ; — " Never mind," said the King, " my present revenues will bear the expense : do you steal like the rest :" and he added, with a hearty laugh, — " be sure you take enough." The King, indeed, appears to have utterly dis credited the existence of such a virtue as honesty. Ridiculing the creditable scruples of the more conscientious of his servants, he seems to have been impressed with the conviction that venality was equally the foible of his first minister, and GEORGE THE FIRST. 299 of the humblest denizen of his kitchen. When Sir Robert Walpole remonstrated with him on the rapaciousness of his German dependants, and their practice of disposing of places and honours at a high price, the King merely replied with a smile, — " I suppose you also are paid for your re commendations." George the First appears to have been as averse to England and the English, as he was prejudiced in favour of Hanover and his own countrymen. Count Broglio writes to the King of France on the 6th of July, 1724,—" The King has no pre dilection for the English nation, and never re ceives in private any English of either sex ; none even of his principal officers are admitted to his chamber of a morning to dress him, nor in the evening to undress him. These offices are per formed by the Turks, who are his valets-de-cham- bre, and who give him everything he wants in private. He rather considers England as a tem porary possession, to be made the most of while it lasts, than as a perpetual inheritance to himself and family. He will have no disputes with the Parliament, but commits the entire transaction of that business to Walpole ; choosing rather that the responsibility should fall on his minister's head than on his own." The interests of this great country were almost entirely lost sight of in his attachment to his native dominions. Whenever he signed a treaty, or declared war, it was the aggrandizement of Hanover, and not of England, which dictated the policy of the moment ; and 300 GEORGE THE FIRST. the English had the mortification of seeing that the treasures which were lavished, and the blood which was spilt, were expended in gratifying the vanity of an ungrateful foreigner, and adding to the consequence of his paltry Electorate. It has already been remarked, that George the First was entirely ignorant of the English language ; and as his prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, knew as little of the French, there re mained no other means of communicating with each other except in Latin. " George the First," says Horace Walpole, " did not understand Eng lish : my father brushed up his old Latin, to use a phrase of Queen Elizabeth, in order to converse with the first Hanoverian sovereign, and ruled him in spite even of his mistresses." A biting sarcasm, uttered by William Shippen, the cele brated Tory leader in the reign of George the First, gave great offence to the Court ; and as he refused to soften the expression, it led to his being sent to the Tower. " It was the only in felicity," he said, " of his Majesty's reign, that he was unacquainted with the English language and the English constitution." As a proof of the justice of one of Count Broglio's remarks, — that the King merely re garded England as a temporary possession, " to be made the most of while it lasts," — it may be observed that though George the First had care fully husbanded the revenues of the Electorate, in England he launched forth into the most pro fligate excesses. According to a contemporary GEORGE THE FIRST. 301 writer, Toland, he had been accustomed, when in Hanover, to defray his household expenses every Saturday night. The case, however, was now altered ; and the nation was equally amazed and exasperated, when, in 1725, the Parliament was called upon to defray the debts of the civil list, amounting to the enormous sum of £500,000. 302 GEORGE THE FIRST. CHAPTER II. Attachment of the University of Oxford to the House of Stuart. — Whig principles of the University of Cambridge. — Dr. Trapp's epigram on the occasion. — Sir W. Browne's re tort. — James Shepherd's attempt to assassinate the King. — His execution. — Lord Chesterfield's remark on the subject. — The King's good-humour, and love of music. — His aversion to pomp. — Anecdote of his humour. — Anecdotes of the Duchess of Bolton and of Dean Lockier. — The King's liberality of feeling towards the House of Stuart Extract from Horace Walpole. — The King's generosity towards prisoners for debt. — Horace Walpole presented to him, when a mere child. — His account of the presentation The King's liaison vrith Anne Brett, daughter of the repudiated Countess of Macclesfield, by her second husband. — Her insolence and ambition. — Anecdote of her related by Horace Walpole.— The King's superstitious feelings He orders his wife's will to be burned. — His hatred of her and his son, George the Second. — His departure from England in 1727 for his Elec torate. — Archdeacon Coxe's details of his last illness. — Ex tract from the Marchmont Papers. — Romantic anecdote re lated by Lockhart. — The King's death in 1727. — His cha racter as a man, and as a King. — His indifferent education. — Anecdote of him — His daughter Sophia Dorothea married in 1706 to Frederick William, King of Prussia. — Her beauty and intelligence. — Her husband's brutal treatment of her. — Her death in 1757. The suppression of the unfortunate rebellion of 1715, though it imparted an accession of vigour to the existing government, added little to the GEORGE THE FIRST. 303 personal popularity of the King. Only two years after that event, the sprig of oak was again boldly displayed on the 29th of May, and the white rose publicly worn on the birth-day of the Pretender. The university of Oxford, in particular, whose devotion to hereditary right, has, at times, al most assumed the character of romance, gave such evident proofs of their reviving attachment to the House of Stuart, that the government at tempted to frighten them from their principles, by quartering on them a military force. On the other hand, the University of Cambridge forgot the individual failings of the Whig monarch in their attachment to Whig principles ; and as a reward for their adhesion to the existing govern ment, received a valuable present of books from the King. It was in reference to the very op posite conduct of the two Universities that Dr. Trapp composed the following epigram : — " Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes, The wants of his two Universities. Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why That learned body wanted loyalty ; But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning How that right loyal body wanted learning." These lines were retorted upon with singular felicity by Sir William Browne, whose compo sition not only excels, both in point and versifi cation, the verses which prompted his rejoinder, but has also the merit of having been written im promptu : — • 304 GEORGE THE FIRST. " The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse, For Tories know no argument but force. With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent, For Whigs allow no force but argument." The circumstance, perhaps, is a curious one, that, notwithstanding the excited state of party- feeling in the reign of George the First, and the fact that by nearly half the nation he was re garded merely as a usurper, yet that his life should only on one occasion have been in dan ger from assassination, and then from the hands of a mere boy, who had conceived an almost frenzied devotion for the Stuart family. The youth in question was named James Shepherd, a coach-maker's apprentice, who, it seems, com municated his project to one Leake, a non-juring clergyman ; at the same time expressing his de sire to receive the sacrament daily, till he should have accomplished his purpose. By means of Leake, the government was made acquainted with the project, and the person of Shepherd secured. When placed on his trial, he not only freely admitted his guilt, but, at the place of execution, declared that he gloried in the design, and died a willing martyr to his principles. Lord Chesterfield writes, about thirty years afterwards, to his son, — " I cannot help reading of Porsenna and Regulus with surprise and reverence: and yet I remember that I saw, without either, the execution of Shepherd, a boy of eighteen years old, who intended to shoot the late King, and who would have been pardoned, if he would have GEORGE THE FIRST. 305 expressed the least sorrow for his intended crime ; but, on the contrary, he declared that if he was pardoned, he would attempt it again : that he thought it a duty which he owed his country ; and that he died with pleasure for having endea voured to perform it. Reason equals Shepherd with Regulus ; but prejudice, and the recency of the fact, makes Shepherd a common malefactor, and Regulus a hero." Shepherd was executed at Tyburn on the 17th of March, 1718. Probably, though actuated by false principles, the youth may have sacrificed his life for what he believed the good of his country ; and so far he merits the implied eulogium wasted upon him by Lord Chesterfield. He appears, however, by all ac counts, to have been a mere fanatic, and more suited for Bedlam, than deserving a death on the scaffold, or a place in the temple of political martyrs. Though occasionally obstinate and self-willed, George the First, when nothing of importance occurred to ruffle the evenness of his temper, appears to have been, what may be termed, an agreeable and a good-humoured man. In his own circle, and among his own friends, he could converse freely and laugh heartily, though, gene rally speaking, he preferred the pleasure of listen ing to the conversation of others to the labour of talking himself* He delighted to divest himself of the cares of sovereignty with its trappings, and * Letter from Etough to Dr. Birch. Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 4326, B. VOL. II. X 306 GEORGE THE FIRST. though neither his wit nor his conversation were of a very high order, he was, on these occa sions, especially over his punch, a cheerful, and sometimes an amusing companion. Parade and observation were his particular aversion. Among his few redeeming qualities was a love of music, and whenever this taste led him to frequent the opera, instead of appearing in state in the royal box, he usually sat (in a box allotted to the ladies of the Court) behind the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham, where he could watch the performances without being observed by the au dience. Of the King's peculiar kind of humour, and of his practice of embellishing a slight incident, the following may be taken as a specimen : " This is a very odd country," he said, speaking of England, " the first morning, after my arrival at St. James', I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walls, and a canal, which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a brace of fine carp out of my canal, and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's man, for bringing me my own carp, out of my own canal in my own park." A seasonable and well-turned pleasantry appears to have usually had the effect of putting him in a good-humour, a circumstance of which his courtiers did not fail to avail themselves. Among those who were in the habit of diverting him, either by exposing their own follies or re tailing those of others, was the Duchess of Bolton, GEORGE THE FIRST. 307 a natural daughter of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth.* This lady is said to have frequent ly amused him by her ridiculous, and more than Hibernian, blunders. On one occasion, having been at the theatre the night before when Colley Cibber's first dramatic performance " Love's last Shift," was acted, the King inquired of her, the next day, what piece she had seen performed. The play, she said, with a grave face, was La derniere Chemise de V Amour. At another time, she made her appearance at Court in a great fright, and the King inquiring the cause of her alarm, she told him she had just been listening to a prophecy of Winston, that the world would be burnt in three years, — " And for my part, " she added, " I am determined to go to China." Among others, in whose society he delight ed, was Dr. Lockier, the well-known friend of Pope and the wits. The King, one day see ing Lockier at Court, desired the Duchess of An- caster to invite him to her evening party. Loc kier, however, begged that the Duchess would excuse him to his Majesty : he stood well at pre sent, he said, with the ministers, but should it be known that he was keeping such good company, he should probably miss the preferment which he was anxiously expecting. A few days afterwards Lockier was appointed to the Deanery of Peter- * Henrietta Crofts, natural daughter of James, Duke of Mon mouth, by Eleanor, younger daughter of Sir Robert Needham, Knt. She became the third wife of Charles Paulet, second Duke of Bolton. x 2 308 GEORGE THE FIRST. borough, and while kneeling to kiss hands on his preferment, the King whispered good-naturedly in his ear, " Well, now, doctor, you will not be afraid to come to our evening parties, I hope." There were two other divines, (Dr. Younger, Dean of Salisbury, his deputy Clerk of the Closet, and a Dr. Savage,) in whose society the King appears to have taken great pleasure. He once inquired of the latter, how it hap pened that, during his long stay in the Papal dominions, he had missed effecting the conver sion of the Pope ? "I believe, your majesty," replied the other, " that it was because I had nothing higher than the see of Rome to offer his Holiness." Dr. Younger, whom he had formerly known in Hanover, he was accustomed to style his " little Dean." This person, with whom the King used familiarly to converse in high Dutch, while standing behind his chair, eventually ob tained so inconvenient a degree of influence over his royal master, that the ministers, disliking his Tory principles, contrived effectually to remove him out of the way. There is one trait in the character of George the First, for which we readily hasten to do him credit. We allude to the liberality of feeling which he displayed towards the adherents of the exiled family ; and whether that feeling was prompted simply by constitutional good-nature, or whether it originated in some conscientious scruples in regard to the validity of his own claims, scruples which it is well known that he GEORGE THE FIRST. 309 entertained, the circumstance, nevertheless, does him infinite credit. When it was reported to him of an old acquaintance, that on hearing the news of his accession, he had observed, — "I have no objection to smoke a pipe with him as Elector of Hanover, but I cannot admit his claims to the throne of Great Britain," the King is said, not only to have shown no resentment, but to have fre quently regretted that a difference in political opinion should have separated him from a man whom he loved. It is said of him, on another occasion, that when at a masquerade, a lady, in a domino, invited him to fill a bumper, at the the same time proposing " the Pretender ;" " I will drink," he said, " with all my heart to the health of any unfortunate prince." But the following anecdote, related by Horace Walpole, not only places the generosity of the King's sentiments in a very agreeable point of view, but exhibits an instance of fine breeding, for which it would not be easy to find a parallel. " On one of his journeys to Hanover," says Wal pole, " his coach broke down. At a distance, in view, was a chateau of a considerable German nobleman. The King sent to borrow assistance. The possessor came, conveyed the King to his house, and begged the honour of his majesty's accepting a dinner while his carriage was re pairing ; and, in the interim, asked leave to amuse his majesty with a collection of pictures, which he had formed in several tours to Italy. But what did the King see in one of the rooms, 310 GEORGE THE FIRST. but an unknown portrait of a person in the robes and with the regalia of a sovereign of Great Britain ! George asked whom it represented ? The nobleman replied, with much diffident but decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had been acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George, who had done him the honour of sending him that picture. ' Upon my word,' said the King, instantly, 'it is very like to the family.'" It was impossible, adds Walpole, to remove the embarrassment of the proprietor with more good- breeding. George the First was what may be termed a good-natured man, and though the frightful pro scriptions which followed the suppression of the rebellion of 1715 must always be regarded as a blot on his character, they nevertheless appear to have been prompted by feelings of stern necessity, and by a conviction that it was incumbent upon him to make terrible examples, in order to prevent further outbreaks, rather than from an unrelenting vindictiveness, or that he derived any satisfaction from the misery of his fellow-creatures. That he could occasionally sympathise with the sufferings of others, there is no want of evidence to prove. From some cause, which has been left unexplain ed, he had conceived a particular interest in the condition of persons imprisoned for debt, and, on several occasions, we find him kindly procuring their release. Previously to his quitting Hanover, to assume the sovereignty of England, he ordered a general emancipation of all the insolvent debtors GEORGE THE FIRST. 311 throughout the Electorate, and, only a few months afterwards, presented the sheriffs of Lon don with a thousand pounds to be applied to a similar object. Again, in a progress which he made in the English provinces, in 1722, the King, at his own expense, released from gaol all pri soners confined for debt in every town through which he passed. The account which Horace Walpole has left us of his being presented, when a mere child, to George the First, contains some of the most agree able of his octogenarian reminiscences. " I must suppose," he says, " that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head to long to see the King. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his Ma jesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child ; yet not being proper to be made a prece dent, it was settled to be in private and at night. Accordingly, the night but one before the King began his last journey, my mother carried me, at ten at night, to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham, on the ground-floor to wards the garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt, the Duchess of Kendal : apartments occupied by George the Second after his Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth. 312 GEORGE THE FIRST. " Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother. " The person of the King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins ; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-co loured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object, that I do not believe I once looked at the Duchess ; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just be yond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-fa voured old lady ; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was." Walpole informs us elsewhere, that the King took him up in his arms, kissed him, and " chatted some time." In the last years of his life, the King paid his English subjects the compliment of taking an Englishwoman for his mistress. This lady was Anne Brett, a daughter of the repudiated Countess of Macclesfield by her second husband, and a sis ter of Savage, the poet. Her hair and eyes are said to have been extremely dark, so much so, that she might have been mistaken for a Spanish beauty. She seems to have been as ambitious as GEORGE THE FIRST. 313 she was handsome, and as she had been promised a coronet, as the reward of her complaisance, as soon as her royal lover returned from the last visit which he paid to Hanover, she would, probably, have proved a dangerous rival to the Duchess of Kendal, had the King's life been extended a few years. Insolence — a quality which she, probably, inherited from her unprincipled mother, Lady Macclesfield — appears to have been the chief cha racteristic of this new Sultana. Previously to the King's last departure for Hanover, he had left his new mistress in St. James's palace, in apartments contiguous to those of his granddaughters, the Princesses Anne, Amelia, and Elizabeth. " When the King set out," says Walpole, " Miss Brett ordered a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal garden. Anne, the eldest of the Princesses, offended at that freedom, and not choosing such a companion in her walks, ordered the door to be walled up again. Miss Brett as imperiously reversed that command. The King died suddenly, and the empire of the new mis tress, and her promised coronet, vanished. She afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster." George the First, at an earlier period of his life, had been warned by a French prophetess to take care of his wife, as it was fated that he would not survive her more than a twelvemonth. Like most Germans, he was superstitious, and such an effect had the prediction on his mind, that shortly 314 GEORGE THE FIRST. after his wife's death, on taking leave of his son and the Princess of Wales, when on the eve of his departure for Hanover, he told them, with tears in his eyes, that he should never see them again. However, notwithstanding his firm con viction that the hour of his dissolution was at hand, the circumstance seems to have had no ef fect in deterring him from the commission of a very gross act of injustice and crime. With a contempt of all laws, human and divine, he gave directions that his wife's will should be burnt ; and this for the mere purpose, it seems, of depriv ing his own son of some valuable legacies be queathed to him by his unfortunate mother. It is a remarkable and a melancholy fact that his wife and his only son appear to have been the two persons whom George the First detested most in the world. On the 3rd of June, 1727, the King departed from Greenwich on his last visit to his beloved electorate. He landed in Holland four days afterwards, and on reaching Delden, on the 9th of the month, appeared to be in the enjoyment of his usual health. It appears, however, that about twenty miles from that place he had supped with the Count de Twittel, at the country-seat of that nobleman, on which occa sion he had eaten an unusual quantity of melons, an act of imprudence to which was subsequently ascribed the disorder that caused his death. He proceeded the same evening to Delden, and, GEORGE THE FIRST. 315 having breakfasted the following morning on a cup of chocolate, set off on his way to Osnaburg. The circumstances which attended the King's last illness are minutely detailed by Archdeacon Coxe, from the account of persons who were either eye-witnesses of, or who remembered, the event. " On his arrival at Bentham," says Coxe, " the King felt himself indisposed, but con tinued his journey, in opposition to the repeated entreaties of his suite. His indisposition in creased, and when he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic ; his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs of life, by continually crying out, as well as he could articulate, ' Os naburg, Osnaburg.' This impatience to reach Osnaburg induced the attendants not to stop at Ippenburen, but to hasten on in hopes of arriving at that city before he died. But it was too late. The exact time and place of his death cannot be ascertained ; but it is most pro bable that he expired either as the carriage was ascending the hill near Ippenburen, or on the summit. On their arrival at the palace of his brother, the Bishop of Osnaburg, he was imme diately bled, but all attempts to recover him proved ineffectual."* Etough, in a letter to Dr. Birch, preserved in the British Museum, intimates that the extra ordinary vigour of the King's constitution seemed to promise him an existence of more than com- * Coxe's Life of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. i. p. 266. 316 GEORGE THE FIRST. mon duration : he adds, however, that his fond ness for sturgeon, and other strong food, and his custom of indulging in hearty suppers at late hours of the night, counteracted the exer tions made by nature in his behalf* These presumptions of the King's want of prudence, in regard to his daily diet, render it the more probable that the excess to which he indulged at the table of the Count de Twittel, was the immediate cause of his death. Among the Marchmont Papers there is a letter, dated 15th June, 1727, addressed by George Baillie, Esq., to Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, detailing some further particulars relating to the death of George the First. The narrative, it may be re marked, differs in no material degree from that of Coxe. " It is with great grief and concern," says the writer, " that I am to tell you of our most excellent King's death. The melancholy news came by express yesterday. He had been ill at se,a, and continued so on the road, but would not stop. On Friday night he was taken ill with a severe purging and great sweating, which weakened him very much. He would, however, go on ; and upon Saturday lost his speech and the power of one side, but still made signs with his hand to proceed, and in the even ing arrived at Osnaburg, where he died about one o'clock on Sunday morning; a fatal day, were we not happy in the Prince his successor." f * Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 4326. B. + Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 411. GEORGE THE FIRST. 317 Lockhart, of Carnwath, in his Memoirs, relates a somewhat romantic anecdote, connected with the last illness of George the First, which was formerly current in Germany. According to this writer, the unfortunate Sophia Dorothea, shortly before her death, addressed a letter to her royal consort, in which, after emphatically assert ing her innocence, she reproached him with the long course of ill-usage that she had experi enced at his hands, and concluded by solemnly citing him to appear on a certain day before the Divine tribunal. This letter, it is said, was entrusted by the dying princess to a faithful attendant, by whom it was presented to the King on his entering his German dominions. He read it; appeared to be awe-struck by the contents, and immediately afterwards was seized by the disorder which carried him off. Lockhart, a trustworthy chronicler, informs us, that the same year in which the King died, he was ac tually shown the letter in question by Count Welling, Governor of Luxemburg. It is more likely, however, that Lockhart was imposed upon, than that the story had any foundation in fact. Indigestion, and not superstition, seems to have shortened the life of George the First. King George expired on the 11th of June, 1727, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and the thir teenth of his reign over England. His remains were interred at Hanover on the 3rd of September following. In person he was somewhat beneath the middle stature. His general appearance was 318 GEORGE THE FIRST. undignified; his address awkward. Though not handsome, his features were good, and the slight expression which they bore is said to have been that of benignity. The King's character has already been sufficiently illustrated in the fore going pages, without requiring any general sum mary of his virtues or his vices. It may be remarked, however, that, with the single excep tions of social pleasantry and constitutional good- humour, he seems to have been possessed of no redeeming quality which reflected dignity on him as a monarch, or rendered him amiable as a man. Profligate in his youth, and libidinous in old age, he figures through life as a bad hus band, a bad father, and, in as far as England is concerned, a bad king. He wanted even those graceful qualifications of the Stuarts, a love for polite literature and the fine arts : he possessed no taste for the one, and extended no patronage to the other. The only thing he seems to have had a regard for was his own ease ; the only being he hated heartily was pro bably his own son. Many of these unamiable characteristics were unquestionably owing to his indifferent education ; for, notwithstanding his wrong-headiness, he is said to have meant well. A single favourable anecdote is related of this monarch, that when, on his accession to the throne, a German nobleman congratulated him on his elevation, " Rather," he said, " congratu late me on having Newton for a subject in one GEORGE THE FIRST. 319 country, and Leibnitz in the other."* The au thenticity of the story may reasonably be doubt ed, but, if true, it deserves to be written in letters of gold. George the First, (by his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Zell,) was the father of two children, — a son and a daughter, — of whom the former succeeded him on the throne of England as King George the Second. His remaining child was Sophia Dorothea, born in 1684. This lady, on the 28th of November, 1706, became the wife of Frederick William, of Brandenburg, afterwards King of Prussia, a man whose eccentric brutalities have been rendered so celebrated by Voltaire. His unhappy wife is said to have combined the strong sense of her grandmother, the old Electress, with the beauty and fascinating manners of her unfor tunate mother, Sophia of Zell. Neither her virtues, however, nor her accomplishments were sufficient to protect her against the inhumanities of her husband. This despicable and unmanly ruffian is known to have practised the same cruelties towards his wife and children which he exercised so no toriously towards his oppressed subjects. On dif ferent occasions, we find him kicking his daughter, with brutal violence, from his apartment ; f pro- * This anecdote is related by Seward, but without giving his authority. — Anecdotes of distingtiished Persons, vol. ii. p. 295. t Lord Chesterfield writes to the plenipotentiaries on the 15th of September, 1750, from the Hague; — " My last letters from Rome inform me that the King of Prussia had beaten the '320 GEORGE THE FIRST. posing to behead his son, afterwards Frederick the Great, for having been guilty of writing a copy of verses ; forcing that son to be a wit ness of the execution of his friend ; and sub sequently to be present at the public castigation of a beloved mistress. Harassed by her own misfortunes, and by witnessing the distresses of her children, the Queen of Prussia continued to drag on an existence of misery and disease till 1757, when she expired in the seventy-fourth year of her age. Princess-Royal, his daughter, most unmercifully, dragged her about the room by the hair, kicking her in the belly and breast, till her cries alarmed the officer of the guards, who came in. She keeps her bed of the bruises she received. Twenty-pence a day is allowed for the maintenance of the Prince-Royal in the Castle of Custan." — Lord Mahon's Hist, of England, vol. ii. p. 72, Appendix. The Princess, on the occasion above referred to, received a severe injury on her left breast, the marks of which she, some years afterwards, exhibited to Voltaire. 321 MELESINA, DUCHESS OF KENDAL. Sister of the Count of Schulenberg. — Appointed Maid of Honour to the Electress Sophia, mother of George the First. — The Duchess's birth in 1659. — Her personal appearance. — Reluctantly accompanies George the First to England. — Created an Irish peeress, Duchess of Munster, in 1716. — Afterwards created an English peeress, Duchess of Kendal, for life, and, subsequently, Princess of Eberstein in Germany. — Supposed to have contracted a left-handed marriage with George the First. — Her assumption of piety — Sir R. Wal pole's mean opinion of her. — Her political influence Letter respecting her from Count Broglio to Louis the Fifteenth. — The latter's reply. — The Duchess presides at the King's evening parties. — His nightly visits to her apartments. — Accompanies him on his last visit to Hanover. — Her grief on hearing of his death. — Singular anecdote. — The Duchess's death in 1743. Erengard Melesina Schulenberg, the cele brated mistress of George the First, was sister of Frederic Achatius, Count of Schulenberg and Hedlen. The influence of her family procured her the appointment of Maid of Honour to the Electress Sophia, mother of George the First, at the period when her royal lover was only Electo ral Prince. Thus early did their intercourse com mence, and it is remarkable that the influence obtained by the one, and the affection felt by vol. ii. y 322 MELESINA, the other, should have survived till both were progressing towards their seventieth year. As Mademoiselle Schulenberg is said to have been a year older than her royal lover, the date of her birth must be placed in 1659. It must have occasioned no slight degree of astonishment to the English people, and no small contempt for the taste of their new monarch, when, at the head of the extraordinary seraglio which accompanied him to England, they beheld a woman whose face was not only plain, and whose elongated figure was attenuated almost to emaciation, but who at this period must have entered on her fifty-fifth year. This uninteresting Sultana, satisfied with the small pension which she enjoyed in Hanover, was with great difficulty prevailed upon to accompany her royal lover to England. According to Lady Mary AVortley Montagu, — " She even refused coming hither at first, fearing that the people of England, who, she thought, were accustomed to use their Kings barbarously, might chop off his head in the first fortnight ; and had not love or gratitude enough to venture being involved in his ruin." The King, however, who had been accustomed to saunter away his idle hours in the apartments of the women, and who dreaded the long evenings which he was likely to pass in England without female society, found arguments sufficiently forcible to effect a change in her resolution. For this compliance with her lover's wishes DUCHESS OF KENDAL. 323 Mademoiselle Schulenberg was speedily and pro fusely rewarded. In 1716, the King created her a peeress of Ireland, with the titles of Baroness of Dundalk, Countess and Marchioness of Dun- gannon, and Duchess of Munster. She was after wards raised, in 1719, to be a peeress of England with the additional titles of Baroness Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal, for life, and was subsequently created Princess of Eberstein in Germany. It has been affirmed that George the First was married to the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand ; and though an unauthorised ceremony of this nature must have appeared sufficiently ridiculous to the people of England, yet it was a kind of marriage which was not unfrequently practised in Germany, for the purpose of lulling incon venient scruples, and creating for the lady an adventitious respect.* The Duchess herself, by assuming an extraordinary semblance of piety and attending strictly to her devotional duties, appears to have been eager to countenance such a belief. It is said to have been her custom to attend different Lutheran chapels as many as seven times on every Sunday. To her great mortification, however, the minister of the Lu theran chapel in the Savoy, notwithstanding her assumption of superior piety, positively refused * There is reason to believe, from the contents of a letter from Etough to Dr. Birch preserved in the British Museum, that the ceremony was actually performed in this country by the Archbishop of York. Add. MSS. 4326. B. y 2 304 MELESINA, to administer the sacrament to her, on the ground that she was living in a state of adultery, though she subsequently met with more complaisance from a clergyman of the same persuasion in the city. Horace Walpole speaks of the Duchess of Kendal as " by no means an inviting object" ; and, on another occasion, alluding to the impres sion which her appearance made on him in his youth, he describes her as " a very tall, lean, ill- favoured old lady." She was one day waiting behind the chair of the old Electress Sophia at a ball, when the latter, pointing her out to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, ob served, — " Look at that mawkin, and think of her being my son's mistress." Neither does her mind appear to have been more gifted than her person. She ever remained in ignorance of the English language, and Sir Robert Walpole, who was well acquainted with her, spoke of her capacity as contemptible in the extreme. A love of money, he said, was the ruling passion of her life ; and it was .one of his remarks, that were the King's honour put up to auction, she would have sold it, for the consideration of a shilling, to the highest bidder. The correspondence which passed between Louis the Fifteenth, and his minister, Count Broglio, discovers how much importance was attached to the good word of the Duchess of Kendal, and how paramount was believed to be her influence over the King. Count Broglio writes to his royal master, on the 6th of July DUCHESS OF KENDAL. 325 1724, — " As the Duchess of Kendal seemed to express a desire to see me often, I have been very attentive to her ; being convinced that it is highly essential to the advantage of your majesty's service to be on good terms with her, for she is closely united with the three ministers who now govern." And again, the Frenchman writes, on the 10th of the same month, — " The more I consider state affairs, the more I am convinced that the Government is entirely in the hands of Mr. Walpole, Lord Townshend, and the Duke of Newcastle, who are on the best terms with the Duchess of Kendal. The King visits her every afternoon from five till eight, and it is there that she endeavours to penetrate the senti ments of his Britannic majesty, for the purpose of consulting the three ministers, and pursuing the measures which may be thought necessary for accomplishing their designs. She sent me word that she was desirous of my friendship, and that I should place confidence in her. I assured her that I would do everything in my power to merit her esteem and friendship. I am convinced that she may be advantageously employed in promoting your majesty's service, and that it will be necessary to employ her, though I will not trust her further than is absolutely neces sary." It seems to be in reply to these curious pas sages, that the French King writes to Count Broglio on the 18th of July, following, — "There is no room to doubt that the Duchess of Kendal, 326 MELESINA, having a great ascendancy over the King of Great Britain, and maintaining a strict union with his ministers, must materially influence their principal resolutions. You will neglect nothing to acquire a share of her confidence, from a con viction that nothing can be more conducive to my interests. There is, however, a manner of giving additional value to the marks of confi dence you bestow on her in private, by avoiding in public all appearances which might- seem too pointed ; by which means you will avoid fall ing into the inconvenience of being suspected by those who are not friendly to the Duchess; at the same time that a kind of mysteriousness in public on the subject of your confidence, will give rise to a firm belief of your having formed a friendship mutually sincere." Though George the First was far from being constant to his antiquated Sultana, she, neverthe less, maintained her unaccountable influence over him to the last. It must have been the force of habit, indeed, rather than the remains of any softer feeling, which latterly attached him to the mistress of his youth, for at the period when death dissolved their union, the connection be tween them must have subsisted for nearly half a century. Unquestionably, she was of great ser vice to him after he had ascended the throne of England ; for not only, from a long course of ex perience, was she intimately acquainted with his tastes, his prejudices, and habits, and thus able to dissipate the tedium of his more solitary hours, DUCHESS OF KENDAL. 327 but she also did the honours of his evening par ties, and, apparently, was complaisant enough to allow him to extend his favours to younger rivals, without wearying him with inconvenient re proaches. Occasionally, it is said, she used to complain of the great difficulty she experienced in amusing the King, and finding employment for his idle hours. A similar complaint is known to have been made by Madame de Maintenon during her intercourse with Louis the Fourteenth. George the First, when he paid his nightly visits to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal, is said to have usually employed himself in cutting paper into different shapes. Probably, the Duchess really retained an at tachment for her royal lover. Lady Mary Wort- ley Montagu observes, speaking of their almost ludicrous amours, " She was duller than the King, and, consequently, did not find out that he was so." She accompanied her royal lover in his last visit to Hanover, but, for some reason, remained behind at Delden, while the King was hastening towards Osnaburg. She had, however, proceed ed on her journey, when a courier met her on the road, and announced to her the melancholy tid ings of the King's illness. She immediately hur ried forward with all speed, but had accomplished only a few miles when a second courier commu nicated to her the tidings of his death. The grief which she displayed on hearing the news, to all appearance, was excessive and sincere. She even beat her breast and tore her hair, and immediately separating herself from the English ladies who 328 MELESINA, DUCHESS OF KENDAL. accompanied her, took the road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion about three months. A somewhat fantastic anecdote is related by Horace Walpole, which, though it places in a ridiculous light the superstition both of George the First and of his mistress, yet affords pleasing evidence that they were sincerely attached to each other. " In a tender mood," says Walpole, " George the First promised the Duchess of Ken dal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that en gagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or she took their last flight." The Duchess of Kendal, after the death of her royal lover, paid a compliment to England, by making it the country of her choice. She princi pally resided at Kendal House, near Twickenham, which, after her death, was converted into a tea- garden. She expired in the early part of 1743, in the eighty-fifth year of her age. Her wealth, of which Walpole, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, speaks as "immense," was divided between her reputed niece and presumed daughter, the Coun tess of Chesterfield, and some other German rela tions. 329 SOPHIA CHARLOTTE, COUNTESS OF PLATEN AND DARLINGTON. Sister of Count Platen, one of the most influential noblemen in Hanover. — The family of Platen supply the Electoral House with mistresses. — The young "Countess taken by her ambi tious mother to the Electoral Court. — She thwarts her mo ther's schemes by falling in love with the son of a Hamburgh merchant. — She marries him, in order to preserve her cha racter. — Her mother's disappointment and death The Countess separates from her husband, and squanders the fortune left her by her mother. — Becomes George the First's mistress. — His vexation at her indiscretions and extrava gance. — She accompanies him to England. — Character of her by Lady M. W. Montagu. — Her liaison with Mr. Methuen. — Created Countess of Darlington. — Horace Walpole's portrait of her in her old age. — Her daughter by George the First married to Viscount Howe of Ireland. — Death of the Countess in 1730. Sophia Charlotte, Countess of Platen, who figures as the next in importance in the seraglio of George the First, had attained the age of forty at the period when she followed the King to this country. She was of the house of Offlen, being sister of Count Platen, one of the most consider able men in Hanover. It seems to have been the fate of this family to supply the Electoral House with mistresses. The mother of Count Platen had long been the mistress of the Elector Ernest 330 SOPHIA CHARLOTTE, Augustus, and, moreover, the Count had the mis fortune to see his wife and sister successively fill ing the same situation to the Elector George Lewis, afterwards King of England. The mother of the Countess of Platen is said to have carried her daughter to the Electoral court, with the express purpose of establishing her as the mistress of the future sovereign of England. The young lady was possessed of an agreeable person and considerable powers of fascination, and such was the effect which they produced on the amorous Elector, that his desertion of his consort, Sophia of Zell, and the subsequent divorce and misery of that unhappy woman, have been traced to this discreditable attachment. The young lady, however, discovered, at least at this period, but little inclination to second the ambitious views of her mother. Indeed, she completely thwarted them by falling in love with a M. Kilmansegge, the son of a merchant of Hamburgh, and by con ferring on this person the favours which she had refused her sovereign, shortly afterwards proved in a fair way to become a mother. As the only means of saving her from irremediable disgrace, it was thought expedient to marry her to her se ducer. Her mother died shortly after this event (as was supposed, of grief and disappointment), and bequeathed her daughter the large fortune of £40,000, which, in her youth, she had obtained from the generosity of her early lover, the Elector Ernest Augustus. Impatient of matrimonial restraint, and addicted COUNTESS OF PLATEN AND DARLINGTON. 331 to pleasures little compatible with domestic hap piness, the young Countess separated herself from her Hamburgh husband, and speedily squandered the handsome fortune of which she had become the possessor. At what period she became the mistress of George the First is not exactly known. The King, however, appears to have soon wearied of her charms ; her indiscretions, moreover, and reckless extravagance, apparently, causing him great annoyance. On his accession to the English throne, she made a final, and, as it proved, suc cessful attempt to regain the influence she had lost. Ascertaining that her rival, the Duchess of Kendal, had declined accompanying their royal master to his new dominions, she promptly offered her own services, which were gratefully and un hesitatingly accepted. Circumstances, however, still threatened to prevent the accomplishment of her ambitious designs. The King, though he accepted her services, discovered no intention to pay her debts ; and as these were of large amount, and her creditors both watchful and importunate, she found it difficult to quit Hanover without their knowledge and consent. At length, she in geniously effected her purpose by stealth. Having contrived to escape out of the town in disguise, she made the best of her way in a post-chaise to Holland, where she arrived in time to embark for England with the King. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was inti mately acquainted with the Countess of Platen, describes her as being endowed with powers of 332 SOPHIA CHARLOTTE, fascination of no mean order. " She had a greater vivacity in conversation," says Lady Mary, " than ever I knew in a German of either sex. She loved reading, and had a taste for all polite learning. Her humour was easy and sociable. Her constitution inclined her to gallantry. She was well-bred and amusing in company. She knew both how to please and be pleased, and had experience enough to know it was hard to do either without money. Her unlimited expenses had left her with very little remaining, and she made what haste she could to make advantage of the opinion the Eng lish had of her power with the King, by receiving the presents that were made her from all quarters ; and which she knew very well must cease, when it was known that the King's idleness carried him to her lodgings, without either regard for her ad vice, or affection for her person, which time and very bad paint had left without any of the charms which had once attracted him." Notwithstanding the loss of youth and beauty, Madame Kilman segge, on finding herself established in this coun try, appears to have devoted herself to a life of pleasure, with the same zeal which she had pur sued it when in Hanover. A Mr. Methuen, — a Lord of the Treasury, and one of the most distin guished lady-killers of the time, — is said to have been particularly honoured by her regard. This person, it is affirmed, had been incited to pay his addresses to her by Lord Halifax, who hoped, by this means, to obtain the private ear of the King. The arrival of the Duchess of Kendal in Eng- COUNTESS OF PLATEN AND DARLINGTON. 333 land was an effectual check to the short-lived in fluence of the Countess of Platen. The King, however, was not ungrateful for the service which she had rendered him, and on the death of her husband in 1721, created her Countess of Leinster, in Ireland, and on the 10th of April, 1723, Ba roness of Brentford, and Countess of Darlington, in England. As she increased in years, Lady Darlington en tirely lost the comeliness of her youth ; — so much so, that Horace Walpole draws an almost disgust ing portrait of the superannuated courtezan. " Lady Darlington," he says, " whom I saw at my mother's in my infancy, and whom I remem ber by being terrified by her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess of Kendal was long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eye brows ; two acres of cheeks spread with crimson ; an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not dis tinguished from the lower part of her body ; and no part restrained by stays ; — no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress." Owing to her enor mous bulk, Lady Darlington is said to have been commonly designated the "Elephant and Castle." From the period of her elevation to the peer age, to her death in 1730, we discover no particu lars respecting Lady Darlington. By George the First, she had one child, Charlotte, who became the wife of Viscount Howe, of Ireland, and the mother of the celebrated Admiral, Earl Howe. 334 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. His birth. — His early thirst for distinction. — Lord Galway 's advice to him. — His opinion of the University of Cambridge. — His habits of life there. — His own account of his pedantry. — Makes the tour of Europe Elected Member for St. Ger- mains, and appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Prince. — Appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard in 1723 — Succeeds to the Earldom. — Sent Ambassador to Hol land.— His splendid style of living. — Extracts from the Suf folk Correspondence. — Created a Knight of the Garter. — Takes an active part in the debates of the House of Lords. — Opposes the Excise Bill, and is dismissed from all his offices. — Marries the Duchess of Kendal's reputed niece. — Ap pointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. — His successful adminis tration there. — Appointed principal Secretary of State. — Resigns his Secretaryship. — Horace Walpole's high opinion of his eloquence.— His wit and conversational powers.— Pope's compliment to the Earl's wit. — The Earl's epigram on Sir Thomas Robinson. — His literary associates. — His patron age of literary men. — Specimen of his versification. — His at tachment to his natural son. — Addresses his celebrated letters to him. — Character of the letters. — Sarcastic epigram on them. — Character of the Earl's natural son. — His death in 1768. — Publication of the letters in 1774. — The Earl in his old age. — Characteristic anecdote of his last moments. — His death in 1773. This nobleman, so celebrated for his conversa tional wit, and for the profligate homilies which he preached to his own son, was the first-born of Phi- STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 335 lip, third Earl of Chesterfield, by Lady Elizabeth Saville, daughter and coheiress of George, Mar quis of Halifax. He was born in London on the 22nd. of September, 1694, and having passed through a course of instruction under private tutors, was entered, at the age of eighteen, a stu dent of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. A thirst for distinction, and an eager desire to elevate himself above the mere man of rank, ap pear to have influenced the conduct of Lord Chesterfield at a very early age. Many years afterwards he writes to his son, then in his twelfth year, — " When I was at your age, I should have been ashamed if any boy of the same age had learned his book better, or played at any play better than I did ; and I should not have rested a moment till I had got before him." The follow ing piece of advice, which Lord Galway gave him in his youth, is said to have made a particular im pression on his mind. " If you intend to be a man of business, you must be an early riser : in the distinguished posts your parts, rank, and for tune will entitle you to fill, you will be liable to have visitors at every hour of the day, and unless you will rise constantly at an early hour, you will never have any leisure to yourself." This sensible admonition produced the desired effect, and even when, as sometimes happened, he had exhausted the greater part of the previous night in the pursuit of pleasure, he persisted, the next morning; in ris ing at his usual early hour. Several years after wards, when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, an ac- 336 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, quaintance inquiring of him how he could possibly contrive to get through so much business,—" Be cause," he said, " I never put off till to-morrow what I can possibly do to-day." Of the manner in which Lord Chesterfield passed his time at the University we have only some statements contained in his correspondence, and these are not a little contradictory. In a letter, written a few months after his matricula tion, he writes, — " I find the college, where I am, infinitely the best in the University ; for it is the smallest, and it is filled with lawyers who have lived in the world, and know how to be have. Whatever may be said to the contrary, there is certainly very little debauchery in this University, especially amongst people of fashion, for a man must have the inclinations of a porter to endure it here." Notwithstanding, however, this laudable abhor rence of vulgar debauchery, it appears that the subsequent arbiter of taste and fashion grew to be himself tainted by its plebeian fascinations. Many years afterwards, he writes to his beloved son, — " As I make no difficulty of confessing my past errors, where I think the confession may be of use to you, I will own that when I first went to the University I drank and smoked, notwith standing the aversion I had to wine and tobacco, only because I thought it genteel, and that it made me look like a man. When I went abroad, I first went to the Hague, where gaming was much in fashion, and where I observed that many EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 337 people of shining rank and character gamed too. I was then young enough and silly enough to believe that gaming was one of their accomplish ments ; and, as I aimed at perfection, I adopted gaming as a necessary step to it. Thus I acquired by error the habit of a vice, which, far from adorning my character, has, I am conscious, been a great blemish to it." Nevertheless, the thirst for knowledge, and the desire of distinction, were not altogether without their legitimate influence, and served at times to wean him from his pernicious pursuits. In a let ter written in his youth, he says, that with the exception of an occasional game at tennis, his time is almost entirely occupied with the study of philosophy and the civil law, and with his at tendance on mathematical lectures. " As for anatomy," he adds, " I shall not have an oppor tunity of learning it ; for though a poor man has been hanged, the surgeon, who used to perform those operations, would not this year give any lectures, because it was a man, and then he says the scholars will not come." When he left Cam bridge, at the age of nineteen, he had become, to use his own words, an " absolute pedant." — " When I talked my best," he says, " I talked Horace; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial ; and when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was con vinced that none but the ancients had common sense ; that the classics contained everything that was either necessary, or useful, or ornamental to vol. ii. z 338 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, men : and I was not without thoughts of wear ing the toga virilis of the Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns." On quitting the University, Lord Chesterfield made the then fashionable tour of Europe, with out the customary incumbrance of a travelling- tutor. A considerable portion of his time ap pears to have been wasted in gaming at the Hague, and a further period in playing the petit maitre at Paris. " I shall not give you my opi nion of the French," he writes, " because I am very often taken for one ; and many a French man has paid me the highest compliment they think they can pay to any one, which is, ' Sir, you are just like one of us.' I talk a great deal; I am very loud and peremptory ; I sing and dance as I go along ; and, lastly, I spend a mon strous deal of money in powder, feathers, white gloves, &c." He returned to England before he had completed his twenty-first year, and while yet under age, was elected member for St. Ger- mains, in Cornwall. About the same period he was appointed gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second. He sided with the Prince during his memorable quarrels with his father, and from this circum stance, as well as by the pertinacious manner in which he opposed the court in Parliament, ren dered himself personally offensive to the King. In 1723, having recently made his peace with the Court, by voting in favour of an augmenta tion of the army, he was rewarded with the post EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 339 of Captain of the Yeomen of the Guards. It is said to have been in his power to render his place extremely profitable, by disposing of the subordinate situations in his gift. When Lord Lumley, his predecessor in the office, (who, it seems, had laudably neglected to avail himself of this advantage,) advised him to be less scrupu lous, — "I had rather, in this instance," he said, " follow your lordship's example than your ad vice." By the death of his father, on the 27th of Jan uary 1726, he succeeded as fourth Earl of Ches terfield, and on the accession of George the Second to the throne, in 1727, was rewarded for his attachment to the new Sovereign by being ap pointed a lord of the bedchamber, and a member of the Privy Council. In the spring of 1728, he was sent ambassador to Holland, where he no less distinguished himself by his talent for diplomacy, than by his magnificent mode of living. The anniversary of the King's birth-day, afforded him an excellent opportunity of displaying his splen dour to the homely Dutch. Accordingly, when the day arrived, we find him entertaining the foreign ministers and the whole of the States- General, at three different tables in a room pur posely built by him for the occasion. To Mrs. Howard he writes on the 13th of August, 1728 ; — " I am at present over head and ears in mortar, building a room of fifty feet long, and thirty-four broad. Whether these are the right proportions or no, I must submit to you and Lord Herbert, z 2 340 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, who, I hope, will be so good as to give me your sentiments upon it. It will, I am sure, have five great faults, which are five great windows, each of them big enough to admit intolerable light. However, such as it is, it will be handselled upon his Majesty's birth-day next ; at which time, if you will do me the honour to come there, and bring your own company, you will be extremely welcome."* The day following the entertain ment, he gave a ball to four hundred persons, while, in the vicinity of the embassy, two foun tains were constructed, — beautifully illuminated, and flowing with wine, — at which the populace were allowed to drink to the sound of music, till three o'clock in the morning. Of Lord Chesterfield's mode of passing his time at the Hague, we find some amusing notices in his letters to Mrs. Howard. He writes to that lady, 18th May, 1728 : — " My morning is entirely taken up in doing the King's business very ill, and my own still worse : this lasts till I sit down to dinner with fourteen or fifteen people, where the conversation is cheerful enough, being ani mated by the patronazza, and other loyal healths. The evening, which begins at five o'clock, is wholly sacred to pleasures ; as, for instance, the Foraultf till six ; then either a very bad French * Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. 306. f The Voorhout, a public walk at the Hague, planted by Charles the Fifth. Lady M. W. Montagu thus describes it in a letter to Miss Skirrett, dated the Hague, 5th of August, 1716, — " The Voorhout is, at the same time, the Hyde Park and EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 341 play, or a reprize at quadrille with three ladies, the youngest upwards of fifty, at which, with a very ill-run, one may lose, besides one's time, three florins : this lasts till ten o'clock, at which time I come home, reflecting with satisfaction on the innocent amusements of a well-spent day, that leave no sting behind them, and go to bed at eleven, with the testimony of a good consci ence.'' Again, Lord Chesterfield writes to Mrs. Howard from the Hague, on the 13th of July following ; " This place, though empty in com parison of what it is in the winter, is yet not without its recreations. I played at blind-man's buff till past three this morning; we have music in 'The Wood'; parties out of town; besides the constant amusements of quadrille and scandal, which flourish and abound. We have even at tempted two or three balls, but with very mode rate success, the ladies here being a little apt to quarrel with one another ; insomuch that be fore you can dance down three couple, it is highly probable that two of them are sat down in a huff. Upon these occasions I show the circumspection of a minister, and observe a strict neutrality, by which means I have hitherto escaped being en gaged in a war."* "Lord Chesterfield's first public character," says Horace Walpole, " was that of Ambassador Mall of the people of quality ; for they take the air in it both on foot and in coaches: there are shops for wafers, cool li quors, &c." Letters, vol. i. p. 264. * Suffolk Correspondence, pp. 289—302. 342 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, to Holland, where he courted the good opinion of that economical people, by losing immense sums at play." But it was not in Holland alone that he indulged in this pernicious vice; from his youth it had been a blot on his character, and on his return to London, he persisted in renew ing his almost nightly visits to White's and other places. On one occasion, in the rooms at Bath, a young nobleman happening to stand near him, whose fortune had hitherto escaped the harpies of the gaming-table, — "Beware of these scoun drels," whispered Lord Chesterfield ; " it is by flight alone that you can preserve your purse." The young nobleman took his advice and quitted the room, but returning a short time afterwards, beheld his monitor engaged at play with those same " scoundrels," whom he had himself warned him so strenuously to shun. Lord Chesterfield's unfortunate propensity for the gaming-table is not only bitterly lamented by him in several of his letters, but, on more than one occasion, seems to have materially interfered with his brilliant prospects in life. It is said to have been on account of this unhappy failing that, when he became a suitor for the hand of Made moiselle Schulemberg, the presumed daughter of George the First, that monarch positively re fused his consent to the match, and, indeed, with held his permission to the day of his death. Again, the indulgence of the same propensity is said, in the reign of George the Second, to have indirectly occasioned his loss of influence at EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 343 Court. "The Queen," says Walpole, "had an obscure window at St. James's that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard's apart ment. Lord Chesterfield, one twelfth-night at court, had won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thence the Queen inferred great intimacy ; and thence- forwards Lord Chesterfield could obtain no fa vour from court ; and, finding himself desperate, went into opposition." The sum won by Lord Chesterfield on this particular night is said to have been fifteen thousand pounds. In October 1729, Lord Chesterfield returned to England from the Hague. He immediately waited on the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who seems to have been somewhat jealous of his influence with the King, and who could not re frain from displaying it at their interview. " Well, my Lord," he observed, " I find you are come to be Secretary of State." Lord Chester field told him he had no such pretensions ; but, he added, — " I claim the Garter, not on account of my late services, but agreeably with the King's promise to me when he was Prince of Wales : besides I am a man of pleasure, and the blue ri band would add two inches to my size." The King kept his word, and on the 18th of June fol lowing, Lord Chesterfield was installed a Knight of the Garter, at Windsor, at the same time as the young Duke of Cumberland ; George the 344 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, Second being present at the ceremony, and de fraying the expense of the installation. About the same period, the appointment was conferred on him of High Steward of the household. In August following, he repaired to his duties at the Hague; but returned in 1732, on the ground of impaired health, and commenced taking an active part in the debates of the House of Lords. From this period, in consequence of the freedom of speech in which he indulged in Parliament, his favour at Court was of short duration. By degrees, he seceded from Sir Robert Walpole and his party ; and subsequently, in consequence of opposing the progress of the Excise Bill in the Upper House, was dismissed in 1732 from all his offices by the King. On the 5th of September, 1733, about six years after the death of George the First, Lord Ches terfield received the hand of Melesina de Schu lenberg ; a lady who was acknowledged in society as the niece of the Duchess of Kendal, but who, there is every reason to believe, was the daughter of that lady by her royal lover. Lady Chesterfield, on the 10th of April, 1722, had been created by George the First Baroness of Aldborough and Countess of Walsingham. On her marriage, how ever, she assumed the title of her husband. For several years after his dismissal from office, Lord Chesterfield continued in constant oppo sition to the Court. However, in 1744, he was re-appointed to his former post of Ambassador at the Hague ; and, subsequently, on the 3rd of EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 345 January, 1745, was constituted Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. It was his fortune to fill this high office during the celebrated rebellion which took place in that year. By his vigilant conduct, his sensible precautions, and the personal popularity which he had obtained by showing himself a friend of toleration and the enemy of persecution, he maintained the whole of Ireland in perfect tran quillity, and obtained the applause of all parties but those whose intrigues he circumvented. Even Walpole admits that he was the most popular governor Ireland ever had. An anecdote is related of Lord Chesterfield by his friend and correspondent Dr. Chevenix, Bishop of Waterford, which admirably illustrates his wit and presence of mind during the heat of the Rebellion : " The vice-treasurer, Mr. Gardner, a man of a good character and a con siderable fortune, waited upon him one morning, and in a great fright told him that he was as sured upon good authority that the people in the Province of Connaught were actually rising. Upon which Lord Chesterfield took out his watch, and with great composure answered him, — " It is nine o'clock, and certainly time for them to rise ; I therefore believe your news to be true." The same story is related, though with some trifling difference, by Horace Walpole. Another anecdote is recorded of Lord Chester field at this period, that when a fussy Protestant gentleman came to complain to him that he had suddenly discovered his coachman to be a Roman 346 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, Catholic, and that he secretly attended mass ;— " Does he, indeed ?" said Lord Chesterfield with a suppressed smile ;— " well, I will take care that he shall never carry me there." It has been affirmed, as a proof of Lord Chesterfield's extraordinary in fluence in Ireland, and the excellence of his ad ministration, that during the whole period he was in that country, no single instance occurred of a person being seen drunk in the street. This story, however, seems rather too wonderful to admit of implicit credit. In April, 1716, Lord Chesterfield resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and in November following, was appointed principal Secretary of State. During the time that he had filled the former situation, no faro-table, or high gaming of any kind, had been permitted at the vice regal palace. Now, also, that he was appointed to the high post of Secretary of State, his sense of propriety so far prevailed over the ruling pas sion of his life, that he neither gambled himself, nor allowed play in his house. Even his pane gyrist, Dr. Maty, however, admits that on the very evening on which he quitted office, he paid a visit to White's, and renewed those pernicious practices which had been interrupted for about four years. " From this period," says Walpole, " he lived at White's ; gaming and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality." Lord Orford, who misses no opportunity of placing the character and conduct of Lord Ches terfield in a ridiculous or contemptible light, re- EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 347 lates the following anecdote at his expense : — " On his being made Secretary of State, he found a fair young lad in the ante-chamber at St. James's, who seeming much at home, the Earl, concluding it was the mistress's (Lady Yar mouth's) son, was profuse of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his prodigious re gard for his mamma. The shrewd boy received all his lordship's vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself. At last he said, — ' I suppose your Lordship takes me for Master Louis ; but I am only Sir William Russell, one of the pages.' " In 1748, partly from some differences which he had with his colleagues, and partly on account of ill-health, Lord Chesterfield resigned his appoint ment of Secretary of State ; nor did he hencefor ward accept any office under the State. Occa sionally, indeed, he spoke in his seat in the House of Lords, and more particularly distinguished himself in 1751, when the proposal to alter our style, according to the Gregorian account, was discussed in Parliament. He was seconded by an able mathematician and astronomer, Lord Mac clesfield; and it is remarkable, that while the latter nobleman, (though fully conversant with all the merits of this complicated question,) failed, from some natural defects, in either entertaining or enlightening his hearers, Lord Chesterfield, who possessed only a very superficial knowledge of the question, produced, by his graceful eloquence and the perspicuity of his style, one of the most amusing and effective speeches on record. He 348 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, himself observes, alluding to the success of his oratory on this occasion, — " God knows, I had not even attempted it. I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them, as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well."* Lord Chesterfield's eloquence was unquestionably of a high order. Horace Walpole, — who had listened to the oratory of his own father; of Wyndham, Carteret, Pulteney, and Pitt, — ob serves, that the '* finest speech" he had ever heard was one of Lord Chesterfield's, f Dr. Johnson remarked of Lord Chesterfield, that he was " a wit among Lords, and a Lord among wits." Horace Walpole also observes of his conversational powers, — "Chesterfield's en trance into the world was announced by his bon mots ; and his closing lips dropped repartees that sparkled with his juvenile fire." Nothing can be more strongly expressed than this latter encomi um, and consequently in a work written at a later period of Walpole's life, we are not a little startled by discovering the following contradictory remarks : — " Lord Chesterfield had early in his life announced his claim to wit, and the women believed in it. He had, besides, given himself out for a man of great intrigue with as slender preten sions ; yet the women believed in that too : one should have thought they had been more compe tent judges of merit in that particular. It was not his fault if he had not wit : nothing exceeded * Letter to his Son, No. 247. f Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 321. EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 349 his efforts in that point ; and though they were far from producing the wit, they at least amply yield ed the applause he aimed at. He was so accus tomed to see people laugh at the most trifling things he said, that he would be disappointed at finding nobody smile before they knew what he was going to say. His speeches were fine, but as much laboured as his extempore sayings. His writings were everybody's, that is, whatever came out good was given to him, and he was too hum ble ever to refuse the gift."* That there exists some truth in the foregoing picture, is not at all improbable ; but on the other hand it would be unfair to rob Lord Ches terfield of his reputation for wit, merely because so prejudiced a writer as Horace Walpole chooses to deny him in one passage, what he had freely and almost enthusiastically awarded him in an other. Of little worth, indeed, was the praise or blame of Horace Walpole ! With the cynical voluptuary of Strawberry Hill, a presumed person al slight, or the mere circumstance of a difference in politics, was sufficient to convert admiration into contempt, and friendship into hatred, and to send down to posterity in the likeness of a demon, the man who might otherwise have been invested with the attributes of an angel. The secret of his enmity to Lord Chesterfield is evident. The lat ter had deserted the colours of Sir Robert Wal pole, to join the ranks of the Tories, and, what was * Walpole's Memoirs of the last ten years of George II. vol. i, p. 44. 350 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, still more unpardonable, had conceived an intimate friendship for the arch-enemy of the Walpoles, Lord Bolingbroke. From henceforth, to the rancorous mind of Lord Orford, Lord Chester field ceased to be either the brilliant orator or the sparkling wit. We have already had occasion to introduce one or two specimens of Lord Chesterfield's peculiar humour, to which we shall presently make some trifling additions. Notwithstanding the ill-na tured sarcasms of Walpole, his conversational powers appear to have been of a high order. " My great object," he writes to his son, " was to make every man I met like me, and every woman love me." A contemporary writer observes, — " The most barren subjects grow fruitful under his culture, and the most trivial circumstances are enlivened and heightened by his address. When he appears in the public walks, the company en croach upon good manners to listen to him, or (if the expression may be allowed) to steal some of that fine wit which animates even his common discourses. " With poignant wit his converse still abounds, And charms, like beauty, those it deepest wounds."* " Lord Chesterfield was esteemed the wittiest man of his time," says Speaker Onslow, " and of a sort that has scarcely been known since the time of King Charles the Second, and revived the memory of the great wits of that age, to the live- * Gentleman's Magazine for 1740. EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 351 liest of whom he was thought not to be un equal."* Of the quickness of his fancy, a few specimens will bear repetition. Once, in the House of Lords, the debate turning on the sub ject of the late rebellion, Lord Chesterfield ob served to the peer next him, " I could effectually annihilate the power of the Pretender ; the best way would be to make him Elector of Hanover, for we shall never again send to that country for a king." To a military friend, who had built a house equally remarkable for the magnificence of its ex terior, as for the indifference of its interior ar rangements, — " If I were you, General," he said, '' I would hire the opposite house to live in, for the purpose of enjoying the prospect." On another occasion, happening to enter the Haymarket Theatre, a friend inquired of him if he had come from the rival and less popular house in Lincoln's Inn Fields? "Yes," he replied; " but there was no one there but the King and Queen, and as I thought they might be talking about business, I came away." During the time he was Secretary of State, the ministry being desirous to appoint to a vacant post in the government a person who had render ed himself particularly offensive to the King, Lord Chesterfield was the only member of the cabinet who had courage enough to introduce the subject to his Majesty. Accordingly, he laid a warrant, drawn out in the usual form, and con- * Coxe's Life of Sir Robert Walpole, v. ii, p. 570. 352 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, taining the name of the obnoxious individual, be fore George the Second. The moment the offen sive name met the King's eyes, he exclaimed, an grily, " I would rather have the Devil !" " Your Majesty," said Lord Chesterfield, "will make choice of which you please ; but I beg to observe, that the warrant is addressed to our right trusty and right well-beloved cousin." This sally had the desired effect, and the King, with a smile, affixed his signature to the document. The exquisite compliment which Pope paid to the wit of Lord Chesterfield is almost too well known to need repetition. They were one day amusing themselves at an inn, when the poet, borrowing a diamond-pointed pencil which Lord Chesterfield was in the habit of carrying about him, wrote extemporaneously on a window-pane in the apartment : — " Accept a miracle instead of wit, See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ." And the great poet says of him on another occa sion : — " How can I, Pulteney, Chesterfield forget, While Roman spirit charms, and Attic wit?" It may be remarked, as another singular com pliment paid to Lord Chesterfield, that at the period when Cardinal de Polignac's celebrated poem of Anti-Lucretius was published, Eng land being then at war with France, the work was transmitted by sound of trumpet from EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 353 Marshal Saxe to the English general, the Duke of Cumberland, with a request that it might be forwarded to Lord Chesterfield. According to Lord Chesterfield's panegyrists, his wit was on all occasions tempered by good nature and high breeding. This, however, does not appear to have been invariably the case. He once exclaimed to Anstis, Garter King at Arms, "You foolish man, you do not even know your own foolish business." Again, when his acquaint ance, Sir Thomas Robinson, — a man celebrated among his contemporaries for his great height and insufferable dulness, — requested Lord Ches terfield to distinguish him by some poetical notice, his wit got the better of his good-nature, and he gave birth to the following offensive couplet : — Unlike my subject, will I frame my song ; It shall be witty, and it shan't be long." Lord Chesterfield lived on intimate terms with most of the celebrated men of letters of the period, and apparently had no objection to be regarded as the Mecsenas of the lesser stars. Among his foreign correspondents were Mon tesquieu, Algarotti, Voltaire, and the younger Crebillon; and in England he could enumerate Swift, Pope, Gay, Addison, Thomson, Garth, Arbuthnot, and Sir John Vanbrugh as his friends. Of the latter he remarks, that he knew no man who united conversational pleasantry and perfect good humour in so eminent a degree. vol. n. 2 A 354 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, Of the kindness and patronage which Lord Chesterfield extended to his literary friends,— considering it was an age when genius requir ed the fostering hand of wealth and influence far more than at the present day, — we have unfortunately but a slight record. We know little more than that he threw sunshine over the short life of Hammond, the author of the " Love Elegies,"* and that he exerted himself to procure subscribers for the charming Fables of Gay. When these celebrated men died, he edited the poems of the one, and was a pall bearer at the funeral of the other. These, indeed, are but slight tributes to departed genius, yet the merit of them should not be denied to him. Respecting the claims of Lord Chesterfield to be considered a patron of literature, we have little more to add. His conduct to Dr. Johnson, indeed, reflects little credit on him. However, he allevi ated the wants of Aaron Hill ;f and, moreover, * James Hammond, the Author of the " Love Elegies," died under melancholy circumstances, at Lord Cobham's seat at Stowe, on the 7th of June, 1742, in his thirty-third year. Lord Chesterfield, in editing his friend's poems, bestows the warmest encomiums on his judgment, his genius, and his taste. f Aaron Hill, an indifferent poet but amiable man, was born in 1685. He was at different times manager of Drury Lane theatre and master of the Opera house. Lady Hervey, in one of her letters, mentions her meeting him at Goodwood in 1732, and dwells on the pleasure which she derived from hearing him read aloud. He is now principally known from his misunder- EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 355 when the surly and cynical Dennis was labouring in his old age under the miserable inflictions of penury and disease, he is known, at the generous instigation of Pope, to have extended relief to the snarling critic, though a man whom Lord Chesterfield had no reason to love, and Pope had every inducement to hate. Lord Chesterfield has himself some claims to be considered a poet. Of the ephemeral poetry of the period, more than one trifle was attributed to him; but, as is usually the case with the careless scribblers of anonymous verse, it is now extreme ly difficult to distinguish what was really written by him, from that to which he has no claim. Of the various trifles imputed to him, the following seems to possess the most merit, and affords a favourable specimen of his poetical abilities : "ON LORD ISLAY'S GARDEN AT WHITTON ON HOUNSLOW HEATH. " Old Islay, to show his fine delicate taste, In improving his garden purloined from the waste ; Bade his gard'ner one day lay open his views, By cutting a couple of grand avenues. No particular prospect his lordship intended, But left it to chance how his walks should be ended, With transport and joy he beheld his first view end, In a favourite prospect — a church, that was ruin'd ; standing with Pope, who, however, appears to have sincerely regarded the man whom he ridiculed. There is an interesting account of their literary hostilities in Disraeli's " Quarrels of Authors." 2a 2 356 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, But alas ! what a sight did the next cut exhibit, At the end of the walk hung a rogue on a gibbet I He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on Full many a Campbell, that died with his shoes on. All amazed and aghast at the ominous scene, He ordered it quick to be closed up again, With a clump of Scotch firs by way of a skreen.*" By his wife, Melesina de Schulenberg, Lord Chesterfield had no children. We have seen them occupying separate houses, and, indeed, he seems to have been a suitor for her hand rather with a view of ingratiating himself with the old Duchess of Kendal, and of becoming the inheritor of her vast wealth, than from any ardent attachment which he had conceived for the person of his intended wife. His projects, however, were destined to be signally disappoint ed, for, with the exception of a trifling legacy, the Duchess bequeathed her wealth to her Ger man relations. With another hoarding dowager, Lord Chesterfield was more successful. The celebrated Duchess of Marlborough, — as a re ward for the biting sarcasms which he had in flicted on Sir Robert Walpole's ministry, and for his stedfast opposition to the court, — be queathed him "her best and largest diamond ring" and the sum of twenty thousand pounds. " The Duchess," says Horace Walpole, " was scarce cold, before he returned to the King's service." The Duchess of Marlborough died in * Cole's MSS. v. 31, p. 161. EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 357 1744, and in January 1745, Lord Chesterfield was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Probably in uniting himself to Madame de Schulenberg, Lord Chesterfield anticipated her inheriting a portion of the private wealth of her presumed father, George the First. On the death of that monarch, however, George the Second, as is well known, destroyed the will of his father and predecessor; and it is no less certain that Lord Chesterfield commenced an action against the new sovereign for the recovery of 20,000/. which George the First was believed to have bequeathed to Lady Chesterfield. Accor ding to Horace Walpole, the King became alarm ed at the idea of an exposure, and the money was privately paid. Having no children by his Countess, Lord Chesterfield concentrated his whole affection and anxiety on a natural son — the offspring of a handsome Dutch woman, with whom he had formed a connection at the Hague. It was to this son that he addressed his celebrated letters, of which Dr. Johnson said that they " inculcated the morals of a strumpet and the manners of a dancing-master." And yet, in spite of this cut ting satire, Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son constitute collectively one of the most agreeable works in our language, and apparently are unique of their kind in the literature of Europe. Re garding them indeed in one light, namely, — as a code of morality, — and bearing in mind the start ling fact, that the plausible impurities which 358 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, they contain were addressed to his own son, — we cannot sufficiently deprecate their worldly- minded Author. On the other hand, however, these celebrated letters possess a merit and a charm peculiar to themselves. To the Christian they are curious, as showing how imperfect, com pared with his own pure standard of morality, is the wretched philosophy of a votary of the world. To the ordinary reader they are fascinat ing from the heterogeneous mass of knowledge which they display ; the insight which they af ford into human nature; the graceful and witty style in which they are written ; and from their presenting a code of manners, which, though occasionally faulty and sometimes ridiculous, contain some valuable maxims for repairing the rudeness of human nature ; for improving and refining the intercourse between man and man ; and rendering others happier with little expense to ourselves. Lastly, Lord Chesterfield's letters must ever be especially interesting to the anato mist of the human heart, as laying bare the Machiavelian principles of a statesman, a courtier, and a man of the world ; and as displaying the singular spectacle of a man systematically debauch ing the mind of his own son, while he conscien tiously believed he was exalting him in the dig nity of a human being. In regard to Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, the author remembers to have met in a MS. collection, with the following severe lines, which do not appear to have been before published ; EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 359 " Vile Stanhope, demons blush to tell, In twice three hundred places Taught his own son the way to hell, Escorted by the Graces. But little this degenerate lad Concerned himself about 'em ; For mean, ungraceful, dull, and bad, He sneaked to hell without 'em." These lines, though deservedly severe as far as Lord Chesterfield's false philosophy is concerned, reflect rather too severely on the character of his son. This person, to whom Lord Chesterfield gave his family name of Stanhope, though by his retired habits and reserved manner he signally dis appointed the hopes of his worldly-minded father, appears to have been, if not a shining member of society, at least a quiet, inoffensive, and even an accomplished man. Diffident, indeed, he may have been, and unassuming, but the well-known stories of his dulness and awkwardness are doubt less exaggerated. Lady Vere, in a letter to Lady Suffolk, speaks of him as a very agreeable com panion ; and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams paid him the compliment of inscribing to him one of his lively odes. That Lord Chesterfield was de votedly attached to his unaspiring offspring, — far more, indeed, than from our knowledge of his apparently cold and calculating disposition, we should have been inclined to think possible, — there can be no question. The tutors he pro vided for him were men of the most distinguished merit ; he neglected no opportunity of instilling 360 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, into him a taste for learning and the elegancies of life ; he established him, at different times, at the most polished courts on the continent ; and, dur ing his residence abroad, procured his introduction to Algarotti, Maupertuis, Dargens, and many of the most celebrated literati in Europe. All these advantages, however; all the laboured homilies and endearing exhortations of a doting father ; were wasted, in the opinion of Lord Chesterfield, on the amiable but unpretending individual whom they were intended to serve. Moreover, when, in 1768, Lord Chesterfield lost his beloved son, he had the misfortune to find, that, so far from hav ing acted up to the worldly precepts which he had endeavoured to inculcate, the object of all his love and solicitude had secretly united himself- to a woman without fortune, and had left two children unprovided for. To the widow and children of his son, Lord Chesterfield extended the hand of kindness. From the former, probably, as a reward for his munifi cence, and perhaps with a view to their suppres sion, he regained possession of the celebrated let ters which he had addressed to his son. The widow, indeed, is said to have acted most unfairly to her benefactor, by retaining copies of the let ters, which she afterwards published. As the world is in possession of the work, it matters little under what circumstances it saw the light. It may be remarked, however, that they were first published in 1774, about a year after Lord Chester field's decease; and though it is unquestionable EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 361 that the world was indebted foj: their appearance in print to Mr. Stanhope's widow, — thus adding weight to the charge that she had unfairly retained copies of them, — yet, as she states in her adver tisement to the work, that the originals, in the late Earl's own hand-writing, and sealed with his seal, are in her possession, there is reason to question the fairness of the charge. The letters she form ally dedicates to the Prime Minister, Lord North, and as she takes care to remind him that they were once on terms of friendship, probably her family connexions may have been more respect able than her fortune. During the closing years of his long life, Lord Chesterfield not only suffered severely, and almost constantly, from disease, but latterly deafness was added to his other infirmities. As many as twenty years before his death, we find him speaking of himself as already " half-way down hill," and in one of his latest letters to his son, he complains that his want of hearing has deprived him of the pleasures of society, at an age when he was pre cluded from every other source of rational enjoy ment. And yet this heavy accumulation of human ills was endured by the infidel philosopher, with a dignity and resignation that would have done credit to a better faith. To his intimate friend, Mr. Dayrolles, he writes, on the 10th of July, 1755: — " All my amusements are reduced to the idle business of my little garden, and to the reading of idle books, where the mind is seldom called upon. Notwithstanding this unfortunate situation, my 362 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, old philosophy comes to my assistance, and enables me to repulse the attacks of melancholy, for I never have one melancholic moment. I have seen and appraised everything in its true light, and at its intrinsic value. While others are outbidding one another at the auction, exulting at their ac quisitions, or grieving at their disappointments, I am easy, both from reflection, and experience of the futility of all that is to be got or lost." Again, he writes to the Bishop of Waterford ; — " I consider myself as an old decayed vessel, of long wear and tear, brought into the wet-dock to be careened and patched up, not for any long voy age, but only to serve as a coaster for some little time longer. How long that may be, I little know, and as little care ; I am unrelative to this world, and this world to me. My only attention now is to live, while I do live in it, without pain, and when I do leave it, to leave it without fear." On one occasion, he sent a message to the cele brated Pulteney, Lord Bath, that he had grown very lean, and very deaf. " Tell him," replied Pulteney, " that I can lend him some fat, and shall be very glad to lend him at any time an ear." The death of his beloved son was a severe blow to Lord Chesterfield. He was now in his seventy- third year, and from the declining state of his health, was, to all appearance, but little capable of sustaining so severe a shock. He survived the melancholy event, however, more than four years, during which period his bodily infirmities con- EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 363 tinued to increase. Once, speaking of old Lord Tyrawley, he said ; — " We have both been long dead, but we do not choose to have it mentioned." Lord Chesterfield, during the last months of his life, was afflicted with a diarrhoea, which entirely baffled the art of his physicians, and subsequently proved the immediate cause of his death. " He was afflicted," says Dr. Maty, " with no other ill ness, and remained to the last free from all manner of pain, enjoying his surprising memory and pre sence of mind to his latest breath ; perfectly com posed and resigned to part with life, and only re gretting that death was so tardy to meet him." About half an hour before he expired, his valet opened the curtains of his bed, and announced a visit from Mr. Dayrolles. Though he had hardly strength to give utterance to his words, he mut tered faintly, — " Give Dayrolles a chair." Thus his last words were those of politeness. It was observed by his physician, Dr. Warren, who was in the apartment at the time, — " Lord Chester field's good breeding only quitted him with his life." The death of Lord Chesterfield took place on the 24th of March, 1773, in his seventy-ninth year. His remains were interred in Audley-street chapel, agreeably with directions contained in his last will. 364 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. Eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol. — His birth in 1696.— Educated at Cambridge. — Appointed Gentleman of the Bed chamber to the Prince of Wales. — Returned to Parliament for Edmondsbury. — Called to the House of Peers as Lord Hervey, of Ickworth, during his father's life-time. — Nomi nated Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1740. — His oratorical powers. — Supports Sir Robert Walpole. — Resigns the Privy Seal on the overthrow of that minister. — His political writings. — His duel with Pulteney. — Circumstances that gave rise to it. — Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's verses on the duel. — Lord Hervey's quarrel with Pope. — The latter sati rizes him under the character of Sporus. — Lord Hailes' ac count of Lord Hervey. — Extract from Archdeacon Coxe. — Personal warfare commenced by Lord Hervey on Pope. — His satirical address to that poet. — Pope's prose letter to Lord Hervey. — Suppressed during their life-time. — Brief Memoir of Hammond, the Poet. — His unfortunate attachment to Catherine Dashwood, ward of Lord Hervey. — The latter's opposition to their union. — Hammond's despondency in con sequence, and death in his thirty-third year, 1742. — Dr. Middleton's fulsome dedication of his Life of Cicero to Lord Hervey. — The latter's unamiable character. — Queen Caro line's partiality for him. — His effeminacy and affectation. — His success with the fair sex. — Princess Caroline's romantic attachment to him. — His desertion of Sir Robert Walpole. — Extracts from Horace Walpole's letters. — Lord Hervey's death in 1743. John, Lord Hervey, the eldest surviving son of John, first Earl of Bristol, was born on the 15th of October, 1696. He completed his education at JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 365 Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he took the degree of Master of Arts, and, shortly after quitting the University, was appointed Gentleman of the Bed chamber to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, who had recently accompanied his father to England. About the period that he came of age, Lord Hervey was returned to Parliament as member for Edmondsbury, and in May, 1730, was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, and sworn of the Privy Council. On the 12th of June, 1733, in the lifetime of his father, he was called up to the House of Peers as Lord Hervey, of Ickworth ; and on the 1st of May, 1740, was nominated Keeper of the Privy Seal, the highest appoint ment to which he attained in the state. About the same time he was named one of the Lords Justices for conducting the affairs of the king dom during the absence of the King in Hanover. Lord Hervey, when in the House of Commons, and subsequently in the House of Lords, distin guished himself by his oratorical powers ; and though his style of eloquence is said to have been somewhat florid and pompous, he was both an able and witty, as well as a frequent speaker. In politics he professed the principles of the Whigs, and remained a zealous supporter of the measures of Sir Robert Walpole, as long as the administra tion of that minister appeared likely to stand. When Walpole was driven from Parliament in 1742, Lord Hervey was compelled to resign his post of Privy Seal, in order to make way for Lord 366 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. Gower. His expulsion from office appears to have been borne with a bad grace. According to Ho race Walpole, " he turned patriot on being turned out of place." During the administration of Sir Robert Wal pole, and more especially during the last years which preceded the downfal of that minister, the press, as is well known, teemed with political papers and pamphlets, in which Bolingbroke and Pulteney, on the one hand, and Sir Robert Wal pole and Lord Hervey on the other, not only reprobated each other's opinions and principles, but frequently indulged in indecent scurrilities and personal abuse. As regards Lord Hervey individually, it may be remarked that his political writings display a degree of spirit and vigour, which we should have little anticipated from the flimsy style of his versification, and the apparently frivolous and feminine character of the man. His political writings, indeed, are unquestionably among the best of the day, and are particularly distinguished by a spirit of searching bitterness and invective, which made him many enemies, and on one occasion nearly cost him his life. We allude to his duel with William Pulteney, of which, as the circumstances are somewhat re markable, a brief account may be acceptable to the reader. In 1730, there appeared in print a pamphlet entitled " Sedition and Defamation displayed," which the world in general attributed to Lord Hervey. This work contained a violent per- JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 367 sonal attack on Bolingbroke and Pulteney, and consequently when, some time afterwards, the latter replied to it in due form, he vomited forth an acrimonious and most indecent attack on its presumed author, Lord Hervey. Alluding to the effeminate appearance and habits of the latter, Pulteney speaks of his opponent as a thing half man and half woman, and dwells malignantly on those personal infirmities pro duced by suffering and disease, which Pope afterwards introduced, with no less acrimony and indecency, in his celebrated poetical character of Lord Hervey, under the name of Sporus. Whatever truth there may have been in the charge of want of manliness, which has been so often and so sedulously brought against Lord Hervey, it was certainly not displayed in his encounter with Pulteney. Immediately on the production of the offensive pamphlet, he sent a message to his maligner, inquiring whether re port had correctly assigned to him the author ship of the work. To this Pulteney refused to give a direct answer ; but, at the same time, he plainly intimated to the person who delivered the message, that, "whether or no, he was the author of 'the Reply,' he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of any part of it, at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased." —"This last message," writes Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, " your lordship will easily imagine was the occasion of the duel ; and, ac cordingly, on Monday last, between three and 36S JOHN, LOUD HERVEY. four o'clock in the nftornoon, thov met in the Upper St. James's Park, behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Hushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey, that he would have infallibly run my Lord through the body, if his foot had not slipped, and then the seconds took an occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of con cern at. the accident of their quarrel ; promising, at the same time, that he would never per sonally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow, without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use the common expression, thus they parted." The duel is celebrated by Sir Charles Ilunhury Williams, in his " Newer Ode than the Lust." Addressing Pulteney, he says: — " Lord Funny once Did play the dunce, And challenged you to fight; And he so stood, To lose his blood, Hut had a dreadful fright." It subsequently appeared that the pamphlet which had originally excited Pulteney 's spleen was not written by Lord Hervey. The author was Sir William Young, who, at a later period, admitted the fact, to Lord I lardwicko. But far more celebrated than his feud with JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 369 Pulteney was Lord Hervey's quarrel with Pope. The poet, as is well known, under the fictitious names of Lord Fanny and Sporus, diverted him self with the failings of the man whom he had once affected to love. But it w-as more especially in his memorable character of Sporus, that Pope gave vent to all the bitterness of his nature, and, in sketching the likeness of Lord Hervey, drew the most powerful, and at the time the most odious, poetical portrait that has ever emanated from the pen of genius : — . " Let Sporus tremble 1 what ! that thing of silk ! Sporus, that mere white curd of asses milk ! Satire or sense, alas ! can Sporus feel ? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ? Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings ; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys. Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks ; Or, at the ear of Eve. familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad : In puns or politics, or tales or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies ; His wit all see-saw between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss. And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious tiling! that acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart ; Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady and now struts a lord. VOL. II. ~ B 370 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed, A cherub's face and reptile all the rest ; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust." In order fully to comprehend the severity of the foregoing picture, it is necessary to illustrate it by some cursory remarks. According to Lord Hailes, — " Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of epilepsy, entered upon and per sisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopped the progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of asses' milk and a flour biscuit. Once a week he indulged himself with eating an apple ; he used emetics daily. Mr. Pope and he were once friends ; but they quarrelled, and persecuted each other with virulent satire. Pope, knowing the abstemious regimen which Lord Hervey observed, was so ungenerous as to call him a mere cheese-curd of asses' milk. Lord Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly appearance: Mr. Pope must have known this also, and there fore it was unpardonable in him to introduce it into his celebrated portrait." The Duchess of Marlborough observes of Lord Hervey, in her " Opinions," — " He has certainly parts and wit, but is the most wretched, profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous ; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head." She afterwards adds, that all the world, except Sir Robert Wal pole, abhorred him, and it may be remarked, JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 371 that even Sir Robert Walpole had subsequently sufficient reason to abhor him too. Absurd and contemptible, however, as Lord Hervey may have been, the conduct of Pope, in dragging the personal infirmities of a fellow- creature before the public, and converting into a matter of reproach the miserable sufferings of humanity and the ravages of disease, has been severely commented upon, not only by his ene mies but by his friends. Archdeacon Coxe, alluding to the character of Sporus, observes, — " However I may admire the powers of the sa tirist, I never could read this passage without disgust and horror ; disgust at the indelicacy of the allusions, horror at the malignity of the poet, in laying the foundation of his abuse on the lowest species of satire, personal invective, and, what is still worse, on sickness and debility." The fact, however, is a remarkable one, and, moreover, seems to have escaped the eager cen- surers of the conduct of Pope, that the war of scurrility, — the brutal act of exposing and an atomizing the personal infirmities of an oppo nent, — originated, in fact, not with the poet, but with Lord Hervey himself. Pope, it is true, was the first who commenced the attack in verse, but then it was only by an occasional in troduction of the name of " Lord Fanny," in which,— even admitting that Lord Hervey was the person intended,-— the allusions are certainly not more severe, nor the licence greater, than 2 b 2 372 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. has been permitted to the satirist from the days of Juvenal to those of Churchill ; and, moreover, they were disgraced by none of those offensive personalities which the poet afterwards intro duced so profusely in the character of Sporus. For instance, there is no couplet, in which the name of " Lord Fanny" is introduced, that has greater severity than the following : Pope, al luding to the charge of want of vigour, which he presumes had been brought against his satires, observes : — " The lines are weak, another's pleased to say, — Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.'' And. again : — " Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream." Lord Hervey was himself a poet, and, conse quently, this contemptuous allusion to his poeti cal powers, was doubtless a source of great an noyance to the literary lord. On the other hand, however, Lord Hervey, as an author, was fair game for the satirist, and, moreover, a mere glance over his almost forgotten verses, evince that Pope's sarcasm was at least as well-merited as it was severe. The poet, in fact, in his ca pacity of a satirist, had as much right to amuse himself with the namby-pamby verses and maud lin sensibility of Lord Hervey, as a reviewer in our own times is entitled to ridicule the frothy nonsense of a fashionable novel. Pope, indeed, had the advantage of a modern critic, JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 373 for his attacks were always open, while a modern reviewer stabs, without compunction, in the dark. Such was the state of the case, when Lord Hervey, smarting under the satire of his oppo nent, unadvisedly commenced a warfare of wit and poetry with Pope, by retaliating on him in a meagre, poetical epistle, addressed, — " To the Imi tator of the Satires of the Second Book of Horace." In this contemptible production, what was want ing in wit was made up by personal abuse ; and the poet's distressing and well-known deformity of person was rendered the subject of indecent ribaldry and unfeeling sarcasm. The most re markable of Lord Hervey's verses are as follow : addressing Pope, he says: — " In two large columns on thy motley page, Where Roman wit is striped with English rage : Where ribaldry to satire makes pretence, And modern scandal rolls with ancient sense ; Whilst on one side we see how Horace thought, And on the other how he never wrote; Who can believe, who view the bad, the good, That the dull copyist better understood That spirit, he pretends to imitate, Than heretofore that Greek he did translate.* " Thine is just such an image of his pen, As thou thyself art to the sons of men; Where our own species in burlesque we trace, A signpost likeness of the human race ; That is at once resemblance and disgrace. * This, of course, has reference to Pope's translation of the Iliad, of which Bentley is well-known to have observed, that it was " a pretty poem, but not Homer." 374 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. " Thus, whilst with coward hand you stab a name, And try at least t' assassinate our fame ; Like the first bold assassin's be thy lot ; Ne'er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot; But as thou hat'st, be hated by mankind, And with the emblem of thy crooked mind Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God's own hand, Wander, like him accursed, through the land." By these unfeeling allusions to his constitu tional infirmities, Pope, the most irritable of poets and the most sensitive of men, was naturally cut to the quick. Following the unworthy example set him by his opponent, he raked up all that approached to hideousness or deformity in the mind and person of Lord Hervey, and, clothing them in verse, which has seldom been surpassed in vigour of language or poetical imagery, gave vent to the deep bitterness of his feelings in the celebrated character of Sporus. One more cir cumstance may be adduced in favour of Pope; namely, that the " Lord Fanny" of his satires can only be presumed by inference to be Lord Hervey ; while, on the other hand, his opponent openly pours forth his invectives on the Imitator of the Satires of Horace, of which Pope was the acknowledged author. One more word respecting this remarkable quarrel. Pope, in the first impulse of his rage, addressed his celebrated prose letter to Lord Hervey, which Warton styles " a master-piece of invective," and on which Warburton and others have bestowed high praise. In this letter he says, "Give me the liberty, my Lord, to tell JOHN, LORD HERVEY. .375 you why I never replied to those verses on the imitation of Horace:* they regarded nothing but my figure, which I set no value upon ; and my morals, which I knew needed no defence. Any honest man has the pleasure to be conscious that it is out of the power of the wittiest, nay, of the greatest person in the kingdom, to lessen him in that way, but at the expense of his own truth, honour, and justice." Of this letter Pope appears to have thought well as a composition. To one of his friends he writes, — " There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord ; his weapons are the same which women and children * At the period when this was written, the character of Sporus had not yet been given to the public. It is inserted, as is well-known, in one of Pope's finest productions, the " Epistle to Arbuthnot,'' or, as this poem is sometimes absurdly styled, the " Prologue to the Satires." Pope, in his advertisement to the " Epistle," observes, — " This paper is a sort of bill of com plaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thought of publishing it, till it pleased some persons of rank and fortune [the authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity, from a Nobleman at Hampton Court,] to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my writings (of which, being public, the public is judge), but my person, morals, and family; whereof to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided be tween the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this epistle." The best advice that was ever given to Pope, in regard to his literary quarrels, was that of Swift;— "Give me a shilling," he said, "and I will ensure you that posterity shall never know you had one single enemy excepting those whose memory you have preserved." 376 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. use, a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter. I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and, after showing it some people, suppressed it : otherwise it was such as was worthy of him and worthy of me." Pope, indeed, suppressed the letter at the time, and it was not published till after his death and that of his rival : according to his own account, it was because he was ashamed to " enter the lists" with an unworthy rival ; but, if we are to believe Tyers, it was at the express desire of Queen Caroline, who feared lest, by the publi cation of this eloquent appeal to public taste and public feeling, her favourite, Lord Hervey, should be rendered contemptible in the eyes of the world. According to Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey " pretended not to thank" Pope for the suppression.* There is another poet, though of less note, whose name is intimately connected with that of Lord Hervey ; and, as the history of the person in question forms an almost romantic episode in the history of real life, it may not be uninterest ing to introduce a few words respecting him. We allude to James Hammond, the author of the " Love Elegies," whose subsequent aberration of mind and untimely death may be indirectly traced to his connection with Lord Hervey. The Delia of Hammond, is known to have been Miss Catherine Dash wood, a young lady of considerable mental and personal accomplish- * Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 391. JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 377 ments. She was a Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen of George the Second, and a ward of Lord Hervey. The young poet be came deeply enamoured of her, and in the course of a long courtship, which was distinguished by the customary characteristics of hope and de spondency, addressed to her his graceful love- elegies, which are the more interesting from their being intended for the eye alone of the person to whom they were addressed, and, consequently, describing real and not imaginary ills. " Sincere in his love as in his friednship," says Lord Ches terfield, " he wrote to his mistresses as he spoke to his friends, nothing but the true genuine sen timents of his heart. He sat down to write what he thought, not to think what he should write : it was nature and sentiment only that dictated to a real mistress, not youthful and poetic fancy to an imaginary one." Miss Dashwood returned the love of the poet, and the only obstacle to their union arose from the cold obduracy and determined opposition of Lord Hervey. The reason which the latter gave for witholding his consent, was the inadequate means of the lovers to support themselves credit ably in life. Hammond, however, is known to have possessed a private income of four hundred pounds a year, besides the salary which he drew as equerry to the Prince of Wales : moreover, he was regarded in the House of Commons, as a young man of great promise, and lived on inti mate terms with several of the most influential 378 JOHN, LORD HERVEY, persons of the day. The real fact appears to have been that a wide difference of political opinion, and the terms of intimacy subsisting between Hammond and the leaders of the party opposed to Lord Hervey, were the secret of the latter refusing his consent to the match. The sequel of the story may be soon told. Hammond, on Lord Hervey finally rejecting his overtures, fell seriously ill. His intellects became disordered, and on the 7th of June, 1742, he closed his life, in his thirty-third year, at the classical seat of his friend, Lord Cobham, at Stowe. Miss Dashwood remained true to his memory. She rejected several advantageous op portunities of entering the marriage-state, and though she survived her lover as many as thirty- five years, she retained to the last a tender re collection of his romantic devotedness, and was ever sensibly affected by any allusion to their youthful loves. But we must return to the subject of the present memoir. To give any correct idea of the character of Lord Hervey appears to be an impracticable task. Dr. Middleton, indeed, in dedicating to him his " Life of Cicero," not only dwells in the most glowing terms on his temperance, his high breeding, and sound sense ; but, in speaking of him as a writer, an orator, and a patriot, seems almost to prefer him to the illustrious Roman of whom he writes. When Dr. Middle- ton, however, in the innocence of his heart, drops for a moment the higher tone of encomium, to JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 379 speak of his " constant admission" to Lord Hervey on his morning visits, and more especially to thank him for the number of subscribers which he had procured for his work, we guess to what such extraordinary praises owe their birth. The whole, indeed, is a pedantic hyperbole, in which we distrust the truth of the panegyric from its very fulsomeness. It very properly obtained for Middleton a place in the Dunciad : — " Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power, Looked a white lily sunk beneath a shower." Lord Hervey, at best, appears to have been an unamiable character ; his contemporaries gene rally speak of him with dislike, and still more frequently with contempt. " His defects," says Archdeacon Coxe, " were extreme affectation, bitterness of invective, prodigality of flattery, and great servility to those above him." It was by the exercise of the last of these qualities, that he seems to have insinuated himself into the affec tions of George the Second, when, as the Duchess of Marlborough expresses it, — " It was not above six months ago that the King hated him so that he would not suffer him to be one in his diver sions at play." It could not, however, have been by servility and adulation alone that Lord Her vey overcame the prejudices of his Sovereign. He unquestionably possessed the art of pleasing in a very high degree ; his repartees were once famous ; and though frequently sarcastic and ill- natured in his remarks, he could be agreeable and even fascinating when he chose. Queen 380 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. Caroline, a woman of strong sense and observa tion, regarded him with singular partiality. With her, at least, it was his object to please ; and, consequently, whether it was from the value which she set on his advice in the cabinet, or admiration of his conversational powers, we find her extending her confidence and friendship to him to the last. It is not alone to the unmasculine delicacy of Lord Hervey's appearance, nor to the wo manish tone of his voice, that we are to trace the character for effeminacy which he obtained among his contemporaries, for he himself seems to have courted it by an affected and almost finical nicety in his habits and tastes. On one occasion, when asked at dinner whether he would have some beef, he answered, with apparent serious ness, — " Beef ! don't you know that I never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things." Nei ther his effeminacy, however, his affectation, nor his constitutional infirmities, appear to have un dermined his credit with the fair sex. He bore off the beautiful Mary Lepel from a host of rivals ; and the Princess Caroline, daughter of George the Second, is known to have conceived so romantic a passion for him, that, at his death, she became the prey of a settled melancholy, which only terminated with her blameless career. During the latter part of the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Hervey appears to have been regarded as the ministerial leader in the House of Lords. However, when the star of JOHN, LORD HERVEY. 381 Sir Robert began to decline in the political hori zon ; when the falling minister could no longer command overwhelming majorities in the House of Commons, nor the shouts of the populace in the streets, Lord Hervey seems to have been among the first to forsake the fortunes of his benefactor and friend. On the 7th of January, 1742, exactly five weeks before Sir Robert re signed, we find Horace Walpole writing to Sir Horace Mann, — " I forgot to tell you, that upon losing the first question, Lord Hervey kept away for a week : on our carrying the next great one, he wrote to Sir Robert, how much he desired to see him ; ' not upon any business, but Lord Hervey longs to see Sir Robert Walpole.' " And in the same letter, he writes, — " Lord Hervey, is too ill to go to operas ; yet, with a coffin-face, is as full of his dirty politics as ever. He will not be well enough to go to the house till the majority is certain somewhere, but lives shut up with my Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pulteney, a triumvirate who hate one another more than any body they could proscribe, had they the power. I dropped in at my Lord Hervey's the other night, knowing my lady had company : it was soon after our defeats. My Lord, who has al ways professed particularly to me, turned his back on me, and retired for an hour into a whisper with young Hammond,* at the end of the room. Not being at all amazed at one whose * James Hammond, the poet : he died in less than six months from the date of Walpole's letter. 382 JOHN, LORD HERVEY. heart I knew so well, I stayed on to see more of this behaviour; indeed, to use myself to it. At last he came up to me, and begged this music, which I gave him, and would often again, to see how many times I shall be ill and well with him within this month." Lord Hervey survived the date of this letter only eighteen months. His constitution had never been strong, and, probably, the excitement produced by passing events and the loss of his appoint ment of Privy Seal, served to hasten his end. He lingered in a wretched state of health, till the 8th of August, 1743, when he expired in the forty- seventh year of his age. 383 MARY LEPEL, LADY HERVEY. Daughter of General Lepel. — Born in 1700. — Appointed at an early age Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, after wards Queen Caroline, and Mistress of the Robes, on the Princess's accession. — Miss Lepel's extraordinary beauty and accomplishments.— Extracts from the Suffolk Correspond ence. — Pope's admiration of the young beauty. — Hismoonlight walk with her in the gardens at Hampton Court, and letter on the subject. — His poetical address to Miss Howe. — Com pliments by Gay and Voltaire to Miss Lepel. — Lord Chester field's praises of her manners and accomplishments. — Lively verses addressed to her by Lords Chesterfield and Bath. — Her marriage in 1720 to Lord Hervey. — Extract from Lady Montagu's Letters. — Quarrel with Lady Hervey. — Singular particulars respecting its origin. — Lady Hervey's French tastes and partialities. — Her education of her children — Her irreligious feelings, and repeated attacks of illness. — Churchill's eulogium on her youngest daughter, Lady Caro line. — Lady Hervey's death in 1768. — Posthumous publica tion of her Letters Their character. Mary Lepel, so celebrated at the Court of the first George for her beauty and wit, was a daughter of Brigadier-general Nicholas Lepel. She was born on the 26th of September, 1700 ; and at an early age was named one of the Maids of Honour to Queen Caroline, then Princess of 384 MARY LEPEL, Wales, to whom, on her accession to the throne, she was appointed Mistress of the Robes. Were we to place credit in half the en comiums which have been heaped on Lady Her vey by her contemporaries, a more gifted or more charming person can scarcely be conceived. Those who knew her best, describe her as pos sessing, in an eminent degree, that peculiar fasci nation of manner, which an union of perfect high-breeding and good humour can alone con fer : they speak of her, moreover, as on all occa sions tempering her extraordinary vivacity with discretion and strong sense ; and as uniting all the graceful accomplishments of a woman of fashion, with the qualifications requisite to confer happiness on social life. In point of beauty and good humour, her charming friend, Miss Bellen- den was the only one of her contemporaries who could compete with her ; while, as regards her wit and general powers of pleasing, even Horace Walpole, difficult as he is to please, awards her unqualified praise, and Gay, Pope, and Voltaire grow equally warm in describing the idol of the day. Even her friends, when they have occasion to find some slight fault with her, involuntarily mingle praise with their complaints. Mrs. Brad- shaw writes to Mrs. Howard, on the 21st of Au gust, 1720, — "I met Madam Lepel coming into town last night : she is a pretty thing, though she never comes to see me, for which, tell her, I will use her like a dog in the winter." And LADY HERVEY. 385 again, Mrs. Howard writes to Lady Hervey her self, a few years afterwards, — "You see I can not forgive you all the wit in your last letter. Is it because I suspect your sincerity ? — or do I envy what I cannot possess ? No matter which ; you may still always triumph : the world, though you allow it to be but sometimes in the right, will do you a justice that I deny you. You will always be admired ; and even I, that condemn you, find I must love you with all my heart."* Long before she had attained to a fixed rank in society by becoming the wife of Lord Hervey, the lively conversation and extreme beauty of the young Maid of Honour, appear to have excited universal attention. Pope was among the fore most of her admirers, and in one of the most pleasing of his letters, describes his satisfaction at being permitted a walk of three hours with her by moonlight, in the gardens at Hampton Court. " I went by water," he says, " to Hampton Court, unattended by all but my own virtues, which were not of so modest a nature as to keep them selves, or me, concealed ; for I met the Prince.f with all his ladies on horseback, coming from hunting. Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepel took me into their protection, (contrary to the laws against harbouring Papists,) and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of con versation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of all * Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 69, and 323. f The Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. VOL. II. 2 C 386 MARY LEPEL, things the most miserable, and wished that every woman who envied it, had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning ; ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks ; come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the fore head from an uneasy hat ; all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for fox-hunters, and bear abundance of ruddy-complexioned chil dren. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold in the Princess's apartment : from thence (as Shakespeare has it,) to dinner, with what appe tite they may, and after that, till midnight, work, walk, or think, which they please. I can easily believe no lone house in Wales, with a moun tain and a rookery, is more contemplative than this Court; and as a proof of it, I need only tell you Miss Lepel walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain, all alone, under the gar den wall." Pope in the following poetical trifle, addressed to another of the maids of honour, Miss Howe, again familiarly introduces the name of Miss Lepel : — " Answer to the following Question of Miss Howe.* " What is prudery ? — 'Tis a beldam, Seen with wit and beauty seldom, * Sophia Howe, maid of honour to Queen Caroline, when LADY HERVEY. 387 'Tis a fear that starts at shadows ; 'Tis (no, 't isn't) like Miss Meadows : * 'Tis a virgin hard of feature, Old, and void of all good-nature ; Lean and fretful ; would seem wise, Yet plays the fool before she dies. 'Tis an ugly, envious shrew, That rails at dear Lepel and you. Princess of Wales. This unfortunate young lady, whose frailty caused considerable sensation at the Court of George the First, was a daughter of General Emanuel Scroop Howe, by Ruperta, an illegitimate daughter of Prince Rupert. Her love of admi ration, her wild frivolity, and indifference to consequences, are sufficiently displayed in the only two of her letters that have been hand.ed down to us, which are to be found in the Suffolk Correspondence. In one of these letters, addressed to Mrs. Howard, she says, — " Of one thing, I am more sensible than ever I was, of my happiness in being maid of honour ; I wont say ' God preserve me so/ neither, that would not be so well." Gay, in his " Welcome to Pope from Greece," seems to refer to the unsettled character of the giddy girl, when he says, — " Perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance, Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along." Miss Howe, in one of her letters above referred to, mentions incidentally her being so affected by some ludicrous coinci dence, while attending divine service in Farnham Church, as to * Another maid of honour, whose prudery caused much amusement to the Court. She held the office for a consider able period ; and, as Lord Chesterfield speaks of the proba bility of her having the gout, and as Lady Hervey, in one of her letters, styles her " old Meadows," she probably never entered the married state. Dodington, in one of his trifles, couples her name with that of Lady Hervey :— " As chaste as Hervey or Miss Meadows." She was sister to Sir Sidney Meadows. 2c2 388 MARY LEPEL, Gay, in his fine copy of verses entitled " Wel come from Greece to Mr. Pope upon finishing his Translation of the Iliad," describes the poet as welcomed by his beautiful friend ; " Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well, With thee, youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel. burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. It was on this occasion, that the Duchess of St. Albans, chiding her for her irreverence, and telling her " she could not do a worse thing," — " I beg your grace's pardon," she replied, " but I can do a great many won-se things." The betrayer of Miss Howe was Anthony Low ther, brother of Henry, Viscount Lonsdale. In Sir Charles Hanbury Williams' poem, describing the " Mourn ing" of Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, General Churchill thus introduces the story to a circle of listening gossips : — " The General found a lucky minute now To speak. — " Ah, ma'am, you did not know Miss Howe I" " I '11 tell you all her history," he cried. At this, Charles Stanhope gaped extremely wide, Poor Dicky sat on thorns ; her Grace turned pale, And Lovel trembled at the impending tale. " Poor girl I faith she was once extremely fair, Till worn by love, and tortured by despair, Her pining looks betrayed her inward smart ; Her breaking face foretold her breaking heart. At Leicester House her passion first began, And Nanty Lowther was a pretty man : But when the Princess did to Kew remove, She could not bear the absence of her love : Away she flew " Miss Howe is known to have been the heroine of Lord Her vey's poetical epistle from Monimia to Philocles, where she pours forth a long complaint against her lover's cruelty, in lines which have little pathos and less poetry. She died, apparently of a broken heart, in 1726, having survived the loss of her repu tation only a very few years. LADY HERVEY. 389 But perhaps the most remarkable tribute paid to her charms was by Voltaire, who did her the singular honour of celebrating her beauty in English verse : his lines, which will be found in Dodsley's collection, are as follow : " To Lady Hervey. " Hervey, would you know the passion, You have kindled in my breast ? Trifling is the inclination That by words can be expressed. In my silence see the lover ; True love is by silence known ; In my eyes you '11 best discover, All the power of your own." In noticing the various compliments paid to Lady Hervey by her contemporaries, the eulo giums heaped on her taste and accomplishments by so celebrated an arbiter of taste and fashion as Lord Chesterfield, must not be passed over in silence. He writes to his son 22nd of October, 1750, — " Lady Hervey, to my great joy, because to your great advantage, passes all this winter at Paris. She has been bred all her life at Courts, of which she has acquired all the easy good breed ing and politeness, without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman should have, and more than any woman need have ; for she understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it. No woman ever had, more than she has,— le ton de la parfaitement bonne compagnie, les manihres engageantes, et le je ne spais quoi qui plait. Desire her to reprove and correct any, 390 MARY LEPEL. and every, the least error and inaccuracy in your manner, air, address, &c, no woman in Europe can do it so well ; none will do it more willingly, or in a more proper and obliging manner." Again Lord Chesterfield writes to his son on the 28th of February following : — " The word pleasing, always puts one in mind of Lady Hervey : pray tell her, that I declare her responsible to me for your pleasing ; that I consider her as a pleasing Falstaff, who not only pleases herself, but is the cause of pleasing in others." We will conclude our notices of the enco miums heaped on Miss Lepel, with the following lively verses believed to be the joint composition of Lords Chesterfield and Bath. The reader will perceive that they are singularly characteristic of the manners of the last age, inasmuch as a lady of the present day would probably be more ready to denounce them for their impropriety, than to value them as a panegyric. " The Muses quite jaded with rhyming, To Molly Mogg bid a farewell ; But renew their sweet melody chiming, To the name of dear Molly Lepel. Bright Venus yet never saw bedded So perfect a beau and a belle, As when Hervey the handsome was wedded To the beautiful Molly Lepel. So powerful her charms, and so moving, They would warm an old monk in his cell, Should the Pope himself ever go roaming, He would follow dear Molly Lepel. LADY HERVEY. 391 If to the seraglio you brought her, Where for slaves their maidens they sell, I'm sure tho' the Grand Seignior bought her, He 'd soon turn a slave to Lepel. Had I Hanover, Bremen, and Verden, And likewise the Duchy of Zell 1 I 'd part with them all for a farthing, To have my dear Molly Lepel. Or were I the King of Great Britain, To choose a minister well, And support the throne that I sit on, I'd have under me Molly Lepel. Of all the bright beauties so killing, In London's fair city that dwell, None can give me such joy were she willing, As the beautiful Molly Lepel. What man would not give the great Ticket, To his share if the benefit fell, To be but one hour in a thicket, With the beautiful Molly Lepel. Should Venus now rise from the ocean, And naked appear in her shell, She would not cause half the emotion, That we feel from dear Molly Lepel. Old Orpheus, that husband so civil, He followed his wife down to hell, And who would not go to the devil, For the sake of dear Molly Lepel. Her lips and her breath are much sweeter, Than the thing which the Latins call met; Who would not thus pump for a metre, To chime to dear Molly Lepel. 392 MARY LEPEL, In a bed you have seen pinks and roses ; Would you know a more delicate smell, Ask the fortunate man who reposes On the bosom of Molly Lepel. 'Tis a maxim most fit for a lover, If he kisses he never should tell : But no tongue can ever discover His pleasure with Molly Lepel. Heaven keep our good king from a rising, But that rising who 's fitter to quell, Than some lady with beauty surprising, And who should that be but Lepel ? If Curll would print me this sonnet, To a volume my verses should swell ; A fig for what Dennis says on it, He can never find fault with Lepel. Then Handel to music shall set it; Thro' England my ballad shall sell ; And all the world readily get it, To sing to the praise of Lepel. On the 25th of October, 1720, when in her twentieth year, Miss Lepel accepted the hand of the celebrated John, Lord Hervey. About the period of their marriage, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes to her sister, Lady Mar, — " The most considerable incident that has hap pened a good while was the ardent affection that Mrs. Hervey, and her dear spouse,* took to me. * Lord Hervey at this period had not attained to the title. His elder brother, Carr, Lord Hervey, survived till the 15th November, 1723. LADY HERVEY. 393 They visited me twice or thrice a day, and were perpetually cooing in my rooms. I was com plaisant a great while ; but, (as you know,) my talent has never lain much that way ; I grew at last so weary of those birds of paradise, I fled to Twickenham, as much to avoid their persecu tions as for my own health, which is still in a declining way." Notwithstanding the " perpe tual cooing " here referred to, the married life of Lord and Lady Hervey is said to have been distinguished, at a later period, rather by a well-bred civility, than any apparent remains of an ardent or romantic attachment.* The misunderstanding which took place be tween Pope and her husband, effectually put an end to the long and friendly intercourse which * See Lady M. W. Montagu's Works, v. 1. p. 69. Ed. 1837. On the contrary, the editor of Lady Hervey's Letters, observes, — " Neither her own vivacity nor the indulgence of a court appear to have betrayed Lady Hervey into the neglect of any of her duties. She was fondly attached to Lord Hervey's person, she respected and admired his talents, and revered his me mory." Lady Hervey's Letters, Biog. Sketch, p. 9. Lady Hervey herself writes to the Reverend Edmund Morris, on the 31st. of October, 1743, about two months after her husband's death, — " The misfortunes Mrs. Phipps can have met with are few and slight compared to those I have experienced ; I see and feel the greatness of this last in every light, but I will struggle to the utmost, and though I know, at least I think, I can never be happy again, yet I will be as little miserable as possible, and will make use of the reason I have to soften, not to aggravate, ray affliction." Lady Hervey's Letters, p. 14. 394 MARY LEPEL, had existed between Lady Hervey and the great poet. Pope, however, though he grew to detest the husband, was still ready to do justice to the wife ; and in his memorable letter to Lord Her vey, pays a last tribute to the " merit, beauty, and vivacity," of his charming friend. The friendship, too, which had existed be tween Lady Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu appears to have been of short du ration. A coldness sprang up between them, to which we shall presently have to allude, and it seems to be in consequence of Lady Mary considering herself the party aggrieved, that we are to attribute those slighting and almost ill- natured remarks in her celebrated letters, when ever she has occasion to introduce the name of Lady Hervey. The circumstances of their mis understanding were as follow : — One of Lady Hervey's most valued friends was a Mrs. Murray, a grand-daughter of the first Earl of Marchmont, and a woman of considerable accomplishments of person as well as mind.* * Griselda Baillie, daughter of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswood, and a near relation of Bishop Burnet, became the wife, in 1710, of Mr. afterwards Sir A. Murray, of Stanhope. She died in 1759. Lady Hervey says of her, in recording her loss, — " Never in my long life, did I ever meet with a creature in all respects like her : many have excelled her, perhaps, in parti cular qualities ; but none that ever I met with have equalled her in all. Sound good sense, strong judgment, great sagacity, strict honour, truth, and sincerity ; a most affectionate disposi tion of mind ; constant and steady ; not obstinate ; great indul- LADY HERVEY. 395 About the month of October, 1721, Mrs. Murray obtained a most unenviable notoriety, in conse quence of a criminal attempt made upon her by one of her own footmen, a man of the name of Arthur Grey. This individual, it appears, entered her chamber in the middle of the night, and presenting a pistol at her breast, swore that, unless she would consent to gratify his passion, he would take her life. Either terror or virtue, however, gave strength to her arm, and she had already succeeded in wresting the pistol from her assailant, when her screams brought her the assistance which she required. The man was immediately seized, and Mrs. Murray giving her evidence against him at the Old Bailey, he was sentenced to be transported for life. The publicity given to this unfortunate affair must have been sufficiently painful to most women; while, to a person who, like Mrs. Mur- gence to others ; a most sweet, cheerful temper ; and a sort of liveliness and good-humour, that promoted innocent mirth wherever she came." Lady Hervey's Letters, p. 254. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann on the 22nd of June, 1759, — " A much older friend of yours is just dead, my Lady Mur ray. She caught her death by too strict attendance on her sister, Lady Binning, who has been ill. They were a family of love, and break their hearts for her. She had a thousand good qualities ; but no mortal was ever so surprised as I when I was first told that she was the nymph Arthur Grey would have ravished. She had taken care to guard against any more such dangers by more wrinkles than ever twisted round a human face." Walpole's Letters, v. 3, p. 4458. 396 MARY LEPEL, ray, moved in a certain sphere of society, the notoriety she had acquired could not fail to be a source of the deepest affliction. The position of Mrs. Murray, moreover, was rendered still more distressing by the publication of more than one offensive pasquinade on the subject of her recent misfortune, which, as is usually the case with similar malicious productions, were purchased and read with the greatest avidity. Of these effu sions, there were two which excited particular attention ; the one, a gross ballad, and the other a long and indelicate copy of verses entitled, " Epistle from Arthur Grey, the Footman."* Both of these infamous productions were at tributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; but though the former was unquestionably the pro duction of her pen, we find her repeatedly deny ing the authorship of the latter. The fact, how ever, of her having been the parent, if of only one of these galling attacks, is sufficient to bring home to her the charge of unwarrantably aggra- * Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann on the 24th of November, 1747: — "Mr. Shute agrees with me: he says, for the epistle from Arthur Grey, scarce any woman could have written it, and no man, for a man who had had experience enough to paint such sentiments so well, would not have had warmth enough left." — Walpole's letters, vol. ii. p. 207. Mr. Dallaway, Lady M. W. Montagu's biographer, remarks that " the epistle of Arthur Grey has true ' Ovidian tenderness.' " This, of course, is exaggerated praise ; nevertheless, the " Epistle" has some merit as a composition, though possessing certainly more of the indecency of Ovid, than either his ten derness or his grace. LADY HERVEY. 397 vating the distress of an unoffending member of her own sex, by trumpeting forth a misfortune which had already obtained sufficient publicity. That Mrs. Murray believed her to be the author of both lampoons, is evident. Lady Mary her self informs us, that on every occasion of her meeting the subject of her unfeeling satire in public, the latter never failed to display her in dignation and disgust : on one occasion, in par ticular, — " she was pleased to attack me," says Lady Mary, " in very Billingsgate language at a masquerade, where she was as visible as ever she was in her own clothes." Lady Hervey warmly and generously sided with her injured friend ; and it was probably her having drop ped some expressions of disgust at Lady Mary's conduct that produced from the latter those slighting remarks on an almost faultless cha racter, to which we have already had occasion to allude. Among various interesting reminiscences of Lady Bute, (daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,) she remembered Lady Hervey to have been distinguished by the exquisite grace of her manners, which she described as somewhat marked by a "foreign tinge." Lady Hervey, indeed, was half a Frenchwoman. During her widowhood, she paid long and frequent visits to France ; we find her intimate friends frequently bantering her on her French tastes and French habits ; while, from her maiden name of Lepel, we may conclude that her family were originally 398 MARY LEPEL, natives of that country. Lady Chesterfield writes to a lady at Paris on the 30th of De cember, 1751; — "We look upon Lady Hervey as having forsaken her own country, and being naturalized a Frenchwoman. I regret, but do not blame her, for I know others that would do the same if they could." Again, she writes to the same correspondent on the 3rd of May, 1753, — " You will soon see Lady Hervey again ; she is heartily sick of London, and longs to be at Paris. I shall lament her absence, but cannot blame her taste ; it comes into my system of philosophy." Lady Hervey, in her letters, al ludes to her foreign partialities as if they were notorious among her friends ; and Horace Wal pole, in his correspondence, speaks incidentally of her as " doting" on everything French. We have now brought our notices of Lady Hervey very nearly to a close. After the death of her husband, she resided principally with his father, the Earl of Bristol, dedicating herself to the performance of her social duties, and more especially to the education of her children. By Lord Hervey she was the mother of four sons and four daughters : — of the former, George,* Augustus, and Frederick, were successively Earls * George, second Earl of Bristol, inherited the effeminate appearance, and, it was thought, the effeminate character of his father : like his father, however, he knew how to resent an insult when thoroughly provoked. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann, 25th of February, 1750, — " About ten days LADY HERVEY. 399 of Bristol, and William, the youngest, was a member of Parliament, and a general in the army. Of the daughters, — Lepel married Con- stantine, Lord Mulgrave ; Lady Mary married George Fitzgerald, Esq. ; and Lady Emily and Lady Caroline died unmarried. Horace Walpole says of the elder daughter, in one of his letters, — "she is a fine, black girl, as masculine as her father should be." But it seems to have been the youngest, Lady Caroline, who inherited, in the ago, at the new Lady Cobham's assembly, Lord Hervey was leaning over a chair, talking to some women, and holding his hat in his hand. Lord Cobham came up and spit in it ! — and then, with a loud laugh, turned to Nugent, and said, — ' Pay me my wager ! ' In short, he had laid a guinea that he committed this absurd brutality, and that it was not resented. Lord Hervey, with great temper and sensibility, asked if he had any farther occasion for his hat ? — ' Oh ! I see you are angry I' — ' Not very well pleased.' Lord Cobham took the fatal hat, and wiped it, made a thousand foolish apologies, and wanted to pass it off as a joke. Next morning he rose with the sun, and went to visit Lord Hervey ; so did Nugent : he would not see them, but wrote to the Spitter, (or, as he is now called, Lord Gob'em,) to say, that he had affronted him very grossly before company ; but having involved Nugent in it, he desired to know to which he was to address himself for satisfaction. Lord Cobham wrote to him a most submissive answer, and begged pardon both in his own and Nugent's name. Here it rested for a few days ; till getting wind, Lord Hervey wrote again to insist on an ex plicit apology under Lord Cobham's own hand, with a rehearsal of the excuses that had been made to him. This, too, was com plied with, and the fair conqueror shows all the letters." — Wal pole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 319. For a further account of this dis reputable frolic, see Wraxall's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 128, et seq. 400 MARY LEPEL, most eminent degree, the attractions of her mother. Churchill celebrates, — " That face, that form, that dignity, that ease, Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please, By which Lepel, when in her youthful days, Even from the currish Pope extorted praise, We see, transmitted, in her daughter shine, And view a new Lepel in Caroline !" Lady Hervey expired on the 2nd of Septem ber, 1768, having nearly completed the sixty- eighth year of her age. For many years she had suffered severely from the gout,* the frequent attacks of which she endured with extraordinary resignation and unrepining gentleness. Horace Walpole writes to the Earl of Hert ford on the 16th of December, 1763, — "Poor Lady Hervey desires you will tell Mr. Hume how incapable she is of answering his letter. She has been terribly afflicted for these six weeks with a complication of gout, rheumatism, and a nervous complaint. She cannot lie down in her bed, nor rest two minutes in her chair : I never saw such continued suffering." Two days before * This disease, which was hereditary in Lady Hervey's fa- • mily, she entailed on her daughter, Mrs. Phipps, afterwards Lady Mulgrave, and probably on others of her children. Lady Hervey writes to the Rev. E. Morris, 24th of October, 1747: — " Poor Mrs. Phipps, that young, abstemious, careful woman, has had a tedious rheumatism, which at last terminated in a severe fit of the gout. She is now well of both ; but what must that poor dear creature expect, who at four-and-twenty is wrapped up in flannel with the gout!" — Lady Hervey's Letters, p. 107. LADY HERVEY. 401 she expired, she wrote to her son, the Earl of Bristol, — "I feel my dissolution coming on ; but I have no pain : what can an old woman desire more?" Walpole, in recording this anecdote, ob serves, — " This was consonant to her usual pro priety : — yes, propriety is grace, and thus every body may be graceful, when other graces are fled."* It is to be feared, however, that tho exem plary patience which Lady Hervey displayed during her repeated illnesses, originated in no degree from any consolation which she derived from her religious faith. The example of in fidelity set her by her husband, and apparently the pernicious sophistry of their mutual friend, Dr. Middleton,f produced an unfortunate effect on her otherwise strong mind ; and though she refrained from obtruding her peculiar tenets on others, her own confidence in the truth of revealed religion was unquestionably weakened, if not en tirely destroyed. Posterity, of late years, has acquired an in teresting memento of Lady Hervey, in the form * Walpole's Letters, vol. iv. p. 335, vol. v. p. 226. t Dr. Conyers Middleton,— a sceptical divine, and the well- known author of the Life of Cicero,— was the son of a clergy man, and was born at York in 1683. His " Discourse on the Miraculous Powers" supposed to have been vested in the early Christian Church, led the world to believe that he was a free thinker; and his letters to Lord Hervey have since sub stantiated the fact. As a divine, a moralist, and a philosopher, he should have taken especial care to maintain his private character in good repute : and yet the same man,— who pro- VOL. II. 2 D 402 MARY LEPEL, LADY nERVEY. of a volume of her epistolary correspondence. To the general reader, indeed, the letters in question will convey a feeling of disappointment, for we search in vain for that playful wit and fascinating vivacity for which her contemporaries have so universally given her credit. The whole of these letters, however, were written after she had completed her forty-second year ; at a period when the hey-day of life had passed away ; and, moreover, when misfortune had quenched the buoyancy of her spirits, and thrown its shadows over her brow. But, on the other hand, they portray the character of Lady Hervey in its best light ; they afford valuable evidence of her strong sense, her refined taste, and real goodness of heart ; and are equally interesting as a memorial of a courtly beauty of the last age, and as afford ing a faithful and pleasing picture of an amiable and highly-cultivated mind. fessed that " Providence had placed him beyond the tempta tion of sacrificing philosophic freedom to the servilities of de pendence," — is known, in the most shameless manner, to have subscribed the thirty-nine articles for the mere purpose of en joying the living of Hascombe. " Though there are many things in the Church," he says, " which I wholly dislike, yet, while I am content to acquiesce in the ill, I should be glad to taste a little of the good." The apology was worthy of his prin ciples. Dr. Middleton died on the 28th of July, 1750, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 403 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Her birth in 1690. — Her early love of reading. — Teaches her self Latin, and translates Epictetus. — Anecdote of her fa ther related by herself. — Her acquaintance with Mr. Wortley Montagu. — His literary tastes. — He proposes for her hand to her father, and is rejected. — He elopes with, and is privately married to, her. . — Lady Mary's first appearance at St. James's. — Attends the evening parties of George the First. — Accompanies her husband on his embassy to Constantinople. — Her familiarity with the Turkish ladies. — Anecdote. — Intro duces into England the Oriental practice of inoculation for the small pox. — Returns home, and takes a house at Twicken ham. — Her intimacy with Pope. — Addison warns her against him. — Her subsequent quarrel with Pope. — Her account of its origin. — Her splenetic feelings towards him. — Retires to the continent. — Her separation from her husband. — Extracts from Horace Walpole's letters. — Pope's remarks on Lady Mary's want of cleanliness. — Anecdote of Lady Mary. — In decency of some of her letters. — Brief memoir of her son, Edward Wortley Montague. — His eccentricities abroad. — Extract from Horace Walpole's letters. — Mr. Montagu dis inherited on his father's death. — His extraordinary adver tisement in the Public Advertiser. — His sudden death at Lyons. — His literary production. — Lady Mary's return to England after the death of her husband. — Horace Walpole's description of her. — Her death. Lady Mary Pierrepont, afterwards so cele brated as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was the eldest daughter of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, by Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William, 2 D 2 404 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Earl of Denbigh. She was born at Thoresby, in Nottinghamshire, about the year 1690. When she was about four years old, Lady Mary had the misfortune to lose her mother.* The loss was an irreparable one ; for it was probably owing to the want of proper female guardianship in her youth, and to the absence of a mother's anxious watchfulness, that we are to attribute many of those faults and fooleries which subsequently distinguished her irregular career. Her father, too, was a man little qualified to per form so important a trust as the guardianship of a volatile and high-spirited girl. Figuring merely as one of the well-bred libertines of the period, and preferring the pursuit of pleasure to * In reference to the fact stated in the text, namely, that Lady M. W. Montagu was only four years old when she lost her mother, it is curious to find, in the eleventh edition of " The Curiosities of Literature," the following rather remarkable anachronism : — " We have lost much literature by the illiberal or malignant de scendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Wortley Montagu's letters have been destroyed, I have been informed, by her mother, who imagined that the family honours were lowered by the addition of those of literature : some of her best letters, recently published, were found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her ladyship's mother to have heard that her daughter was the Sevigne of Britain." — Cur. of Literature, p. 19, Ed. 1839. In recording this error, it is far from the author's intention to attempt to derogate from the general merit and accuracy of one of the most charming works in our language. The writer of an article in the Quarterly Re view (vol. xxiii. p. 414,) has fallen, it may be remarked, into exactly the same error as Mr. DTsraeli. — See Lady M. W. Montagu's Works, vol. i. p. 3. Edition by Lord Wharncliffe. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 405 the discharge of his domestic duties, he seems to have troubled himself little with the education or moral, improvement of his child.* A thirst after knowledge, however, formed an early and remark able feature in Lady Mary's character. " When I was young," she observed to Spence, " 1 was a vast admirer of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and that was one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thought of stealing the Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I com municated my design ; and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six hours a day for two years, in my father's library, and so got that language whilst everybody thought I was reading nothing but novels and romances." According to her biographer, Dallaway, her father for the most part entrusted her education to the tutors of his son, from whom she acquired a knowledge of the Greek, Latin, and French languages. We have, however, the authority of Lady Mary herself that she taught herself Latin ; and in regard to her knowledge of Greek, though professedly the author of a translation of Epictetus, we learn * The father of Lady M. W. Montagu was Evelyn Pierre pont, fifth Earl of Kingston, created 23rd of December, 1706, Marquis of Dorchester ; and, on the 29th of July, 1715, Duke of Kingston. Macky says of him, — " He has a very good estate, is a very fine gentleman, of good sense, well bred, and a lover of the ladies ; entirely in the interest of his country, makes a good figure, is of a black complexion, and well made." The Duke died in 1726, and was succeeded in his titles by his grandson, Evelyn Pierrepont, the second and last Duke of Kingston. 406 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. from Lady Bute that her mother had, in fact, but little acquaintance with that language. Not im possibly she had the advantage of a Latin version, to which circumstance we may add the proba bility of her having received material assistance from Bishop Burnet, who is known to have superintended her labours. That her father, however, though he neglected, was nevertheless proud of the attainments and beauty of his child, is evident from the following lively anecdote which Lady Mary, in after-life, took great pleasure in recalling. " As a leader of the fashionable world, and a strenuous Whig in party, he of course belonged to the Kit-cat club.* One day, at a meeting to choose toasts for the year, a whim seized him to nominate her, then not eight years old, a candidate; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on their list. The other members demurred, because the rules of the club forbade them to elect a beauty * The meetings of the celebrated Kit-cat club were origin ally held at the Fountain Tavern in the Strand, the landlord of which was one Christopher Cat, from whom the club borrowed their name. He was famous for his mutton-pies, which was always a standing-dish at their meetings. In a Tory pasquin ade of the period we find, — " Hence did the assembly's title first arise, And Kit-Cat wits sprung first from Kit-Cat pies." The Kit-cat club, at a later period, held their meetings at the residence of their secretary, the celebrated Jacob Tonson, at Barn Elms. This house, which is rendered still more interest ing by having formerly been inhabited by Cowley, the poet, is still standing. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 407 whom they had never seen. ' Then you shall see her,' cried he ; and, in the gaiety of the mo ment, sent orders home to have her finely dressed, and brought to him at the tavern, where she was received with acclamations, her claim unani mously allowed, her health drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon a drinking-glass. The company consisting of some of the most eminent men in England, she went from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of another, was feast ed with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with caresses, and, what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard her wit and beauty loudly ex tolled on every side. Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensations ; they amounted to ecstacy : never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day."* Another disadvantage (arising from her father being a widower) which Lady Mary had to en counter as she increased in years, was the preva lence of male society at his table. A woman, thrown into constant intercourse with the other sex, will unquestionably find her wit sharpened, and will acquire increased confidence in her own powers ; moreover, where the society is of a su perior order, she may add to her stock of know ledge, and improve her taste ; but, on the other hand, the finer feelings of the woman are imper- * Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Works, vol. i. p. 5, edition by Lord WharnclHfe. 408 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. ceptibly destroyed, and she acquires that masculine tone of thought and speech, which was peculi arly the characteristic of Lady Mary. Among the duties which, as the mistress of the domestic portion of her father's establishment, Lady Mary was called upon to perform, was the then formidable task of doing the honours of his table. People still cling to the barbarism of carving huge joints, and inhaling their obnoxious smells, at dinner ; but, in the commencement of the last century the case was still worse: not only was it imperative on the lady of the house to teaze her guests till they eat to repletion ; but it was necessary that every guest should be in dividually helped, and every joint operated upon, by her hand. Lady Mary used to mention, as curious illustrations of the fashionable manners of her youth, that carving-masters used to at tend young ladies for the purpose of perfecting them in the art, and that she herself had been compelled to take lessons from one of these pro fessors three times a week. She added, that such was the laborious task of presiding at table on one of her father's public days, that she was always obliged to eat her own dinner beforehand.* Lady Mary was in the zenith of her beauty, when she formed the acquaintance of Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, a man, apparently, of some talent, of sound sense, of a classical taste, and * Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Works, vol. i. p. 1 1, edition by Lord Warncliffe. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 409 of an original cast of mind. On the other hand, he was miserly in his habits ; and we glean from Lady Mary's letters to him, that no flat tery was too gross for his palate. Still it is evi dent, from the literary correspondence of the period, that he was the intimate friend of Addi son, and that Steele, Congreve, and Garth were among his acquaintance. Thus, a congenial taste for literature and wit existed between Lady Mary and himself. He naturally became enamoured of a woman, who, to the possession of great beauty, superadded those intellectual qualities which he most valued and admired ; and Lady Mary, though she confessed to him her inability to return his passion with a warmth equal to his own, jet freely admitted that she entertained a regard and partiality for him which she had never experienced towards any other suitor. On this, Montagu made his proposals to her father; but, either from an inability to make a settlement, or rather, as it would appear, from a prejudice against settling property on unborn children, of whose good or bad qualities he could know nothing, his offers were perempto rily rejected by the Duke of Kingston. The lovers, indeed, still kept up a correspond ence, but it appears by Lady Mary's letters, written at the period, that it was constantly on the point of being broken off, — not, indeed, by the vigilance and interference of her father, — but by perpetual jealousies and mistrusts on the part of Mr. Montagu, whose good sense pointed 410 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. out to him how little suited they were to each other, and that, however charming Lady Mary might be as a mistress, she was little calculated to confer happiness on him as a wife. Still, he was unable to extricate himself from the toils of wit and beauty, and when Lady Mary an nounced to him her father's fixed determination to unite her to another person, the passion of the lover drowned the reflections of the man of sense, and having persuaded his mistress to elope with him, they were privately married by a special licence, bearing date 12th August, 1712. On the accession of George the First to the throne, the friends of Mr. Wortley came into power, and he received the reward of his par liamentary exertions by being appointed a Lord of the Treasury. The duties of his office obliged him, of course, to reside principally in London, and, consequently, Lady Mary was recalled from the solitude of Wharncliffe, where she had hi therto resided since her marriage. According to her biographer, Dallaway, — " her first appear ance at St. James's wras hailed with that uni versal admiration which beauty, enlivened by wit, incontestably claims." She speedily grew into favour with George the First, and in his son, afterwards George the Second, seems to have excited a warmer sentiment. One evening, the Prince happening suddenly to cast his eyes on her, desired the princess, who was playing at cards in another part of the apartment, to mark how very becomingly Lady Mary was LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 411 dressed. To be interrupted in the excitement of play, and for the purpose too of noting the love liness of a rival, must have been sufficiently disagreeable to the Princess, and, consequently, we cannot be surprised that she retorted, with a marked sneer, — " Lady Mary always dresses well!" This anecdote was recorded by Lady Mary in her private journal — apparently a curi ous repository of wit and scandal, which her daughter, Lady Bute, no doubt from very proper motives, thought proper to destroy ; the loss of which, however, we cannot but regret. The circumstance of Lady Mary being con stantly invited to the private parties of George the First, had the effect of depriving her of the favour and admiration of his son. It has, indeed, ever been the peculiar characteristic of the heirs of the House of Hanover, so far to reverse the order of nature, as to deprecate the slightest respect shown to the author of their being ; and, consequently, it was in the true spirit of this feeling, that when Lady Mary was known to be a favoured visitor at St. James's, she grew to be an object of distrust and dislike at Leicester House. As regards, however, her admission to the select evening parties of George the First, the following anecdote, the substance of which was inserted in her lost journal, is deserving of repetition : — " She had on one evening a particular engagement that made her wish to be dismissed unusually early : she explained her reasons to the Duchess of Ken dal, and the Duchess informed the King, who, 412 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. after a few complimentary remonstrances, appeared to acquiesce. But when he saw her about to take her leave, he began battling the point afresh, de claring it was unfair and perfidious to cheat him in such a manner, and saying many other fine things, in spite of which she at last contrived to escape. At the foot of the great stairs she ran against Secretary Craggs* just coming in, who stopped her to inquire what was the matter? were the company put off? She told him why she * James Craggs, the younger, who succeeded Addison as Secretary of State, was equally distinguished for his abilities as a statesman, for his handsome person, his ingratiating manners, and social pleasantry. His father, James Craggs the elder, had been footman to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and by the influence of that celebrated woman, as well as by his own strong sense and excellent conduct, rose to be Postmaster-General, and was enabled to amass an almost princely fortune. The younger Craggs died on the 16th of February, 1720, at the age of thirty-five, and about a month afterwards his father followed him to the grave. The former was buried in Westminster Abbey, where there is a monument to him, inscribed with the well-known epitaph of his friend Pope : — " Statesman, yet friend to truth ; of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear: Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gained no title, and who lost no friend ; Ennobled by himself, — by all approved, Praised, wept, and honoured by the muse he loved! " Alluding to the lowness of his origin, and to the circumstance of his dying before his father, Peter Leneve, the herald, pro posed that his inscription should be, — '¦ Here lies the last, who died before the first of his family." Both the Craggs are be lieved to have been deeply implicated in the memorable and infamous South-Sea bubble. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 413 went away, and how urgently the King had pressed her to stay longer ; possibly dwelling on that head with some small complacency. Mr. Craggs made no remark ; but when he had heard all, snatching her up in his arms as a nurse carries a child, he ran full speed with her up stairs, de positing her within the ante-chamber, kissed both her hands respectfully, (still not saying a word,) and vanished. The pages seeing her returned, they knew not how, hastily threw open the inner doors, and before she had recovered her breath, she found herself again in the King's presence. "Ah! la revoilhl" cried he and the Duchess, ex tremely pleased, and began thanking her for her obliging change of mind. She was bewildered, fluttered, and entirely off her guard ; so beginning giddily with, — " Oh ! Lord, Sir ! I have been so frightened ; " — she told his Majesty the whole story exactly as she would have told it to any one else. He had not done exclaiming, nor his Ger mans wondering, when again the door flew open, and the attendants announced Mr. Secretary Craggs, who, but that moment arrived, it should seem, entered with the usual obeisance, and as composed an air as if nothing had happened. " Mais comment done, Monsieur Craggs," said the King, going up to him, " est-ce que e'est I'usage de ce pays de porter des belles dames comme un sac de froment 1 " — " Is it the custom of this country to carry about fair ladies like a sack of wheat ? " The minister, struck dumb by this unexpected attack, stood a minute or two, not knowing which way 414 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. to look ; then, recovering his self-possession, an swered with a low bow, — " There is nothing I would not do for your Majesty's satisfaction." This was coming off tolerably well ; but he did not forgive the tell-tale culprit, in whose ear, watching his opportunity when the King turned from them, he muttered a bitter reproach, with a round oath to enforce it ; — ' which I durst not resent,' continued she, ' for I had drawn it upon myself; and indeed I was heartily vexed at my own imprudence.'"* On the 5th of June, 1716, Mr. Wortley was appointed ambassador at Constantinople, whither Lady Mary, either from affection or curiosity, con sented to accompany him. To the Princess of Wales she writes from Adrian ople on the 1st of April, 1717; "I have now, Madam, finished a journey that has not been undertaken by any Christian since the time of the Greek Emperors ; and I shall not regret all the fatigues I have suf fered in it, if it gives me an opportunity of amus ing your Royal Highness by an account of places utterly unknown amongst us ; the Emperor's am bassadors, and those few English that have come hither, always going on the Danube to Nicopolis." She was not, indeed, as was formerly supposed, the first Englishwoman of rank who had visited the Levant ; for it seems that Lady Paget and Lady Winchelsea had each previously accompanied her husband on their several embassies. Her inquiring disposition, however, and her ingratiat- * Lady M. W. Montagu's Works, vol. i. p. 38. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 415 ing manners appear to have brought her into greater familiarity with the Turkish ladies, than has been achieved by any other of her country women, either before or since. "The ladies of Constantinople," she said to Spence, " used to be extremely surprised to see me go always with my bosom uncovered. It was in vain that I told them that everybody did .so among us; and alleged everything that I could in defence of it. They could never be reconciled to so immodest a cus tom, as they thought it ; and one of them, after I had been defending it to my utmost, said, — ' O, my sultana, you can never defend the manners of your country, even with all your wit ; but I see you are in pain for them, and shall therefore press it no farther." Nor was this the only occasion where the habits and manners of Lady Mary appear to have excited astonishment in the minds of the ladies of the East. " One of the greatest entertainments in Turkey," said Lady Mary to Spence, " is having you to their baths ; and when I was introduced to one, the lady of the house came to undress me, which is another high compliment that they pay to strangers. After she had slipped off my gown, and saw my stays, she was very much struck at the sight of them, and cried out to the other ladies in the bath, — ' Come hither, and see how cruelly the poor English ladies are used by their husbands ; you need boast, indeed, of the superior liberties allowed you, when they lock you up thus in a box.' " Lady Mary, it need scarcely be remarked, 416 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. relates the same anecdote in one of her charming letters, with some other less delicate circum stances. Dring her absence in the East, several strange stories were circulated respecting Lady Mary in England, the truth or falsehood of which it is now difficult to ascertain. Among other eccentric adventures, it was believed by many that she con ferred her favours on the Sultan, Achmed the Third. This story, whether truly or not, Lady Mary attributed to the invention of Pope. " The word malignity," she writes, some years after wards, to Lady Pomfret, " and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twick enham. His lies affect me now no more ; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am per suaded he was the only inventor. The man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mask of a moralist, in order to decry human nature, and to give his vent to his- hatred of man and womankind." It seems, indeed, (notwithstanding an opinion to the con trary has long been prevalent,) that Lady Mary never even obtained access to the interior of the Seraglio. There is certainly nothing in her let ters to show that this extraordinary indulgence was ever awarded to her; and, in later times, when the wife of one of our ambassadors applied for a similar favour, — pleading the visit of Lady Mary as a well-known precedent, — the Turks LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 417 pronounced the story to be as false as it was ridiculous. One important result, consequent on the visit of Lady Mary to the East, was her being the means of introducing into this country the Oriental practice of inoculating for the small-pox. Pos terity, at this distance of time, can scarcely com prehend the vast service which she thus performed in the cause of humanity. According to the " Plain Dealer" (No. XXX, July 3, 1724.) " It is a godlike delight that her reflection must be con scious of, when she considers to whom we owe, that many thousand British lives will be saved every year, to the use and comfort of their coun try, after a general establishment of this practice. A good, so lasting and so vast, that none of those wide endowments and deep foundations of public charity which have made most noise in the world, deserve at all to be compared with it." The more recent and more valuable discovery of vaccination, though it has superseded the boon which Lady Mary conferred on mankind, yet detracts in no degree from her personal merit, or her claims on the gratitude of her contemporaries. Indeed, when we remember the violent opposition which she had to encounter in her attempt to benefit mankind ; the obloquy and ridicule which her new theory entailed upon her ; the undaunted re solution with which she pursued her thankless task ; as well as the extraordinary blessings which she ultimately conferred on humanity, words are VOL. ii. 2 E 418 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. insufficient to express our admiration of her noble and disinterested conduct. In October, 1718, Lady Mary returned with her husband to England, and shortly afterwards we find her renewing her intercourse with the Court and the wits. Distinguished by high rank, and gifted with beauty and wit which have become historical, we cannot wonder that she grew to be the idol of that celebrated circle which numbered Gay, Swift, Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Garth among its brightest ornaments. At the sugges tion of Pope, with whom she was as yet on good terms, she took a house at Twickenham, and it was either under her own roof, or at the resi dence of the poet, that in this, the most classical of English villages, the above-mentioned brilliant assemblage of talent was frequently associated. The friendship, however, which existed be tween Lady Mary and Pope was destined to be of shorter duration, and of less celebrity than their subsequent quarrel, of which we have little to add beyond that which the reader is already acquainted with. Pope, as is well known, after having lived on terms of intimacy with Lady Mary for some years, and having on all occasions written and spoken of her rather as a goddess than a woman, suddenly changed his tone of panegyric into that of invective, and, under the names of Lady Mary and Sappho, stigmatized in the most unjustifiable manner her private habits and moral conduct. It is remarkable that, many years before Pope distinguished himself as a sat- LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 419 irist, Addison should have put Lady Mary on her guard against the spiteful nature and latent satirical vein of the poet. " Leave him as soon as you can," was the advice of Addison ; " he will certainly play you some devilish trick else : he has an appetite for satire."* Addison unquestion ably alluded to the celebrated satire on himself, the unfinished sketch of which Pope is known to have sent him in MS.f In regard to the immediate cause of quarrel between Pope and Lady Mary, the explanation which she herself gave to her relations, not only affords the best apology for Pope, but presents the easiest and most probable solution of a difficult question. Pope, she said, addressed to her a passionate declaration of love ; the effect of which was so ludicrous that she burst into an immode rate fit of laughter, and from that moment the poet became her implacable enemy. * Spence's Anecdotes, p. 32. ¦f Addison and his friends, it would seem, had been in the habit of discussing Pope's character and genius in rather too free a manner, in the London coffee-houses and elsewhere : on which, says Pope, " I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to let him know that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his ; that if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way ; and that I should rather tell himself freely of his faults, and allow his good qualities ; and that it should be something in the following manner : I then adjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. Mr. Addison used me very civilly ever after, and never did me any injustice that I know of from that time to his death, which was about three years after." — Spence, p. 10. 2e2 420 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Such appears to have been the secret history of the quarrel between Lady Mary and Pope. The poet himself says, in the Epistle to Arbuth not, — thus giving a pointed meaning to an other wise unintelligible couplet, — " Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit." There is extant, moreover, a copy of verses addressed by Pope to Gay, — occasioned, it seems, by the latter congratulating him on the comple tion of his villa at Twickenham, — which goes far to prove that the poet had conceived a hopeless and unhappy attachment for Lady Mary ; — " Ah ! friend, 'tis love — this truth you lovers know — In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow ; In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens : Joy lives not here ; to happier seats it flies, And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes. What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade, The morning bower, the evening colonnade ; But soft recesses of uneasy minds, To sigh unheard in, to the passing winds ? So the struck deer in some sequestered part Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart ; There, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day, Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away." Lady Mary, in transmitting these verses to her sister, Lady Mar, observes that she has thought proper to "stifle" them, and requests that they may go no further than her sister's closet. It is LADY MARY WOKTLEY MOXTAGr. 421 remarkable that Pope afterwards published the last eight lines only as a Fragment. Having quarrelled with the goddess of his idolatry, he was of course unwilling to publish a fulsome panegyric ; which, while it might have afforded a triumph to her, must only have given a disagree able publicity to his own weakness and unhappy love. Under no circumstances is rejection by a wo man a very palatable consummation of a pleasing delusion; but, in the present instance, the pain was enhanced by the constitutional and almost morbid sensibility of Pope, and by the cruel con sciousness of his personal deformity. With such a man, and under such circumstances, the wither ing effect of Lady Mary's unfeeling, and contemp tuous laugh may be more easily imagined than described. Lady Mary appears to have missed no single opportunity of vexing the irritable poet. In a letter to Arbuthnot, — which she was well aware would meet the eye of Pope, — she writes: — " I wish you would advise poor Pope to turn to some more honest livelihood than libelling. I know he will allege in his excuse that he must write to eat, and he is now grown sensible that nobodv will buy his verses, except their curiosity is piqued to it. to see what is said of their acquaint ance." Remarks of a similar malicious tendency, of which Lady Mary was the author, were con stantly conveyed to Pope by his friends. Indeed, in her determination to be avenged on her ma- 422 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. ligner, she seems occasionally to have outstepped the bounds of truth, and to have invented one or two ingenious stories to Pope's discredit, which had the effect of cutting the poet to the quick. Among others, an account, which was published at the period, of Pope having been cudgelled by two gentlemen in Ham Walk, near Twickenham, has been attributed to Lady Mary ; and so an noyed was Pope at the publicity obtained by the unfounded anecdote, that he drew up the follow ing solemn refutation, which was inserted in the Daily Post of the 14th of June, 1718 :— " Whereas there has been a scandalous paper cried aloud about the streets, under the title of 'A Pop upon Pope,' insinuating that I was whip ped in Ham Walk, on Thursday last:— This is to give notice, that I did not stir out of my house at Twickenham on that day ; and the same is a malicious and ill-grounded report. — A. P." According to Pope's sister, Mrs. Racket, the poet was but little susceptible of fear. Even after the publication of the Dunciad, when he was several times threatened with castigation by the persons whom he had satirized, he still con tinued his solitary ramblings in Ham Walk. He adopted, however, the precaution of taking with him a large Danish dog, named Bounce,* who * When Bounce died, Pope had a notion of burying him in his garden, at Twickenham, and placing over him a piece of marble, with the inscription, — " O Rare Bounce 1" LADY MARY WOETLEY MONTAGU. 423 was much attached to him, and of arming him self with pistols. " With pistols," he said, " the least man in England was above a match for the largest without." In the summer of 1739, Lady Mary proceeded to the continent, with the express intention of remaining an exile for the remainder of her life. As she was unaccompanied by her husband, and, moreover, as during the twenty-one following years which preceded the death of Mr. Wortley, they never again appear to have met, we may presume that they separated, either on account of domestic differences, or from increasin«r feel- ings of mutual distaste. Having, in the first instance, visited the classi cal scenes of Rome and Naples, Lady Mary hired a palace at Brescia, where, with the exception of He thought it possible, however, that it might he construed into disrespect towards Ben Jonson's memory, and the project was consequently dropped. Bounce, it ma y be remarked, is the hero of Gay's " Epistle from Bounce to Fop, from a dog at Twicken ham to a dog at Court.'"* Bounce is there made to exclaim : — " My eldest born resides not far, Where shines great Strafford's glittering star; My second (child of Fortune) waits At Burlington's palladian gates ; A third majestically stalks (Happiest of dogs) in Cobham's walks ; One ushers friends to Bathurst s door, One fawns at Oxford's on the poor. Nobles, whom arms or arts adorn, Wait for my infants yet unborn; None but a peer of wit and grace Can hope a puppy of my race." 424 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. occasional visits to Genoa, Padua, and Florence, she continued chiefly to reside till her death. About a twelvemonth after she quitted England, Horace Walpole, who was occasionally thrown into her society at Florence, draws a curious picture of her appearance and habits, as she presented her self in her fifty-first year. In a letter, addressed to the Hon. H. S. Conway, dated 25th Septem ber, 1740, he writes, — " Did I tell you Lady Mary is here ? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence, must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks that hang loose, never combed or curled ; an old mazarine- blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvass petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a ,* partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney." To those, whose imaginations have pictured Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in no other light * It is needless, perhaps, to recal to the reader's memory the well-known couplet of Pope, in which there is the same in decent and scandalous allusion to the supposed effects of Lady Mary's frailty : — " From furious Sappho scarce a milder fate, 'd by her love, or libell'd by her hate." Imitations of Horace, Book ii. Satire 1. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 425 than as the charming possessor of wit and beauty, the effect of the foregoing passage will have been somewhat startling. Walpole, however, in a letter to Richard West, dated a fewr days after wards, again canvasses Lady Mary's failings, and with increased acrimony. After speaking of " a grave young man from Oxford," who, it appears, had rendered himself extremely popular with the Englishwomen residing at Florence, he proceeds; — "Lady Mary is so far gone, that to get him from the mouth of her antagonist [Lady Walpole], she literally took him out to dance country-dances last night at a formal ball, where there was no measure kept in laughing at her old, foul, tawdry, plastered personage. She played at faro two or three times, at Princess Crayon's, where she cheats horse and foot. She is really entertaining : I have been reading her works, which she lends out in manuscript, but they are too womanish.*' It is needless to remark, that Lady Mary's want of personal cleanliness is, on more than one occasion, severely satirized by Pope. In the Imitation of the First Epistle of the First Book of Horace we find : — " You laugh, half beau, half sloven if I stand, My wig all powder, and all snuff my band; You laugh, if coat and breeches strangely vary, White gloves, and linen, worthy Lady Mary;" And again, in the " Essay on Women": — •• Rufa, whose eye. quick glancing o'er the park, Attracts each light, gay meteor of a spark. 420 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho's diamonds witfi her dirty smock ; Or Sappho, at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at nn evening mask. So morning insects, that in muck begun. Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting sun." Pinkerton, in his amusing little work, the " Walpoliana," reports Horace Walpole to have said : — " Lady Wortley Montagu was a playfellow of mine when both were children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit continued with her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. One room sufficed for everything. When she went away, the stench was so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar for a week." W hat- ever credit is to be placed in the latter part of this passage, the assertion that Lady Mary and Horace Walpole were playfellows, is a ludicrous and unaccountable mistake. Walpole was born on the 5th of October, 1717, at least three years after Lady Mary had become a mother. Of the conversational wit of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu but few specimens have been handed down to us; the following, however, will serve as an illustration. Lady Sundon,* * Wife of William Clayton, Lord Sundon. The influence of the Duchess of Marlborough procured her introduction to Queen Caroline, who subsequently conferred upon her the ap pointments of woman of the bed-chamber and mistress of the robes. The secret of her influence over the Queen — an influ ence of which even Sir Robert Walpole himself was jealous,— is known to have been n discovery which she nuidc of the LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 427 mistress of the robes to Queen Caroline, and a great favourite with that princess, had been pre sented by Lord Pomfret with a magnificent pair of diamond ear-rings, valued at fourteen hundred pounds, as a bribe for having procured for him the appointment of master of the horse to the Queen. One day Lady Sundon happened to wear these suspicious jewels when on a visit to the old Duchess of Marlborough : when she had gone, — "What an impudent creature that is," said the Duchess, " to go about with her bribe in her ear !" — " Madam," replied Lady Mary, who was present, " how would you have people know where wine is sold, unless a sign is hung out to show them ?"* Queen being ruptured, an infirmity which hei Majesty was morbidly anxious to conceal. Lady Sundon is accused on more than one occasion of having turned her court influence to pecu niary advantage. She once, in the enthusiasm of vanity and success, proposed to Sir Robert Walpole to unite their several interests, and govern the kingdom together. Sir Robert bowed and begged her patronage, but remarked that he thought no one fit to govern the kingdom but the King and Queen. Another anecdote is related of Lady Sundon by Horace Walpole. " One day Sir Robert was at dinner with Lady Sundon, who hated the Bishop of London, as much as she loved the Church : ' Well,' said she to Sir Robert, ' how does your Pope do ? ' — ' Madam,' replied he, ' he is my Pope, and shall be my Pope ; everybody has some Pope or other ; don't you know that you are one ? They call you Pope Joan.' She flew into a passion, and desired he would not fix any names on her ; that they were not so easily got rid of." — Horace Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 126. * Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 124. Walpole's Reminiscences, p. 71. 428 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Apparently, we have been deprived of some of the wittiest of Lady Mary's letters in conse quence of their discussing subjects, and record ing anecdotes totally unfit for publication. Dr. Young, the author of the " Night Thoughts," is said, a short time before his death, to have destroyed a large number of her letters ; alleg ing as his motive, that they were too indecent to meet the public eye. During the last years of Lady Mary's life, she suffered constant annoyance and anxiety from the vices and follies of her only son, whose eccentri cities were carried to the verge of insanity. Of this singular personage, a brief notice may per haps be acceptable to the reader. Edward Wortley Montagu was born at Wharncliffe- Lodge in Yorkshire, about the year 1714. Distinguished in his youth by an utter disregard of truth, and a dislike to wholesome control, his first exploit was to run away from Westminster School, and enter the service of a chimney-sweeper. From his long and unaccount able absence, his family had given him up as lost, when a gentleman happened to recognize his face in the streets, and succeeded in restoring him to his friends. Wedded, however, to a vagabond life, he contrived to elope a second time, and, on this occasion, engaged himself as an apprentice to *the master of a fishing-smack. He subsequently shipped himself on board a vessel bound for Spain, and in that country served for some time as a muleteer : however, he was again discovered LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 429 and brought back to his friends, by whom he was placed under the charge of a private tutor, and subsequently sent to travel on the continent. But neither his restoration to civilized society, nor the watchful care of his tutor, had the slightest effect in giving stability to his character, or improving his mind. At one time we find him affecting to be a religious enthusiast; and at another, engaged in philosophical speculations. He made himself further conspicuous by con tracting a very improvident marriage with a woman of low birth, whom he deserted in a few weeks ; he was always in debt and in scrapes, and in whatever town abroad he took up his residence, he speedily made himself notorious by his eccentricities. In the month of June, 1742, Lady Mary had an interview with her son at Valence, «f which, in one of her letters to her husband, she gives the following interesting account: — "I am just re turned from passing two days with our son, of whom I will give you the most exact account I am capable of. He is so much altered in person I should scarcely have known him. He has en tirely lost his beauty, and looks at least seven years older than he did ; and the wildness that he always had in his eyes is so much increased, it is downright shocking, and, I am afraid will end fatally. He is grown fat, but he is still genteel, and has an air of politeness that is agreeable. He speaks French like a Frenchman, and has got all the fashionable expressions of that language, and 430 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. a volubility of words which he always had, and which I do not wonder should pass for wit with inconsiderate people. His behaviour is perfectly civil, and I found him very submissive ; but in the main, no way really improved in his under standing, which is exceedingly weak ; and I am convinced he will always be led by the person he converses with, either right or wrong, not being capable of forming any fixed judgment of his own. As to his enthusiasm, if he had it, I sup pose he has already lost it ; since I could perceive no turn of it in all his conversation. But, with his head, I believe it is possible to make him a Monk one day, and a Turk three days after. He has a flattering, insinuating manner, which na turally prejudices strangers in his favour. He began to talk to me in the usual silly cant I have so often heard from him, which I shortened by telling him I desired not to be troubled with it ; that professions were of no use where actions were expected ; and that the only thing that could give me hopes of a good conduct was regularity and truth." Lady Mary concludes her letter : — " The rest of his conversation was extremely gay. The various things he has seen have given him a superficial universal knowledge. He really knows most of the modern languages ; and if I could believe him, can read Arabic and has read the Bible in Hebrew. He said it was impossible for him to avoid going back to Paris; but he promised me to lie but one night there, and to go to a town six posts from thence, on the Flanders LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 431 road, where he would wait your orders." It seems by a subsequent letter of Lady Mary, that Mr. Montagu, who was travelling under the assumed name of Mons. du Durand, had given her the " most solemn assurances" that no human being should know of their meeting at Valence- " Yet," she adds, " he rode straight to Monteli- mart, where he told at the assembly that he came into this country purely on my orders, and that I had stayed with him two days at Orange ; talking much of my kindness to him, and insinuating that he had another name, much more consider able than that he appeared with." About the end of 1747, Mr. Montagu obtained a seat in Parliament, as member for Huntingdon ; and four years afterwards, we find him achieving increased notoriety by suffering imprisonment with Mr. Taaffe, another member of Parliament, in the Grand Chatelet at Paris,* on the charge of cheating and robbing a Jew. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann, on the 22nd of November, 1751, — "All the letters from Paris have been very cautious of relating the circum stances. The outlines are, that these two gentle men, who were faro -bankers to Madame de Mirepoix, had travelled to France to exercise the same profession, where it is supposed they cheated a Jew, who would afterwards have cheated them of the money he owed, and that, to secure pay ment, they broke open his lodgings and bureau, * For Mr. Montagu's own account of this strange affair, see Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 629. 432 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. and seized jewels and other effects ; that he ac cused them ; that they were taken out of their beds at two o'clock in the morning ; kept in dif ferent prisons, without fire or candle, for six-and- thirty hours ; have since been released on ex cessive bail ; are still to be tried ; may be sent to the galleys or dismissed home, where they will be reduced to keep the best company ; for I suppose nobody else will converse with them. Their separate anecdotes are curious : Wortley, you know, has been a perfect Gil Bias." Horace Walpole writes the same year to Sir Horace Mann, — " Our greatest miracle is Lady Mary Wortley's son, whose adventures have made so much noise. His parts are not propor tionate, but his expense is incredible. His father scarce allows him anything, yet he plays, dresses, diamonds himself, and has more snuff-boxes than would suffice a Chinese idol with a hundred noses. But the most curious part of his dress, which he has brought from Paris, is an iron wig : you literally would not know it from hair : I believe it is on this account, that the Royal Society have just chosen him of their body." At a later period, Mr. Montagu fixed his abode in Egypt, where he resided several years. While in that country he adopted the dress and habits, and, apparently, the religion of the Turks ; taking especial care to avail himself of the advantage of the plurality of wives, which is permitted by the Mahomedan code. On the death of his father in 1761, Mr. Mon- LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 433 tagu could scarcely be astonished at finding him self disinherited. The family estate, which should properly have descended to him, was bequeathed to the children of his sister, Lady Bute, with the especial proviso, however, that should he leave an heir born in marriage, the estate should return to that child. For fifteen years Mr. Montagu ap pears to have quietly succumbed to the will of the departed. A short time, however, before his own decease, being then resident at Venice, he caused (through the medium, it is said, of his friend Romney, the painter) the following extraordinary advertisement to be inserted in the " Public Ad vertiser" of the 16th of April, 1776 :— " A gentleman who has filled two successive seats in Parliament ; is nearly sixty years of age ; lives in great splendour and hospitality ; and from whom a considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue ; hath no objection to marry a widow or single lady, provided the party be of genteel birth, polite manners, and is five or six months gone in her pregnancy. Letters directed to — Brecknock, Esq. at Will's Coffee-house, will be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every mark of respect." In London, as in all great cities, money will purchase anything, and a rich man has only to make known his wishes, to have them gratified. Lord Wharncliffe, Mr. Montagu's great-nephew, informs us, — " It has always been believed in the family that this advertisement was successful, and that a woman, having the qualifications required vol. n. 2 F 434 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. by it, was actually sent to Paris, to meet Mr. E. Wortley, who got so far as Lyons, on his way thither : there, however, while eating a beccafico for supper, a bone stuck in his throat, and occa sioned his death." Before closing our notices of Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, it may be re marked that he united the character of an author to his other eccentricities. In addition to some " Observations on the Rise and Fall of the Ro man Empire," in which his tutor was thought to have had the principal share, he was unquestion ably the writer of some " Observations on Earth quakes,1' as well as an account of the " Written Mountains in Arabia," which were published in the Philosophical Transactions. Of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu but little remains to be said. After an absence from her native country of twenty-two years, she returned to England, on the death of her husband,* and had the satisfaction to find that her literary repu- * Horace Walpole writes to George Montagu on the 7th of February, 1761, — " Have you heard what immense riches old Wortley has left ? One million three hundred and fifty-thou sand pounds ! It is all to centre in my Lady Bute ; her hus band is one of Fortune's prodigies." Walpole's Letters, vol. iv. p. 140. Gray also writes about the same period, — " You see old Wortley Montagu is dead at last, at eighty-three. It was not mere avarice, and its companion abstinence, that kept him alive so long. He every day drank, I think it was, half a pint of tokay, which he imported himself from Hungary in greater quantity than he could use, and sold the overplus for any price he chose to set upon it. He has left better than half a million of money." Gray's Works, vol. iii. p. 272. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 435 tation had not faded, and that she was still an object of curiosity to the world. Horace Wal pole writes to George Montagu, on the 2nd of February, 1762, — "Lady Mary Wortley is ar rived ; I have seen her : I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a galimatias of seve ral countries ; the ground-work rags, and the embroidery, nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-laced hood represents the first ; the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second ; a dimity petti coat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth ; and slippers act the part of the last."* Her family inform us that she had acquired foreign tastes and foreign habits, and consequently the exchange from the gloomy magnificence of an Italian pa lace, to a small, three-storied house, in the neigh bourhood of Hanover-square, appears to have been almost as striking as it was inconvenient. " I am most handsomely lodged," she said, " for I have two very decent closets, and a cupboard on each floor." Lady Mary survived her return to England only ten months. She had for some time been afflicted with a cancer in the breast, the ravages of which terminated her life on the 21st of Au gust, 1762, in the seventy-third year of her age. * Walpole's Letters, vol. iv. p. 203. 436 MARY BELLENDEN. Daughter of the second Lord Bellenden. — At an early age ap pointed Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales Her great vivacity and wit. — Horace Walpole's description of her. — Extract from Gay's " Welcome to Pope." — George the Second's admiration of her. — Anecdotes. — Her private mar riage in 1720 to Colonel Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle. — Specimen of her epistolary style from the Suffolk Correspondence. — Period of her death. — Enumeration of her family. This lively and beautiful woman was a daugh ter of John, second Lord Bellenden, by Mary, daughter of Henry Moore, first Earl of Drog- heda, and widow of William Ramsay, third Earl of Dalhousie. At an early age she was appointed a Maid of Honour to Queen Caroline, then Prin cess of Wales, at whose Court, with the single exception of her beautiful friend, Mary Lepel, there was no one who rivalled her in wit, and few who approached her in loveliness. The names of the two friends are frequently associ ated together. Gay says, in his ballad of "Damon and Cupid :" " So well I 'm known at Court, None ask where Cupid dwells ; But readily resort, To Bellenden's or Lepel's." MARY BELLENDEN. 437 Horace Walpole speaks of Miss Bellenden, as having been " exquisitely beautiful " ; and, in noticing various persons connected with the Court of George the First, he observes, — " Above all, for universal admiration, was Miss Bellenden. Her face and person were charming ; lively she was almost to etourderie, and so agreeable was she, that I never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries, who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew." Gay in his "Welcome to Pope from Greece," commemorates her with her sister Margaret : " Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land, And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down." And as regards her character for liveliness, we find in a ballad of the period : " But Bellenden we needs must praise, Who, as down stairs she jumps, Sings ' over the hills and far away', Despising doleful dumps." George the Second, when Prince of Wales, is said to have entertained a stronger passion for Miss Bellenden, than he had been known to feel for any other woman except his own wife. " Miss Bellenden," says Walpole, " by no means felt a reciprocal passion. The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate; and his avarice disgusted her. One evening, sitting by her, he took out his purse, and counted his money. He repeated the numeration : the giddy Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out, 438 MARY BELLENDEN. — * Sir, I cannot bear it : if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room :' the chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of his Royal Highness." On another occasion, when the Prince was counting his money in her presence, her feelings of disgust are said so entirely to have mastered her respect for royalty, that, by a sudden motion, either of her foot, or hand, she scattered his gui neas about the floor, and contrived to escape from the apartment while he was eagerly employed in picking them up. Nor are these the only evi dences of the slighting manner in which she treated her royal lover. In one of her letters to Mrs. Howard, speaking of the recent introduc tion of a new maid of honour at Court, she says : " I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back : and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms, as I did to the Prince, and told him I was not cold, but I liked to stand so."* At the period when Miss Bellenden was sub jected to the addresses of the Prince, her heart was engaged to another. This circumstance was subsequently discovered by the Prince, who, however, with much generosity of feeling, as sured her that if she would promise not to marry without his knowledge he would not only con sent to the match, but would extend his regard * Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. 62. MARY BELLENDEN. 439 to her husband. Miss Bellenden gave the re quired promise, but without discovering the name of her lover. It seems, however, that she sub sequently repented of the pledge, and fearing lest the Prince should throw some insurmountable obstacle in the way of her marriage, privately gave her hand to Colonel John Campbell, after wards fourth Duke of Argyle, to whom she was married in 1720. The Prince was naturally provoked and an noyed at this implied suspicion of his good faith ; so much so, that whenever Mrs. Campbell entered the drawing-room at Leicester House, it was his custom to step up to her and whisper some un pleasant reproach in her ear. His anger, how ever, was certainly not extended towards her husband. He not only retained him in his post of groom of the bed-chamber, but continued him in the appointment on his own accession to the throne. A few of Mrs. Campbell's letters have recently been published among the Suffolk Correspond ence; but, in regard to the wit which might have been expected from the character of the writer, they are even more disappointing than those of her beautiful friend, Mary Lepel. Of these letters, the following one, though some what tainted by the indelicacy of the age, affords the liveliest, and, unquestionably, the most cha racteristic specimen : — 440 MARY BELLENDEN. To Mrs. Howard. " Bath, 1720. " O Gad, I am so sick of bills, for my part I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts: — bills are accounts, you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but I am sure mine are not dropped, for I have paid one this morning as long as my arm, and as broad as my . I intend to send you a letter of attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I can leave this place — such is my condition. I was in hopes to have found the good effects of your present ; but I have found nothing to brag of but your goodness, which is always more than my desert. I am just a-going to the King's garden — I wish to God it belonged to my Lord Mayor, as the saying is. Pray give my duty to my grandmother, and tell her T love her, and wish her the desert of the g ", and prosperity of the wicked. My dear Howard, God bless you, and send health and liberty. Don't show this, I charge you, at your peril." Of Mrs. Campbell, from the period of her marriage, we know little but that she main tained her character for good sense and unspot ted virtue. Of the date of her decease also we have no record, but it would seem that her ex istence was scarcely prolonged beyond middle age. By Colonel Campbell, she was the mother of five children :— John, fifth Duke of Argyle; MARY BELLENDEN. 441 Henry, killed at the battle of La Feldt ; William, who represented the county of Argyle, and who was a captain in the navy ; Frederick, member for Rutherglen, and a councillor at law ; and Caroline, who married, first, Charles Bruce, Earl of Aylesbury, and afterwards the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, the relation and correspondent of Horace Walpole. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. LONDON J Pllltlrtl llV S, Hi .). ItlUVIM.Y, Wii.non, mid Kl Him^ir IIou«i3, Hhoo Luiki.