quality ascribed to riches in general, of making unto themselves wings and flying away, but of flying in a direction that can neither be traced, nor even guessed at. He endeavours also to vindicate him, respecting the charge of being negligent in the encouragement of literature; but in so doing, he speaks himself of literary men with that flippant unconsciousness of either their importance or their deserts, which he continually betrayed in his intercourse with them; and of which his treatment of Chatterton must always be remembered as a most disgraceful instance. His character, indeed, too much resembled the sparkling frost-work of Fontenelle's. In the whole course of these Memoirs he is only twice hurried into any thing like warmth of feeling: once when he speaks of the treatment of the Duke of Cumberland, by his royal father, respecting the campaign in Germany; and again on the conduct of government, with regard to Admiral Byng, whose death he justly styles "a perfect tragedy, for there were variety of incidents, villainy, murder, and a hero." Lord Orford always believed this unfortunate man to have been unjustly aspersed, maliciously condemned, and put to death contrary to all equity and precedent. The behaviour of the King, with respect to the Duke of Cumberland, exhibited a refinement of dissimulation that might bear comparison with the most notorious instances of that quality as practised by Queen Elizabeth, that mistress of the art, when it suited her purpose to blame those around her, rather than herself. The account of the transaction is extremely interesting. The avarice of the King was at the bottom of the whole affair; causing him secretly to prevent the duke from being supplied with troops sufficient to enable him to keep his ground in Germany: he was therefore compelled, after the battle of Hastenbecke, to submit to a suspension of arms, at which the King affected extraordinary indignation and surprise, though fully aware, all the time, that the measure was in itself unavoidable, circumstanced as his son was for want of supplies. When it was known in England, it caused a great commotion, and Lord Orford minutely relates the behaviour of the duke, under the trying circumstances in which his father's duplicity had placed him, concluding with the following observations: "A young prince, warm, greedy of military glory, yet resigning all his passions to the interested dictates of a father's pleasure, and then loaded with the imputation of having acted basely without authority; hurt with unmerited disgrace, yet never breaking out into the least unguarded expression; preserving dignity under oppression, and the utmost tenderness of duty under the utmost delicacy of honour-this is an uncommon picture-for the sake of human nature, I hope the conduct of the father is uncommon too! When the duke could tear himself from his favourite passion, the army, one may judge how sharply he must have been wounded. When afterwards the King, perfidiously enough, broke that famous convention, mankind were so equitable as to impute it to the same unworthy politics, not to the disapprobation he had pretended to feel on its being made. In a former part of this history I have said with regard to his eldest, that the King might have been an honest man, if he had never hated his father, or had ever loved his son-what double force has this truth, when it is again applied to him on his treachery to the best son that ever lived! Considering with what freedom I have spoken of the duke's faults in other parts of this work, I may be believed in the just praise bestowed on him here." It is indeed rarely that Lord Orford expresses himself thus; he was not apt to praise,-for this simple reason, that he was not apt to admire; and perhaps the only instance of his portrait-painting, wherein fidelity has been sacrificed to partiality, is in his own character, as traced by his own hand : "Walpole," says he, speaking of himself in the third person, “had a warm conception, vehement attachments, strong aversions; with an apparent coutradiction in his temper-for he had numerous caprices, and invincible perseverance. His principles tended to republicanism, but without any of its austerity; his love of faction was unmixed with any aspiring. He had great sense of honour, but not great enough, for he had too much weakness to resist doing wrong, though too much sensibility not to feel it in others. He had a great measure of pride, equally apt to resent neglect, and scorning to stoop to any meanness or flattery. A boundless friend; a bitter, but a placable enemy. His humour was satyric, though accompanied with a most compassionate heart. Indiscreet and abandoned to his passions, it seemed as if he despised or could bear no restraint; yet this want of government of himself was the more blameable, as nobody had greater command of resolution when. ever he made a point of it. This appeared in his person: naturally very delicate, and educated with too fond a tenderness, by unrelaxed temperance and braving all inclemency of weathers, he formed and enjoyed the firmest and unabated health. One virtue he possessed in a singular degree-disinterestedness and contempt of money-if one may call that a virtue, which really was a passion. In short, such was his promptness to dislike superiors, such his humanity to inferiors, that, considering how few men are of so firm a texture as not to be influenced by their situation, he thinks, if he may be allowed to judge of himself, that had either extreme of fortune been his lot, he should have made a good prince, but not a very honest slave." The compassionate heart, and contempt of money, of which the noble author accuses himself in this delineation, must be adduced as a proof in favour of the truth of that maxim, which holds, that all persons are most anxious to assume the appearance of those qualifications which they are conscious they least possess. It was probably the complacency with which he viewed himself, that prevented Lord Orford from being dazzled with striking qualities in any other person. He professes to have known, in his own time, only five great men, viz. the Duke of Cumberland, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Granville, Lord Mansfield, and Mr. Pitt. The characters of these personages he delineates and contrasts in a very lively manner : "Lord Granville was most a genius of the five: he conceived, knew, expressed, whatever he pleased. The state of Europe and the state of literature were equally familiar to him. His eloquence was rapid, and flowed from a source of wit, grandeur, and knowledge. So far from premeditated, he allowed no reflection to chasten it. It was entertaining, it was sublime, it was hyperbole, it was ridiculous, according as the profusion of ideas crouded from him. He embraced systems like a legislator, but was capable of none of the detail of a magistrate. Sir Robert Walpole was much the reverse: he knew mankind, not their writings; he consulted their interests, not their systems; he intended their happiness, not their grandeur. Whatever was beyond common sense, he disregarded. Lord Mansfield, without the elevation of Lord Granville, had great powers of eloquence. It was a most accurate understanding, and yet capable of shining in whatever it was applied to. He was as free from vice as Pitt, more unaffected, and formed to convince, even where Pitt had dazzled. The Duke of Cumberland had most expressive sense, but with that connection between his sense and sensibility, that you must mortify his pride before you could call out the radiance of his understanding. Being placed at the head of armies without the shortest apprentice ship, no wonder he miscarried: it is cruel to have no other master than one's own faults. Pitt's was an unfinished greatness: considering how much of it depended on his words, one may almost call his an artificial greatness; but his passion for fame and the grandeur of his ideas compensated for his defects. He aspired to redeem the honour of his country, and to place it in a point of giving law to nations. His ambition was to be the most illustrious man of the first country in Europe; and he thought that the eminence of glory could not be sullied, by the steps to it being passed irregularly. He wished to aggrandize Britain in general, but thought not of obliging or benefitting individuals. Lord Granville you loved till you knew him; Sir Robert Walpole, the more you knew him: you would have loved the duke, if you had not feared him. Pitt liked the dignity of despotism; Lord Mansfield the reality: yet the latter would have served the cause of power, without sharing it: Pitt would have set the world free, if he might not command it. Lord Granville would have preferred doing right, if he had not thought it more convenient to do wrong: Sir Robert Walpole meaned to serve mankind, though he knew how little they deserved it-and this principle is at once the most ineritorious in one's self and to the world." One of the most amusing personages of that day was the facetious George Bubb, who afterwards added to his name the more lofty-sounding one of Doddington, with the agreeable appendage of a suitable estate. Before this event took place, he had complained to Lord Chesterfield of his name carrying with it an idea of insignificance, on account of its shortness, and continued, that he had serious thoughts of changing it for a longer: "you might lengthen your own," replied his lordship, "by calling yourself Silly Bubb.' "Soon after the arrival,” says Lord Orford, "of Frederick Prince of Wales in England, Doddington became a favourite, and submitted to the prince's childish horse-play, being once rolled up in a blanket, and trundled down stairs; nor was he negligent in paying more solid court, by lending his royal highness money. He was, however, supplanted, I think, by George, afterwards Lord Lyttleton, and again became a courtier and placeman at St. James's; but once more reverted to the prince at the period where his Diary commences. Pope was not the only poet who diverted the town at Doddington's expence. Sir Charles Hanbury ridiculed him in a well-known dialogue with Gyles Earle, and in a ballad entitled “A Grub upon Bubb." Dr. Young, on the contrary, who was patronized by him, has dedicated to him one of his satires on the love of fame, as Lyttelton had inscribed one of his cantos on the progress of love. Glover, and that prostitute fellow Ralph, were also countenanced by him, as the Diary shews. Doddington's own wit was very ready. I will mention two instances. Lord Sundon was commissioner of the Treasury with him and Winnington, and was very dull. One Thursday, as they left the board, Lord Sundon laughed heartily at something Doddington said; and when gone, Winnington said, Doddington, you are very ungrateful; you call Sundon stupid and slow, and yet you see how quick he took what you said.' 'Oh no,' 'replied Doddington, he was only laughing now at what I said last treasury day.'Mr. Trenchard, a neighbour, telling him, that though his pinery was expensive, he contrived, by applying the fire and the dung to other purposes, to make it so advantageous, that he believed he got a shilling by every pine-apple he ate.' 'Sir,' said Doddington, I would eat them for half the money.— Doddington was married to a Mrs. Behan, whom he was supposed to keep. Though secretly married, he could not own her, as he then did, till the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, to whom he had given a promise of marriage, under the penalty of ten thousand pounds. He had long made love to the latter, and, at last, obtaining an assignation, found her lying on a couch. However, he only fell on his knees, and after kissing her hand for some time, cried out, Oh that I had you but in a wood!' In a wood!' exclaimed the disappointed dame; What would you do then? Would you rob me?' It was on this Mrs. Strawbridge that was made the ballad My Strawberry-my strawberry Shall bear away the bell.' To the burthen and tune of which Lord Bath many years afterwards wrote his song on Strawberry-hill.' "Doddington had no children. His estate descended to Lord Temple whom he hated, as he did Lord Chatham, against whom he wrote a pamphlet to expose the expedition to Rochfort. "Nothing was more glaring in Doddington than his want of taste, and the tawdry ostentation in his dress and furniture of his houses. At Eastberry, in the great bedchamber, hung with the richest red velvet, was pasted, on every pannel of the velvet, his crest (a hunting-horn supported by an eagle) cut out of gilt leather. The foot-cloth round the bed was a mosaick of the pocketflaps and cuffs of all his embroidered clothes. At Hammersmith his crest, in pebbles, was stuck into the centre of the turf before his door. The chimneypiece was hung with spars representing icicles round the fire, and a bed of purple, lined with orange, was crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers. The great gallery, to which was a beautiful door of white marble, supported by two columns of lapis lazuli, was not only filled with busts and statues, but had, I think, an inlaid floor of marble; and all this weight was above stairs. "One day shewing it to Edward, Duke of York, Doddington said, Sir, some persons tell me that this room ought to be on the ground.' 'Be easy, Mr. Doddington,' replied the prince, it will soon be there.' Doddington was very lethargic: falling asleep one day, after dinner, with Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, the general, the latter reproached Doddington with his drowsiness; Doddington denied having been asleep, and to prove he had not, offered to repeat all Lord Cobham had been saying. Cobham challenged him to do so. Doddington repeated a story, and Lord Cobham owned he had been telling it. Well,' said Doddington, and yet I did not hear a word of it; but I went to sleep because I knew that about this time of day you would tell that story.' Lord Waldegrave has said in his Memoirs, that those who could lift the veil from the privacy of royalty, would not envy its hours of retirement; and the picture he has drawn of the independence of George the Second and the pleasures of his court is reflected in these pages, in colours that offer no temptation to the eye to dwell upon it. So little power had the King to consult his own inclinations, that for two years he was unable even to promote Dr. Thomas, the preceptor of his grandson, to the preferment he wished; and when General Ligonier offered him the nomination to a living in his gift, he warmly thanked him, expressing the utmost joy and gratitude, and saying, "There is one I have long tried to make a prebendary, but my ministers never would give me an opportunity; I am much obliged to you; I will give the living to him.' (Vol. i. p. 255.) To shew, however, that the walls of a palace may occasionally immure characters of as many virtues as few enjoyments, we will close these extracts with the following account of the Princess Caroline, the King's third daughter, who died December 28th, 1757. "She had been the favorite of the Queen, who preferred her understanding to those of all her other daughters, and whose partiality she returned with duty, gratitude, affection, and concern. Being in ill health at the time of her mother's death, the Queen told her she would follow her in less than a year. The princess received the notice as a prophecy; and though she lived many years after it had proved a vain one, she quitted the world, and persevered in the closest retreat, and in constant and religious preparation for the grave; a moment she so eagerly desired, that when something was once proposed to her, to which she was averse, she said, I would not do it to die! To this impression of melancholy had contributed the loss of Lord Hervey, for whom she had conceived an unalterable passion, constantly marked afterwards by all kind and generous offices to his children. For many years she was totally an invalid, and shut herself up in two chambers in the inner part of St. James's, from whence she could not see a single object. In this monastic retirement, with no company but of the King, the Duke, Princess Emily, and a few of the most intimate of the court, she led, not an unblameable life only, but a meritorious one: her whole income was dispensed between generosity and charity; and, till her death by shutting up the current discovered the source, the jails of London did not suspect that the best support of their wretched inhabitants was issued from the palace. "From the last Sunday to the Wednesday on which she died, she declined seeing her family; and when the mortification began, and the pain ceased, she said, I feared I should not have died of this!"" THE FIRST OF MARCH. THE bud is in the bough and the leaf is in the bud, How awful the thought of the wonders underground, Is commission'd to remark whether Winter holds her sway; Go back, thou dove of peace, with the myrtle on thy wing, Say that floods and tempests cease, and the world is ripe for Spring. The forest seems to listen for the rustle of its leaves, Thy vivifying spell has been felt beneath the wave, By the dormouse in its cell, and the mole within its cave, H. |