EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 VIGNETTES 
 
 SECOND SERIES
 
 EIGHTEENTH 
 ~ CENTURY 
 
 VIGNETTES 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 BY 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON 
 
 ' Homines quidem pereunt : 
 ipsa humanitas permanet' 
 
 NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD 
 AND COMPANY .... 1894
 
 rt; 
 
 Copyright, 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 
 
 j4// rights reserved. 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 TO 
 
 WALTER BESANT 
 
 IN FRIENDLY RECOGNITION OF HIS MANY SERVICES 
 TO 
 
 Setters anti ffien of Hetters 
 
 THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 the twelve papers comprised in this second 
 series of ' Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 
 three appeared in ' Longman's Magazine, 1 two 
 in ' Scribner's Magazine,' two in the ' Magazine 
 of Art,' one in ' Temple Bar,' one in the ' Eng- 
 lish Illustrated Magazine,' one in the 'Studio,' 
 and one (in part) in the ' Graphic.' All of 
 these have now been minutely revised, and 
 in some cases considerably expanded. The 
 remaining essay on ' Lady Mary Coke,' having 
 been the last written, has not hitherto been 
 printed.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 7 
 
 Ax 'TULLY'S HEAD' 28 
 
 RICHARDSON AT HOME 57 
 
 LITTLE ROUBILLAC' 84 
 
 NIVERNAIS IN ENGLAND 107 
 
 THE TOPOGRAPHY OF 'HUMPHRY CLINKER' . . 138 
 
 THE PRISONERS' CHAPLAIN 168 
 
 JOHNSON'S LIBRARY 187 
 
 THE Two PAYNES 199 
 
 THE BERLIN HOGARTH 211 
 
 LADY MARY COKE 233 
 
 RANELAGH 269 
 
 EPILOGUE 291
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES. 
 
 THE JOURNAL TO STELLA. 
 
 A DIM light was burning in the back room 
 * of a first-floor in Bury Street, St. James's. 
 The apartment it irradiated was not an extensive 
 one ; and the furniture, sufficient rather than 
 sumptuous, had that indefinable lack of physiog- 
 nomy which only lodging-house furniture seems 
 to possess. There was no fireplace ; but in the 
 adjoining parlour, partly visible through the open 
 door, the last embers were dying in a grate from 
 which the larger pieces of coal had been care- 
 fully lifted out and ranged in order on the hobs. 
 Across the heavy high-backed chairs in the bed- 
 room lay various neatly-folded garments, one 
 of which was the black gown with pudding 
 sleeves commonly worn in public by the eigh- 
 teenth-century divine, while at the bottom of the 
 bed hung a clerical-looking periwig. In the bed
 
 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 itself, and leaning toward a tall wax candle at 
 his side (which, from a faint smell of singed 
 woollen still lingering about the chamber, must 
 recently have come into contact with the now 
 tucked-back bed-curtain), was a gentleman of 
 forty or thereabouts, writing in a very small 
 hand upon a very large sheet of paper, folded, 
 for greater convenience, into one long horizontal 
 slip. He had dark, fierce-looking eyebrows, an 
 aquiline nose, full-lidded and rather prominent 
 clear blue eyes, a firmly-cut, handsome mouth, 
 and a wide, massive forehead, the extent of 
 which was, for the moment, abnormally exagger- 
 ated by the fact that, in the energy of composi- 
 tion, the fur-lined cap he had substituted for his 
 wig had been slightly tilted backward. As his 
 task proceeded, his expression altered from time 
 to time ; now growing grave and stern, now 
 inexpressibly soft and tender. Occasionally the 
 look almost passed into a kind of grimace, 
 resembling nothing so much as the imitative 
 motion of the lips which one makes in speaking 
 to a pet bird. He continued writing until, in 
 the distance, the step of the watchman first 
 pausing deliberately, then moving slowly forward 
 for a few paces was heard in the street below. 
 ' Past twelve o'clock ! ' came a wheezy cry at 
 the window. ' Paaaaast twelvvve o'clock 1 '
 
 The Journal to Stella. 9 
 
 followed the writer, dragging out his letters so 
 as to reproduce the speaker's drawl. After this, 
 he rapidly set down a string of words in what 
 looked like some unknown tongue, ending off 
 with a trail of seeming hieroglyphics : ' Nile, 
 noivn deelest sollahs. Nile dee lilt MD, Pdfrs 
 MD. Rove Pdfr, poo Pdfr, MD MD MD FW 
 FW FW Lele Lele Lele Lele michar MD: 1 
 Then, tucking his paper under his pillow, he 
 popped out the guttering candle, and turning 
 round upon his side with a smile of exceeding 
 sweetness, settled himself to sleep. 
 
 The personage thus depicted was Jonathan 
 Swift, Doctor of Divinity, vicar of Laracor by 
 Trim, in the diocese of Meath in the kingdom 
 of Ireland, and Prebendary of Dunlavin in St. 
 Patrick's Cathedral. He had not been long in 
 London, having but recently come over at the 
 suggestion of Dr. William King, Archbishop of 
 Dublin, to endeavour to obtain for the Irish 
 clergy the remission, already conceded to their 
 English brethren, of the First Fruits and Twen- 
 tieths payable to the Crown ; and he was writing 
 off, or up, his daily record of his doings to Mrs. 
 Rebecca Dingley and Mrs. Esther Johnson, two 
 
 1 ' Sollahs' = Sirrahs ; ' MD,' Stella, or My Dear, but 
 sometimes Stella-cum-Dingley ; ' Pdfr,' Swift ; ' FW, 1 
 Farewell, or Foolish Wenches ; ' Lele ' is doubtful.
 
 io Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 maiden ladies, who, in his absence from the Irish 
 Capital, were temporarily occupying his lodgings 
 in Capel Street. At this date he must have been 
 looking his best, for Pope's friend, Charles 
 Jervas, who had painted him two years earlier, 
 found him grown so much fatter and better for 
 his sojourn in Ireland, that he volunteered to re- 
 touch the portrait. He has given it ' quite 
 another turn,' Swift tells his correspondents, 
 ' and now approves it entirely.' Nearly twenty 
 years later Alderman Barber presented this very 
 picture to the Bodleian, where it is still to be 
 seen ; and it is, besides, familiar to the collector 
 in George Vertue's fine engraving. But even 
 more interesting than the similitude of Swift in 
 the fulness of his ungratified ambition are the 
 letters we have seen him writing. With one 
 exception, those of them which were printed, 
 and garbled, by his fatuous namesake, Mrs. 
 Whiteway's son-in-law, are destroyed or lost ; 
 but all the latter portion (again with exception 
 of one), which Hawkesworth, a more consci- 
 entious, though by no means an irreproachable 
 editor, gave to the world in 1766, are preserved 
 in the MSS. Department of the British Museum, 
 having fortunately been consigned in the same 
 year by their confederated publishers to the safe 
 keeping of that institution? They still bear, in
 
 The Journal to Stella. 1 1 
 
 many cases, the little seal (a classic female head) 
 with which, after addressing them in laboriously 
 legible fashion ' To Mrs. Dingley, at Mr. 
 Curry's House, over against the Ram in Capel 
 Street, Dublin, Ireland,' Swift was wont to 
 fasten up his periodical despatches. Several of 
 them are written on quarto paper with faint 
 gilding at the edges the 'pretty small gilt 
 sheet ' to which he somewhere refers ; but the 
 majority are on a wide folio page crowded from 
 top to bottom with an extremely minute and 
 often abbreviated script, 1 which must have tried 
 other eyes besides those of Esther Johnson. ' I 
 looked over a bit of my last letter,' he says him- 
 self on one occasion, ' and could hardly read it.' 
 Elsewhere, in one of the epistles now lost, he 
 counts up no fewer than one hundred and ninety- 
 nine lines ; and in another of those that remain, 
 taken at a venture, there are on the first side 
 sixty-nine lines, making, in the type of Scott's 
 edition, rather more than five octavo pages. As 
 for the ' little language ' which produced the 
 facial contortions above referred to (' When I 
 am writing in our language I make up my mouth 
 
 1 In his ' Letter to a Young Clergyman,' he hints at the 
 cause of this, when he warns his correspondent against 
 writing his sermons in too small a hand, ' from a habit of 
 saving time and paper .... acquired at the university.'
 
 12 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 just as if I was speaking '), it has been sadly 
 mutilated by Hawkesworth's editorial pen. 
 Many of the passages which he struck through 
 were, with great ingenuity, restored by the late 
 John Forster, from whom, at the beginning of 
 this paper, we borrowed a few of those recovered 
 hieroglyphs. But the bulk of their ' huge baby- 
 isms ' and ' dear diminutives ' are almost too 
 intimate and particular for the rude publicities 
 of type. ' Dans ce ravissant opera quon appelle 
 ramour,' says Victor Hugo, ' le libretto nest 
 presque rieri 1 ; and if for ' amour ' we read 
 ' ami/iV, 1 the adapted aphorism is not untrue of 
 Swift's famous special code to Stella. 
 
 There can, however, be no question as to the 
 pleasure with which Swift's communications 
 must have been welcomed by the two ladies at 
 Capel Street, not occupied, as was the writer of 
 them, with the ceaseless bustle of an unusually 
 busy world, but restricted to such minor dissi- 
 pations as a little horse exercise, or a quiet game 
 of ombre at Dean Sterne's, with the modest 
 refreshment of claret and toasted oranges. 
 Swift's unique and wonderful command of his 
 mother tongue has never been shown to such 
 advantage as in these familiar records, abound- 
 ing in proverbs and folk-lore invented ad hoc, 
 in puns good and bad, in humour, irony,
 
 The Journal to Stella. 13 
 
 common sense, and playfulness. One can 
 imagine with what eagerness the large sheet 
 must have been unfolded and read not all at 
 once, but in easy stages by Mrs. Dingley to 
 the impatient Mrs. Johnson, for whom it was 
 primarily intended, but whose eyes were too 
 weak to decipher it. Yet, for the modern 
 student, the ' Journal to Stella,' taken as a 
 whole, scarcely achieves the success which its 
 peculiar attributes would lead one to anticipate. 
 It remains, as must always be remembered, 
 strictly a journal, with a journal's defects. There 
 is a deficiency of connected interest ; there is 
 also a predominance of detail. Regarded in the 
 light of an historical picture, it is like Hogarth's 
 ' March to Finchley ' : the crowd in the fore- 
 ground obscures the central action. It treats, 
 indeed, of a stirring and a momentous time, for 
 power was changing hands. The Whigs had 
 given place to the Tories ; adroit Mrs. Masham 
 had supplanted imperious ' Mrs. Freeman ' ; the 
 Great Captain himself was falling with a crash. 
 Abroad, the long Continental war was dwin- 
 dling to its close ; at home, the Treaty of Utrecht 
 was preparing. But of all these things, one 
 rather overhears than hears. In Swift's gallery 
 there are no portraits A la Clarendon with 
 sweeping robes ; at best there are but thumb-
 
 14 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 nail sketches. Nowhere have we such a finished 
 full-length as that of Bolingbroke in the ' Inquiry 
 into the Behaviour of the Ministry ' ; nowhere 
 a scathing satire like the ' Verres ' kitcat of 
 Wharton in the seventeenth ' Examiner.' Nor 
 are there anywhere accounts of occurrences 
 which loom much larger than the stabbing of 
 Harley by Guiscard or the duel of Hamilton 
 with Mohun. Not the less does the canvas 
 swarm with figures, many of whom bear famous 
 names. Now it is Anna Augusta herself, driving 
 red-faced to hounds in her one-horse chaise, or 
 yawning behind her fansticks at a tedious recep- 
 tion ; now it is that ' pure trifler ' Harley, daw- 
 dling and temporizing, 
 
 ' Yea,' quoth the ERLE, ' but not to-day,' . 
 
 or spelling out the inn signs on the road to Lon- 
 don. It is Peterborough, ' the ramblingest lying 
 rogue on earth,' talking deep politics at a barber's, 
 preparatory to starting for the world's end with 
 the morrow; it is poor Mrs. St. John, on her way 
 to the Bath, beseeching Swift to watch over her 
 illustrious husband, who (like Stella 1) is not to 
 be governed, and will certainly make himself ill 
 between business and Burgundy. Many others 
 pass and re-pass Congreve (quantum muta- 
 tus /), a broken man, but cheerful, though almost
 
 The Journal to Stella. 1 5 
 
 blind from ' cataracts growing on his eyes ' ; 
 Prior, with lantern jaws, sitting solemnly at the 
 4 Smyrna ' receiving visits of ceremony.or walk- 
 ing in the Park to make himself fat, or disap- 
 pearing mysteriously on diplomatic expeditions 
 to Paris ; grave Addison rehearsing ' Cato,' 
 and sometimes un-Catonically fuddled ; Steele 
 bustling over ' Tatlers ' and ' Spectators,' and 
 ' governed by his wife most abominably, as bad 
 as Marlborough ' ; ' pastoral Philips ' (with his 
 red stockings), just arrived from Denmark ; 
 clever, kindly Dr. Arbuthnot, ' the queen's 
 favourite physician,' meditating new ' bites ' for 
 the maids of honour or fresh chapters in 'John 
 Bull ' ; young Mr. Berkeley of Kilkenny, with 
 his ' Dialogues against Atheism ' in his pocket, 
 and burning ' to make acquaintance with men 
 of merit ' ; Atterbury, finessing for his Christ 
 Church deanery. Then there are the great 
 ladies Mrs. Masham, who has a red nose, but 
 is Swift's friend ; Lady Somerset (the 'Carrots' 
 of the ' Windsor Prophecy '), who has red hair, 
 and is his enemy ; sensible and spirited Lady 
 Betty Germaine ; the Duchess of Grafton (in a 
 fontange of the last reign) ; Newton's niece, 
 pretty Mrs. Barton ; good-tempered Lady 
 Harley ; hapless Mrs. Ann Long, and a host 
 of others. And among them all, 'unhasting,
 
 1 6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 unresting,' filling the scene like Coquelin in 
 ' L'^tourdi,' comes and goes the figure of 
 ' Parson Swift' himself; now striding full-blown 
 down St. James's Street in his cassock, gown, 
 and three-guinea periwig ; now riding through 
 Windsor Forest in a borrowed suit of ' light 
 camlet, faced with red velvet, and silver buttons.' 
 Sometimes he is feasting royally at ' Ozinda's ' 
 or the 'Thatched House' with the society of 
 ' Brothers' ; sometimes dining moderately in the 
 City with Barber, his printer, or Will Pate, the 
 'learned woollen-draper'; sometimes scurvily 
 at a blind tavern ' upon gill ale, bad broth, and 
 three chops of mutton.' You may follow him 
 wherever he goes ; whether it be to Greenwich 
 with the Dean of Carlisle, or to Hampton with 
 1 Lord Treasurer,' or to hear the nightingales 
 at Vauxhall with my Lady Kerry. He tells 
 you when he buys books at Christopher Bate- 
 man's in Little Britain, 1 or spectacles for Stella 
 on Ludgate Hill, or Brazil tobacco (which Mrs. 
 Dingley will rasp into snuff) at Charles Lillie 
 the perfumer's in Beaufort's Buildings. He sets 
 down everything his maladies (very speci- 
 fically), his misadventures, economies, extrava- 
 
 1 It was Bateman's singular rule (according to Nichols) 
 not to allow persons to look into books in his shop. One 
 wonders whether he enforced this in the case of Swift.
 
 The Journal to Stella. 17 
 
 gances, dreams, disappointments his votum, 
 timor, ira, voluptas. The timor is chiefly for 
 those dogs the Mohocks (' Who has not 
 trembled at the Mohock's name ? ') ; the ira, to 
 a considerable extent, for that most aggravating 
 of retainers, his man-servant Patrick. 
 
 It has been said that the 'Journal to Stella 1 
 contains no finished character-sketch ; but so 
 many entries are involved by the peccadilloes of 
 Patrick, that after a time he begins, from sheer 
 force of reappearance, to assume the lineaments 
 of a personage. At first he is merely a whee- 
 dling, good-looking Irish boy an obvious 
 ' Teaguelander,' as Sir Thomas Mansel calls 
 him. He makes his entry in the third letter 
 with the remark that, ' the rabble here [i. e. in 
 London] are much more inquisitive in politics 
 than in Ireland' an utterance which has all 
 the air of a philosophic reflection. His natural 
 aptitudes, however, being in the direction of 
 pleasure rather than philosophy, he is speedily 
 demoralized by those rakes, the London foot- 
 men. ' Patrick is drunk about three times a 
 week,' says the next record, ' and I bear it, and 
 he has got the better of me ; but one of these 
 days I will positively turn him off to the wide 
 world, when none of you are by to intercede 
 for him,' from which we must infer that Patrick
 
 1 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 was, or had been, a favourite with the ladies at 
 Dublin. He has another vice in Swift's eyes ; 
 he is extravagant. Coals costs twelvepence a 
 week, yet he piles up the fires so recklessly that 
 his economical master has laboriously to pick 
 them to pieces again. Still, he has a good heart, 
 for he buys a linnet for Mrs. Dingley, at a per- 
 sonal sacrifice of sixpence, and in direct opposi- 
 tion to his master's advice. ' I laid fairly before 
 him the greatness of the sum, and the rashness 
 of the attempt ; showed how impossible it was 
 to carry him safe over the salt sea : but he would 
 not take my counsel, and he will repent it.' A 
 month later the luckless bird is still alive, though 
 grown very wild. It lives in a closet, where it 
 makes a terrible litter. ' But I say nothing : I 
 am as tame as a clout.' This restraint on Swift's 
 part is the more notable in that Patrick himself 
 has been for ten days out of favour. ' I talk 
 dry and cross to him, and have called him 
 "friend" three or four times.' Then, having 
 been drunk again, he is all but discharged, and 
 Mrs. Vanhomrigh (a near neighbour) has to 
 make the peace. He is certainly trying: he 
 loses keys, forgets messages, locks up clothes 
 at critical moments, and so forth. But he is 
 accustomed to Swift's ways, and the next we 
 hear of him is that, ' intolerable rascal ' though
 
 The journal to Stella. 19 
 
 he be, he is going to have a livery which will 
 cost four pounds, and that he has offered to pay 
 for the lace on his hat out of his own wages. 
 Yet his behaviour is still so bad that his master 
 is afraid to give him his new clothes, though he 
 has not the heart to withhold them. ' I wish 
 MD were here to entreat for him just here at 
 the bed's side.' Then there is a vivid little study 
 of Swift bathing in the Thames at Chelsea, with 
 Patrick on guard of course quite perfunctorily 
 to prevent his master being disturbed by 
 boats. 'That puppy Patrick, standing ashore, 
 would let them come within a yard or two, and 
 then call sneakingly to them.' After this he 
 takes to the study of Congreve, goes to the play, 
 fights in his cups with another gentleman's 
 gentleman, by whom he is dragged along the 
 floor upon his face, ' which looked for a week 
 after as if he had the leprosy ; and, 1 adds the 
 diarist grimly, ' I was glad enough to see it. 
 Later on he exasperates his master so much by 
 keeping him waiting, that Swift is provoked into 
 giving him ' two or three swingeing cuffs on the 
 ear,' spraining his own thumb thereby, though 
 Arbuthnot thinks it may be gout. ' He [Patrick] 
 was plaguily afraid and humbled.' That he was 
 more frightened than repentant, the sequel shows. 
 ' I gave him half-a-crown for his Christmas box,
 
 2O Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 on condition he would be good, 1 says Swift, 
 whose forbearance is extraordinary, ' and he 
 came home drunk at midnight.' Worse than 
 this, he sometimes stays out till morning. At 
 last arrives the inevitable hour when he is 
 ' turned off to the wide world,' and he seems 
 never to have succeeded in coaxing himself 
 back again. Yet it is hard not to think that 
 Swift must have secretly regretted his loss ; and 
 it would, no doubt, have been highly edifying to 
 hear Patrick's report of his master. 
 
 There is one person, however, for ampler de- 
 tails respecting whom one would willingly sur- 
 render the entire ' Patrickiad/ and that is the 
 lady in whose interest the Journal was written, 
 since Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, notwithstanding 
 the many conventional references to her, does 
 no more than play the mute and self-denying 
 part of Propriety. But of Esther Johnson l we 
 get, in reality, little beyond the fact that her 
 health at this time was already a source of 
 anxiety to her friends. The Journal is full of 
 injunctions to her to take exercise, especially 
 
 1 She signs herself thus in the autograph given at p. 101 
 of Sir William Wilde's ' Closing Years of Dean Swift's 
 Life.' But according to the Richmond Register, quoted 
 in Thome's ' Environs of London,' 1876, p. 504, she was 
 christened ' Hester.'
 
 The Journal to Stella. 21 
 
 horse exercise, and not to attempt to read Pdfr's 
 ' ugly small hand,' but to let Dingley read it to 
 her. ' Preserve your eyes, if you be wise,' says 
 a distich manufactured for the occasion. Nor 
 is she to write until she is ' mighty, mighty, 
 mighty, mighty, mighty well ' in her sight, and is 
 sure it will not do her the least hurt. ' Or come, 
 I will tell you what ; you, Mistress Ppt, shall 
 write your share at five or six sittings, one sit- 
 ting a day ; and then comes DD altogether, and 
 then Ppt a little crumb towards the end, to let 
 us see she remembers Pdfr ; and then conclude 
 with something handsome and genteel, as "your 
 most humble cumdumble," or, &c.' A favourite 
 subject of raillery is Mrs. Johnson's spelling, 
 which was not her strong point, though she was 
 scarcely as bad as Lady Wentworth. 'Ridicu- 
 lous, madam ? I suppose you mean ridiculous. 
 Let me have no more of that ; it is the author 
 of the " Atalantis 1 " spelling. I have mended 
 it in your letter. 1 Elsewhere there are lists of 
 her lapses : bussiness for business, immagin, 
 merrit, phamplets, etc. 1 But the letters seldom 
 end without their playful greeting to his ' dearest 
 Sirrahs/ his ' dear foolish Rogues,' his ' pretty 
 saucy MD,'and the like. As his mood changes 
 
 1 Modern usage would sometimes side with Mrs. John- 
 son. For example, Swift corrects ' waist ' into ' wast.'
 
 22 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 in its intensity, they change also. ' Farewell, 
 my dearest lives and delights ; I love you better 
 than ever, if possible. . . . God Almighty bless 
 you ever, and make us happy together. I pray 
 for this twice every day, and I hope God will 
 hear my poor, hearty prayers.' In another place 
 it is ' God send poor Ppt her health, and keep 
 MD happy. Farewell, and love Pdfr, who loves 
 M D above all things ten millions of times.' And 
 again, ' Farewell, dearest rogues : I am never 
 happy but when I think or write of MD. I 
 have enough of Courts and ministers, and wish 
 I were at Laracor.' It is to Laracor, with its 
 holly, and its cherry trees, and the willow-walk 
 he had planted by the canal he had made, and 
 Stella riding past with Joe Beaumont ' to the 
 Hill of Bree, and round by Scurlock's Town,' 
 that he turns regretfully when the perfidies of 
 those in power have vexed his soul with the 
 conviction that, for all they ' call him nothing 
 but Jonathan,' he ' can serve everybody but 
 himself.' ' If I had not a spirit naturally cheer- 
 ful,' he says in his second year of residence, ' I 
 should be very much discontented at a thousand 
 things. Pray God preserve MD's health, and 
 Pdfr's ; and that I may live far from the envy 
 and discontent that attends those who are 
 thought to have more favour at Court than they
 
 The Journal to Stella. 23 
 
 really possess. 1 And then the letter winds off 
 into those enigmatical epistolary caresses of 
 which a specimen has been presented to the 
 reader. 
 
 Upon Stella's reputed rival, and Swift's rela- 
 tions with her, the scope of this paper dispenses 
 us from dwelling. Indeed, though Swift's visits 
 to Miss Vanhomrigh's mother are repeatedly re- 
 ferred to, Esther Vanhomrigh herself from 
 motives which the reader will no doubt interpret 
 according to his personal predilections in the 
 famous Vanessafrage is mentioned but twice 
 or thrice in the entire Journal, and then not by 
 name. But we are of those who hold with Mr. 
 Cralk that, whatever the relations in question 
 may have been, they never seriously affected, or 
 even materially interrupted, Swift's life-long at- 
 tachment for the lady to whom, a year or two 
 later, he was, or was not according as we 
 elect to side with Sir Walter Scott or Mr. 
 Forster married by the Bishop of Clogher in 
 the garden of St. Patrick's Deanery. For if 
 there be anything which is detachable from the 
 network of tittle-tattle and conjecture encum- 
 bering a question already sufficiently perplexed 
 in its origin, it is that Swift's expressions of 
 esteem and admiration for Stella are as emphatic 
 at the end as at the beginning. Some of those
 
 24 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 in the Journal have already been reproduced. 
 But his letters during her last lingering illness, 
 and a phrase in the Holyhead diary of 1727, are, 
 if anything, even more significant in the unmis- 
 takable sincerity of their utterance. ' We have 
 been perfect friends these thirty-five years,' he 
 tells Mr. Worrall, his vicar, speaking of Mrs. 
 Johnson ; and he goes on to describe her as one 
 whom he ' most esteemed upon the score of 
 every good quality that can possibly recommend 
 a human creature. . . . Ever since I left you 
 my heart has been so sunk that I have not been 
 the same man, nor ever shall be again, but drag 
 on a wretched life, till it shall please God to 
 call me away.' To another correspondent, re- 
 ferring to Stella's then hourly-expected death, 
 he says : ' As I value life very little, so the poor 
 casual remains of it, after such a loss, would be 
 a burden that I beg God Almighty to enable me 
 to bear ; and I think there is not a greater folly 
 than that of entering into too strict and particular 
 a friendship, with the loss of which a man must 
 be absolutely miserable. . . . Besides, this was 
 a person of my own rearing and instructing from 
 childhood ; who excelled in every good quality 
 that can possibly accomplish a human creature.' 
 The date of this letter is July, 1726 ; but it was 
 not until the beginning of 1728 that the blow
 
 The Journal to Stella. 25 
 
 came which deprived him of his ' dearest friend.' 
 Then, on a Sunday in January, at eleven at 
 night, he sits down to compile that, in the cir- 
 cumstances, extraordinary ' Character ' of ' the 
 truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend that I, 
 or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed 
 with.' A few passages from this strange Finis 
 to a strange story, begun while Stella was lying 
 dead, and continued after her funeral, in a room 
 in which he has taken refuge in order to escape 
 seeing the light in the church, may be here copied. 
 ' Never,' he says, ' was any of her sex born with 
 better gifts of the mind, or who more improved 
 them by reading and conversation. . . . Her 
 advice was always the best, and with the greatest 
 freedom, mixed with the greatest decency. She 
 had a gracefulness somewhat more than human 
 in every motion, word, and action. Never was 
 so happy a conjunction of civility, freedom, easi- 
 ness, and sincerity. . . . She never mistook the 
 understanding of others ; nor ever said a severe 
 word, but where a much severer was deserved. 
 . . . She never had the least absence of mind 
 in conversation, or was given to interruption, or 
 appeared eager to put in her word, by waiting 
 impatiently till another had done. She spoke 
 in a most agreeable voice, in the plainest words, 
 never hesitating, except out of modesty before
 
 26 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 new faces, where she was somewhat reserved ; 
 nor, among her nearest friends, ever spoke much 
 at a time. . . . Although her knowledge, from 
 books and company, was much more extensive 
 than usually falls to the share of her sex, yet she 
 was so far from making a parade of it that her 
 female visitants, on their first acquaintance, who 
 expected to discover it by what they call hard 
 words and deep discourse, would be sometimes 
 disappointed, and say they found she was like 
 other women. But wise men, through all her 
 modesty, whatever they discoursed on, could 
 easily observe that she understood them very 
 well, by the judgment shown in her observations 
 as well as in her questions.' 
 
 In the preceding retrospect, as in the final 
 Birthday Poems to Stella, Swift, it will be 
 gathered, dwells upon the intellectual rather 
 than the physical charms of this celebrated 
 woman. To her mental qualities, in truth, he 
 had invariably given the foremost place. But 
 Time, in 1728, had long since silvered those 
 locks once ' blacker than a raven,' while years 
 of failing health had sadly altered the outlines of 
 the perfect figure, and dimmed the lustre of the 
 beautiful eyes. What she had been, is not quite 
 easy for a modern admirer to realize from the 
 dubious Delville medallion, or the inadequate
 
 The Journal to Stella. 27 
 
 engraving by Engleheart of the portrait at 
 Ballinter, which forms the frontispiece to Wilde's 
 invaluable ' Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life.' 
 The photogravure of the Ballinter picture given 
 in Mr. Gerald Moriarty's recent book is much 
 more satisfactory, and so markedly to Esther 
 Johnson's advantage as to suggest the further 
 reproduction of the original in some separate 
 and accessible form.
 
 AT 'TULLY'S HEAD.' 
 
 THE ' Tully's Head ' stood on the north side 
 of Pall Mall. In those days what is now 
 the Via Sacra of Clubland was little more than 
 an unpaved roadway from St. James's Palace to 
 Carlton House the latter of which occupied 
 the existing open space between the foot of 
 Regent Street and the Duke of York's column. 
 The precise position of Mr. Robert Dodsley's 
 establishment was next the passage leading into 
 King Street, at present known as Pall Mall 
 Place, or, in other words, about half-way be- 
 tween the Old Smyrna Coffee-house of Swift 
 and Prior (the site of Messrs. Harrison's) and 
 the Old Star and Garter Tavern which preceded 
 the more recent hostelry of that name. Judged 
 by a latter-day standard, it is probable that the 
 ' Tully's Head ' was not very impressive exter- 
 nally. Indeed, a bookseller's shop in the 
 Georgian era must have been something widely 
 different from the attractive-looking resort to 
 which we are accustomed in this age of plate 
 glass and parti-coloured cloth bindings. Viewed
 
 At ' Tully's Head: 29 
 
 through the bulged and clumsily-framed greenish 
 panes, the homely calf and sheep covers looked 
 homelier still ; while the elaborate develop- 
 ments of modern book-illustration were but 
 faintly foreshadowed by very rudimentary and 
 appropriately entitled ' wooden cuts,' and by 
 old-fashioned ' coppers,' often, for economy, 
 crowding many ' figures ' on one plate of metal. 
 But if, at the period here intended, you could 
 have peeped under the slanting sunblind of the 
 'Tully's Head' (the shop, be it remembered, 
 was not on that ' sweet shady side of Pall Mall ' 
 afterwards so melodiously sung by Captain 
 Charles Morris of the Life Guards), you would 
 at once have found yourself on familiar ground. 
 You would discover the little window to be 
 piled with pamphlets on those burning questions, 
 the Naturalisation of the Jews, the State of the 
 Corn Trade, and the ' Case ' of the notorious 
 Elizabeth Canning. You would also be con- 
 fronted by the latest numbers of Mr. Dodsley's 
 new periodical, ' The World,' one of which 
 would doubtless be opened at the passage invit- 
 ing the contributions of ' the Generous and the 
 Fair ' for that bankrupt Belisarius, Baron 
 Neuhoff, otherwise Theodore of Corsica, who, 
 with his realm for his only assets, Was, at this 
 particular moment of time, languishing in the 
 King's Bench Prison. And you could not fail
 
 30 Eighteenth Century Pignettes. 
 
 to be attracted by the very prominent notifica- 
 tion that on Thursdays, when ' The World ' was 
 published, the Editor, ' Mr. Adam Fitz Adam,' 
 could be ' spoke with ' at the ' Tully's Head.' 
 
 If, moved thereto either by charity or curios- 
 ity, you proceeded to enter the dim shop, you 
 would in all probability be greeted, not by Mr. 
 Fitz Adam's ' fetch' or ' double,' Mr. Edward 
 Moore of the ' Fables for the Female Sex ' and 
 ' The Gamester,' but by Mr. Dodsley himself 
 a sober-clad, quiet-voiced personage, with a 
 courteous, though somewhat over-deferential 
 manner who, if you looked like a book-buyer, 
 would proceed to exhibit invitingly his latest 
 novelties. Here, for example (most fitly issued 
 from the ' Tully's Head'), is Mr. William 
 Melmoth's ' Letters of Cicero,' a very elegant 
 and excellent Performance, greatly commended 
 by 'the Learned.' Here again, in the dramatic 
 way, are Dr. Young's tragedy of ' The Brothers,' 
 and ' The Earl of Essex ' of Lord Chesterfield's 
 protdgd, the bricklayer poet Henry Jones 
 both of them recently performed, one at Drury 
 Lane, the other at Covent Garden. 1 Of these 
 
 1 Not, apparently, with equal success. ' Will it be 
 hereafter believed' writes Richardson to Lady Brad- 
 shaigh in February 1753 'that the Earl of Essex had a 
 run ; and that a play of the author of the Night Thoughts 
 was acted to thin houses but just eight nights ? ' (' Cor- 
 respondence,' 1804, vi. 246.)
 
 At ' Tully's Head.' 3 1 
 
 'curious Pieces' Mr. Dodsley himself an 
 acted playwright speaks with an appreci- 
 able note of authority. Or, if you care for 
 poetry (and again a slight intonation reminds 
 you that you are speaking to the author of ' A 
 Muse in Livery '), here is a very pretty copy of 
 verses in the manner of Mr. Gray. The writer 
 prefers to remain anonymous ; but Mr. Dodsley 
 may tell you (though it should go no further) 
 that he is a gentleman of Balliol College, Oxford. 
 Mr. Samuel Johnson (who was in the ' Tully's 
 Head' but yesterday with Dr. Bathurst) was 
 so pleased with one of the stanzas that he is 
 going to quote it in his great *' Dictionary,' upon 
 the second volume of which he is at present 
 engaged, and for which work, by the way, sub- 
 scriptions can still be received in this very shop. 
 The lines are about a girl spinning. But Mr. 
 Dodsley will show you them in loco, as the schol- 
 ars say. They are these, at the foot of page 6 : 
 
 ' Verse softens Toil, however rude the Sound ; 
 She feels no biting Pang the while she sings ; 
 Nor, as she turns the giddy Wheel around, 
 Revolves the sad Vicissitude of things.' 1 
 
 1 Johnson duly quoted the above stanza, but not text- 
 ually, in vol. ii. of the ' Dictionary/ under the word 
 ' wheel.' He also repeated it orally to Boswell in Scot- 
 land, thereby sadly puzzling that gentleman's editors, 
 until in 1887 its source was definitely traced by Dr. Birk- 
 beck Hill (Bosvvell's ' Life of Johnson,' v. 117-18).
 
 32 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 If he cannot tempt you with the Rev. Richard 
 Gifford's ' Contemplation,' he will display to 
 you another work he has just received from the 
 binder to wit, Mr. Gray's Poems with Mr. 
 Richard Bentley's designs, which latter are 
 thought, by the Connoisseurs, to be extremely 
 fine. Mr. Gray, indeed, goes so far as to say 
 that ' the Verses are only subordinate and ex- 
 planatory to the Drawings ' but that (between 
 ourselves) is Mr. Gray's way. Meanwhile, by 
 Mr. Gray's desire, Mr. Dodsley has just des- 
 patched two copies of the volume to Dr. Thomas 
 Wharton at Durham. If you are wise, you will 
 secure a third, for the modest outlay of half-a- 
 guinea. And perhaps, on second thoughts, it 
 will be well to let Mr. Dodsley put a copy of 
 ' Contemplation ' in . the packet. Tis but a 
 shilling, stitched, with a Latin motto, and a fine 
 device of Tully on the title-page ; and 'twill 
 certainly be heard of again 1 
 
 In the first months of 17$ 3, when the publica- 
 tions referred to in the foregoing paragraph were 
 issued, Robert Dodsley had been long resident 
 at the 'Tully's Head.' Born in 1703 near 
 Mansfield, in Robin Hood's country, where his 
 father kept the free school, he began life as a 
 stocking weaver, a trade so little to his taste 
 that he changed it for that of a footman. In
 
 At ' Tully's Head: 33 
 
 this capacity he was certainly at one time (for 
 he himself in- after life admitted it to Johnson) in 
 the service of the well-known bon-vivant, Charles 
 Dartiquenave, the short cut to whose intract- 
 able name was Dartineuf, further abbreviated 
 by his familiars into the ' Darty' of Pope's 
 couplet : 
 
 ' Each mortal has his pleasure : none deny 
 Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his Ham-pie.' 
 
 From the service of this genial epicure, Dodsley 
 passed into the household of the Honourable 
 Mrs. Lowther, where he began to develop his 
 literary talents by birthday odes, verses on 
 weddings, and so forth ingenuities which had 
 the good fortune to please those for whom 
 they were intended, and at whose expense 
 they were no doubt printed. But his first 
 definite production in verse and one in which 
 he certainly observes that cardinal condition of 
 success, the selecting of a subject within his 
 capacity and experience was a poem entitled 
 ' Servitude.' Defoe prefaced and postscripted 
 this modest effort, which was published by T. 
 Worrall in September, 1729, as a sixpenny 
 pamphlet. The book, which is described as 
 ' Written by a Footman,' consists of a series of 
 rhyming paragraphs on Carefulness, Obedience, 
 3
 
 34 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Neatness, etc., of all of which the laudable 
 intention is ' to excite Bad Servants to their 
 Duty.' It is certainly a very different perfor- 
 mance from Swift's famous ' Directions.' ' We 
 servints should see all and say nothing,' writes 
 Winifred Jenkins ; and Mrs. Lowther's poet, 
 under the chapter of ' Discretion,' is as insistent 
 as Lord Chesterfield himself on the importance 
 (in the Servants' Hall) of the polto sciolto and 
 pensieri stretti : 
 
 ' Your Master's House his Closet ought to be, 
 Where all are Secrets which you hear or see,' 
 
 he says, adding with undeniable but superfluous 
 truth : 
 
 ' For he who indiscreetly babbles small Things 
 May be suspected of the same in all Things.' 
 
 Three years elapsed before Dodsley again- 
 addressed the public. This time it was as the 
 author of a volume of occasional verses entitled 
 1 A Muse in Livery: or, the Footman's Miscel- 
 lany.' It was prefaced by a goodly subscription 
 list, which in addition to a fair show of 
 Duchesses and Countesses included the names 
 of Sir Robert Walpole and of Steele's ' Aspasia,' 
 the Lady Elizabeth Hastings ; and it was fur- 
 nished with an emblematic frontispiece by Four- 
 drinier which should have been worth the entire
 
 At ' Tally's Head.' 35 
 
 price of the volume. This represents a young 
 man in a classic tunic, who, besides being alone 
 in a desolate landscape, is manifestly in lament- 
 able case. His right hand, weighed down by 
 Poverty, is chained to Misery, Folly, and 
 Ignorance, while he hopelessly stretches his left, 
 winged by Desire, towards Knowledge, Virtue, 
 and Happiness. Fate has further handicapped 
 him in the race by fettering his right foot to a 
 box or block very legibly labelled ' Despair.' 
 
 ' In vain DESIRE oft wings my Soul, 
 
 And mounts my Thoughts on high ; 
 DESPAIR still clogs, and keeps me down, 
 Where I must grov'ling lie.' 
 
 So sings the poet himself in a rhymed ' Effigies 
 Authoris,' or ' Mind of the Frontispiece.' As 
 for the contents of the volume, they are no 
 worse nay, they are rather better than the 
 average of contemporary ' Verses on Various 
 Occasions.' There is the usual Pastoral after 
 Mr. Pope, the usual ' Wish' after Mr. Cowley, 
 the usual Tale, more or less coarse, in the man- 
 ner of Mr. Prior or Mr. Gay, and the usual 
 Epistles. The best of these last is a letter 
 entitled ' The Footman,' the compensation for 
 whose menial calling is the privilege of listening 
 to the talk at dinner :
 
 36 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 1 1 hear, and mark the courtly Phrases, 
 And all the Elegance that passes ; 
 Disputes maintain'd without Digression, 
 With ready Wit, and fine Expression, 
 The Laws of true Politeness stated, 
 And what Good-breeding is, debated.' 
 
 With Despair tugging at his leg, Mr. Dodsley 
 may perhaps be forgiven for declining to tell 
 the whole truth and nothing but the truth con- 
 cerning the amiable Persons of Quality who 
 were kind enough to patronize his little work. 
 Unless, however, his experiences in the Lowther 
 household were very exceptional, his description 
 of contemporary ' Polite Conversation ' (it may 
 be whispered) is greatly at variance with the 
 encounters of Lady Smart and Lord Sparkish, 
 of Miss Notable and Tom Neverout, as they 
 are represented in that famous record of Swift 
 of which Mr. George Saintsbury not long since 
 revived the interest. But if he is over-indul- 
 gent to his superiors, he is correspondingly 
 severe upon his equals. Swearing, small-beer, 
 obscenity, and scandal about their Masters and 
 Mistresses, make up, he affirms, the chief re- 
 sources of his ' Brother Skips.' ' For my Part,' 
 says this ideal domestic, speaking of the last- 
 named enormity, 
 
 ' For my Part, as I hate the Practice 
 And see in them how base and black 'tis,
 
 At ' Tally's Head.' 37 
 
 To some bye Place I therefore creep, 
 And sit me down, and feign to sleep ; 
 And could I with old Morpheus bargain 
 'Twou'd save my Ears much Noise and Jargon.' 
 
 Towards the close of the book he asks inci- 
 dentally whether future ages will join his name 
 with that of Prior. The question is put to no- 
 body in particular, but Posterity, it is to be 
 feared, will scarcely answer in the affirmative. 
 In the meantime, Mr. Dodsley's contempo- 
 raries were more easily satisfied. They re- 
 ceived 'A Muse in Livery' so kindly that 
 Osborne and Nourse were enabled to bring out 
 a second edition in the same year (1732) as the 
 first, to the title-page of which the writer added 
 the supplementary information that he was 
 ' Footman to a Person of Quality at White- 
 hall.'' In his next literary effort there is a 
 greater congruity. That a gentleman's gentle- 
 man should versify is unexpected ; but, looking 
 to the recognized importance of the eighteenth- 
 century lackey as a playhouse critic, it is not so 
 remarkable that he should write for the stage. 
 Whether keeping his mistress's place in the 
 boxes, or surveying the house from that coign of 
 vantage, the upper gallery. Mrs. Lowther's foot- 
 man must have enjoyed peculiar advantages. 
 He turned them to account by composing,
 
 38 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 upon a hint taken from Thomas Randolph, a 
 little single-scene satire entitled 'The Toy Shop.' 
 Dramatically it is weak, as the interest lies 
 chiefly in the satirico-didactic observations which 
 one person (the toy-man himself) makes upon 
 his wares ; and it is not difficult to conjecture 
 the course he would take in moralizing upon 
 (say) a lady's pocket-glass or a pair of temple 
 spectacles. But it is neatly and fluently 
 written ; and the author had the temerity to 
 submit it in manuscript to the great Mr. Pope. 
 What was more, he had the good fortune to 
 please that potentate, who acknowledged it very 
 graciously. ' I like it,' he said, ' so far as my 
 particular judgment goes.' He doubted, and 
 doubted justly, whether it had action enough 
 for the boards, but he recommended it notwith- 
 standing to Rich of Covent Garden, where it 
 was played. With its success, Dodsley's career 
 1 below stairs ' came definitely to an end. He 
 had saved something; Pope lent him ;ioo; 
 and other friends came forward so liberally 
 that, having quenched his last flambeau in Mrs. 
 Lowther's employ, he opened the ' Tully's 
 Head ' as a bookseller's shop. 
 
 This was in 1735 ; and he could scarcely have 
 chosen a more favourable moment. Before the 
 year was out, died Jacob Tonson the Younger,
 
 At ' Tully's Head: 39 
 
 to be followed only a few months later by Jacob 
 Tonson the Elder the famous old Jacob of 
 Dryden and the Kit-Cats. Early in 1736, too, 
 died another survivor of the Augustan Worthies, 
 Bernard Lintot. In each of these cases relatives 
 of the same surname continued the business, but 
 the ancient prestige was gone. And if the mo- 
 ment was favourable, so was the locality selected. 
 No one of the other booksellers, either notable or 
 notorious, was very near to Pall Mall. Edmund 
 Curll, of disreputable memory, at the ' Pope's 
 Head 'in Rose Street, Covent Garden, was 
 closest. Of the rest, Andrew Millar was in 
 the Strand, Dodd by Temple Bar, Lawton 
 Gilliver of the ' Homer's Head' 
 
 (' Vendit hunc Librum Gilliverus 
 Cujus Insigne est Homerus '), 
 
 in Fleet Street, Cooper at the 4 Globe ' in Pater- 
 noster Row, Wilford at the Chapter House, 
 Roberts in Warwick Lane, Thomas Osborne 
 in Gray's Inn. As far as can be judged, their 
 new rival of the 'Tully's Head' must have 
 opened his campaign as a publisher with con- 
 siderable vigour. In the first month of 1736 he 
 issued a memorial ode by John Lockman, later 
 known as the ' herring poet,' following it up 
 shortly afterwards by a reprint of Sackville's old
 
 4O Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 tragedy of ' Gorboduc.' As may be gathered 
 from these items, poetry and the drama were 
 his chief attraction. He did not, indeed, pub- 
 lish the effusions of Queen Caroline's thresher 
 minstrel, Stephen Duck, to whom ' A Muse in 
 Livery' had contained a tribute, and with whom 
 he might be supposed to be in especial sym- 
 pathy, but he received subscriptions for the 
 ' Works ' of Richard Savage, and he issued the 
 ' Leonidas ' of Glover. Pope also entrusted 
 him with two of his wonderful imitations of 
 Horace, and consigned to him the sole property 
 in his sophisticated letters. Nor was Dodsley's 
 own pen idle. Early in 1737 he produced at 
 Drury Lane a ' dramatick tale 1 called ' The 
 King and the Miller of Mansfield,' in which 
 Mrs. Pritchard acted the heroine, and Gibber 
 the monarch. The little piece was cleverly 
 constructed, and it found so much favour that 
 the author followed it up with a sequel, 
 ' Sir John Cockle at Court ' (Sir John 
 being the miller be-Knighted), which again 
 had the advantage of a famous heroine, Mrs. 
 Clive. These successes, and Pope's patron- 
 age, were commemorated by Curll in snarling 
 couplets. (The ' you ' is, of course, Pope, to 
 whom the lines of which they form part were 
 addressed.)
 
 At ' Tullfs Head: 41 
 
 "Tis kind, indeed, a Livery Muse to aid 
 Who scribbles farces to augment his trade. 
 
 ; Where you, and Spence, and Glover drive the nail, 
 The devil's in it, if the plot should fail.' 
 
 Of Spence we shall hear further. But Dodsley 
 was to make another friend as eminent, if not 
 yet as famous, as Pope. In 1738 came to him 
 from Edward Cave of the ' Gentleman's,' the 
 then unknown Samuel Johnson, bringing, for 
 anonymous publication, the manuscript of ' Lon- 
 don/ the nervous merit of which Dodsley at 
 once perceived. He bought it for ;io, and 
 produced it on the same day as Cooper issued 
 the earlier of the two Dialogues which now form 
 the Epilogue to Pope's ' Satires.' This was in 
 May; in July Dodsley himself published the 
 second Dialogue. With the veiled attacks upon 
 the Court which these contained, is indirectly 
 connected what, in Dodsley's uneventful life, 
 almost ranks as a capital occurrence. While the 
 irritation in high places was still simmering 
 against the audacious censor who had ventured 
 to write 
 
 'All his Grace preaches, all his Lordship sings, 
 All that makes Saints of Queens, and Gods of Kings, 
 All, all but Truth, drops dead-born from the Press, 
 Like the last Gazette, or the last Address ; '
 
 42 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and to suggest that Caroline of Anspach had not 
 sent her dying blessing to her eldest son, an 
 unexpected opportunity presented itself for vica- 
 rious retributive action. A meaner quarry than 
 Pope traversed the scene in the person of Paul 
 Whitehead, whose satire of ' Manners ' Dodsley 
 put forth in February, 1739. Upon the strength 
 of a passage reflecting on Bishop Sherlock, 
 ' Manners ' was at once voted scandalous by 
 the House of Lords, before whom the author 
 and publisher were straightway summoned. 
 Whitehead, who, as Johnson says, ' hung loose 
 upon society,' promptly absconded, but Dods- 
 ley's shop and family made his surrender a matter 
 of necessity. He was ordered into custody in 
 a spunging-house in the now-demolished Butcher 
 Row. But, in politics, the criminals of one side 
 are fortunately the martyrs of the other. Vigo- 
 rous efforts were accordingly made by Pope's 
 friends and the Leicester House Opposition for 
 his release, Marchmont, ' Granville the polite,' 
 Lyttelton, and Chesterfield, all crowding the 
 Strand in their carriages to bail him. After a 
 week's incarceration, and the payment of some 
 JQ in fees, he was released upon the petition 
 of one of the libelled personages, the Earl of 
 Essex. He himself always regarded the pro- 
 ceedings as an indirect caution to Pope ; and it
 
 At ' Tully's Head: 43 
 
 is certain that Pope made no further excursions 
 into political satire. ' Ridicule,' he wrote, with 
 the foresight of afterthought, ' was become as 
 unsafe as it was ineffectual.' 
 
 Five years later, Dodsley stood by Pope's 
 death-bed ; and the only other works which, in 
 the interval, he published for his patron were a 
 second volume of his letters, and an octavo 
 edition of the ' Dunciad.' But by this time the 
 reputation of the ' Tully's Head ' was established, 
 and its proprietor began to measure himself 
 strenuously against his older rivals. In January, 
 1741, he started, in opposition to the ' Gentle- 
 man's,' a threepenny quarto serial entitled the 
 ' Publick Register,' which unfortunately expired 
 at its twenty-fourth number, owing, in part, to 
 the hostility with which it was received by the 
 other established magazines. In 1746 he pro- 
 jected, but not by himself, a second periodical, 
 the ' Museum,' which had a brilliant list of con- 
 tributors, including such varied names as those 
 of Spence and Horace Walpole, Lowth, Aken- 
 side, and the two Wartons. The ' Museum ' 
 deserved and obtained a longer run than its pred- 
 ecessor. It was succeeded by the ' Preceptor,' 
 a kind of early ' Popular Educator,' for which 
 Johnson wrote the preface, and otherwise as- 
 sisted. It is for this reason, presumably, that
 
 44 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Boswell terms it ' one of the most valuable books 
 for the improvement of the young that has ap- 
 peared in any language,' though it is, neverthe- 
 less, an excellent idea well executed. Besides 
 these, Dodsley produced two collections, one 
 of ' Old Plays,' 1744, and the other the well- 
 known volumes of Miscellany ' Poems by Several 
 Hands,' 1748-58. Many of the pieces included 
 in these latter are now become classic ; but those 
 who wish to read ' The Spleen ' of Matthew 
 Green, the ' Eclogues ' of Lady Mary, or the 
 ' Man of Taste ' of Bramston, cannot do better 
 than invest a few shillings in Dodsley's Anthol- 
 ogy, adding thereto Pearch's continuation. But, 
 and this is only fitting, it is as a publisher 
 of poetry that Dodsley is most attractive. His 
 name is to be found on the title-pages of Young 
 and Akenside ; and it was from the ' Tully's 
 Head' that came forth both 'Irene' and the 
 ' Vanity of Human Wishes. 1 More remarkable, 
 however, than either Johnson's play or satire, 
 was a short poem which, in February, 1751, 
 Walpole placed suddenly in Dodsley's hands for 
 press. It was to be struck off post haste, so as 
 to anticipate the yawning and piratical pages of 
 the ' Magazine of Magazines.' Thus it came 
 about that, with the modesty of a masterpiece, 
 the ' Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard '
 
 At ' TuUy's Head.' 45 
 
 was first given to a grateful world. It was 
 given, in another sense, to its grateful publisher, 
 since the unnamed author, Mr. Thomas Gray, 
 from a sense of delicacy upon which it is possi- 
 ble to insist too much, declined to receive any 
 money for his labours. 
 
 It is time, however, to turn once more from 
 the works which Dodsley published to those 
 which he himself produced. A convenient 
 bridge to these latter is the once-famous ' Oe- 
 conomy of Human Life,' with which his name 
 was long associated as ' only begetter,' whereas 
 he is now believed, as a matter of fact, to have 
 been no more than 'putter forth.' 1 This vol- 
 ume, a collection of moral precepts in Biblical 
 phraseology, of which Horace Walpole had 
 helped to set the fashion in his ' Lessons for the 
 Day,' was attributed, on its publication in 17^0, 
 to Lord Chesterfield a device which, at that 
 time (witness the success of Goldsmith's subse- 
 quent ' History of England, in a Series of Let- 
 ters from a Nobleman to his Son'), was often 
 employed to promote the success of an anony- 
 mous work. The difference in this case was 
 that the book seems to have been attributed to 
 
 1 See the exhaustive and admirable article on Dodsley 
 by Mr. Henry R. Tedder in vol. xv. of the ' Dictionary of 
 National Biography.'
 
 46 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 its real author, for it has been with good reason 
 suspected that it was written by Chesterfield, 
 and as such has nothing to do with Dodsley's 
 life, although it long held a prominent place 
 there. His own undisputed works at this date 
 consisted of another little play, ' The Blind 
 Beggar of Bethnal Green,' which was repre- 
 sented at Drury Lane in 1741 ; a series of love 
 songs entitled ' Colin's Kisses/ which show that 
 even a plain-sailing Pall Mall publisher may 
 arrive at a very adequate conception of what 
 Lien Chi Altangi denominates ' perpetual anas- 
 tomosis,' and an attempted new development of 
 pantomime called ' Rex et Pontifex.' Another 
 of his projects was a vast didactic poem in blank 
 verse on ' Public Virtue,' a subject which (as its 
 author ruefully admitted to Johnson) failed to 
 excite any appreciable Public Interest, and con- 
 sequently remains in the depressed condition of 
 a fragment entitled ' Agriculture,' which Wai- 
 pole professed to have read more than once. 
 Dodsleyalso collected his dramatic pieces under 
 the title of ' Trifles,' dedicating them, with need- 
 less particularity, to ' To Morrow.' But his 
 most interesting production, to speak paradoxi- 
 cally, is again one which, like the ' Oeconomy 
 of Human Life,' is only ' attributed' to him. It 
 is another of the many eighteenth-century imita-
 
 At ' Tally's Head.' 47 
 
 tions of the ' Ars Poetica,' and is entitled the 
 ' Art of Preaching.' Whoever wrote it, if 
 Dodsley did not, was certainly a creditable 
 Popesque versifier. One of the offending lines 
 in ' Manners ' had been : 
 
 ' But Henley's, Shop, and Sherlock's are the same.' 
 
 Perhaps the following was intended by the 
 prisoner of the ' Butcher Row ' as an amende 
 
 honorable : 
 
 ' It much concerns a Preacher first to learn 
 The Genius of his Audience, and their Turn. 
 Amongst the Citizens be grave and slow; 
 Before the Nobles let fine Periods flow ; 
 The Temple Church asks Sherlock's Sense, and Skill; 
 Beyond the Tow'r no matter what you will.' 
 
 But if Dodsley's authorship of the ' Art of 
 Preaching' is not above suspicion, there is no 
 mystery about his association with the collec- 
 tion of weekly essays already mentioned at the 
 beginning of this paper. Not only was 'The 
 World,' during its career of four years, published 
 continuously from the ' Tully's Head,' but it is 
 admitted that Dodsley himself suggested its title. 
 As a periodical it has the merit of a specific 
 character. It was a distinctly different publica- 
 tion, both from its contemporaries, and from the 
 society journals with which, in this day, it would,
 
 48 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 from its name, be associated. Unlike these 
 latter, it dealt with society in the abstract ; un- 
 like the ' Adventurer ' and its allies and prede- 
 cessors, it entirely eschewed, in addressing its 
 public, the hortatory or didactic method. Rail- 
 lery and irony were its chosen weapons, and it 
 employed them almost exclusively. Its chief 
 defect is that, rejecting subjects which were too 
 weighty for its light artillery, and shutting the 
 door to fiction and criticism proper, there is a 
 lack of variety in its themes. But it is, on the 
 whole, a remarkably well-sustained production, 
 not the least of its merits being that to quote 
 a now hackneyed expression it was actually 
 'written by gentlemen for gentlemen.' Its 
 editor, Moore, was a man of taste and ability ; 
 and his chief contributors, Lord Chesterfield, 
 Richard Owen Cambridge, Horace Walpole, 
 Soame Jenyns, Lord Orrery, Lord Hailes, and 
 the other assistants enlisted by the friendly 
 advocacy of Lord Lyttelton, whatever may be 
 charged against their literary ability, could cer- 
 tainly not be accused of ignorance of polite 
 society. ' The World ' might well furnish ma- 
 terial for an essay to itself ; but it is only 
 necessary to add here, that in its pages Lord 
 Chesterfield published the pair of papers on 
 Johnson's ' Dictionary ' which provoked John-
 
 At ' Tully's Head. 1 49 
 
 son's memorable retort ; and that Dodsley 
 himself wrote another a little study of Criti- 
 cism considered as a contagious disease in 
 which he respectably, if not overpoweringly, 
 vindicates his claim ' to converse with the 
 Wits.' 
 
 Both in its first and in its reprinted form 'The 
 World 'was exceedingly successful ; and although 
 critics like Dr. Nathan Drake deplore its lack 
 of serious purpose, Time has done something 
 to advance its value as a record of manners. 
 Before its race was well run, Dodsley lost his 
 wife, an event of which we know little more 
 than is conveyed by a sentence in Boswell, 
 stating the fact, and referring to his sorrow. In 
 17^8, he published anonymously an ' Ode to 
 Melpomene.' The popularity of this was con- 
 siderable ; and as long as he preserved silence 
 as to the authorship, it was regarded as the work 
 of a young and promising poet. But his great- 
 est success in this year, and indeed the greatest 
 success of his life, was the tragedy of ' Cleone.' 
 which he produced at Covent Garden. His 
 plot was based upon the legend of St. Gene- 
 vieve a subject which Pope had already 
 essayed and abandoned. Nevertheless, when 
 Dodsley showed him his first draft, he en- 
 couraged him to extend it from three to five 
 4
 
 5o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Acts. Lord Chesterfield was also of those 
 who recommended Dodsley to complete his 
 outline. ' Cleone' is a skilful, but a very tragic 
 tragedy. Johnson, who looked upon the book- 
 seller as his patron (and it was, in reality, to 
 Dodsley that he owed the first suggestion of 
 the 'Dictionary 1 ), seems to have regarded it 
 with mixed feelings. When it was read to him 
 by Langton (an ordeal which he abominated), he 
 said he feared it had ' more blood than brains,' 
 and he spoke of it disrespectfully as a ' slaughter- 
 house.' Yet he honestly admired its pathos. 
 ' If Otway had written it,' he said, ' no other 
 of his pieces would have been remembered.' 
 On the other hand, Garrick, either because it 
 contained no part in which he could outshine 
 Mrs. Gibber, or because he was mistaken as to 
 its acting qualities a mistake he was unlucky 
 enough to make with some of the leading pieces 
 of his day not only refused it when offered 
 to him, but refused it in terms of the plainest 
 possible dislike. It was (he declared) ' a cruel, 
 bloody, and unnatural play.' 
 
 Had he confined himself to this expression of 
 opinion, his character as an unbiassed critic 
 would have been safer. He was, however, not 
 only unwise enough to prophesy the failure of the 
 piece openly at the Bedford Coffee-house ; but
 
 At 'Tully's Head: 51 
 
 he did his best to secure that result by arranging 
 to appear himself as Marplot in ' The Busy 
 Body ' on the very evening of its production. 
 When, in consequence of this step, the friends 
 of ' Cleone ' postponed its first night, Garrick, 
 in turn, postponed 'The Busy Body.' He 
 seems, in short, to have behaved extremely ill. 
 But he had probably an antipathy to the author 
 as well as to the play. ' David and Doddy have 
 had a new quarrel,' said Johnson a remark 
 which implies that they were in the habit of 
 disagreeing. In the end, ' Cleone ' was brought 
 out with complete success a result to which 
 the efforts of the leading lady, the blue-eyed 
 and beautiful George Ann Bellamy, not a little 
 contributed. We may borrow again from John- 
 son. ' Cleone,' he told Langton. ' was well 
 acted by all the characters, but Bellamy left 
 nothing to be desired. I went the first night, 
 and supported it, as well I might ; for Doddy, 
 you know, is my patron, and I would not desert 
 him. The play was very well received. Doddy, 
 after the danger was over, went every night to 
 the stage-side, and cried at the distress of poor 
 Cleone.' Report adds that, on the same occa- 
 sion, Johnson's unqualified approval of Mrs. 
 Bellamy's talents was announced from the pit 
 in the form of a sonorous ' I will write a copy
 
 52 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 of verses on her myself ; ' while ' Doddy's ' 
 tears must have become historic, since they 
 appeared years after in the last poem of 
 Churchill. After bidding the Muses woo Gray 
 modestly, and ' doze ' with Glover, and ' bleat, 
 and bray, and coo ' with Mason, the author of 
 ' The Journey' goes on 
 
 ' Let them with DODSLEY wail Cleone's woes, 
 Whilst He, fine feeling creature, all in tears, 
 Melts as they melt, and weeps with weeping Peers,' 
 
 a stroke aimed, in all probability, at Dodsley's 
 fast friends, Lyttelton and Chesterfield. But 
 Dodsley could afford to laugh as well as cry, 
 for Garrick's rival Marplot did not succeed, 
 whilst ' Cleone ' ran triumphantly for sixteen 
 nights ; and, according to Shenstone, who sup- 
 plied the Epilogue, after a first sale in book 
 form of two thousand copies, passed rapidly 
 into its fourth edition. 
 
 Earlier in the year in which ' Cleone ' was 
 produced, Dodsley had accompanied Spence on 
 a tour through England and Scotland, spending 
 a week on the way with Shenstone in his Shrop- 
 shire home. In the same year he established, 
 under the editorship of Burke whose ' Essay 
 on the Sublime and Beautiful ' he had previously 
 issued the still existent ' Annual Register,'
 
 At ' Tully's Head.' 53 
 
 with the success of which he revenged the 
 failure of his first periodical enterprise. In 1759, 
 after publishing Johnson's ' Rasselas ' and Gold- 
 smith's ' Polite Learning,' Dodsley retired from 
 business in favour of his younger brother, James, 
 who had for some years been associated with 
 him, and (having prepared for posterity by sitting 
 to Reynolds, whose picture of him was admirably 
 engraved by Ravenet) devoted his energies to 
 the preparation, upon the model of Croxall, of 
 the once well-known ' Select Fables,' now vital 
 chiefly by their inclusion, in part, in one of the 
 rarest of the early illustrated volumes of Thomas 
 Bewick. Shenstone lent him some aid in this 
 costly and unremunerative work, which he 
 followed up by a volume of ' Fugitive Pieces 
 on Various Subjects,' containing, among other 
 things, contributions by Burke. Shortly after- 
 wards Shenstone died, and Dodsley's last pro- 
 duction was an edition of his friend's literary 
 remains a task which includes a 'character,' 
 and a minute account of the ' Arcadian Groves 
 rural,' the valleys, torrents, winding waters, and 
 Gothic seats with poetical inscriptions, which 
 went to make up that object-lesson in ' landskip 
 gardening,' and rival to Spence's Byfleet, the 
 Leasowes at Hales Owen. In 1764, Dodsley 
 himself died of gout at Durham, while on a visit 
 to Spence.
 
 54 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Spence buried his friend in the Abbey Church- 
 yard, under a fitting epitaph. As it makes no 
 secret of his humble origin and lack of learned 
 education, it may perhaps be assumed to speak 
 the truth when it lays stress upon his ' integrity of 
 heart,' and ' purity of manners and conversation.' 
 Johnson referred to him in terms of the warmest 
 affection ; Walpole with patronizing, but genuine 
 approval ; while Shenstone commended his sim- 
 plicity, his benevolence, his humanity, and his 
 true politeness. That some anecdotes of him 
 disclose a certain petulance, and others an over- 
 copious vein of sentimentality, cannot be denied, 
 but these are small things to set against the 
 combined testimony of witnesses so diverse as 
 those quoted. As will be gathered from the 
 preceding account, his life is really little more 
 than the record of the books he published ; but 
 if any biography may fairly resemble a catalogue, 
 it should assuredly be that of a publisher. His 
 reputation as an author is not now very high, 
 and indeed, when allowance is made for the 
 adventitious interest which attached to his first 
 efforts, little remains to him but the merits of 
 facility and industry. He himself doubted 
 Johnson's comparison of ' Cleone ' with the 
 masterpieces of Otway ; and we can no longer 
 verify that comparison where alone it could be
 
 At ' Tuttfs Head.' 55 
 
 verified effectively, since both Dodsley and the 
 author of ' Venice Preserv'd, 1 if they are not 
 absolutely forgotten, have long ceased to be 
 acted. As a verse-man he fails to follow Prior ; 
 but he vindicated, in a tolerable epigram, the 
 fame of Prior against the sneer of Gilbert 
 Burnet, 1 while in the little song beginning ' One 
 kind kiss before we part,' he has the infinitesimal 
 distinction of recalling, by its first line, the ' Ae 
 fond kiss, and then we sever ' of Burns. But 
 for all that he figures in the collections of 
 Chalmers and Anderson he is more eminent 
 in his business than in his literary capacity. The 
 man who, of our time, should produce the works 
 of the leading poets, philosophers, fine gentle- 
 men (if there were any), historians, and critics, 
 and also contrive to acquire their esteem and 
 affection, would certainly be entitled to rank 
 as a remarkable personage. In such relations 
 stood Robert Dodsley to the chief authors of 
 his day. Besides reprinting old plays and 
 
 1 In Burnet's ' History of His Own Time,' 1734, ii. 
 580, he spoke contemptuously of ' One Prior, who had 
 been Jersey's Secretary.' This was Dodsley's retort : 
 
 ' One Prior ! and is this, this all the fame 
 The Poet from th' historian can claim ! 
 No ; Prior's verse posterity shall quote, 
 "When 'tis forgot one Burnet ever wrote.'
 
 56 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 establishing the ' Annual Register, 1 he published 
 for Pope and Gray for Johnson and Burke, for 
 Spence and Warton, for Walpole and Chester- 
 field ; and none of them spoke ill of him. This 
 is something ; enough, it may be, to justify the 
 dedication of these brief pages to his memory.
 
 RICHARDSON AT HOME. 
 
 IT is an old truth that we are often more keenly 
 interested in shadows than in realities, and 
 this is especially the case with certain fictitious 
 characters. At Gad's Hill, for example, it is 
 less Charles Dickens that we remember, writing 
 his last novel in the garden-chalet which had 
 been given him by Fechter the actor, than Shake- 
 speare's Falstaflf, ' larding the lean earth ' in his 
 flight from the wild Prince and Poins. When 
 we walk in Chiswick Mall, it is probable that 
 the never-existent Academy of Miss Barbara 
 Pinkerton, where Becky Sharp flung the great 
 Doctor's ' Dixonary ' out of the carriage 
 window into the garden, is far more present to 
 us than the memories of Mr. Alexander Pope 
 and his patron, Richard, Earl of Burlington, 
 both of whom had ' local habitation ' in the 
 neighbourhood. If we visit the Charterhouse, 
 Addison and Steele, and even Thackeray him- 
 self, do not force themselves so vividly upon 
 our recollection as does the tall, bent figure of 
 a certain Anglo-Indian colonel with a lean brown
 
 58 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 face, and a long white moustache, who said 
 ' Adsum ' for the last time as a pensioner within 
 its precincts. And whether this be, or be not, 
 the experience of the imaginative, it is certain 
 that the present writer seldom goes print-hunt- 
 ing at Mr. Fawcett's in King Street, Covent 
 Garden, without calling to mind the fact, not 
 that those most painted and palpable realities, 
 the four Iroquois Indian Kings of the ' Spec- 
 tator,' once sojourned in that very thoroughfare 
 at the sign of the ' Two Crowns and Cushions,' 
 but that it was ' at Mr. Smith's,' a glove shop 
 in the same street, where ' stockings, ribbons, 
 snuff, and perfumes ' were also sold, that, under 
 the disguise of ' Mrs. Rachel Clark, Clarissa 
 Harlowe lay in hiding from Lovelace ; and that 
 hard by, in the adjoining Bedford Street, the 
 most harassed of all heroines was subsequently 
 pounced upon by the sheriffs officers as she was 
 coming from morning prayers at St. Paul's, 
 Covent Garden. What a subject for Mr. 
 Orchardsonor Mr. Marcus Stone 1 The Tuscan 
 portico of Paul's, with its clock and bells ; the 
 battered, brass-nailed sedan-chair, spotted with 
 damp, and browned by exposure to the sun, 
 waiting, the head ready up, ' at the door front- 
 ing Bedford Street ' ; the broad-shouldered 
 and much-muffled minions of the law watching
 
 Richardson at Home. 59 
 
 doggedly for their prey ; the gathering circle of 
 spectators, half-sympathetic, half-censorious ; 
 and Clarissa poor, hunted Clarissa 1 tremb- 
 ling, terrified, and beautiful, appearing, with 
 her white face peeping from her ' mob,' a step 
 or two higher than the rest, upon the dark cavity 
 of the church-door. 
 
 There are seven volumes of Clarissa Har- 
 lowe's lamentable history, and, according to 
 Mrs. Barbauld, there were originally two more 
 in the manuscript. Yet one of the author's 
 correspondents, Miss Collier the Margaret 
 Collier who went with Henry Fielding to Lisbon 
 tells Richardson that she is reading the book 
 for the fourth time ! As one turns the pages, 
 one almost grows incredulous. Did she really 
 read all that four times ? Did she really read 
 those thirteen small-print pages of the heroine's 
 will, four several times ? To doubt a lady, and 
 a friend of Richardson to boot, is inexcusable ; 
 but, at all events, the exploit is scarcely one 
 to be repeated in this degenerate age. Not 
 that the only obstacle is the length of the story. 
 Other writers even writers of our own day 
 are long. If ' Pamela' is in four volumes, so 
 is the ' Cloister and the Hearth' ; if 'Clarissa ' 
 and ' Sir Charles Grandison ' are in seven vol- 
 umes, there are eight of ' Monte Christo ' and
 
 60 Eighteenth Centurv Vignettes, 
 
 ten of ' Les Miserables.' But there is length 
 of time, and length of tedium. Besides words, 
 and sentences, and paragraphs, and chapters, 
 the masterpieces above-mentioned also contain, 
 to a greater or lesser extent, abundance of plot, 
 of movement, of incident. Richardson is long 
 with a minimum of these, and he is also deplor- 
 ably diffuse, copious, long-winded, circumstan- 
 tial. He plays his piece to borrow a musical 
 illustration to the very slowest beat of the 
 metronome. He can concentrate his thoughts 
 upon his theme, but he cannot concentrate the 
 expression of them ; and, as he admitted to 
 Young, for one page that he takes away he is 
 apt to add three. What is worse, as MM. 
 Janin and Prevost have proved in France, and 
 Mrs. Ward and Mr. E. S. Dallas in England, 
 you can no more cut him down now than his 
 friends could do in his lifetime. Aaron Hill, 
 who endeavoured to abridge the first seven 
 letters of ' Clarissa, 1 confessed, after making 
 the attempt, that he only spoilt them ; and in 
 casting about for an explanation of his failure, 
 he happens upon the truth. ' You have,' he 
 says, ' formed a style . . . where verbosity 
 becomes a virtue ; because, in pictures which 
 you draw with such a skilful negligence, re- 
 dundance but conveys resemblance ; and to
 
 Richardson at Home. 61 
 
 contract the strokes, would be to spoil the 
 likeness.' This, in other words, is but to say 
 that the prolixity of Richardson, if it be a 
 cause of weakness, is also a source of strength. 
 It is his style ; and the Style, in this case, is the 
 Man, or, in the explicit language of the first 
 form of the aphorism, I'homme mme the 
 very Man. 
 
 At Stationers' Hall, of which institution in ^ 
 later life he became a Master, there is an 
 excellent likeness of Richardson as he appeared 
 to his contemporaries. It was executed by 
 Joseph Highmore, ' a painter of eminence,' says 
 Mrs. Barbauld, ' at a time when the arts were at a 
 very low ebb in England ' an utterance which 
 suggests some disregard on the part of that 
 otherwise unimpeachable biographer of the 
 efforts of William Hogarth. Highmore, who 
 was a personal friend of Richardson, had al- 
 ready made a series of studies for ' Pamela ' ; 
 and he painted Clarissa ' in a Vandyke dress,' 
 a conceit which must then have been popular, 
 since both Walpole and Gray masqueraded to 
 Eckhardtin similar costume. Under Highmore's 
 brush, Richardson is depicted as a middle-aged 
 and plump little man in a claret-coloured coat, 
 holding his right hand in his bosom, a habit to 
 which he more than once refers. He wears a
 
 62 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 flaxen wig which covers his ears, has a fresh- 
 coloured complexion, a comfortable double 
 chin, and a general look of grey-eyed and 
 placid, if slightly flabby, benignity. 
 
 By nature he is said to have been slow and 
 taciturn, but among friends, and especially in 
 the ' fitting environment ' of that ' flower-garden 
 of ladies ' which he loved to gather about him, 
 he became animated, and even playful. His 
 health was bad ; like Swift, whom he adapts, 
 
 ' That old vertigo in my head 
 Will never leave me till I'm dead,' 
 
 he was subject to attacks of giddiness ; and he 
 suffered from a variety of nervous ailments, the 
 majority of which might be traced to his seden- 
 tary habits, and the relentless industry with which 
 he pursued his vocation as a printer, and his 
 avocation as an author. ' I had originally/ he 
 says, ' a good constitution. I hurt it by no in- 
 temperance, but that of application.' Unlike 
 most men of his generation, he was a vegetarian 
 and water-drinker ; unlike them again, he never 
 learned to ride, but contented himself with that 
 obsolete apology for equestrian exercise, the 
 chamber-horse a species of leathern seat upon 
 four legs and a strong spring, still sometimes 
 to be discovered in the forgotten corners of
 
 Richardson at Home. 63 
 
 second-hand furniture shops. One of these 
 contrivances he kept at each of his houses ; 
 and those who, without violence to his literary 
 importance, can conceive the author of ' Sir 
 Charles Grandison ' so occupied, must imagine 
 him bobbing up and down daily, at stated hours, 
 upon this curious substitute for the saddle. 1 
 
 The ' chamber-horse ' is not included in High- 
 more's picture, which, it may be observed, was 
 successfully scraped in mezzotinto by James Mc- 
 Ardell. But the artist has not forgotten another 
 article which played an indispensable part in 
 Richardson's existence, to wit, his ink-bottle. 
 This for convenience' sake, it was. his custom to 
 have sunk into the right-hand arm of his chair, 
 where it is accordingly depicted by the artist, 
 decorated with a quill of portentous dimensions. 
 The detail is characteristic. No man, in truth, 
 ever set pen to paper with greater pertinacity. 
 If Pope lisped in numbers, Richardson certainly 
 lisped in ' epistolary correspondence.' He was 
 a letter-writer, and, what is more, a moral letter- 
 writer, almost from his ' helpless cradle.' Two 
 
 1 Times moves so swiftly that the ' chamber-hobby,' as 
 Fielding calls it in No. 10 of the ' Covent Garden Journal,' 
 bids fair to renew its vogue. Already (May, 1894) it is 
 appearing once more in London shop windows as the 
 ' Hercules Horse Action Saddle.'
 
 64 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 anecdotes, both on the best authority his 
 own show how markedly these prevailing 
 qualities of scribbling and sermonizing were with 
 him from the beginning. At school, where he 
 was noted for his edifying stories, one of his 
 playfellows endeavoured to persuade him to 
 write the history of a footman (virtuous) who 
 married his mistress ; and he had not attained 
 the mature age of eleven before he addressed 
 an admonitory but anonymous epistle to a back- 
 biting widow of fifty, who had distinguished 
 herself more by the austerity of her precepts 
 than the assiduity of her practice. His inde- 
 fatigable pen found, however, a more legitimate 
 employment in the service of the young women 
 of the neighbourhood, who made use of his 
 equipments and his discretion to convey their 
 written sentiments to their sweethearts an 
 office which must have been a sort of liberal 
 education in love affairs, since he had frequently 
 not only to explain what was meant, but also 
 to supply what was wanted. ' I cannot tell you 
 what to write,' said one warm-hearted girl, en- 
 raptured with her lover's protestations, ' but 
 you cannot be too kind.' Obviously it was 
 in these confidences, for which, even in youth, 
 his grave and very grown-up demeanour espe- 
 cially qualified him, that he laid the founda-
 
 Richardson at Home. 65 
 
 tion of his marvellously minute knowledge of 
 the female heart. When his leaning to litera- 
 ture determined his choice of the trade of a 
 printer, letter-writing was still his relaxation ; 
 and all his leisure was absorbed by a copious 
 correspondence with an unnamed and eccentric 
 gentleman who was, on his side, to use Wai- 
 pole's phrase, equally 'corresponding.' As he 
 proceeded from 'prentice to master, his reputa- 
 tion as a letter-writer increased proportionately; 
 and when Messrs. Rivington and Osborne sug- 
 gested to him the book that afterward grew 
 into ' Pamela,' it was almost inevitable that it 
 should take an epistolary form. After ' Pa- 
 mela ' it was equally inevitable that the author 
 should cling to the pattern in which his first 
 success had been achieved. It may, indeed, 
 be a matter for nice speculation whether he 
 could have produced a novel in any other way, 
 so inveterate had his habit of letter-writing be- 
 come. He confesses himself that he wrote far 
 more than he read. ' I cannot tell why, but my 
 nervous disorders will permit me to write with 
 more impunity than to read.' His works cer- 
 tainly do not show him to have been a well- 
 read man, though, as a quondam Carthusian, 
 he was probably better educated than is gener- 
 ally supposed. But it is clear that to the day 
 5
 
 66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 of his death the writing of letters was his 
 ruling passion, as well as the standing occupa- 
 tion of his daughters, who were unceasingly 
 employed in transcribing the leisurely effusions 
 which form the basis of Mrs. Barbauld's selec- 
 tion. When a letter left the little board, duly 
 shown in Chamberlin's portrait, upon which it 
 was composed, it was handed to Anne or 
 Martha to copy, and the copy was preserved 
 as carefully as if it had been an original work. 
 Several hundred of these methodical but im- 
 moderate epistles, making with the replies six 
 huge volumes, are still to be seen in the Forster 
 Collection at South Kensington. They include 
 many unpublished documents, which, when Rich- 
 ardson's uneventful career finds its fitting chron- 
 icler, will probably be discovered to contain 
 particulars of interest. The late Mr. Malcolm 
 Kingsley Macmillan, it is understood, had made 
 considerable progress in 'prospecting 1 this mine 
 of material. 1 
 
 After the fashion of the tradesman of his time, 
 Richardson lived chiefly in the city, with a coun- 
 
 1 There are some scattered references to this task in 
 his 'Letters' (Privately printed, 1893). 'I ^ ave ^ een 
 copying Richardson's will,' he says in one of them. 'It 
 throws light on the reserve he exercised about his rela- 
 tives, showing that they harassed and sponged on him ' 
 (p. 144).
 
 Richardson at Home. 67 
 
 try house in the suburbs for Sundays. When, 
 having duly passed through his probation as a 
 compositor and press corrector, he married his 
 master's daughter (like Hogarth's industrious 
 apprentice), he opened a business on his own 
 account in Fleet Street. Thence he moved to 
 Salisbury Court, now Salisbury Square, a region 
 which, as it could boast of Dryden as a former 
 resident, and probably of Locke, was not with- 
 out its literary memories. His first house was 
 in the centre of the Court. Later on and 
 not, it is said, at all to the satisfaction of the 
 second Mrs. Richardson he moved his resi- 
 dence to No. ii in the north-west corner; and, 
 pulling down at the same time a number of old 
 houses in Blue Ball Court (now Bell's Buildings) 
 on the eastern side, constructed for himself 'an 
 extensive and commodious range' of offices. It 
 was certainly in Salisbury Court that Richardson 
 wrote part of his works ; and here he was vis- 
 ited by Johnson, Young, Hogarth, Dr. Delany ? 
 and others of his intimates. It must have been 
 in this establishment, too, that Goldsmith la- 
 boured as a corrector of the press, having, it 
 is said, made Richardson's acquaintance through 
 a disabled master-printer, one of the doctor's 
 Bankside patients. But not many anecdotes 
 cluster about the dwelling-place in the little
 
 68 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 square in the shadow of St. Bride's, beyond 
 the legend that Richardson used occasionally 
 to hide a half-crown among the types as a re- 
 ward to the exemplary workman who should be 
 first at his work in the morning. There is also 
 a tradition that, in later life, he was so sensible 
 of the infirmities of his own nervous tempera- 
 ment and of the intractable deafness of his fore- 
 man, that he never trusted himself to give any 
 oral orders, but characteristically issued all his 
 business directions in writing. 
 
 His first country house, now known as The 
 Grange, still exists, with its old wrought-iron 
 gates, at 50, North End Road, Fulham. 'A 
 few paces from Hammersmith Turnpike ' was 
 the indication which Richardson gave to ' Mrs. 
 Belfour ' ; a more exact description to-day would 
 be, ' a few paces from the West Kensington Sta- 
 tion of the District Railway.' In Richardson's 
 time the house consisted of two distinct dwell- 
 ings the novelist occupying the western half, 
 while the tenant of the remaining portion was a 
 certain Mr. Vanderplank, often referred to in 
 Richardson's letters. It retains its dual charac- 
 ter, and continues to wear much of the aspect 
 which it formerly presented. Stucco, it is true, 
 has been allowed in part to disfigure the original 
 red brick ; windows have been blocked here
 
 Richardson at Home. 69 
 
 and there ; and a balcony has been added, of 
 which no sign appeared when, in May, 1804, 
 the building was sketched for volume four 
 of Mrs. Barbauld's correspondence. But the 
 house no longer stands, as it must have done 
 when Richardson walked to it through the Park, 
 in the open country ; and only a few of the fine 
 old cedars and other forest trees which formerly 
 flourished in its neighbourhood have survived the 
 inroad of bricks and mortar. One of its occu- 
 pants after Richardson was Sir William Boothby, 
 who married the charming actress, Mrs. Nis- 
 bett. 1 But for the last quarter of a century it 
 has had a still more distinguished inmate in that 
 painter of 
 
 'Fair passions and bountiful pities, 
 And loves without stain,' 
 
 Sir E. Burne-Jones, who, although intermediate 
 tenants have effectually obliterated all definite 
 memorials of the Richardsonian era, still cher- 
 ishes a kindly reverence for his last-century 
 predecessor. At ' Selby House,' as The Grange 
 
 1 Sir William Boothby died in 1846, and his widow 
 returned to the stage. She was famous as ' Constance ' 
 in 'The Hunchback' of Sheridan Knowles, and as 'Lady 
 Gay Spanker' in Boucicault's ' London Assurance.' She 
 survived until 1858, and is buried at St. Leonard's-on- 
 Sea.
 
 /o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 seems to have been then called, Richardson 
 lived from 1730, or earlier, until October, 1754; 
 and it follows that while residing at North End 
 he wrote not only ' Pamela,' but ' Clarissa' and 
 4 Sir Charles Grandison, 1 the final volumes of 
 which last appeared early in the latter year. 
 
 Which of the rooms he used for his study, 
 when his numerous visitors made no special 
 claims upon his attention, is not now discover- 
 able. But his favourite writing-place was an 
 arbour or grotto at the back of the house, no 
 visible trace of which remains. It is described 
 by a visitor, Mr. Reich of Leipsic, as being 
 ' in the middle of the garden, over against the 
 house ' ; and it contained a seat or chair in 
 which Richardson was accustomed to work. 
 ' I kissed the ink-horn on the side of it,' says 
 the perfervid gentleman from Saxony, thus con- 
 veniently confirming a detail in Highmore's pic- 
 ture. According to Mrs. Barbauld, Richardson 
 was in the habit of repairing to this retreat in 
 the morning, before the rest of the family were 
 up ; and ' when they met at breakfast, he com- 
 municated the progress of his story, which, by 
 that means, had every day a fresh and lively 
 interest. Then [says his biographer] began the 
 criticisms, the pleadings, for Harriet Byron or 
 Clementina ; every turn and every incident was
 
 Richardson at Home. 71 
 
 eagerly canvassed, and the author enjoyed the 
 benefit of knowing beforehand how his situa- 
 tions would strike.' These breakfast-table dis- 
 cussions must have been invaluable to a writer 
 of Richardson's type ; and they were renewed 
 at other times in the grotto itself. Miss High- 
 more, the artist's daughter, who was no mean 
 draughtswoman, has left a little sketch in which 
 one of these meetings is depicted. She has 
 probably exaggerated the size of the grotto, 
 which looks exceptionally spacious ; but it must 
 have been large enough to hold seven people, 
 since, as shown in the picture, there are seven 
 in it. It is as bare of ornament as the cabinet 
 of M. de BufFon, a table and chairs being the 
 only furniture. To the left, Richardson, in his 
 habitual velvet cap and morning gown, is reading 
 the MS. of 'Grandison'; Miss Mulso (after- 
 ward 'the celebrated Mrs. Chapone'), a hand- 
 some young woman, is in the middle; the others 
 are her father and brother, her brother's future 
 wife, Miss Prescott, Miss Highmore, and Miss 
 Highmore's lover, Mr. Duncombe. The ladies, 
 in their Pamela hats, are dignified and decorously 
 attentive, while the attitudes of the gentlemen 
 rise easily to the occasion. Their management 
 of their legs in particular is beyond all praise. 
 For the rest, Mr. Mulso the elder is feeling
 
 72 Eighteenth Century l/ignettes. 
 
 for his handkerchief; Mr. Mulso junior has 
 his hands in his bosom ; and the Rev. John 
 Duncombe is taking snuff with an air which 
 would do credit to the vieille cour, or even to 
 the irreproachable Sir Charles himself. 1 
 
 As a valetudinarian whose life was spent be- 
 tween steel and tar-water, it might have been 
 expected that Richardson would often be absent 
 from London in search of health. But beyond 
 his periodical visits to North End visits which, 
 as he advanced in years and prosperity, naturally 
 grew more frequent and more prolonged he 
 seems to have seldom left town, and to have 
 resorted but rarely to the fashionable watering- 
 places of his day. He says, indeed, in one of 
 his letters to Young, that he had often tried 
 Bath, but without benefit ; and it may well be 
 conceived that the Bath of Smollett's time, with 
 its bells and its bustle, was wholly unsuited to 
 his nervous and highly-strung temperament. 
 The place most often in his letters is Tunbridge 
 Wells, where Thackeray puts him in the ' Vir- 
 ginians.' In the middle of the last century, the 
 Wells had always its recognized supporters, who, 
 in due season, religiously perambulated the 
 shady walks, loitered at the toy-shops on the 
 
 1 Mr. Buncombe was the author of the ' Feminead, 1 
 1754, and, like Mr. Mulso, junior, wrote for the ' World.'
 
 Richardson at Home. 73 
 
 red-roofed Pantiles, or crowded in the Tea 
 Room round the last new ' Cynthia of the 
 minute.' In her third volume, Mrs. Barbauld 
 reproduces an old water-colour drawing which 
 once belonged to Richardson, and which (it is 
 alleged) bore in his own writing the names of 
 many of the notabilities of the place. The Hon. 
 Miss Chudleigh, ' Maid of Honour to her 
 Royal Highness the Princess of Wales,' in a 
 monstrous side-hoop, ' swims ' or ' sails' up the 
 centre between Beau Nash and Mr. Pitt; Dr. 
 Johnson is talking deferentially to the Bishop 
 of Salisbury ; the septuagenarian Gibber is 
 following like a led-captain close upon the heels 
 of Lord Harcourt, while Garrick the great 
 Garrick himself is chatting amicably with the 
 famous prima donna, Giulia Frasi. Among the 
 rest you may distinguish another ' professional 
 beauty,' Miss Peggy Banks (who afterward 
 married Lord Temple's brother) ; Arthur 
 Onslow, the philanthropic Speaker of the 
 House of Commons ; and the lanky form of 
 Chesterfield's ' respectable Hottentot,' Lyttel- 
 ton. In a corner, at an unconscionable distance 
 from her husband, is Mrs. Johnson, and hard 
 by, Whiston of ' Josephus ' and the longitude 
 
 ' The longitude uncertain roams, 
 In spite of Whiston and his bombs.'
 
 74 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Finally, in the right foreground, his left hand 
 in his breast, his right steadied upon his cane as 
 a precaution against giddiness, is the little figure 
 of Richardson, shuffling along, circumspect and 
 timorous, as he describes himself to his dear 
 Miss Highmore. After making mild fun of the 
 fantastic appearance presented by those ancient 
 lady-killers, Mr. Nash and Mr. Gibber, hunt- 
 ing ' with faces of high importance ' after new 
 beauties, he proceeds to draw his own likeness. 
 He is, he says, 'a sly sinner, creeping along 
 the very edges of the walks, getting behind 
 benches : one hand in his bosom, the other held 
 up to his chin, as if to keep it in its place : afraid 
 of being seen, as a thief of detection. The 
 people of fashion, if he happen to cross a walk 
 (which he always does with precipitation) 
 unsmile their faces, as if they thought him in 
 their way ; and he is sensible of so being, steal- 
 ing in and out of the bookseller's shop, as if 
 he had one of their glass-cases under his coat. 
 Come and see this odd figure 1 ' * 
 
 1 The artist of this sketch, long in the possession of 
 Richardson's family, was Loggan the dwarf, whose dimi- 
 nutive figure appears in the left-hand corner, where he is 
 talking to the woman of the Wells. He made many 
 similar drawings of the notabilities at the different water- 
 ing-places. Upon the strength of this one, Malone and
 
 Richardson at Home. 75 
 
 When Richardson extended his business pre- 
 mises at Salisbury Court, he also moved his 
 ' country box ' from Fulham to Parson's Green. 
 Of this Parson's Green house an old mansion 
 once occupied by a Caroline Lord Chief Justice, 
 Sir Edmund Saunders no trace now remains, 
 and the neighbourhood itself is greatly altered. 
 Tradition speaks, however, of a porch with seats, 
 from which Richardson was accustomed to wel- 
 come his guests ; and there was also an alcove 
 which found its poet : 
 
 ' Here the soul-harr'wing genius form'd 
 
 His PAMELA'S enchanting story ! 
 And. here divine CLARISSA died 
 A martyr to our sex's glory I ... 
 
 ' Here GRANDISON, to crown the whole, 
 
 A bright examplar stands confest ! 
 Who stole those virtues we admire 
 From the great Author's glowing breast.' 
 
 others have assumed that Samuel Johnson was at Tun- 
 bridge in 1748. It is, however, by no means certain that 
 he is the ' Dr. Johnson ' here represented. The. names of 
 the characters are said to be inserted in Richardson's own 
 handwriting. But, as Dr. Birkbeck Hill points out 
 (Boswell's ' Life,' i. 190 n.), Samuel Johnson did not re- 
 ceive a doctor's degree until more than four years after 
 Richardson's death in 1761 ; and therefore could not have 
 been described by Richardson as ' Dr.' Johnson.
 
 76 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 So ' sings the bright-haired muse ' in volume 
 five of Dodsley's 'Collection.' Unluckily, all 
 the immortal works referred to were, as already 
 stated, composed at North End. 1 At his new 
 home, Richardson still continued to receive his 
 friends, to write to them at immeasurable length, 
 or to read to them what he had written at equal 
 length to other people. Mrs. Charlotte Lenox, 
 pf the ' Female Quixote,' who was a frequent 
 visitor at this time, could scarcely recall an 
 occasion upon which ' her host had not re- 
 hearsed at least one, but probably two or three 
 voluminous letters, if he found her in the 
 humour of listening with attention.' Of such 
 ' lucubrations' his printed correspondence is 
 composed. It has, indeed, a certain unity, for 
 the subject is almost exclusively himself and his 
 novels ; but it can only by courtesy be called 
 absorbing. His habitual male correspondents 
 were none of them of the first order. The most 
 eminent were Young, who was a poet, and 
 Edwards (of the ' Canons of Criticism '), who 
 was a scholar; but Gibber and Aaron Hill re- 
 
 1 The error is repeated in Malcolm's engraving (May 
 7> *799) of the Parson's Green house, which has for title. 
 ' The House at Fulham in which Richardson wrote Cla- 
 rissa.' The building represented is, however, entirely 
 different from that at North End.
 
 Richardson at Home, 77 
 
 present the general level. It was in his lady 
 correspondents that he was most fortunate. 
 Henry Fielding's sisters, Sally and Patty, had 
 something of their brother's genius ; the two 
 Miss Colliers, daughters of Arthur Collier, the 
 metaphysician, were also remarkable women, 
 while Mrs. Delany, Miss Highmore, Miss 
 Mulso, Miss Talbot, and Mrs. (or more strictly) 
 Miss Donellan were all far beyond the eigh- 
 teenth-century average of what Johnson called 
 ' wretched unidea'd girls.' To the nervous little 
 genius they must have been invaluable, for they 
 not only supplied him continuously with that 
 fertilizing medium of sympathetic encourage- 
 ment which robust spirits call by the grosser 
 name of adulation, but their comments and 
 discussions upon his work while in progress 
 afforded much of the stimulus and none of the 
 irritation of applied criticism. They were his 
 School of Emotion ; and no one was better 
 aware of the fact than he was. ' I have often 
 sat by in company,' he tells Lady Echlin, ' and 
 been silently pleased with the opportunity given 
 me, by different arguers, of looking into the 
 hearts of some of them, through windows that 
 at other times have been closed.' 
 
 The longest series of his letters is addressed 
 to Lady Echlin's sister, and both in its origin
 
 78 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and its development it is the most interest- 
 ing. In 1748, when the first four volumes of 
 ' Clarissa ' had appeared, a letter purporting to 
 come from Exeter was received by Richardson 
 from an unknown correspondent. Referring to 
 the current rumour that the book would end un- 
 happily, the writer requested confirmation of this 
 in the ' Whitehall Evening Post,' where Rich- 
 ardson accordingly inserted a notice. Shortly 
 afterward came an impassioned communication 
 appealing strongly against his decision, in words 
 which must have thrown him into a twitter of 
 gratified agitation. ' If you disappoint me,' said 
 'Mrs. Belfour' (for so she signed herself), 
 'attend to my curse : May the hatred of all the 
 young, beautiful, and virtuous, for ever be your 
 portion 1 and may your eyes never behold any- 
 thing but age and deformity ! may you meet with 
 applause only from envious old maids, surly 
 bachelors, and tyrannical parents 1 may you be 
 doomed to the company of such 1 and, after death, 
 may their ugly souls haunt you ! Now make 
 Lovelace and Clarissa unhappy if you dare.' 
 Richardson replied as an artist, defending, with 
 more decision than might have been expected, 
 his foregone conclusion ; and the correspon- 
 dence, protracted while the book progressed to 
 its final volume, was continued subsequently,
 
 Richardson at Home. 79 
 
 degenerating at last into a species of decorous 
 elderly flirtation. The writer proved to be a 
 Lady Bradshaigh, of Haigh, near Wigan, in 
 Lancashire Exeter having been only given as 
 a blind. When a lady confesses to have shed a 
 pint of tears (for this is the precise liquid measure 
 specified) over one's work, a certain curiosity is 
 perhaps excusable, and, as time went on, Rich- 
 ardson obviously grew anxious to make his 
 Incognita's personal acquaintance. The later 
 letters reveal a good deal of finessing on both 
 sides on his, to identify the lady at various 
 places where she announced she should be ; on 
 hers, to see him without being seen herself. At 
 last, in March, 1750, they came together; and 
 the further correspondence of Lady Bradshaigh 
 with Richardson fills Mrs. Barbauld's sixth vol- 
 ume. In one of the earlier letters he gives a 
 minute and often-quoted description of himself, 
 from which a few particulars have already been 
 borrowed in describing his portrait. 
 
 Lady Bradshaigh seems to have somewhat 
 disconcerted Richardson by her undisguised par- 
 tiality for that reprehensible personage, Love- 
 lace. She must have exercised him still more 
 by the indulgence with which she referred to 
 ' Clarissa's' rival, 'Tom Jones.' With much 
 of the little man's annoyance at what he called
 
 8o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 the ' lewd and ungenerous engraftment ' upon 
 ' Pamela ' of ' Joseph Andrews,' it is difficult not 
 to sympathize, but his continual exhibitions of 
 irritation are certainly undignified. Fielding's 
 recognition, in the ' Jacobite's Journal,' of the 
 genius of ' Clarissa ' was powerless to mollify 
 him, and his utterances are almost abject in their 
 querulous ill-nature. He finds the characters 
 and situations in 'Amelia' 'so wretchedly low 
 and dirty' that he cannot get beyond the first 
 volume ; * Tom Jones ' is a ' spurious brat ' with 
 a ' coarse title ' ; its author has overwritten him- 
 self ; he hath no invention ; his works have no 
 sale and so forth. But the most ludicrous 
 disclosure of his mingled animosity and jealousy 
 is to be found in an unpublished correspondence 
 at South Kensington with Aaron Hill's daugh- 
 ters, Astraea and Minerva. He has not, he 
 announces, as yet brought himself to read ' Tom 
 Jones,' though he clearly knows a great deal 
 about the book ; and he asks the two girls to 
 report upon it, manifestly anticipating from them, 
 as fervent admirers of the ' divine Clarissa,' a 
 verdict entirely consolatory to his own uneasy 
 vanity. But the fair critics, who, despite their 
 absurd and actual names (there was a third sister, 
 Urania), were evidently very sensible young 
 women, return what, making due allowance for
 
 Richardson at Home. 81 
 
 some transparent conciliation of the sensitive 
 author they are addressing, is a remarkably just 
 appreciation of Fielding's masterpiece. It was, 
 in fact, a great deal too just for their correspon- 
 dent, who, though he still claims to have been 
 discouraged from reading the book, does not on 
 that account scruple in his rejoinder to criticise 
 the hero, the heroine, and the plot with such 
 asperity as to draw tears of mortification from 
 the fine eyes of Minerva and Astraea, who can- 
 not endure that Mr. Richardson should think 
 it possible that they could ' approve of Any 
 thing, in Any work, that had an Evil Tendency." 
 They have still the courage, however, to maintain 
 (through their father) that, when Mr. Richardson 
 has time to study ' Tom Jones' for himself, he 
 will find 'a Thread of Moral Meaning 'in it. 
 Whether he did eventually peruse it, history has 
 not recorded. For the moment, he preferred to 
 write another long letter condemning it on hear- 
 say ; but he refrained from prejudicing his judg- 
 ment by making its acquaintance at first hand. 
 That he would ever have approved it, is scarcely 
 to be hoped. The wound inflicted by * Joseph 
 Andrews' remained incurable. It was nulla 
 medicabilis herba. 
 
 To-day the rivals lie far enough apart : the 
 one on the hill at Lisbon, the other in St Bride's. 
 6
 
 82 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 It is a favourite commonplace of literature to 
 fable that, in some Lucianic and ultra-Stygian 
 Land of Shadows, the great ones who have 
 departed meet again, and adjust their former 
 differences. But whatever may come to pass 
 in another sphere, it is not easy to conceive 
 of any circumstances in which these two could 
 ever have lived harmoniously on this particularly 
 earthy planet of ours. No men were ever more 
 absolutely antipathetic more fundamentally and 
 radically opposed than Richardson with his 
 shrinking, prudish, careful, self-searching nature, 
 and Fielding with his large, reckless, generous, 
 exuberant temperament. Their literary methods 
 were no less at variance. The one, with the 
 schooling of a tradesman, was mainly a spectator 
 ab intra; the other, with the education of a 
 gentleman, mainly a spectator ab extra. If one 
 had an unrivalled knowledge of Woman, the 
 other had an unrivalled experience of Man. 
 To Richardson's subjective gifts were added an 
 extraordinary persistence of mental application, 
 and a merciless power of cumulative details ; 
 to Fielding's objective faculty, the keen per- 
 ceptions of a humorist, and a matchless vein 
 of irony. Both were reputed to have written 
 l le premier roman du monde.' Each has been
 
 Richardson at Home. 83 
 
 called by his admirers ' the Father of the English 
 Novel.' It would be more exact to divide the 
 paternity to speak of Richardson as the Father 
 of the Novel of Sentiment, and Fielding as the 
 Father of the Novel of Manners.
 
 'LITTLE ROUBILLAC.' 
 
 \I7HEN, circa 1760, Goldsmith's Chinese 
 * * Philosopher visited this country, he 
 made it part of his duty to seek out famous 
 living men. In one of his letters he records 
 the result. He looked for them in the book- 
 shops, and could not find them ; he looked for 
 them in the windows of the print-sellers, and 
 neither were they there. They were, in short, 
 nowhere discoverable ' eo clariores quia ima- 
 gines eorum non deferebantur,'' says this accom- 
 plished Oriental, quoting Tacitus, and thereby 
 unkindly anticipating the ' conspicuous by their 
 absence ' of a latter-day Prime Minister. Fail- 
 ing of the living, he fell back upon the dead, 
 and repaired to Westminster Abbey. But at 
 that time the national Valhalla was not more 
 discriminating than the popular voice. He 
 discovered, indeed, numerous new monuments 
 to notabilities of whose existence he was totally 
 ignorant, and whose names he speedily forgot ; 
 although he afterwards well remembered that
 
 'Little Roubillac: 85 
 
 Roubillac was the statuary who carved them. 
 ' I could not help smiling at two modern 
 epitaphs in particular ; one of which praised 
 the deceased for being ortus ex antiqua stirpe ; 
 the other commended the dead, because hanc 
 txdem suis sumptibus recedificavit : the greatest 
 merit of one, consisted in his being descended 
 from an illustrious house ; the chief distinction 
 of the other, that he had propped up an old 
 house that was falling. Alas, alas, cried I, 
 such monuments as these confer honour, not 
 upon the great men, but upon little Roubillac.' 
 
 This passage from the ' Citizen of the World,' 
 written a few months before Roubillac's death, 
 is almost too ambiguous to prove much in the 
 way of an acquaintance between Goldsmith and 
 the sculptor. 1 It has been called a friendly 
 mention, but it might also be explained as a con- 
 temptuous one. Yet, with a line in the poems 
 of Churchill's friend, Lloyd, and a reference 
 in Foote's comedy of 'Taste,' it apparently 
 makes up the sum of what eighteenth-century 
 belles-lettres has devoted to the most popular 
 artist in stone who flourished under the second 
 George. Lord Chesterfield, whose bust Rou- 
 billac modelled, is said to have declared that he 
 
 1 There is a popular anecdote connecting the pair, but 
 its authenticity is not above suspicion.
 
 86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 was the only statuary of his day, and that all 
 the rest were nothing more than stonecutters. 
 But Pope, whom he carved far better than 
 Rysbrack, never enshrined his name in the 
 amber of a couplet ; nor did Hogarth, whom 
 he equally immortalized, work him into the 
 the accessories of a picture. He seems, in 
 short, to have suffered, with more than usual 
 severity, that frequent fate of the migrating 
 artist to be neglected in the land of his 
 adoption, and forgotten in the land of his birth. 
 He was the contemporary of Horace Walpole, 
 yet Horace Walpole perhaps because of Rou- 
 billac's connection with his untuneable brother 
 Edward is culpably perfunctory in his account 
 of him. Allan Cunningham's sketch in the 
 * Lives,' on the other hand, is palpably padded ; 
 and beyond these nothing now remains but a 
 strav paper in a magazine, a few dispersed dic- 
 tionary articles, and a brief essay in biography. 
 The story of this last is curious enough. 
 Twelve years ago, M. Le Roy de Sainte- 
 Croix, a French art critic of some achieve- 
 ment, who, like Roubillac, was a native of 
 Lyons, resolved to rouse his countrymen gen- 
 erally, and his townsmen in particular, into 
 some recognition of their distinguished com- 
 patriot. With a view to the erection of a
 
 ' Little Roubillac.' 87 
 
 statue, he set about the preparat'ion of a life. 
 His book, which is entitled ' Vie et Ouvrages 
 de L. F. Roubillac, Sculpteur Lyonnais (1695- 
 1762), par Le Roy de Sainte-Croix (du "Jour- 
 nal des Arts"),' purports on its title-page to be 
 published by P. Ollendorff, 2&bis, Rue de Riche- 
 lieu, and its date is 1882. It was set up in type 
 by an English firm of printers now no longer 
 existent : and it was no doubt intended that the 
 sheets should be sent to Paris. But, for some 
 unexplained reason, this was not done, and M. 
 Ollendorff, we are credibly informed, never 
 even beheld a copy of the book which bears 
 his name as ' Editeur.' In 1882 the author 
 died, and after much patient inquiry we have 
 failed to find any copy of his work except in 
 the Art Library at South Kensington. This is 
 to be regretted, because, though scarcely ex- 
 tending beyond the limits of a pamphlet, M. 
 Sainte-Croix's essay is distinctly what Mon- 
 taigne calls ' un livre de bonne foy. 1 The 
 author must have diligently ransacked many 
 sources for material ; and, unlike some French 
 writers, must have studied his subject on the 
 spot. In spite of occasional repetition, his 
 work, though of necessity incomplete, remains 
 the sole existing attempt at any separate and 
 systematic account of Roubillac's career.
 
 88 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 His full name was Louis Francis Roubillac, 
 afterwards phonetically anglicized into Rou- 
 biliac ; and he was born at Lyons in 1695. 
 He is supposed to have studied under his 
 townsman Nicolas, the elder of the Coustou's, 
 and he was subsequently a pupil of Balthazar, 
 sculptor to the Elector of Saxony. By the 
 earlier authorities, he is said to have found his 
 way to England in 1720 ; but as he is not defi- 
 nitely heard of here until eighteen years later, 
 and as, in 1730, he gained the second Grand 
 Prix of the Academic Royale de Peinture et de 
 Sculpture with a group representing ' Daniel 
 saving the chaste Susanna at the moment when 
 she was being led to death,' it is highly probable 
 that his settlement in this country has been 
 antedated. According to Northcote, his first 
 employment in England was that of journeyman 
 to Jervas's protege", Thomas Carter of Knights- 
 bridge, who afterwards executed a bas-relief for 
 Colonel Townsend's monument in Westminster 
 Abbey, and who divides with Bird's assistant, 
 Delvaux, a somewhat doubtful claim to the 
 authorship of the leaden lion which was once 
 so prominent an object on old Northumberland 
 House. It is to be feared that Roubillac's first 
 function in Carter's establishment was little 
 more than that of a ' botcher ' or repairer of
 
 1 Little Roubillac: 89 
 
 antiques, for Smith, in his ' Life of Nollekens,' 
 gives the ingredients of a cunning paste com- 
 pacted of porter grounds, yolk of egg, Glou- 
 cester cheese, and plaster of Paris, with which 
 the new recruit was wont to renovate the 
 battered bustos of gods and goddesses. Some 
 time after 1732, however, he had the good for- 
 tune to find a pocket-book in Vauxhall Gardens 
 belonging to Edward Walpole, Horace Walpole's 
 brother, and, returning it with commendable 
 promptitude to its owner, was also fortunate 
 enough to find a life-long protector. In his way 
 Edward Walpole was a virtuoso and connois- 
 seur, and he recommended Roubillac to Henry 
 Cheere, whose stone-yard, with its once popular 
 leaden figures for gardens, is often referred to 
 in eighteenth-century literature. Cheere is ' the 
 man at Hyde Park Corner 1 of whom Lord 
 Ogleby speaks in the 'Clandestine Marriage 1 ; 
 and it is obviously to Cheere's collection that 
 Robert Lloyd refers in the 'Cit's Country 
 Box 1 : 
 
 ' And now from Hyde-Park Corner come 
 The Gods of Athens, and of Rome. 
 Here squabby Cupids take their places, 
 With Venus, and the clumsy Graces: 
 Apollo there, with aim so clever, 
 Stretches his leaden bow for ever ; 
 And there, without the pow'r to fly, 
 Stands fix'd a tip-toe Mercury.'
 
 9O Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 How long Roubillac laboured in Cheere's 
 leaden Pantheon is uncertain ; but it is with 
 Cheere that tradition definitely connects what 
 is reputed to be his first original work in 
 England. In or before the year 1738 Jonathan 
 Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall, who seems 
 to have been very much at the mercy of his 
 friends (he had already been persuaded by the 
 painters Hayman and Hogarth to decorate the 
 gardens with paintings), applied to Cheere for 
 his suggestions. Cheere, in duty bound, re- 
 garded sculpture as an indispensable addition. 
 He was also so friendly as to hint that, in such 
 a musical resort, nothing could be more appro- 
 priate than a statue of Handel as Orpheus ; and 
 having gone thus far, he went on to recommend 
 that the work should be entrusted to his clever 
 French journeyman. This was the origin of 
 the well-known sitting statue of Handel, once 
 so familiar to Vauxhall visitors, not only in its 
 proper place, an arch decorated with a figure 
 of St. Cecilia flanked by Harmony and Genius, 
 but upon the plates, crockery, and tickets of 
 the gardens. It was erected in May, 1738 ; 
 and Tyers is said to have given Mr. Cheere's 
 nominee ^300 for his pains. J. R. Smith 
 professes to have derived the particulars of 
 this transaction from the memoranda of his
 
 'Little Roubillac' 91 
 
 father, who had been one of Roubillac's pupils ; 
 but, seeing that the journals of the day repre- 
 sent Roubillac as carving the statue in his own 
 studio at Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane (the 
 room afterwards occupied by the St. Martin's 
 Academy), it must be assumed either that he 
 set up for himself upon obtaining Tyers' com- 
 mission, or that he had previously done so. 
 Handel's statue was not his only contribution 
 to the beauties of the Surrey paradise. The 
 old guides to Vauxhall mention, and attribute to 
 his hand, a further statue of Milton in lead, 
 and ' seated on a rock, in an attitude listening 
 to soft music,' as he is described in his ' II 
 Penseroso.' What has become of this is not 
 recorded. It may, from its material, have been 
 anterior to the Handel, which, after many 
 vicissitudes, eventually came into the hands of 
 its present owner, Mr. Alfred H. Littleton of 
 No. i, Berners Street. The model, once the 
 property of Nollekens, was last in the posses- 
 sion of Hamlet the silversmith. 
 
 With the completion of the Handel statue, 
 the life of Roubillac passes once more from the 
 datable to the conjectural. That he had set up 
 for himself we know. But observes Walpole 
 in a passage which probably refers to this period 
 ' he had little business till Sir Edward Walpole
 
 92 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 recommended him for half the busts at Trinity 
 College, Dublin.' Of these M. Sainte-Croix 
 says nothing ; but one of them must certainly 
 have been the bust of Swift which is copied 
 for the frontispiece of Mr. Craik's admirable 
 biography, and which, moreover, is mentioned 
 by Sir William Wilde. As Swift never returned 
 to England after 1727, it is scarcely possible 
 that the bust can have been modelled from life, 
 and it is no doubt based upon Jervas's portrait. 
 But with the bust of Pope, executed for Boling- 
 broke in 1741, we are on firmer ground, as it 
 is expressly stated to be from nature, and con- 
 sequently represents the Pope of the ' New 
 Dunciad/ The original clay model, which was 
 exhibited at the Pope Commemoration of 1888, 
 is in the possession of Mr. Hallam Murray of 
 Newstead, Wimbledon. It once belonged to 
 Rogers, at whose sale it was purchased by the 
 late Mr. John Murray ; and it bears, especially 
 about the mouth, every evidence of that strong 
 marking of the facial muscles which Reynolds 
 had observed to be characteristic of deformed 
 persons. The sculptor himself, in an anecdote 
 preserved by Malone, went further still. He 
 found, in the contracted appearance of the skin 
 between the eyebrows, proof permanent of that 
 ' aching head ' to which Pope so often refers.
 
 'Little Roubillac.' 93 
 
 The bust, which is without the wig and shows 
 the natural hair, is one of Roubillac's most suc- 
 cessful efforts. It of course fails to reproduce 
 the magic of the wonderful eye ; but it is full of 
 courage, keenness, and alert intelligence. 1 
 
 Other commissions no doubt followed. In- 
 deed, it is not improbable that to this period 
 belong the terra cotta models and casts now 
 decorating the cases of the Glass and Ceramic 
 Gallery in the British Museum, to which in- 
 stitution, soon after the sculptor's death, they 
 were presented by Lord Chesterfield's biogra- 
 pher, Dr. Maty. They comprise among others, 
 in addition to several confessed copies from the 
 antique, studies of Shakespeare, Milton, Crom- 
 well, Mead (of the Library), Martin Folkes the 
 antiquary, Chesterfield, Richard Bentley, and 
 the naturalists Ray and Willoughby. Many of 
 the finished marbles are now in the Library of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge. Speaking gener- 
 
 1 The original marble formerly belonged to Mr. Bindley 
 of the Stamp Office. In 1848 it had passed into the pos- 
 session of Sir Robert Peel, who in that year also purchased 
 a bust of Prior by Roubillac at the Stowe Sale for 130 
 guineas (Lot 751). There is a copy of this in the 
 ' Illustrated London News ' for August 26, 1848, p. 124, 
 where it is described as one of the artist's best works. 
 But as Prior died in September 1721, it can scarcely have 
 been executed from life.
 
 94 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ally, these busts are, as might be expected, most 
 successful when the artist has worked ad vivum; 
 and the superior excellence of Folkes and Mead 
 and Chesterfield is conspicuous when they are 
 contrasted with Cromwell and Milton and 
 Charles I. But to the year 1743, or there- 
 abouts, is to be attributed the first datable 
 specimen of that ' sculpture monumentale et 
 historique ' which Roubillac is regarded as 
 having been mainly instrumental in introducing 
 into England. In 1743 departed this life a sol- 
 dier rated by some as second only to Marlbor- 
 ough himself, and a statesman and an orator 
 moreover to whom Pope had consecrated a 
 couplet in the 'Satires.' This was that fav- 
 oured child of fortune, John Campbell, second 
 Duke of Argyll, and only Duke of Greenwich. 
 An admiring friend having by will supplied the 
 funds for a sumptuous monument, the design, 
 through the interest of Edward Walpole, was 
 entrusted to Roubillac. Thus came about the 
 remarkable performance in the South Transept 
 of Westminster Abbey, where History (dis- 
 creetly pausing at that title of Greenwich which 
 died with him) inscribes His Grace's deeds upon 
 a pyramid, while Britannia mourns sympatheti- 
 cally at the side, and Eloquence, a figure which 
 won extravagant praise from John Bacon and
 
 'Little Roubillac.' 95 
 
 Canova, illustrates by her speaking posture that 
 gift of oral ' persuasion ' with which the Duke 
 is credited : 
 
 ' From his rich tongue 
 Persuasion flows, and wins the high debate.' 
 
 This, with one exception the finest of Roubil- 
 lac's monumental efforts, was followed by three 
 others in the nave, conceived in the same alle- 
 goric pattern that to Marshal Wade, and those 
 to General Fleming and General Hargrave. It 
 is at these last-named mural medleys, and at 
 General Margrave's in particular, that Gold- 
 smith is supposed to glance when he speaks 
 of the memorials which dignify their designer 
 rather than the dead. Neither General Fleming 
 nor General Hargrave had done anything de- 
 serving either of a sculptor or vates sacer. The 
 former, indeed, had been wounded as a captain 
 under Marlborough at Blenheim, and had been 
 present at Falkirk and Culloden. But to the 
 exploits of the latter not even the all-embracing 
 ' Dictionary of National Biography' has vouch- 
 safed a line, though he has an earthquake to 
 himself at Westminster. 
 
 In the year 17^0 History, not prodigal in the 
 minor details of Roubillac's life, records that 
 Tyers lent him twenty pounds a painful re- 
 minder that even costly tributes to rich men do
 
 96 Eighteenth Century l/ignettes. 
 
 not always ensure opulence. In the following 
 year he executed a monument at Oxford to 
 Henry Chichele, the founder of All Souls. 
 Then, at the beginning of 1752, being himself 
 of the mature age of fifty-seven, he married. 
 Of this fact there can be no doubt, as it was 
 ' in all the papers' ; and Mr. Justice Fielding 
 copied it from the ' General Advertiser, 1 with 
 other fashionable intelligence, into Number 4 
 of his own newly-established ' Covent Garden 
 Journal. 1 'A Few Days since [the date of this 
 veracious record is January 11, 1752] was mar- 
 ried Mr. Roubiliac, an eminent Statuary in St. 
 Martin's Lane, to Miss Crosby of Deptford, a 
 celebrated Beauty, with a Fortune of ten Thou- 
 sand Pounds.' Here, it should seem, in the 
 conventional phrase at which Fielding was so 
 fond of poking fun, were ' all the Accomplish- 
 ments necessary to render the Marriage State 
 truly happy." But, unluckily, this is absolutely 
 the only reference to the circumstance which 
 has survived. The ' Fortune of ten Thousand 
 Pounds ' (if it ever existed) must have vanished 
 like fairy gold, for, ten years later, Roubiliac 
 died in poverty ; while the charms of the lady 
 can scarcely have been of an imperative char- 
 acter, since her husband, not many months after 
 his marriage, went on a continental tour, leaving
 
 Little Roubillac.' 97 
 
 his wife behind. When, in October, i/^, Rey- 
 nolds was hastening homeward from Italy he 
 met his old master Hudson, Arthur Pond, and 
 Roubillac, on their way to Rome Roubillac 
 going for the first time. Of this belated explo- 
 ration of classic art, accounts vary. ' He staid 
 but three days in Rome,' said Flaxman con- 
 temptuously, ' and laughed at ancient sculpture/ 
 But Northcote tells a different tale. According 
 to him, Roubillac spoke rapturously to Reynolds 
 about what he had seen abroad. The key to this 
 apparent contradiction probably lies in the fact 
 that what Roubillac praised to Reynolds was, 
 not so much those time-honoured antiques that 
 Flaxman loved, but the more modern master- 
 pieces of a sculptor whose work appealed more 
 directly to his own personal taste and traditions. 
 What chiefly attracted Roubillac in the Eternal 
 City was the transitory work of Bernini. And 
 it was no doubt Bernini whom he had in mind 
 when, on his return, he hurried nervously to 
 Westminster to inspect his own efforts by the 
 light of his latest experiences. The result (he 
 told Reynolds sadly) was profoundly humiliat- 
 ing. All he had done seemed ' meagre and 
 starved, as if made of nothing but tobacco- 
 pipes.' 
 
 From this date his story becomes more than 
 7
 
 98 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ever the record of his work, and of that work it 
 is only necessary to specify the more successful 
 pieces. In 1753 he completed another great 
 sepulchral trophy, the monument to Admiral Sir 
 Peter Warren, which includes a brawny Her- 
 cules (with thews carefully studied from the 
 watermen and chairmen of the period) and a 
 justly-praised figure of Navigation. The War- 
 ren monument is in the North Transept of the 
 Abbey. Five years later he executed for Gar- 
 rick, and, in a measure, from Garrick, who 
 posed as his model, the well-known statue of 
 Shakespeare, which, after long decorating its 
 special temple at the actor's Hampton villa, 
 now, under his will, decorates the entrance 
 hall of the British Museum. For this work 
 Garrick gave Roubillac three hundred guineas, 
 and he also gave him an infinity of trouble. By 
 ill luck the marble turned out streaked, and 
 Garrick complained that Roubillac had carved 
 him a Shakespeare marked with mulberries, 
 upon which the compliant sculptor removed 
 the head and substituted another. After Shake- 
 speare, came a second but not very successful 
 statue of Handel above his grave in Poets' 
 Corner ; and, lastly, what may be regarded as 
 Roubillac's masterpiece in this line, the well- 
 known monument to Mr. Nightingale and
 
 'Little Roubillac.' 99 
 
 his wife, Lady Huntingdon's sister. Death, 
 shrouded and terrible, bursts through the black 
 doors at the base of the monument, and threat- 
 ens with his dart the failing figure of the young 
 wife (she was but six-and-twenty), who sinks 
 dissolving on her husband's arm. The group, 
 which, like the Warren monument, suggests the 
 influence of Bernini, is the ne plus ultra of the 
 Roubillac manner, theatric, fantastic, artificial if 
 you will, but amazingly dexterous and clever ; 
 and one almost feels inclined to sympathize with 
 the burglar of tradition, who, having entered the 
 Abbey on a moonlight night with felonious in- 
 tent, was so startled by Death's hostile attitude 
 that he decamped at once, leaving his profes- 
 sional ' jemmy ' or crowbar of office (' oppositis 
 fonbus minax ') on the pavement in front of the 
 tomb. It is still, according to Dean Stanley, 
 piously preserved as a testimony to his terror. 
 
 The above examples by no means exhaust the 
 list of Roubillac's successes. At Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, there is a justly celebrated 
 statue, the 
 
 ' Newton with his prism J and silent face, 
 The marble index of a mind for ever 
 Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone ' 
 
 which Wordsworth used on moonlight nights to 
 1 He holds a prism in his hand.
 
 IOO Eighteenth Century 1/ignettes. 
 
 watch from his window at St. John's , in Wor- 
 cester Cathedral there are notable monuments 
 to Bishops Hough and Hurd. Another much- 
 praised performance is that in the church of 
 Walton-upon-Thames to the last Lord Shannon 
 a further compilation in the Hargrave and 
 Fleming manner of allegorical figures, guns, 
 drums, and standards in stone. Besides these, 
 scattered about in public institutions and private 
 galleries, there are a number of busts, like the 
 Hogarth in the National Portrait Gallery, the 
 Wilton in the Royal Academy, and the Garrick 
 at the Garrick Club, which only need a patient 
 and conscientious chronicler. After the Night- 
 ingale monument, however, which was erected 
 in 1761, Roubillac can have done little, for early 
 in the following year, on the nth of January, 
 he died, and was buried four days later ' in St. 
 Martin's Church-yard, under the window of the 
 Bell Bagnio.' His funeral was attended by 
 Hogarth, Reynolds, Hayman, and the leading 
 members of that St. Martin's Lane Academy 
 which, when he moved his studio from Peter's 
 Court, had entered upon his vacated premises. 
 He need not, one would think, have died poor, 
 for a receipt in the Morrison Collection of 
 Autographs for jQ^QQ for the Lynn monument 
 in Southwick Church, Northamptonshire, shows
 
 'Little Roubillac.' 101 
 
 that his prices in his later years were by no 
 means contemptible. Yet, according to Smith's 
 ' Nollekens,' he left this world so seriously in 
 debt that his effects, when all necessary expenses 
 were defrayed, paid no more than eighteen- 
 pence in the pound. 
 
 At the Spring Gardens Exhibition of May, 
 1761 that second exhibition to the Catalogue 
 of which Hogarth contributed its most effective 
 decorations there was a portrait in oil of Rou- 
 billac, purporting to be executed by himself. 
 To infer its value from the fact that it only 
 fetched three and sixpence at the sale of his 
 property would be unwise, since, at the same 
 sale, a copy by Reynolds of the Chandos Shake- 
 speare realized, with seven other pictures, no 
 more than a paltry ten shillings. But seeing 
 that the Spring Gardens Catalogue expressly 
 describes the portrait as the artist's ' first at- 
 tempt,' it is probable that its merits were not 
 obtrusive. Fortunately, its loss is more than 
 compensated for by the very characteristic half- 
 length also in the same exhibition, and now 
 at Bethnal Green which was painted by his 
 Swiss friend, Adrien Carpentiers. This, the 
 black-and-white aspect of which is familiar in 
 the mezzotint of David Martin (1765), shows 
 Roubillac at work upon a statuette of Shake-
 
 IO2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 speare, the head of which he is delicately touch- 
 ing with his modelling tool. The portrait is 
 that of a spare-fleshed, keen-featured little man, 
 with red lips and bright eyes, full of vivacity 
 and nervous energy. His dark-skinned Gallic 
 face is closely shaven ; he wears a grey, frogged 
 coat, artistically open at the throat, and in place 
 of his wig, a greenish-looking cap. 
 
 From the scattered anecdotes which have been 
 recorded of him, taken in connection with his 
 likeness and his work, it is comparatively easy 
 to construct his character. Though he lived 
 here for more than a quarter of a century, he 
 remained a foreigner, preserving the character- 
 istics of his race, and to the last speaking English 
 4 as she is spoke ' (for Frenchmen) in the pages 
 of Fielding and Smollett. An enthusiast in his 
 art, and an unwearied worker, his pleasures 
 at all events during his bachelorhood seem 
 to have been confined to an evening look-in, 
 for chess or draughts, at Old Slaughter's, or 
 some of the other friendly hostelries of St. 
 Martin's Lane, where, at that time, ' most did 
 congregate ' the literary and artistic notabilities 
 of the neighbourhood Isaac Ware, the archi- 
 tect (whose bust Roubillac modelled) ; Hogarth 
 and Hudson; Parry, the blind harper; McArdell 
 and Luke Sullivan, the engravers ; Hubert
 
 ' Little Roubillac.' 103 
 
 Bourguignon, otherwise Gravelot, the book- 
 illustrator ; and Moser, more familiarly known 
 as Old Moser, the keeper of the St. Martin's 
 Lane Academy. In such a company, one must 
 imagine Roubillac passing briskly to and fro, 
 and energetically ' piecing the imperfections ' 
 of his English by his emphatic gestures. When 
 absorbed by his work he was often absent- 
 minded, and perhaps not without the affectation 
 of a greater eccentricity than he really possessed. 
 Once, while he was engaged on the Nightingale 
 monument, a messenger found him plunged in 
 a fit of abstraction before one of the kneeling 
 figures in the adjacent tomb of Sir Francis Vere. 
 'Hush!' he whispered mysteriously, when 
 his attention was at length aroused ' hush I 
 hevil speak presently.' Upon another occasion, 
 being pre-occupied with his own conception of 
 Mr. Nightingale, he suddenly dropped his knife 
 and fork at dinner, and flung himself into an 
 attitude of horror which almost petrified the 
 unlucky serving-boy at whom his looks appeared 
 to be directed. Something of the same restless 
 and impulsive extravagance no doubt passed 
 into and exaggerated his manner of speaking. 
 There is a story that when he wanted an in- 
 scription for one of his Westminster efforts, 
 Reynolds accompanied him to Johnson's famous
 
 104 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Gough Square garret. Roubillac straightway 
 began a full-blown and highly-seasoned harangue 
 in order to explain his mission. But the big 
 man was down upon him instanter, bidding him 
 bluntly (in Falstaff phrase) ' deliver himself like 
 a man of this world.' ' Come, come, Sir,' said 
 he, in his most magisterial manner, ' let us have 
 no more of this bombastic, ridiculous rhodomon- 
 tade. Let me know, in simple language, the 
 name, character, and quality of the person whose 
 epitaph you intend to have me write.' 
 
 As a sculptor, Roubillac retains the traces of 
 his foreign training as markedly as he retains the 
 impress of his foreign nationality. To the last he 
 is the pupil of Coustou and Balthazar ; and he 
 had little temptation to be otherwise. Neither 
 from Rysbrack nor Scheemakers aliens like 
 himself, and schooled upon alien models was 
 he likely to learn anything, even if they had 
 been his superiors in ability, which they certainly 
 were not ; and there was no English master of 
 sufficient importance to influence him in any 
 way. Indeed, to define him accurately, one 
 has to go back to the old distinction between 
 Greek and Roman art between the type and 
 the individual. It is not to the school of Phi- 
 dias or Praxiteles that Roubillac belongs ; it is to 
 the school of Lysippus, or rather of his brother
 
 'Little Roubillac.' 105 
 
 Lysistratus. With the lover in the old song, 
 'it is not Beauty he demands' at all events 
 it is not Beauty exclusively ; it is Character 
 first. One can understand how opposed his 
 ' tormented ' and dramatic manner must have 
 been to the restrained and stately style of Flax- 
 man, Flaxman who could see in Roubillac 
 nothing but conceits and epigrams of the chisel. 
 One can understand also how infinitely Roubil- 
 lac would have preferred to Flaxman's Greek 
 severities what Northcote calls 'the captivating 
 and luxuriant splendours of Bernini.' Roubillac, 
 in short, besides being a Frenchman in grain, 
 which was much, was also an eighteenth-century 
 realist, which was more. He delighted in the 
 seizure of fugitive expression, the fixing of mo- 
 mentary gesture, the indication of moods of 
 mind, the ingenious reproduction of costume, 
 detail, surface, texture. He copies the marks 
 of small-pox, the traces of ancient scars, the 
 clocks of a stocking, the petty folds and trivial 
 wrinkles of material. In his work it is idle to 
 look for repose, for gravity, for dignity. But he 
 will give you action, even to gesticulation ; ex- 
 pression, even to grimace. He is most happy 
 in his busts ; and these again are best of their 
 kind when, like those of Pope and Hogarth, 
 they are modelled from the life. Of his elabo-
 
 106 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 rate monumental and sepulchral efforts, the day 
 is past. Still, they had their day ; and those to 
 whom the Nightingale tomb now seems bizarre 
 and exotic, may nevertheless take pleasure in 
 remembering that it was once admired by a 
 great authority on the Sublime and Beautiful 
 by the critic and orator, Edmund Burke.
 
 NIVERNAIS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 A LTHOUGH of late years two bulky vol- 
 * umes 1 have been devoted to LOUIS-JULES- 
 HENRI-BARBON MANCINI-MAZARINI, Duke of 
 Nivernais and Donziois, Peer of France, 
 Grandee of Spain of the first class, Prince of 
 the Holy Empire, Roman Baron, and grand- 
 nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, they are rather 
 proofs of what may be done by a practised 
 writer with imperfect material than examples 
 of eventful biography. As a matter of fact, 
 his Grace's life presents no very moving acci- 
 dents. He had, indeed, in his youth been a 
 soldier under Villars and Belle-Isle. But he 
 had speedily quitted the army from ill-health ; 
 and almost the only notable circumstance con- 
 nected with his military career is, that his ' fare- 
 well' to the ' plumed troop and the big wars' of 
 Louis Quinze was couched in the unusual form 
 of a rhymed dpitre to the regiment of which he 
 
 1 ' Un Petit-Neveu de Mazarin,' 5 e e"d., 1891 ; and ' La 
 Fin du XVIII s Siecle,' 4 e ed., 1892, both by the lady 
 who adopts the pseudonym of ' Lucien Percy.'
 
 io8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 was colonel. At the age of twenty-six, he had 
 been elected a member of the French Academy, 
 succeeding the celebrated Massillon, and having 
 Marivaux for co-nominee. But he had printed 
 nothing ; and his literary claim was based mainly 
 upon an unpublished parallel between Horace 
 and Boileau, and a series of privately-circulated 
 poems to the very young lady whom, in his teens, 
 he had married, and with whom, aided by the 
 family diamonds and a state ' coiffure en grandes 
 boucles,' he subsequently fell violently in love. 
 He was a favourite and capable actor in that 
 'Theatre des Petits-Cabinets,' with its company 
 of dukes and countesses, by which Madame de 
 Pompadour sought to revive her fading hold 
 upon the King ; but he filled no prominent 
 Court office, chiefly, it is conjectured, because 
 of his connection by marriage with the great 
 minister Maurepas, of whom the favourite was 
 the deadly enemy. Yet, notwithstanding all 
 this, he is a distinctly interesting figure in the 
 society of the last century. He is almost the 
 typical example of personal amenity, of refined 
 charm and courtesy of the ' grand seigneur 
 homme de cour,' as the Prince de Ligne called 
 him of the canonical ' homme de bonne com- 
 pagnie.' There cannot be a better judge in this 
 matter than Lord Chesterfield, who knew him,
 
 Nivernais in England. 109 
 
 and, in some respects, resembled him in charac- 
 ter ; and Chesterfield speaks with no uncertain 
 voice. ' I send you here enclosed,' he writes 
 to Philip Stanhope, ' a letter of recommendation 
 to the Duke of Nivernois . . . who is, in my 
 opinion, one of the prettiest men I ever knew 
 in my life. I do not know a better model for 
 you to form yourself upon : pray observe and 
 frequent him as much as you can. He will 
 show you what Manners and Graces are.' 
 
 With these qualities, it is perhaps only natural 
 that Nivernais should shine as a diplomatist ; 
 and, as it happens, his occasional employments 
 in this capacity are the salient features of his 
 life. When Lord Chesterfield wrote the above, 
 the Duke was representing the French Court 
 at Rome ; and he was afterwards sent to Berlin, 
 and to London. Madame Geoffrin called him 
 maliciously an ' ambassadeur manqueY but the 
 epithet is unjust. With abundance of acuteness 
 and resource as a negotiator, his misfortune in 
 his first two missions was that he had either 
 nothing to do, or was not expected to do any- 
 thing. His chief duty at Rome, where he re- 
 mained four years, was to prevent Benedict 
 XIV. from meddling with French clerical affairs, 
 and from putting Montesquieu's ' Esprit des 
 Lois 'into the ' Index Expurgatorius. 1 In both of
 
 no Eighteenth Century fignettes. 
 
 these tasks he succeeded ; and the Holy Father 
 referred to him approvingly as the ' worthy am- 
 bassador of a very great king,' and also laid 
 stress upon his ' extreme politeness.' At Berlin 
 he was ostensibly charged with the conclusion 
 of a treaty with Frederick, while Frederick, on 
 the one hand, was privately negotiating with 
 England, and Bernis and the Marquis de Pom- 
 padour, on the other, were privately negotiating 
 with Austria. Yet even in this futile function 
 he managed to secure for himself the good-will 
 of the King of Prussia. ' Ne me parlez plus 
 du due de Nivernais,' wrote Frederick to Mau- 
 pertuis ; ' je dirai de lui ce qu'on disait a Rome 
 a la mort de Marcellus : " Les dieux n'ont fait 
 que le montrer a la terre." Ce n'tait pas la 
 peine de faire sa connaissance pour le perdre 
 pour toujours.' Elsewhere the utterance is less 
 ' alembicate.' ' Avec beaucoup d'esprit et de 
 connaissances, il est sans preventions. La sim- 
 plicit6 de ses moeurs annonce la candeur de son 
 ame. Je suis bien malheureux qu'il ne soit pas 
 n a Berlin, je vous assure bien que je ne 1'en- 
 verrais a aucune ambassade, et qu'il ne sortirait 
 de chez moi.' But the most important, as well 
 as the most successful, of the Duke's political 
 errands was that to this country in 1762-3, when 
 he was charged with the treaty which concluded
 
 Nivernais in England. m 
 
 the Seven Years' War. This episode in his 
 career, moreover, has not been discussed by 
 his latest biographer with such overpowering 
 fulness as to preclude the possibility of adding 
 some illustrative detail from contemporary news- 
 papers and other sources. It is therefore pro- 
 posed in this article to detach from the 
 straggling story of his life a brief account 
 of his embassy to England. 
 
 The deaths in succession of his only son, of 
 his son-in-law, M. de Gisors, a young man of 
 unusual promise killed at the battle of Crefeld, 
 and of Gisors' father, Marshal Belle- Isle, had 
 deepened Nivernais' constitutional melancholy, 
 and left him more than ever a prey to that mys- 
 terious eighteenth-century malady, the vapours, 
 when his old friend, the Count de Choiseul- 
 Praslin, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, ap- 
 proached him with a proposition. He suggested 
 that the Duke should undertake the delicate 
 negotiations for peace with England which 
 France, exhausted by war and by the disastrous 
 alliance she had concluded seven years earlier 
 with Austria, was now eager to arrange. On 
 our side the eagerness was not so great. The 
 new King, George III., was indeed anxious for 
 peace, as was his very unpopular minister, Bute; 
 but Pitt and the bulk of the Opposition were
 
 H2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 1 absolute for war,' and their views were shared 
 by the nation at large. The task allotted to 
 Nivernais was consequently by no means an 
 easy one, and his selection for so critical an 
 office, in spite of the unwillingness in high places 
 to dignify the brother-in-law of Maurepas, is a 
 testimony to the value placed upon his diplo- 
 matic ability. In August, 1762, he was officially 
 appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Pleni- 
 potentiary to London from His Most Christian 
 Majesty Louis XV. ; the Duke of Bedford, on 
 the other hand, being appointed to Paris. Niv- 
 ernais brought with him as his secretary that 
 ambiguous personage, M. d'Eon de Beaumont, 
 then a captain in the d'Autichamp regiment of 
 dragoons. They crossed from Calais in the 
 ' Princess Augusta' yacht (Captain Ray), which 
 had already, a day or two earlier, carried Bed- 
 ford to France ; and they arrived at Dover at 
 half-past eight on the morning of September 1 1 , 
 having occupied five hours in coming, as against 
 the two hours and forty minutes in which Bed- 
 ford had made the passage. Notwithstanding 
 this irregularity of the elements, Nivernais dis- 
 tributed one hundred guineas among the yacht's 
 crew. At Dover he was welcomed with salvoes 
 of cannon, and much appearance of enthusiasm. 
 He proceeded to Canterbury the same day in
 
 Nivernais in England. 113 
 
 a coach-and-six provided by the Duke of Bed- 
 ford, Mr. Poyntz (probably William, elder son 
 of Stephen Poyntz, the Duke of Cumberland's 
 former governor), who had accompanied him 
 from Paris, posting to town in advance to pre- 
 pare for his arrival. At Canterbury, as at 
 Dover, he found the troops under arms to 
 welcome him. The landlord of the ' Red 
 Lion,' where he alighted, having suffered con- 
 siderably during the war by the billeting of 
 soldiers upon that hostelry, conceived the bril- 
 liant idea of recouping himself at one blow for 
 much unremunerative small beer by fleecing the 
 French Ambassador. For a night's lodging to 
 twelve persons, and a modest supper of which 
 the solids were restricted to boiled mutton, 
 fowls, poached eggs, fried whiting, and a few 
 oysters, he presented the Duke with a bill of 
 ^44 odd. The details of this curiosity in extor- 
 tion, which was printed in most of the London 
 newspapers, are as follows : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Tea, coffee, and chocolate ... 140 
 Supper for self and servants . . . 15 10 o 
 
 Bread and beer 3 o o 
 
 Fruit 2 i <> o 
 
 Wine and punch 1088 
 
 Wax candles and charcoal ... ) o o 
 8
 
 H4 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 s. d. 
 Broken glass and china 2100 
 
 Lodging 170 
 
 Tea, coffee, and chocolate ....200 
 Chaise and horses for next stage . . 2 16 o 
 
 The charge for lodging, it will be seen, is 
 almost the smallest item. Nivernais, of course, 
 paid the bill en grand seigneur, merely remark- 
 ing that business on such terms must be excep- 
 tionally profitable. The sequel of the story is, 
 however, entirely to the credit of ' perfidious 
 Albion.' The county gentry were scandalized 
 at the imposition, and the other Canterbury 
 innkeepers at once took steps to disclaim all 
 connection with their rapacious brother. In a 
 letter to the ' St. James's Chronicle/ the ' Lion' 
 endeavoured to justify himself upon the grounds 
 above stated ; but he was practically boycotted, 
 and ruined in six months, being at last only set 
 on his feet again by the Duke himself, who 
 helped him from France with money. 1 
 
 1 These final and rather apocryphal details appear to 
 rest upon the authority of Grosley's ' Londres,' as quoted 
 at pp. 241-42 of vol. i. of the 'CEuvres Posthumes du 
 Due de Nivernois,' 1807. But it may be noted that in 
 June, 1763, the house, judging from a passage in Smol- 
 lett's ' Travels/ was still open under the same landlord. 
 There can, however, be little doubt that its business suf-
 
 Nivernais in England. 115 
 
 Starting from Canterbury at six in the morn- 
 ing, Nivernais drove to Rochester, which he 
 reached at half-past ten. Here he dined excel- 
 lently (probably at the 'Crown' of Hogarth's 
 ' Five Days' Tour') for the moderate sum of 
 three guineas, from which he concludes ' that 
 there are honest people everywhere.' After a 
 three hours' halt, he went forward to London, 
 delighted on the way with his post-prandial 
 glimpses of the river and the fertile Kentish 
 landscape. ' The open country ' (he writes) ' is 
 cultivated like the kitchen gardens of Choisy ; 
 the roads which intersect it resemble our ram- 
 part ; and you follow nearly all the way, at little 
 less than a league distance, the course of the 
 Thames. It is more than half a league broad, 
 and is covered with ships and boats which come, 
 go, and cross incessantly from either bank. On 
 every side, and as far as the eye can reach, you 
 behold the finest country in the universe ; the 
 most populous, the most animated, the most cul- 
 tivated, the most varied in all kinds of products.' 
 Towards nightfall, he crossed the ' magnificent 
 bridge' of Westminster, and found himself rum- 
 
 fered. When, in 1762, the Duchess of Bedford passed 
 through Canterbury on her way to join her husband at 
 Paris, it was observed (says the 'London Chronicle' foi 
 Oct. 2-5) that she put up at the ' King's Head.'
 
 n6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 bling slowly over the 'detestable pavement' of 
 London. His destination was Burlington Street, 
 where a temporary resting-place for himself and 
 his staff had been secured in a house relinquished 
 by the aforementioned Mr. Poyntz. 
 
 It had been intended, as we learn from Lady 
 Hervey and others, that he should occupy Lord 
 Pembroke's mansion in the Privy Garden at 
 Whitehall, but in view of Lord Pembroke's 
 expected return from Germany at the end of 
 the campaign, this arrangement fell through. 
 Then Mr. Poyntz's house was discovered to 
 be too small (the Duke's complete retinue num- 
 bered nearly a hundred) ; and d'Eon and the 
 secretariat had to be hastily transferred to Soho 
 Square. All this was discomforting. ' II est 
 fort embarrass^ de 1'habitation qu'il aura,' wrote 
 Madame de Rochefort to the Marquis de Mira- 
 beau. Finally he fixed upon Lady Yarmouth's 
 house in Albemarle Street, and here he remained 
 during his stay in England. As an occasional 
 refuge from the dreaded London smoke, he was 
 offered by the Bedford family what he desig- 
 nates ' une petite guinguette' a little out of 
 town, which was reported to be ' very small 
 and shabby, but in a good air and fully fur- 
 nished.' This is probably an inadequate descrip- 
 tion, for, according to the ' London Chronicle,'
 
 Nivernais in England. 1 1 7 
 
 the country seat in question was Streatham 
 House in Surrey, afterwards the residence of 
 the Duke's grandson, the Lord William Russell 
 who was murdered by his Swiss valet, Cour- 
 voisier. But Nivernais had not seen the place 
 when he described it as above to Choiseul. 
 
 His reception in London, though not equal to 
 that given to Bedford in France, was still suffi- 
 ciently enthusiastic, the 'parti du Roi' ('je suis 
 oblige,' he says apologetically, 'd'employer ce 
 langage quelque mal sonnant qu'il soit pour un 
 Franfais') being especially cordial. Not many 
 days after his arrival, he had separate audiences 
 of the King, the Queen, the Princess Dowager 
 of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Princess 
 Augusta. He also visited Lord Bute and the 
 Earl of Egremont, and suffered at the hands of 
 Lord Spencer, the Earl of Thomond, Mr. Gren- 
 ville, and others, some of those interminable 
 state entertainments which, with his ' peevish 
 petit santi,' were the most difficult part of his 
 duties. ' Ma machine est bien faible pour sou- 
 tenir 1'excellent accueil et traitement qu'on fait 
 ici a ma chetive personne,' he writes on Sep- 
 tember 2oth ; and we learn from Walpole that 
 he was too ill on the 2jrd to witness at Wind- 
 sor the grand installation of Prince William and 
 Lord Bute as Knights of the Garter. Never-
 
 n8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 theless, he had by this time already mastered 
 the state of affairs, and on the 24th he summa- 
 rized his impressions in a lengthy and admirable 
 letter to Choiseul. After explaining that the 
 King's party practically consisted of His Ma- 
 jesty, Lord Bute, and the Duke of Bedford, he 
 goes on to describe the Opposition : 
 
 'At the head of the party which cries out 
 against peace and which wishes for war is Mr. 
 Pitt, who must always be regarded as the idol 
 of the people and of a part of Parliament. At 
 the head of the party which dislikes war, and 
 which nevertheless works against peace, is the 
 Duke of Newcastle, who is supposed to regret 
 his loss of office, and can only regain it by the 
 overthrow of the ministry. There is a third 
 party, having affinities with the two others, 
 which has for leader the Duke of Cumberland. 
 This prince is dissatisfied, and wishes for war, 
 but he does not enter into all the extreme 
 manoeuvres of Pitt's followers ; and, as re- 
 gards conduct, inclines to the Newcastle party. 
 Finally, there is the Prussian party, which serves 
 all the others by intriguing actively against the 
 ministry, and makes use of all the others, in that 
 the interests of the King of Prussia are equally 
 and openly protected by them. 
 
 ' Mr. Pitt is devoted to Lord Temple, his
 
 Nivernais in England. 119 
 
 brother-in-law, who is regarded as the most 
 turbulent, the most factious, the boldest and the 
 most violent spirit in all England. The strength 
 of the Pitt party consists in the riches which 
 Temple squanders upon the cause, and in the 
 credit which the eloquence, the intrigues, and 
 the talents of Pitt have acquired for him in 
 public opinion. . . . 
 
 'The Duke of Newcastle, supported by Lord 
 Mansfield, Lord Hardwicke, the Duke of Dev- 
 onshire, and, it is believed, Lord Halifax, has, 
 for the maintenance of his party, his immense 
 riches, and, as additional resources, the votes 
 which he can command in Parliament, the de- 
 pendents he has made by the profuse favours of 
 his long administration, and the readiness with 
 which he is known to distribute those favours to 
 anyone who flatters his vanity. . . . 
 
 'The Duke of Cumberland, supported by 
 Fox, who governs him, has at his back all the 
 military who wish for the continuation of the 
 war, although no one is anxious to serve in 
 Germany. His resources are his birth, which 
 gives him the right to speak authoritatively, 
 and which seems to promise to his adherents a 
 strong protection ; his riches, of which, notwith- 
 standing his attachment to them, he does not 
 spare to make use in order to secure himself
 
 I2O Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 supporters ; and his violent character, which 
 affords assurance to all factious persons of a 
 certain sympathy on his part. Such is the 
 material situation of the parties which to-day 
 agitate this country. . . .' 1 
 
 It is needless to re-tell here the story of the 
 treaty with France and Spain of 1763 a story 
 to be found (as Walpole says) ' in all common 
 histories.' But the above will show with what a 
 complexity of interests Nivernais had to contend. 
 In England as he pointed out to Choiseul 
 he was not dealing, as in Prussia, with one 
 localized and despotic intelligence, but with 
 half-a-dozen dispersed and irreconcilable fac- 
 tions. Among all of these, notwithstanding his 
 valetudinarianism, he flung himself zealously, 
 contriving, conciliating, and finessing, with the 
 prime and immediate object of securing the 
 signature of the preliminaries before the open- 
 ing of Parliament, when the Opposition might 
 be expected to be heard in full cry. There 
 were difficulties in London with the Secre- 
 
 1 Several of the politicians above mentioned appear in 
 Hogarth's unlucky print of 'The Times, Plate I.,' which, 
 when Nivernais reached London, had just been published. 
 Indeed, the Duke himself is supposed to figure in it, by 
 anticipation, as a dove with an olive branch. He was not 
 treated so kindly by the Opposition caricaturists, who 
 generally depicted him as a monkey.
 
 Nivernais in England. 121 
 
 tary of State, Lord Egremont, never a whole- 
 hearted supporter of the peace ; there were 
 difficulties with Bedford in Paris. To make 
 matters worse, the express bringing news of 
 the surrender of the Havannah to Albemarle 
 (an event which had occurred some time before 
 Nivernais reached England) arrived to compli- 
 cate the course of affairs, and moreover as 
 ill-luck would have it arrived at the precise 
 moment when the French ambassador was dining 
 with Lord Bute a circumstance which, we are 
 told, did not in the least prevent the company 
 from exhibiting much inconsiderate exultation. 
 A more serious result was that this new suc- 
 cess, besides considerably swelling the ranks of 
 the Opposition, involved fresh concessions on 
 the part of Spain. Nevertheless, after infinite 
 managements, diversified by commissions of Bris- 
 tol water for Choiseul and fans for Madame 
 de Pompadour, and in spite of ' cette maudite 
 Havane,' as the lady called it, the preliminaries 
 were signed at Fontainebleau ; and His Majesty 
 King George III., when he went to Parliament 
 on November 2^ in the magnificent state coach 
 which had been designed for him by Chambers 
 the architect, 1 was able to announce the fact 
 
 1 In Hogarth's 'Canvassing for Votes,' 1757, the low 
 arch of the Horse Guards is shown knocking off the head
 
 122 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 to both Houses successively, Nivernais being 
 present in each. It is to be presumed that he 
 was also present at the memorable debate in 
 the Commons of a fortnight later, when Pitt, 
 making theatric apparition in faultless black 
 velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, 
 spoke, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, 
 and in a voice broken spasmodically by groans 
 of pain, for three hours and forty minutes against 
 the peace. But, notwithstanding all this, the 
 Definitive Treaty, having surmounted every ob- 
 stacle and they were many was signed in 
 the following February, the ratifications being 
 carried to the French capital by ' le petit d'Eon,' 
 who thus earned, in addition to a pension of 
 6,000 livres, his title of Chevalier of St. Louis. 
 Had the negotiations been protracted longer, 
 it is probable that the ' chttve personne ' of 
 Nivernais would have succumbed to the rigours 
 of the severe winter of 1762-3. He found the 
 smoke and the November fogs especially trying ; 
 he had cold after cold ; his sight was affected by 
 
 of a coachman who drives under it. The following 
 passage from the 'London Chronicle' of Oct. 5-7, 1762 
 (five years later !), is a curious comment upon Hogarth : 
 ' The ground is going to be lowered under the arch at the 
 Horse-guards, to make room for his Majesty's new state- 
 coach to pass through.'
 
 Nivernais in England. 123 
 
 an old ailment, and he had ulcers in his throat 
 which required the unremitting attention of 
 Maty, his doctor while in England. These 
 things, coupled with his lack of physical energy, 
 were aggravated by the intolerable fatigue of 
 ceaseless diplomatic visits, by the tedium and 
 tension of long-drawn official banquets, and by 
 the burden of an overwhelming correspondence, 
 both private and public, 1 in much of which, eti- 
 quette, not less than his own punctilious courtesy, 
 required him to dispense with an amanuensis. 
 His letters to Choiseul, his personal friend as 
 well as ministerial chief, are eloquent upon these 
 miseries, which he charitably concealed from his 
 own womankind at home. ' En ve>iteY he 
 writes, ' ce pays-ci est un cruel pays pour la 
 ne"gociation, il y faut une ame et un corps de fer.' 
 But he had the gratification of reflecting that in 
 England, at all events, whether sincerely or not, 
 the fact that the peace had been concluded at all 
 was attributed in great measure to the persist- 
 ence, the tact, and the adroitness of the French 
 ambassador. 
 
 ' Adroitness ' is perhaps scarcely the word to 
 apply to one little incident, which, if not vouched 
 
 1 A note to vol. i., p. 37, of the '(Euvres Posthumes' 
 says that the official despatches of the embassy filled about 
 sixty portfolios.
 
 124 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 for by Nivernais himself, one would feel inclined 
 to attribute to the fertile brain of that eccentric 
 ' tte de dragon,' his secretary. Once d'Eon 
 tells M. Tercier when there was a momentary 
 hitch in the negotiations for the preliminaries, 
 the Earl of Egremont's representative, Mr. 
 Robert Wood, called at the French Embassy. 
 He was so lamentably indiscreet as to disclose 
 the fact that a case or dispatch-box he carried 
 with him contained the ultimatum which was go- 
 ing to the Duke of Bedford at Paris. Nivernais 
 glanced significantly at the precious receptacle 
 of State secrets, and d'Eon took the hint. 
 Wood was forthwith invited to taste some excel- 
 lent vin de Tonnerre, which had already been 
 found especially seductive to insular palates. 
 While he was discussing the treaty (and the 
 bottle) with the Duke, d'Eon quietly withdrew 
 the papers, transcribed them, and sent off copies 
 post haste to Paris, where they arrived exactly 
 twenty-four hours before the originals, usefully 
 forewarning the French Ministry of the pro- 
 positions made almost immediately afterwards 
 by the unsuspecting Bedford. For the moment 
 ' le petit d'Eon ' was the hero of Versailles, and 
 the delighted Choiseul declared him to be ' un 
 sujet unique, et susceptible de toutes les graces 
 du Roi.' To be susceptible of all His Most
 
 Nivernais in England. 125 
 
 Christian Majesty's favours was not, however, 
 of necessity a lucrative condition. 
 
 Although the peace was proclaimed in March 
 with all the honours, it was not until the end of 
 May that Nivernais left England. Despite his 
 desire to return, he was delayed by various 
 things the appointment of his successor 
 Guerchy, the release of the French prisoners 
 of war (of whom there were some 26,000), and 
 so forth. When at last he started for Paris, he 
 carried with him King George's portrait richly 
 set with diamonds, and from a passage in one 
 of his later letters to d'Eon it seems that, in 
 addition, he was presented with full-lengths by 
 Allan Ramsay of the King and Queen, a com- 
 pliment never before accorded to an ambassador. 
 To Ramsay also we owe the most successful 
 likeness of Nivernais himself, and it was excel- 
 lently reproduced in mezzotint by McArdell. 1 
 While it fully bears out the Duke's reputation 
 for gentleness and amenity, it also exhibits 
 unmistakable signs of ill-health. He looks 
 preternaturally frail and large-eyed, and is as 
 hollow-cheeked as another ambassador, Prior. 
 His notoriously delicate and attenuated physique 
 (the caricaturists called him the ' Duke of Bare- 
 
 1 This should be rare, as the plate was destroyed by the 
 Duke after a certain number of copies had been struck off.
 
 126 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 bones') was, indeed, a subject of constant 
 remark, both from friends and enemies. When 
 he first arrived, Charles Townshend declared 
 that the French had sent over the preliminaries 
 of an ambassador to conclude the preliminaries 
 of a peace; and Walpole whose initial attitude 
 to strangers was always hostile, and who has 
 left a grossly unfair portrait of the Duke in the 
 ' Memoirs of the Reign of George III.' 
 gleefully relates the story of a boy-waiter at the 
 St. James's Coffee-house who was heard to say 
 that he did not wonder we beat the French, 
 since he himself could thrash the Due de 
 Nivernais. Another and more doubtful story 
 which once more went the rounds, attributed 
 to Frederick the Great the statement, that if 
 his eyes were but a little older, he should be 
 obliged to take a magnifying glass to see the 
 French Ambassador. These exaggerations are 
 made intelligible by less malicious witnesses. 
 ' He is a little emaciated figure,' said young 
 Mr. Edward Gibbon, who, having previously 
 sent the Duke his ' Essai sur 1'Etude de la 
 Litterature,' visited him with Dr. Maty at 
 Albemarle Street in January, 1763. ' But [he] 
 appears to possess a good understanding, taste, 
 and knowledge. He offered me very politely 
 letters for Paris,' for which capital the future
 
 Nivernais in England. 127 
 
 author of the ' Decline and Fall ' was then 
 setting out. The introductions were addressed 
 to D'Alembert, St. Palaye, the novelist Duclos, 
 and other writers, and they did not entirely 
 satisfy Mr. Gibbon. 'The Duke treated me/ 
 he complains, ' more as a man of letters than 
 as a man of fashion ' a sentiment which re- 
 minds one of Congreve and Voltaire. It should 
 be added that Dr. Matthew Maty, the medical 
 attendant of the always-ailing Embassy (the 
 entire staff at one time seems to have been 
 invalided), was himself ' a polite writer ' of 
 some eminence, as well as an under-librarian at 
 the British Museum. He wept profusely when 
 Nivernais at last took his departure. 1 
 
 In one of his private letters the Duke enu- 
 merates some of his chief friends in London. 
 They were Pitt's clever sister Anne (who, besides 
 being opposed to her brother's politics, was also 
 an old Paris acquaintance), Lady Bolingbroke, 
 
 1 ' Le bon docteur,' 'le bon Matty' as the Duke 
 calls him had probably been previously known to the 
 Nivernais family, for some French verses on the death of 
 the Count de Gisors, which are said to be his, are re- 
 printed from the ' Utrecht Gazette "in the 'Gentleman's' 
 for September, 1758. There is a head of Maty modelled 
 by Tassie, in the Franks Collection in the British Museum 
 (Glass and Ceramic Gallery). The Museum has also a 
 half-length of the Doctor by Dupan.
 
 128 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Lady Hervey, Miss Pelham, Lady Susan Stewart 
 and her future husband, Lord Gower^the Butes, 
 the Bedfords, the Count de Viry (Sardinian 
 ambassador and father-in-law to Gray's Miss 
 Speed of the ' Long Story '), Lord March of 
 the ' Virginians,' and the Russian minister, Count 
 Woronzoff. According to d'Eon, Nivernais also 
 pretended to be the devoted admirer of the 
 beautiful Duchess of Grafton, later the Lady 
 Ossory of Walpole's letters ; but this was 
 either due to the fact that her husband was a 
 leader of the Opposition, or was part of that 
 ' coquetterie d'esprit qui voulait plaire a tout le 
 monde ' with which his secretary, who after- 
 wards quarrelled with his former master, ironi- 
 cally reproached him. It is strange that the 
 name of Walpole is absent from the above list, 
 since it is from Walpole that we get some of 
 the best information respecting the Duke's 
 doings. But however Horace may have been 
 impressed in days to come by the elegant trans- 
 lator of his own facile ' Essay on Modern Gar- 
 
 1 Their union took place in 1768, upon which occasion 
 the unabashed Miss Chudleigh, who had been long 
 privately married to Lady Hervey's second son, is re- 
 ported to have said to Miss Pitt, ' Since Lady Susan 
 Stewart has got a husband, I don't think any of Us old 
 Maids need despair' (Lady Mary Coke's 'Journal,' ii.
 
 Nivernais in England. 129 
 
 dening,' he certainly does not seem to have 
 taken greatly to him at first ; and with all his 
 'coquetterie d'esprit,' Nivernais was singularly 
 unfortunate in his first advances to the Abbot 
 of Strawberry. Walpole sent him a collection 
 of the Strawberry Press issues, and received 
 in return a set of prints of ' The Four Seasons,' 
 which, he says disdainfully, had 'not even the 
 merit of being badly old enough ' for his Twick- 
 enham Museum. Then the Duke visited Straw- 
 berry on his way from Hampton Court ; but, 
 comments Horace ' with the least little touch 
 of spleen ' ' I cannot say he flattered me much, 
 or was much struck,' to which culpable insensi- 
 bility Nivernais added the unpardonable error 
 of mistaking the Gothic Cabinet for a chapel 
 and reverently removing his hat. He was, 
 nevertheless, invited to the elaborate ftte which 
 Horace gave in May to Madame de Boufflers 
 and some other French visitors, though he was 
 not able to come. On the other hand, he took 
 part in a rival entertainment given by Miss 
 Pelham at Esher Place, where he appears in 
 the most amiable light, rhyming, playing the 
 fiddle, and dancing like the ' political sylph ' 
 that he was. Walpole who certainly does 
 this kind of thing unsurpassably describes 
 the scene to Montagu. ' The day,' he says, 
 9
 
 130 Eighteenth Century Vigmttes. 
 
 ' was delightful, the scene transporting ; the 
 trees, lawns, concaves, all in the perfection in 
 which the ghost of Kent [the architect] would 
 joy to see them. At twelve, we made the tour 
 of the farm in eight chaises and calashes, horse- 
 men, and footmen, setting out like a picture of 
 Wouverman's. My lot fell in the lap of Mrs. 
 Anne Pitt, which I could have excused, as she 
 was not at all in the style of the day, romantic, 
 but political. We had a magnificent dinner, 
 cloaked in the modesty of earthenware ; French 
 horns and hautboys on the lawn. We walked 
 to the Belvidere on the summit of the hill, 1 
 where a theatrical storm only served to heighten 
 the beauty of the landscape, a rainbow on a dark 
 cloud falling precisely behind the tower of a 
 neighbouring church, between another tower 
 and the building at Claremont. Monsieur de 
 1 ' An elegant summer-house, situate on the most 
 elevated spot in the park, commands a variety of rich and 
 pleasant prospects. Among the nearer views are Rich- 
 mond Hill, Hampton Court, Harrow on the Hill, Windsor 
 Castle, the windings of the Thames, &c. and, on the other 
 side, are Claremont, and other fine seats ' (' Ambulator,' 
 1800, p. 82). There is a large print both drawn and 
 engraved by Luke Sullivan, which gives an excellent idea 
 of Old Esher Place, and exhibits the Belvidere at the back. 
 It is dated March i, 1759; and its foreground is occupied 
 by just such another pleasure-party as that described in 
 the text.
 
 Nivernais in England. 131 
 
 Nivernois, who had been absorbed all day, 
 and lagging behind, translating my verses, was 
 delivered of his version, and of some more lines 
 which he wrote on Miss Pelham in the Belvl- 
 dere, while we drank tea and coffee. From 
 thence we passed into the wood, and the ladies 
 formed a circle on chairs before the mouth of 
 the cave, which was overhung to a vast height 
 with woodbines, lilacs, and laburnums, and dig- 
 nified by the tall shapely cypresses. On the 
 descent of the hill were placed the French 
 horns ; the abigails, servants, and neighbours 
 wandering below by the river ; in short, it was 
 Parnassus, as Watteau would have painted it. 
 Here we had a rural syllabub, and part of the 
 company returned to town ; but were replaced 
 by Giardini and Onofrio, who, with Nivernois 
 on the violin, and Lord Pembroke on the base, 
 accompanied Miss Pelham, Lady Rockingham, 
 and the Duchess of Grafton, who sang. This 
 little concert lasted till past ten, then there 
 were minuets, and as we had seven couple left, 
 it concluded with a country dance. I blush 
 again, for I danced, but was kept in counte- 
 nance by Nivernois, who has one wrinkle more 
 than I have. A quarter after twelve they sat 
 down to supper, and I came home by a charm- 
 ing moonlight '
 
 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 At the end of this letter Horace transcribes 
 the Duke's verses, and as at the beginning 
 he had already transcribed his own, we are 
 able to compare the original with the copy. 
 Here is what the ' British diction ' of the Straw- 
 berry Press said to Madame la Comtesse de 
 Boufflers : 
 
 'The graceful fair, who'loves to know, 
 Nor dreads the north's inclement snow ; 
 Who bids her polish'd accent wear 
 The British diction's harsher air, 
 Shall read her praise in every clime 
 Where types can speak or poets rhyme/ 
 
 And here is the ' polish'd accent ' of Nivernais : 
 
 ' Boufflers, qu'embellissent les graces, 
 Et qui plairait sans le vouloir, 
 Elle a qui 1'amour du S9avoir 
 Fit braver le Nord et les glaces ; 
 Boufflers se plait en nos vergers, 
 Et veut a nos sons etrangers 
 Plier sa voix enchanteresse. 
 Repetons son nom mille fois, 
 Sur tout les coeurs Boufflers aura des droits, 
 Partout ou la rime et la Presse 
 A 1'amour preteront leur voix.' 
 
 Perhaps the fittest comment upon these com- 
 peting masterpieces would be that discreet ver- 
 dict of Corneille in ' Voiture versus Benserade ' :
 
 Nivernais in England. 133 
 
 ' L'un est sans doute mieux resve, 
 Mieux conduit, & mieux acheve, 
 Mais je voudrois avoir fait 1'autre.' 
 
 A few minor and very minor incidents of 
 the Duke's residence in England may be culled 
 from the ' scatter'd sapience ' of the ' London 
 Chronicle.' In October, not long after his 
 arrival, he was mobbed in the Royal Exchange 
 (a circumstance which was made much of by the 
 French papers), and he had to take temporary 
 refuge in the shop of the King's watchmaker, 
 Mr. Ellicot, where he handsomely 'bespoke the 
 best watch that could be made.' In December 
 he was present when the King's Scholars of 
 Westminster School played the ' Eunuchus ' of 
 Terence at the Dormitory before some of the 
 Royal Family ; and in January he was elected 
 an F. R. S. Later still, he went to Oxford to 
 receive the degree of D. C. L. , and he subse- 
 quently visited Chatham Dockyard, the Hospital, 
 Chapel, and Observatory at Greenwich, and the 
 'warren [i.e. the Arsenal] at Woolwich.' In 
 some verses addressed to Colonel Drumgold by 
 Lord Lyttelton, which are printed in the ' Lon- 
 don Chronicle' for April, 176), stress is laid 
 upon the Duke's 
 
 ' Learning and Wit, with sweet Politeness graced,'
 
 134 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and his 
 
 ' Wisdom by Guile or Cunning undebased.' 
 
 That the impression he left behind him was 
 entirely favourable to his traditional charm 
 of manner there can be little doubt ; and Lord 
 Chesterfield, although speaking expressly for the 
 paternal ear of the old Duke de Nevers, did not, 
 in all probability, greatly strain the language of 
 compliment when he told Madame de Moncon- 
 seil that Nivernais ' was loved, respected and 
 admired by every honest man in Court and 
 Town.' This is the more to his credit because 
 he liked neither the climate nor the people. 
 ' He accommodates himself to our ways as if they 
 were natural to him' (Chesterfield says else- 
 where), 'and yet heaven knows they are very 
 different from his own. He pleases every one, 
 but at bottom he must amuse himself, as Frois- 
 sart says, " moult tristement la mode de notre 
 pays."' 1 
 
 With his departure from Dover on the 22nd 
 May, the Duke's figure fades beyond the limits 
 of this paper, and his further fortunes must be 
 studied in Lucien Percy's second volume, ' La 
 
 1 Two years earlier, according to the newly printed 
 Newcastle correspondence, he had spoken of Nivernais 
 as 'an old acquaintance of mine, and the most respectable 
 man in France' (Ernst's 'Chesterfield,' 1893, p. 518).
 
 Nivernais in England. 135 
 
 Fin du XVIII 6 Siecle.' He continued to dally 
 with the affairs of his duchy, and to live the salon 
 life of a grand seigneur. He organized \\tt\efites 
 and proverbes, wrote songs and album verses, 
 produced fluent fables which he read to the 
 Academy (where he often presided) in short, 
 completely justified his reputation as *le plus 
 aimable mattre des ceremonies de la socite 
 francaise.' When at last came the crash of the 
 Revolution, he was denounced by the terrible 
 Chaumette, and shut up in the prison of Les 
 Carmes. There, an old man of seventy-nine, he 
 set himself down philosophically to translate, at 
 so many lines per day, the interminable ' Ric- 
 ciardetto 1 of Cardinal Nicholas Fortiguerra. 1 
 
 1 ' Ricciardetto ' had previously been translated into 
 French by the brother of General Dumouriez. An Italian 
 edition in three volumes with frontispieces by Cateni, and 
 engraved titles by Moreau, was published at London and 
 Paris in 1767. 'Those who have counted them' (says 
 M. Sainte-Beuve), declare that there are thirty thousand 
 lines in this once famous burlesque of Ariosto. Nivernais 
 it may be added here besides being a bookmaker, 
 was also a book-collector ; and the present writer is fortu- 
 nate enough to possess a specimen from his library. It is 
 a copy of Johannes Veenhusius his edition of Pliny's 
 Letters (Lugd. Batav. 1669, 8vo), whole bound in old red 
 morocco, with 'LE . Due . DE NIVERNOIS.' on the upper 
 side, and his armorial shield at the back. The volume 
 must have been a favourite with Nivernais, for one of his
 
 136 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Upon his release, he found he had lost every- 
 thing but his serenity of temper. As the citoyen 
 Mancini, he turned undismayed to literature ; 
 wrote a biography of the Abb6 Barthelemy, the 
 author of ' Anarcharsis ' ; and issued, in eight 
 volumes, his own collected works, none of which 
 has had the good fortune to become classic, 
 although a selection of the fables, translated into 
 English, was printed in this country by the 
 younger Cadell. That 4 long disease,' his life, 
 was protracted until February, 1798, but neither 
 age nor misfortune could diminish his amiability 
 and his 'coquetry to please.' Only a few days 
 before the end, he addressed one of his most 
 charming letters to his lawyer, who was ill ; and 
 almost his last act was to dictate from his death- 
 bed some graceful and kindly verses to M. Caille, 
 the faithful doctor who attended him. There had 
 been question of a consultation ; but the Duke 
 thought it needless. 
 
 ' Ne consultons point d'avocats ; 
 Hippocrate ne viendrait pas. 
 Je n'en veux point d'autre en ma cure ; 
 J'ai 1'amitie, j'ai la nature, 
 Qui font bonne guerre au trepas ; 
 
 cleverest pieces is a Dialogue des Marts between Pliny 
 and Madame de Sevigne, in which the interlocutors say 
 remarkably plain things to one another concerning the 
 art of letter-writing.
 
 Nivernais in England. 137 
 
 Mais peut-etre dame Nature 
 A deja decide mon cas ? 
 Alors et sans changer d'allure, 
 Je veux mourir entre vos bras.' 
 
 Having then slept quietly for six hours, he woke 
 at last to find himself surrounded by sympathetic 
 faces. In the effort to greet them, he passed 
 away, a smile of recognition still upon his lips.
 
 THE TOPOGRAPHY OF 'HUMPHRY 
 CLINKER.' 
 
 ']Y|O one will contend,' says Henry Fielding 
 * ' in the Preface to one of his sister's books, 
 ' that the epistolary Style is in general the 
 most proper to a Novelist, or that [and here he 
 was plainly thinking of a certain work called 
 " Pamela"] it hath been used by the best Writers 
 of this Kind.' The former part of the proposi- 
 tion is undeniable ; but however true the latter 
 may have been when Fielding wrote in 1747, it 
 is scarcely as true now. Even if we omit for 
 the moment all consideration of modern exam- 
 ples, 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison' 
 both of them novels told by letters, and in one 
 of which Richardson emphatically vindicated his 
 claim to rank among the ' best Writers ' fol- 
 lowed ' Pamela' before Fielding's death. Half- 
 a-dozen years after that event, another and 
 a greater than Richardson adopted the same 
 medium for a masterpiece ; and the sub-title of 
 Rousseau's ' Nouvelle Helo'ise ' is, ' Lettres de 
 deux Amants, habitants d'une petite ville au pied 
 des Alpes.' Still later in 1771 the ' episto-
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker. 1 139 
 
 lary Style ' was chosen, for his final fiction, by 
 one of Fielding's own countrymen ; and in the 
 success of the enterprise, the fact that it was 
 achieved in what Mrs. Barbauld correctly de- 
 fines as ' the most natural and the least probable 
 way of telling a story,' has fallen out of sight. 
 To think of ' Grandison ' or ' Clarissa ' is to re- 
 member that the prolixity of those prolix per- 
 formances is increased by the form ; but in 
 Smollett's ' Expedition of Humphry Clinker' the 
 form is scarcely felt as an objection, assuredly 
 not as an obstruction. It is true, also, that 
 between Smollett's last and best book and the 
 books of the authors mentioned there are some 
 other not unimportant differences. One of these 
 lies in the circumstance that his communications 
 are never replied to a detail which, however 
 irritating in a practical correspondence, obviates 
 in a novel much of the wearisome repetition 
 usually charged against epistolary narrative ; 
 another difference is, that there is no serious 
 approach to anything like a connected story in 
 the detached recollections of travel recorded by 
 the characters in ' Humphry Clinker.' Enter- 
 taining in themselves, those characters in their 
 progress encounter other characters who are 
 equally entertaining, and an apology for a con- 
 clusion is obtained by the conventional clus-
 
 140 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ter of marriages at the end ; but as far as the 
 intrigue itself is concerned, the book would have 
 been just as amusing if Tabitha Bramble had 
 !never become Mrs. Lismahago, or if Winifred 
 Jenkins, in her ' plain pea-green tabby sack, 
 Runnela cap, ruff toupee and side curls,' had 
 declined to bestow herself upon the fortunate 
 foundling who gives his name to the volumes, 
 although to quote a contemporary critic he 
 ' makes almost as inconsiderable a figure in the 
 work as the dog does in the history of Tobit.' 
 
 But it is not our present intention to hunt old 
 trails with a new ' appreciation ' of the misnamed 
 ' Expedition of Humphry Clinker.' Matthew 
 Bramble and Obadiah Lismahago, the 'squire's 
 sister and her Methodist maid, have passed per- 
 manently into literature, and their places are as 
 secure as those of Partridge and Parson Adams, 
 of Corporal Trim and 'my Uncle Toby.' Not 
 even the Malapropoism of Sheridan or Dickens 
 is quite as riotously diverting, as rich in its 
 unexpected turns, as that of Tabitha Bramble 
 and Winifred Jenkins, especially Winifred, who 
 remains delightful even when deduction is made 
 of the poor and very mechanical fun extracted 
 from the parody of her pietistic phraseology. 
 That it could ever have been considered witty 
 to spell 'grace' 'grease,' and 'Bible' 'byebill,'
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker.' 141 
 
 can only be explained by the indiscriminate 
 hostility of the earlier assailants of Enthusiasm. 
 Upon this, as well as upon a particularly evil- 
 smelling taint of coarseness which, to the honour 
 of the author's contemporaries, was fully recog- 
 nized in his own day as offensive, it is needless 
 now to dwell. But there is an aspect of ' Hum- 
 phry Clinker' which has been somewhat neg- 
 lected namely, its topographical side ; and 
 from the fact that Smollett, in the initial pages, 
 describes it as ' Letters upon Travels/ it is clear 
 that he himself admitted this characteristic of his 
 work. When he wrote it at Leghorn in 1770, he 
 was using his gamut of personages mainly to 
 revive, from different points of view, the impres- 
 sions he had received in his last visits to Bath, to 
 London, and to certain towns in his native North. 
 We are told by Chambers that his pictures of life 
 at these places were all accepted by his relatives 
 as personal records ; and though some of the first 
 reviews condemned him for wasting time on de- 
 scriptions of what every one then knew by heart, 
 we are not likely to insist upon that criticism 
 now. when nearly a century and a quarter of 
 change has lent to those descriptions all the 
 charm the fatal charm of the remote and 
 the half-forgotten. For this reason we propose 
 to run rapidly through ' Humphry Clinker,'
 
 142 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 selecting for reproduction chiefly such passages 
 as deal with actual localities. The reader will only 
 require to be reminded that the persons of the 
 drama are the Welsh 'squire, Matthew Bramble 
 (a bourru bienfaisant who has many characteristics 
 of the author himself) ; Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, 
 his sister (an old maid); his niece and nephew, 
 Lydia and Jerry Melford ; and the two servants, 
 Humphry Clinker and Winifred Jenkins. 
 
 When we first make acquaintance with the 
 little party they have arrived from Gloucester 
 at Clifton, whence they repair to the Hot Well 
 at Bristol. Their different ways of regarding 
 things are already accentuated. Mr. Bramble 
 pooh-poohs the 'nymph of Bristol spring' as 
 purveying nothing but ' a little salt, and cal- 
 careous earth,' while on the boasted Clifton 
 Downs he discovers only the demon of vapours 
 and perpetual drizzle. To his niece Liddy, on 
 the contrary, everything looks rose-coloured. 
 The Downs, with the furze in full blossom (it 
 was late April), are delightful ; the waters are 
 most agreeable (' so pure, so mild, so charmingly 
 mawkish 1 ') ; and the ships and boats going up 
 and down the Avon under the windows of the 
 Pump-room make ' an enchanting variety of 
 moving pictures.' But the spring season is 
 beginning at Bath ; and they migrate to that
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker.' 143 
 
 place, taking a first floor in the South Parade, 
 so as to be near the waters and out of the 
 rumble of the carriages. The lodgings, how- 
 ever, are themselves noisy, besides being too 
 close to the noisy bells of the Abbey Church, 
 which ring for all new comers (who pay the fee 
 of half-a-guinea). Mr. Bramble has no sooner 
 settled down comfortably than they begin to 
 peal in honour ' of Mr. Bullock, an eminent 
 cowkeeper of Tottenham, who had just arrived 
 at Bath, to drink the waters for indigestion.' 
 These, with other annoyances, lead them to 
 quit the Parade precipitately for Milsom Street 
 (' Milsham-street,' Mr. Bramble calls it), which 
 then had not long been built. Here at five 
 guineas a week they get a small house. For 
 Miss Melford, Bath is even more fascinating 
 than Bristol. The bells, the waits, the cotil- 
 lons, the balls and concerts in the Pump-room, 
 are all equally entrancing to the fresh schoolgirl 
 nature but recently emancipated from Mrs. Jer- 
 myn's finishing Academy at Gloucester. They 
 are no sooner settled in their lodgings than the 
 party is visited by the Master of the Ceremo- 
 nies 'a pretty little gentleman, so sweet, so 
 fine, so civil, and polite, that in our country 
 [Miss Melford's] he might pass for the prince 
 of Wales.' ' He talks so charmingly, both in
 
 144 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 verse and prose, that you would be delighted to 
 hear him discourse ; for you must know he is a 
 great writer, and has got five tragedies ready 
 for the stage.' This personage, whose name is 
 afterwards given, was Beau Hash's successor, 
 Samuel Derrick, only one of whose dramatic 
 efforts a translation from the French of Fred- 
 erick of Prussia appears, by the ' Biographia 
 Dramatica,' to have attained the honours of 
 print. Derrick, as might be expected, does 
 himself the pleasure of dining with Mr. Bramble, 
 and next day escorts the ladies round the Circus, 
 the Square [Queen's Square], the Parades, and 
 the ' new buildings,' the last, no doubt, includ- 
 ing the Royal Crescent of the younger Wood, 
 then in course of construction. 1 
 
 In the letter which gives these particulars 
 Miss Liddy proceeds to describe a Bath day 
 as it appeared to the Young Person of the 
 period. ' At eight in the morning,' says she, 
 
 1 Derrick was dead when ' Humphry Clinker ' was 
 written, having departed this life in March, 1769. Ac- 
 cording to Boswell, Johnson had a kindness for the little 
 man, which did not extend to commendation of his very 
 moderate literary abilities. In fact, it was concerning 
 Derrick and another that the Doctor uttered his forcible, 
 if somewhat unsavoury, obiter dictum as to the futility of 
 discussing questions of precedence between infinitesimal 
 insects.
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 145 
 
 'we go in dishabille to the Pump-room ; which 
 is crowded like a Welsh fair ; and there you see 
 the highest quality, and the lowest trades folks, 
 jostling each other, without ceremony, hail-fellow 
 well-met 1 ... Right under the Pump-room 
 windows is the King's Bath ; a huge cistern, 
 where you see the patients up to their necks in 
 hot water. The ladies wear jackets and petti- 
 coats of brown linen [flannel ?], with chip hats, 
 in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the 
 sweat from their faces ; but, truly, whether it is 
 owing to the steam that surrounds them, or the 
 heat of the water, or the nature of the dress, 
 or to all these causes together, they look so 
 flushed, and so frightful, that I always turn my 
 eyes another way.' 1 [It must be conceded that 
 Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, notwithstanding the ex- 
 tenuating attractions of a special cap with cherry- 
 coloured ribbons, would certainly have looked 
 
 1 Here is the same scene under the broader handling 
 of Smollett's forerunner, Anstey of the 'New Bath 
 Guide ' 
 
 "Twas a glorious Sight to behold the Fair Sex 
 All wading with Gentlemen up to their Necks, 
 And view them so prettily tumble and sprawl 
 In a great smoaking Kettle as big as our Hall : 
 And To-Day many Persons of Rank and Condition 
 Were boil'd by Command of an able Physician.' 
 10
 
 146 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 peculiar.] . . . ' For my part,' continues Miss 
 Liddy, ' I content myself with drinking about 
 half-a-pint of the water every morning.' 
 
 After the Pump-room comes the ladies' coffee- 
 house, from the politics, scandal, and philosophy 
 of which Miss Melford is prudently excluded 
 by her watchful aunt ; then the booksellers' 
 shops, with their circulating library (Sir Anthony 
 Absolute's ' evergreen tree of diabolical knowl- 
 edge') ; after these, the milliners and toymen, 
 where are purchased the famous Bath rings of 
 hair, as essentially Bath commodities as Bath 
 buns, Bath brick, Bath chaps, or Bath coating ; 
 and lastly, the noted pastrycook, Mr. Gill, to 
 whom Anstey devotes an entire lyric : 
 
 ' These are your true poetic Fires 
 
 That drest this sav'ry Grill, 
 E'en while I eat the Muse inspires, 
 And tunes my Voice to GILL.' 
 
 Across the water, opposite the Grove, there 
 is the Spring Garden, with its Long Room for 
 breakfasting and dancing, and there is. more- 
 over, the newly-licenced Theatre. But the 
 chief attraction is the assembly-rooms for tea 
 and cards and promenades, where twice a week 
 the gentlemen give a ball, the jumbled respec- 
 tabilities of which, and of other Bath public 
 gatherings, afford infinite amusement to Miss
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 147 
 
 Melford's brother. ' I was extremely diverted, 
 he says, ' last ball-night to see the Master of the 
 Ceremonies leading, with great solemnity, to the 
 upper end of the room, an antiquated Abigail, 
 dressed in her lady's cast-clothes, whom he (I 
 suppose) mistook for some countess just arrived 
 at the Bath. The ball was opened by a Scotch 
 lord, with a mulatto heiress from St. Christo- 
 pher's ; and the gay Colonel Tinsel danced all 
 the evening with the daughter of an eminent tin- 
 man from the borough of Southwark.' ' Yester- 
 day morning, at the Pump-room,' he goes on, 
 1 1 saw a broken-winded Wapping landlady 
 squeeze through a circle of peers, to salute her 
 brandy-merchant, who stood by the window, 
 propp'd upon crutches ; and a paralytic attorney 
 of Shoe-lane, in shuffling up to the bar, kicked 
 the shins of the chancellor of England, while his 
 lordship, in a cut bob, drank a glass of water at 
 the pump.' 
 
 Surveying these things with the distorted vision 
 of an invalid, that laudator tempods acti, Mr. 
 Bramble, finds matter to raise his spleen rather 
 than his mirth. The Bath he had known thirty 
 years before was wholly different from this 
 ' centre of racket and dissipation.' He has 
 the gravest doubts of the curative properties 
 of the waters, either for washing or drinking.
 
 148 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 He blasphemes the ' boasted improvements in 
 architecture ' ; ridicules the poor approaches of 
 the Circus ; condemns the Crescent by antici- 
 pation ; scoffs at the hackney chairs which stand 
 soaking in the open street to the detriment of 
 invalids, and, in fine, delivers himself of a gen- 
 eral jeremiad over the hotchpot of buildings and 
 the nondescript mob that crowds them. 1 Only 
 one person is exempted from his dissatisfaction, 
 and that is the well-known bon-vivant and Bath 
 frequenter James Quin, who turns out to be an 
 old friend. Mr. Bramble and the retired actor 
 thoroughly agree in their criticism of life, which, 
 according to Quin, would ' stink in his nostrils, 
 if he did not steep it in claret.' As he is repre- 
 sented leaving his club at ' The Three Tuns,' a 
 famous old coaching-house in Stall Street, with 
 'six good bottles under his belt,' it may be 
 assumed that he religiously observes this pre- 
 caution against misanthropy. 2 In the pages of 
 
 1 Walpole, who was at Bath in October, 1766, is no 
 easier to please. 'Their new buildings [he says] that are 
 so admired, look like a collection of little hospitals ; the 
 rest is detestable ; and all crammed together, and sur 
 rounded with perpendicular hills that have no beauty.' 
 He lodged in the once fashionable Chapel Court. 
 
 2 Once Lord Chesterfield, seeing two chairmen hoist- 
 ing a heavy gentleman into a sedan-chair, asked his ser- 
 vant who it was. ' Only Mr. Quin, my Lord, going home,
 
 Topography of l Humphry Clinker.' 149 
 
 Smollett, Quin, whom he probably knew, is 
 pictured more amiably than elsewhere, being, 
 indeed, described as ' one of the best bred men 
 in the kingdom.' When he dines with Mr. 
 Bramble he is regaled with his (and Fielding's) 
 favourite John Dory, which, however, to his 
 inconsolable chagrin, is cruelly mangled, and 
 ' even presented without sauce.' It is better to 
 be the guest of an epicure than to invite him to 
 dinner. 
 
 From Bath, on May 20, Mr. Bramble starts 
 in a hired coach-and-four for London ; and it 
 may be noted that the orthodox costume of a 
 smart postilion was ' a narrow-brimmed hat, 
 with gold cording, a cut bob, a decent blue 
 jacket, leather breeches, and a clean linen shirt, 
 puffed above the waist band.' On the edge of 
 Marlborough Downs the coach is upset ; but 
 by the 24th they are safely housed in Mrs. 
 
 as usual, from " The Three Tuns." ' Whereupon his 
 lordship remarked drily that Mr. Quin appeared to be 
 taking one of the tuns with him under his waistcoat. 
 Quin died at Bath in January, 1766. He is buried in 
 the Abbey, and Garrick wrote his epitaph. His lodgings 
 are supposed to have been in Pierrepont Street, as he left 
 a legacy to the landlady of a house there. He also left 
 fifty pounds to ' Mr. Thomas Gainsborough, Limner, now 
 [1765] living at Bath,' Gainsborough having painted his 
 portrait.
 
 150 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Norton's lodgings at Golden Square. The 
 first thing that strikes Mr. Bramble is the 
 enormous extension of London. ' What I left 
 open fields,' he says, ' producing hay and corn, 
 I now find covered with streets, and squares, 
 and palaces, and churches. I am credibly in- 
 formed, that in the space of seven years, eleven 
 thousand new houses have been built in one 
 quarter of Westminster, exclusive of what is 
 daily added to other parts of this unwieldy me- 
 tropolis. Pimlico and Knightsbridge are almost 
 joined to Chelsea and Kensington ; and if this 
 infatuation continues for half a century, I sup- 
 pose the whole county of Middlesex will be 
 covered with brick.' He is pleased, however, 
 with the new streets (they were then building 
 Portman Square), and he is almost warm in his 
 praises of the bridge at Blackfriars, which had 
 recently been opened as a bridleway. But he 
 soon lapses into a digression on the subject so 
 dear to Goldsmith, Johnson, and others of his 
 contemporaries the alleged depopulation of 
 the villages, and the abnormal growth of the 
 capital, which swells it, ' like a dropsical head,' 
 at the expense of the body and extremities. 
 
 ' There are many causes,' he says in a graphic 
 paragraph, ' that contribute to the daily increase 
 of this enormous mass ; but they may be all
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker' 1 5 1 
 
 resolved into the grand source of luxury and 
 corruption. About five-and-twenty years ago, 
 very few, even of the most opulent citizens of 
 London, kept any equipage, or even any ser- 
 vants in livery. Their tables produced nothing 
 but plain boiled and roasted, with a bottle of 
 port and a tankard of beer. At present, every 
 trader in any degree of credit, every broker 
 and attorney, maintains a couple of footmen, 
 a coachman, and postilion. He has his town- 
 house, and his country-house, his coach, and 
 his postchaise. His wife and daughters appear 
 in the richest stuffs, bespangled with diamonds. 
 They frequent the court, the opera, the theatre, 
 and the masquerade. They hold assemblies at 
 their own houses : they make sumptuous enter- 
 tainments, and treat with the richest wines of 
 Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne. The 
 substantial tradesman, who was wont to pass 
 his evenings at the alehouse for fourpence half- 
 penny, now spends three shillings at the tavern, 
 while his wife keeps card-tables at home ; she 
 must likewise have fine clothes, her chaise, or 
 pad, with country lodgings, and go three times 
 a-week to public diversions. Every clerk, ap- 
 prentice, and even waiter of tavern or coffee- 
 house, maintains a gelding by himself, or in 
 partnership, and assumes the air and apparel
 
 1 52 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 of a petit-maitre. The gayest places of public 
 entertainment are filled with fashionable figures ; 
 which, upon enquiry, will be found to be jour- 
 neymen tailors, serving-men, and abigails, dis- 
 guised like their betters/ 
 
 Making some allowance for the splenetic 
 attitude of the writer, it would not be difficult, 
 with a moderate expenditure of foot-note, to 
 confirm this picture from contemporary play- 
 wrights and essayists. But it is less easy, in 
 our days of steam and telegraphy, to realize 
 another thing which strikes Mr. Bramble, and 
 that is the headlong speed at which everything 
 is done. ' The hackney-coachmen make their 
 horses smoke, and the pavement shakes under 
 them ' ; and he goes on to say that he has 
 actually seen a waggon pass through Piccadilly 
 at a hand-gallop. Qualities as intolerable to the 
 peace-lover attach in his opinion to the amuse- 
 ments, where * noise, confusion, glare, and glit- 
 ter, 1 take the place of ' elegance and propriety.' 
 Mr. Bramble's description of Ranelagh has 
 often been quoted ; but that of Vauxhall, which 
 is coloured, or rather discoloured, by the fact 
 that he was caught in a shower and had to 
 take refuge in the Rotunda, is less familiar : 
 ' Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, over- 
 charged with paltry ornaments, ill-conceived,
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker.' 153 
 
 and poorly executed ; without any unity of 
 design, or propriety of disposition. It is an 
 unnatural assembly of objects, fantastically illu- 
 minated in broken masses, seemingly contrived 
 to dazzle the eyes and divert the imagination of 
 the vulgar. Here a wooden lion, there a stone 
 statue ; in one place, a range of things like 
 coffee-house boxes, covered a-top ; in another, 
 a parcel of ale house benches ; in a third, a 
 puppet-show representation of a tin cascade 
 [this, it is to be feared, must have been the 
 famous Waterworks !] ; in a fourth, a gloomy 
 cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault 
 half-lighted ; in a fifth, a scanty slip of grass-plat, 
 that would not afford pleasure sufficient for an 
 ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to 
 have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, 
 are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking 
 up the nocturnal rheums of an aguish climate ; 
 and through these gay scenes, a few lamps 
 glimmer like so many farthing candles. 1 
 
 Although the atmosphere of the metropolis 
 has materially altered for the worse, it is pro- 
 bable that, even in 176^, the last strictures as 
 to its dangers at night-time, which are cynically 
 developed in a further paragraph, were not ill- 
 founded. For the rest, the modern admirers of 
 old Vauxhall must console themselves by reflect-
 
 154 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ing that the writer was none other than that 
 ' learned Smelfungus ' who had reviled the 
 Venus de' Medici, and who declared the Pan- 
 theon (of Rome, not of London) to be nothing 
 better than a ' huge cockpit.' Upon the present 
 occasion Mr. Bramble confines his comments to 
 the two great gardens. But from a letter of 
 his niece, some of the party must also have 
 visited the Assembly Rooms in Soho Square 
 (Carlisle House) of the celebrated Mrs. Teresa 
 Cornelys, who having not yet started the mas- 
 querades which inaugurated her ultimate col- 
 lapse in the Fleet prison, was still at the height 
 of her popularity with persons of quality. Of 
 other shows and amusements there are hints in 
 the despatches of the remaining travellers. 
 Mrs. Jenkins is escorted by Mr. Clinker to 
 the rope-dancing at Sadler's Wells, where there 
 is such ' firing of pistols in the air, and blowing 
 of trumpets, and swinging, and rolling of wheel- 
 barrows upon a wire, no thicker than a sewing- 
 thread,' that she is like to have been frightened 
 into a fit. Then she goes with her mistress to 
 see the wild beasts in the Tower, where the lion 
 conducts himself in a manner which is highly 
 derogatory to the unblemished reputation of 
 Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. Finally (in Win's own 
 words and spelling), they see 'the Park, and
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 155 
 
 the paleass of Saint Gimses, and the king's and 
 the queen's magisterial pursing, and the sweet 
 young princes, and the hillyfents, and pye- 
 bald ass, and all the rest of the royal family/ 
 The piebald ass, it should be explained, was 
 a beautiful female zebra which had been pre- 
 sented to Queen Charlotte, and usually grazed 
 in a paddock in St. James's Park, close to old 
 Buckingham House. It was an object of much 
 public curiosity, as well as the pretext for some 
 exceedingly scurrilous lampoons. 1 
 
 From one of Mr. Bramble's later letters he 
 must have inspected the British Museum. At 
 this date it was little more than an aggregation 
 in Montague House of the Sloane, Cottonian, 
 and Harleian collections, accessible only to small 
 parties under vexatious restrictions, and limited, 
 in respect of its library, to some forty thousand 
 volumes. These about a fortieth part of the 
 present number were apparently uncatalogued, 
 
 1 There is a picture of the zebra in the ' London Maga- 
 zine,' for July, 1762; and Lady Mary Coke in January, 
 1767, speaks of going 'with a great party to see the 
 Queen's Elephants.' Mention is also made of these royal 
 favourites in the ' Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, 
 Knight,' 1773: 
 
 1 In some fair island will we turn to grass 
 (With the Queen's leave) her elephant and ass.'
 
 156 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 for Mr. Bramble makes sundry sagacious re- 
 marks upon this subject which lead one to think 
 that even he would have been satisfied with the 
 present excellent arrangements for inquirers. Of 
 other institutions he says nothing. His horror 
 of crowds prevented him from visiting the 
 theatre in the Haymarket, or we might have 
 had his opinion of that popular mime, Mr. Sam- 
 uel Foote. Towards the beginning of June we 
 find him negotiating ' for a good travelling-coach 
 and four, at a guinea a-day, for three months 
 certain/ to start on the northward journey. The 
 party leave Golden Square on the i^th, and on 
 the 2}rd, after much jolting on the bad roads 
 between Newark and Wetherby, they reach 
 H arrogate. Here is Jerry Melford's descrip- 
 tion of that fashionable watering-place as it 
 appeared in 1766 : 
 
 ' Harrigate-water, so celebrated for its efficacy 
 in the scurvy and other distempers, is supplied 
 from a copious spring, in the hollow of a wild 
 common, round which a good many houses have 
 been built for the convenience of the drinkers, 
 though few of them are inhabited. Most of the 
 company lodge at some distance, in five separate 
 inns, situated in different parts of the common, 
 from whence they go every morning to the well, 
 in their own carriages. The lodgers of each inn
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 157 
 
 form a distinct society, that eat together ; and 
 there is a commodious public room, where they 
 breakfast in dishabille, at separate tables, from 
 eight o'clock till eleven, as they chance or choose 
 to come in. Here also they drink tea in the 
 afternoon, and play at cards or dance in the 
 evening. One custom, however, prevails, which 
 I look upon as a solecism in politeness. The 
 ladies treat with tea in their turns ; and even girls 
 of sixteen are not exempted from this shame- 
 ful imposition. There is a public ball by sub- 
 scription every night at one of the houses, to 
 which all the company from the others are ad- 
 mitted by tickets ; and, indeed, Harrigate treads 
 upon the heels of Bath, in the articles of gaiety 
 and dissipation with this difference, however, 
 that here we are more sociable and familiar. One 
 of the inns is already full up to the very garrets, 
 having no less than fifty lodgers, and as many 
 servants. Our family does not exceed thirty-six, 
 and I should be sorry to see the number aug- 
 mented, as our accommodations won't admit of 
 much increase.' 
 
 Mr. Bramble's verdict does not differ greatly 
 from this ; although he highly disapproves the 
 Harrogate water, which some people say ' smells 
 of rotten eggs,' and others liken to ' the scourings 
 of a foul gun.' He himself defines it as bilge-
 
 158 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 water, pure and simple. After an attempt to 
 apply it externally in the form of a hot bath, he 
 becomes so ill that he is obliged to start, viA 
 York, to Scarborough, in order to brace his 
 exhausted fibres by sea-bathing. York Minster 
 gives him opportunity for a discourse upon the 
 comfortless and ill-ventilated condition of places 
 of worship in general ; and he leaves Scarborough 
 (the then new-fashioned bathing-machines of 
 which are described with some minuteness by 
 Jerry Melford) in consequence of an unfortunate 
 mistake made by Humphry, who, seeing his 
 master ' dipping, 1 imagines him to be drowning, 
 and thereupon rescues him with more vigour 
 than dexterity. The travellers then proceed by 
 Whitby and Stockton to Durham, where they 
 first meet the redoubtable Lieutenant Lismahago. 
 Mr. Bramble's account of the city of Durham 
 as ' a confused heap of stones and brick, accu- 
 mulated so as to cover a mountain, round which 
 a river winds its brawling course,' is, like his 
 astounding comparison of York Minster and 
 its spire to a criminal impaled, entirely in the 
 'Smelfungus' manner. From Durham, through 
 Newcastle, Morpeth, and Alnwick, they go 
 northward to Berwick. Beyond the fact that 
 at Newcastle Mrs. Tabitha and her maid, with 
 Humphry, attend Wesley's meeting (doubtless
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 159 
 
 at the famous Orphan House he had founded in 
 1742), and that poor Win is subsequently de- 
 coyed by Jerry's valet into accompanying him to 
 the play, in rouge, 4 with her hair dressed in the 
 Parish fashion ' an exhibition which leads to 
 her being mobbed by the colliers as a ' painted 
 Issabel ' nothing of interest is recorded. But 
 Mr. Bramble's heart shows signs of softening 
 as he nears Smollett's native land ; and already 
 he notices with complacency that the Scotch 
 side of the Tweed is far more populous and far 
 better cultivated than the English border. 
 
 Passing forward by Dunbar and Haddington 
 they arrive at Musselburgh, where, in a house 
 which was still standing in the days of Paterson's 
 history of the place, Smollett (or rather Mr. 
 Bramble) drinks tea with an old friend, Commis- 
 sioner Cardonnel. Then along the smooth sand 
 of the shore, they get to Edinburgh, where, after 
 brief experience of a miserable inn, they find 
 lodgings 'with a widow gentlewoman, of the 
 name of Lockhart,' up four pair of stairs in the 
 many-storied High Street. Mr. Bramble's im- 
 pressions of the High Street and the Canongate, 
 at this time disfigured by the straggling Lucken- 
 booths which were removed in 1817, are not 
 especially notable ; but from his account of the 
 water-supply of eighteenth-century Edinburgh,
 
 160 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and of its sanitary arrangements in general, it 
 would appear that its nickname of ' Auld Reekie ' 
 was not undeserved : 
 
 4 The water is brought in leaden pipes from a 
 mountain in the neighbourhood, to a cistern on 
 the Castle-hill, from whence it is distributed to 
 public conduits in different parts of the city. 
 From these it is carried in barrels, on the backs 
 of male and female porters, up two, three, four, 
 five, six, seven, and eight pair of stairs, for the 
 use of particular families. Every story is a 
 complete house, occupied by a separate family ; 
 and the stair being common to them all, is 
 generally left in a very filthy condition. . . . 
 Nothing can form a stronger contrast, than the 
 difference betwixt the outside and inside of the 
 door ; for the goodwomen of this metropolis 
 are remarkably nice in the ornaments and pro- 
 priety of their apartments, as if they were 
 resolved to transfer the imputation from the 
 individual to the public. You are no stranger 
 to their method of discharging all their impuri- 
 ties from their windows, at a certain hour of the 
 night, as the custom is in Spain, Portugal, and 
 some parts of France and Italy, a practice to 
 which I can by no means be reconciled ; for not- 
 withstanding all the care that is taken by their 
 scavengers to remove this nuisance every morn-
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker. ' 161 
 
 ing by break of day, enough still remains to 
 offend the eyes, as well as other organs of those 
 whom use has not hardened against all delicacy 
 of sensation.' 
 
 The valetudinarian who had fainted in the bad 
 air of the Bath Pump-room may perhaps be re- 
 garded as abnormally sensitive, although his 
 report is very circumstantially confirmed by Wini- 
 fred Jenkins. But even two years after ' Humphry 
 Clinker' had been published, this evil remained 
 unmitigated, for Mr. James Boswell, piloting 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson up the High Street on a 
 dusky night, confessed himself unable to prevent 
 his illustrious friend from being assailed by the 
 evening effluvia of Edinburgh. ' Sir, I smell you 
 in the dark ' grumbled the Great Man in his 
 companion's ear ; and his companion admits rue- 
 fully that ' a zealous Scotchman would have 
 wished Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five 
 senses upon this occasion.' 1 Nevertheless, the 
 Doctor (while holding his nose) commended the 
 breadth of the thoroughfare and the imposing 
 height of the houses. 
 
 In that 'hotbed of genius,' the Scottish capi- 
 tal, Mr. Bramble's party were so 'caressed and 
 
 1 Rowlandson, as might perhaps be anticipated, se- 
 lected this incident for one of his ' Picturesque Beauties 
 of Boswell,' 1786, Print 4. 
 
 11
 
 1 62 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 feasted ' that, although their degenerate southern 
 stomachs refused to retain or even receive such 
 national dainties as 'haggis 1 and 'singed sheep's 
 head,' the record takes an unusually favourable 
 note. They go to the amateur concerts in St. 
 Cecilia's Hall in the Cowgate ; they go to the 
 Hunters' Ball at Holyrood, one of the belles of 
 which was Smollett's connection, Miss Eleonora 
 Renton ; they attend the Leith races, where they 
 find far better company than at Doncaster or 
 Newmarket ; and they inspect, on the Leith 
 Links, the devotees of that game of golf, of 
 which the fascination, like Hope, seems to 
 spring eternal in the human breast. ' \ was 
 shown one particular set of golfers,' says Jerry 
 Melford, ' the youngest of whom was turned of 
 fourscore. They were all gentlemen of inde- 
 pendent fortunes, who had amused themselves 
 with this pastime for the best part of a century, 
 without having ever felt the least alarm from 
 sickness or disgust ; and they never went to 
 bed, without having each the best part of a 
 gallon of claret in his belly.' Mr. Melford also 
 gives an account, too long to be quoted, of a 
 very singular festival to wit, a caddies', or 
 cawdies' (errand porters'), dinner and ball, 
 which, as related, a little recalls the ' Jolly Beg- 
 gars ' of Burns, as well as that curious enter-
 
 Topography of 'Humphry Clinker.' 163 
 
 tainment which Steele had given in the same 
 city some forty years before 
 
 From Edinburgh part of their latter stay at 
 which was diversified by a trip in a fishing-boat 
 across the Firth to Fife, where they visit among 
 other things that ' skeleton of a venerable city/ 
 St. Andrews ' by the northern sea,' a consider- 
 able amount of which element they ship in mak- 
 ing Leith Pier on their return they depart in 
 August for Loch Lomond, taking Stirling and 
 Glasgow on the way. For Glasgow (which, no 
 doubt, had wonderfully progressed since the 
 days of the author's apprenticeship there in 
 1738) Mr. Bramble, whom the hospitalities of 
 Edinburgh seem to have transformed into an 
 optimist, expresses great admiration. Edin- 
 burgh had been well enough, but Glasgow is the 
 ' pride of Scotland,' ' one of the most flourishing 
 towns in Great Britain,' ' one of the prettiest 
 towns in Europe,' and so forth. Thence they 
 travel along the Clyde to Dumbarton, cross 
 Leven Water, and so reach Mr. Commissioner 
 Smollett's oak-bosomed house of Cameron at 
 the south-western extremity of the loch. If Mr. 
 Bramble has hitherto been laudatory, over the 
 Arcadia of the North he is enthusiastic cer- 
 tainly more enthusiastic than either Johnson 
 or Wordsworth in similar circumstances. But
 
 164 Eighteenth Century !/ignettes. 
 
 Wordsworth was mentally comparing Dumbar- 
 tonshire with his beloved Westmoreland ; and 
 Johnson was not, like Smollett, writing of his 
 natal neighbourhood. 
 
 ' I have seen,' says the last-named, ' the Lago 
 di Garda, Albano, De Vico, Bolsena, and 
 Geneva, and, upon my honour, I prefer Lough- 
 Lomond to them all ; a preference which is cer- 
 tainly owing to the verdant islands that seem to 
 float upon its surface, affording the most en- 
 chanting objects of repose to the excursive view. 
 Nor are the banks destitute of beauties, which 
 even partake of the sublime. On this side they 
 display a sweet variety of woodland, corn-field, 
 and pasture, with several agreeable villas emerg- 
 ing as it were out of the lake, till, at some dis- 
 tance, the prospect terminates in huge mountains 
 covered with heath, which being in the bloom, 
 affords a very rich covering of purple. Every- 
 thing here is romantic beyond imagination. . . . 
 What say you to a natural basin of pure water, 
 near thirty miles long, and in some places seven 
 miles broad, and in many above a hundred 
 fathom deep, having four and twenty habitable 
 islands, some of them stocked with deer, and 
 all of them covered with wood ; containing im- 
 mense quantities of delicious fish, salmon, pike, 
 trout, perch, flounders, eels, and powans, the
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker.'' 165 
 
 last a delicate kind of fresh-v/ater herring, pecu- 
 liar to this lake ; and finally communicating with 
 the sea, by sending off the Leven, through which 
 all those species (except the powan) make their 
 exit and entrance occasionally ? ' 
 
 After this may come the less critical addi- 
 tions of Winifred Jenkins, who describes ' Loff- 
 Loming ' as a ' wonderful sea of fresh water, 
 with a power of hylands in the midst on't. 
 They say as how it has got ne'er a bottom, and 
 was made by a musician ; and, truly, I believe it ; 
 for it is not in the course of nature. It has got 
 waves ivithout wind, fish without fins, and a float- 
 ing hyland; and one of them is a crutch-yard, 
 where the dead are buried ; and always before 
 the person dies, a bell rings of itself to give 
 warning.' 
 
 But it is time to abridge the account of Mr. 
 Bramble's wanderings. Before his return south- 
 ward he makes an excursion with his nephew 
 into Western Argyllshire and the islands of Isla, 
 Jura, Mull, and Icolmkill, ' tarrying at various 
 castles of the West Highland sub-chieftains and 
 gentry.' On the way south the party go out of 
 their road to Drumlanrig, the seat of the Duke 
 of Queensberry, and are hospitably entreated by 
 his Duchess, ' Prior's Kitty.' They visit Man- 
 chester, Chatsworth, the Peak, and Buxton ;
 
 1 66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and so, by easy stages, return in the month of 
 October to Wales and Brambleton House. The 
 invention of the book never flags, but the latter 
 pages are necessarily much occupied in clearing 
 the ground for the marriages which bring it to a 
 close. 
 
 Smollett scarcely takes rank as a poet, in 
 spite of the ' Tears of Caledonia ' or ' The storm 
 that howls along the sky' in the ' Handbook of 
 Quotations.' But towards the end of ' Hum- 
 phry Clinker ' he inserted one of the most pleas- 
 ing specimens of his occasional efforts, the ' Ode 
 to Leven Water,' on the very banks of which 
 4 in ipsis Levinix ripis ' fifty-one years before, 
 he had been born. At Renton, beside the 
 Leven now, alas I no longer famed for its 
 ' transparent wave ' rises the stately Tuscan 
 column which Smollett of Bonhill erected to the 
 memory of his gifted but combative cousin, who, 
 like Fielding, found a last resting-place under 
 alien skies. The long Latin inscription on this 
 monument the joint production of George 
 Stewart and Ramsay of Ochtertyre had the 
 honour of being revised by Johnson, who, we 
 are told, ridiculed the suggestion of Lord Kames 
 that English was preferable. ' It would be a 
 disgrace to Dr. Smollett,' he said, using much 
 the same argument as he employed two years
 
 Topography of ' Humphry Clinker.' 167 
 
 later with regard to the epitaph of Goldsmith in 
 Westminster Abbey ; and Boswell, the com- 
 pliant, followed suit by adding that Smollett's 
 admirers would probably be equal to Latin, and 
 that the inscription was not intended to be 
 understood by Highland drovers. A passage 
 in the Memoir of Thomas Bewick, the engraver, 
 supplies an odd foot-note to Boswell. Making 
 his way in 1776 up the Leven from Dumbarton 
 to Loch Lomond, Bewick paused to puzzle out 
 the words on the pedestal, as Smollett was an 
 author whom he ' almost adored. 1 But he must 
 have gone on his way unenlightened had it not 
 been for the opportune scholarship of a passing 
 Highlander.
 
 THE PRISONERS' CHAPLAIN. 
 
 of the last of William Hogarth's works 
 was a medley entitled ' Credulity, Super- 
 stition, and Fanaticism.' Among others, it as- 
 sailed the Methodists, and was consequently 
 welcomed by the contemporary opponents of 
 Wesley and Whitefield as an entirely justifiable 
 satire. But by the dispassionate critics of our 
 day, as well as by the more judicious admirers 
 of the artist, the picture is considered a mistake ; 
 and it has also been held that in rebuking 
 graphically what he no doubt with perfect 
 sincerity regarded as profane enthusiasm, 
 Hogarth has himself come perilously close to 
 irreverence. In one of his designs of earlier 
 date, there is. however, an unsolicited and pos- 
 sibly unintended tribute to Methodism which 
 goes some way to condone the effect of his later 
 and more ambitious effort. It occurs in the 
 penultimate plate of the series called ' Industry 
 and Idleness/ where is delineated the tragic 
 ending to the graceless career of Thomas Idle. 
 Of the wonderful crowd of debased and brutal-
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 169 
 
 ized spectators which, with its fringe of ruffianism 
 of all sorts, went to make up the horrors of an 
 ' Execution Day ' under the sanguinary penal 
 code of the Georges, it is not here necessary to 
 speak. But of the more prominent of the dram- 
 atis persona?, fhere are three, or rather four, 
 which chiefly serve to rivet the attention. One 
 is the tiny figure of the ' topsman,' or hangman, 
 standing out against the outline of the Highgate 
 Hills, and stolidly smoking a short pipe on the 
 summit of the triple tree itself. Another is the 
 smug Ordinary of Newgate, who, with the ' red- 
 lettered face ' that tells ' more of good living than 
 of grace,' complacently surveys the crowd as he 
 rolls slowly in his coach of office to his perfunc- 
 tory ministrations. Next, in the cart itself, 
 escorted by the mounted sheriff's officers, and 
 lying back against his coffin in an agony of 
 abject terror, is the miserable convict, holding 
 mechanically before his face an open book which 
 his eyes do not perceive ; while beside him in 
 the vehicle, conspicuous by the lank hair then 
 held to be the outward and visible sign of Dis- 
 sent, sits an itinerant preacher, who, with up- 
 lifted hand, vigorously but vainly exhorts his 
 scarcely-conscious companion. The fervent 
 gesticulation and terrible energy of the volunteer 
 chaplain are in marked contrast to the sleek in-
 
 170 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 difference of the recognized functionary ; and 
 there is, in addition, a look of actuality about 
 the former which excites curiosity. But with 
 'the Rev. Dr. Trusler, and the earlier commen- 
 tators of the artist, even Wesley was nothing 
 more than ' a leader of a sect called Methodists ' ; 
 and no foot-note identifies this most humble of 
 his camp-followers. Exactly one hundred and 
 forty-seven years after date, however, we are 
 enabled to supply, from a trustworthy source, 
 the information so long withheld. The life of 
 the preacher, written by himself, is still extant. 
 His name was SILAS TOLD. 
 
 It is a queer Dickens-like name, almost far- 
 fetched enough to be fictitious. But even were 
 its strict veracity not vouched for by Wesley 
 himself, there is little appearance of fiction 
 about the brief autobiography whose over- 
 copious title is reproduced below. 1 Silas Told 
 
 1 An ACCOUNT of the LIFE, and DEALINGS of GOD 
 with SILAS TOLD, late Preacher of the Gospel; wherein is 
 set forth the wonderful Display of Divine Providence 
 towards him when at Sea ; his various Sufferings abroad ; 
 together with many Instances of the Sovereign Grace of 
 God, in the conversion of several Malefactors under Sen- 
 tence of Death, who were greatly blessed under his Min- 
 istry. Written by Himself. . . . London : Printed and 
 sold by Gilbert and Plummer (No. 13) Cree-Church-Lane, 
 Leadenhall Street; and by T. Scollick, Bookseller, City 
 Road, 1786 (12010.).
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 171 
 
 was born ' at the Lime-kilns, near the hot-wells' 
 at Bristol in April, 1711. He could scarcely be 
 called, like Bunyan, ' of a low and inconsider- 
 able Generation,' for his father had been a 
 Bristol physician, who, falling into difficulties 
 through speculation, ended his career as a doctor 
 on a Guinea trader ; while his mother was the 
 daughter of a Devonshire sea-captain. Both 
 were religious people, and the boy's earliest days 
 were spent in wandering in the fields and in 
 long conversations with his sister Dulcy (Dulcy- 
 bella) ' about God and happiness.' That such 
 a childhood should be accompanied by preter- 
 natural manifestations was perhaps inevitable. 
 Once when the children had lost themselves in 
 King's Wood, they were twice mysteriously 
 driven into the right way by the apparition of a 
 large dog, which conveniently vanished as soon 
 as its mission was performed. When he was 
 between seven and eight years of age, little 
 Silas went like Chatterton forty years later 
 to the Bristol Blue Coat School (Edward 
 Colston's famous hospital), concerning the phil- 
 anthropic founder of which he relates more 
 than one anecdote. Here, saturating himself 
 with the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' he had another 
 curious experience. He was nearly drowned 
 while bathing, and, after being rescued in a
 
 172 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 partially-conscious condition by a benevolent 
 Dutchman, had a kind of vision of Bunyan's 
 Celestial City. From the quiet half-monastic 
 life at Colston's he was roughly withdrawn in 
 July, 1725, when, being at that time about four- 
 teen, he was apprenticed to Captain Moses 
 Lilly of the ' Prince of Wales,' bound from 
 Bristol to Cork and Jamaica. On the entire 
 voyage out the poor lad was sick. From Jamaica 
 the ship sailed down to the Bay of Campeachy. 
 Returning thence to the West Indies, both water 
 and provisions failed owing to a miscalculation, 
 and they were all but starved. In Kingston 
 Harbour they came in for a tremendous hurri- 
 cane, which cast away seventy-five sail, piling 
 them one upon another like band-boxes, drove 
 a large snow of 220 tons half a mile inland 
 among the cocoa-trees, and strewed the sea-shore 
 for leagues with the bodies of drowned men. As 
 for the ' Prince of Wales,' she parted all her 
 three cables at once. Having then turned 
 broadside to the wind, she overset, sank as far 
 as the ground would permit, and in that condi- 
 tion was driven with her gunwale on the bottom 
 to the extremity of the harbour, a distance of 
 about twelve miles. After the hurricane, came 
 a pestilential sickness which swept away thou- 
 sands of the natives. Neglected by his skipper,
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 173 
 
 Captain Lilly's apprentice was left in a ware- 
 house to the attentions of a black, who dosed 
 him daily with Jesuits'-bark. Finally, when he 
 had practically laid himself down to die on a 
 dunghill at the east end of Kingston, he at- 
 tracted the attention of a benevolent London 
 captain, and ultimately returned to Bristol in 
 the ' Montserrat,' Master, David Jones. It was 
 not an auspicious name ; but the boatswain of 
 the vessel, a much-experienced man, effectually 
 cured the boy of his fever. 
 
 His seafaring life, it will be seen, had already 
 been chequered, and Captain Lilly in addition 
 like the master in 'Sally in our Alley' had 
 often ' banged him most severely.' But the 
 skipper of the ' Prince of Wales' was an angel 
 of light in comparison with Captain Timothy 
 Tucker of the ' Royal George,' to whom he was 
 next transferred, and who, by the contrast be- 
 tween his precepts and his practice, must have 
 reminded Told of his old friend Talkative in 
 Bunyan. 'A greater villain, I firmly believe, 
 never existed, although at home he assumed the 
 character and temper of a saint.' Upon one 
 occasion, Tucker not only horsewhipped his un- 
 fortunate apprentice with such energy that his 
 clothes were cut to pieces on his back, and the 
 crew declared they could see his bones, but he
 
 174 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 jumped repeatedly upon the pit of his stomach 
 ' in order to endanger his life.' ' Had not the 
 people laid hold of my two legs, and thrown me 
 under the windlass (after the manner they threw 
 cats or dogs) he would have ended his despotic 
 cruelty in murder/ The inadequate reason for 
 this brutal assault was that Tucker thought the 
 boy had been wasteful in taking bread from the 
 gun-room. At another time, when he was suf- 
 fering from fever, he was furiously thrashed to 
 make him better. That he escaped with his 
 life is marvellous, for Tucker stuck at nothing. 
 Once he deliberately shot a sick negro in cold 
 blood ; and he so tormented the ship's cook, 
 John Bundy, that the miserable creature flung 
 himself overboard. As may be gathered, the 
 ' Royal George ' was a slaver ; and the Bristol 
 apprentice escaped none of the horrible incidents 
 of that horrible traffic. When the negro above 
 mentioned was put to death, the rest of the 
 blacks revolted, with intent to kill the crew ; 
 ' but we,' says Silas borrowing for the nonce 
 the pen of Defoe ' nimbly betaking ourselves 
 to the cannons, pointed them through a bulk- 
 head that parted the main and quarter-deck ; 
 which, when they perceived, the greater part of 
 them ran down between decks, and the re- 
 mainder jumped overboard, and were all drowned,
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 175 
 
 save one or two which, with the assistance of 
 the Jolly boat, we rescued from the violence of 
 the sea.' Once again, when they were ready 
 to sail, a panic broke out among the human 
 cargo below, who began to shriek dismally that 
 Egbo (i.e. the devil) was among them. Next 
 morning, on the hatches being opened, forty out 
 of a total of eighty slaves were found to have 
 been suffocated, and were promptly thrown over 
 the ship's side. 
 
 From the ' blood-thirsty devil ' Tucker, Silas 
 Told passed to Captain Roach of the ' Scipio,' 
 whom he describes as ' a pleasant tempered gen- 
 tleman, and exceeding free and liberal with all 
 his ship's company,' a commendation appar- 
 ently compatible, in a West Indian skipper, with 
 a good many questionable qualities. At New 
 Calabar, Captain Roach, being then probably 
 under the influence of the punch which he had 
 been brewing in a tub on the quarter-deck, took 
 umbrage at certain ill-timed attentions offered 
 by a local slave-dealer to a handsome black girl 
 in whom Roach was personally interested. 
 Thereupon Captain Roach promptly knocked 
 out all the offender's front teeth with his cane, 
 and, running to the state-room for a loaded 
 pistol, obliged Tom Ancora (for such was the 
 dealer's name) to jump overboard in order to
 
 176 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 avoid being shot. Reflecting subsequently upon 
 the bad policy of what he had done, Captain 
 Roach, against the advice of his crew, arrayed 
 himself in scarlet plush, girt on his sword, and 
 went ashore in state to make matters up. He 
 was received with much feigned cordiality by 
 Ancora, who straightway concocted for his 
 guest so potent a loving-cup that it gradually 
 paralyzed, and (though he lingered for some 
 weeks) eventually did for, the unfortunate cap- 
 tain of the ' Scipio.' His last illness was accom- 
 panied by an occurrence of ' an ominous nature,' 
 which Silas must relate for himself: 
 
 ' Every day, in the course of his [Captain 
 Roach's] weakness in body, he made repeated 
 efforts to reach the cabin windows, in order to 
 receive the cooling air, and at whatever times 
 he looked in the water, a devil-fish was regularly 
 swimming at the stern of the ship ; he did not 
 appear to be a fish of prey, but his breadth from 
 fin to fin was about 28 feet, and in length about 
 seven or eight, with a wide tail, and two ivory 
 horns in front. He followed the ship, to our 
 best calculation, near 1800 miles, nor was it 
 remembered by any of the ship's crew that a 
 fish of that nature had made its appearance in 
 the course of any of their voyages. Perpetual 
 attempts to destroy or catch this monster was
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 177 
 
 made, by the fastening a thick rope round the 
 body of a dead negro, and casting him over- 
 board, but it was ineffectual ; the fish swam 
 close under our stern, got his horns entangled 
 in the rope, under-run it to the end, and then 
 tossed his refused prey several yards above the 
 water. When the captain died he forsook the 
 ship, and we saw him no more.' 
 
 Many other experiences remained for Silas 
 Told which can only be glanced at briefly here. 
 Between Jamaica and Cuba, the 'Scipio' was 
 taken by a Spanish guarda costa, and her crew 
 narrowly escaped hanging on the Platform under 
 Cape Nicolas in St. Domingo. Then they were 
 wrecked on a reef ; had to swim for fresh water 
 through a shark-haunted sea ; to bury them- 
 selves in the sand to avoid the mosquitoes 
 and so forth. Being rescued by a passing ves- 
 sel, they set sail for Boston, to be cast away 
 anew on ' the Gay-Head of St. Matthias's vine- 
 yard ' (i.e. Martha's Vineyard, off Massachu- 
 setts). Here Told, with three others, swam 
 naked to land, got a line on shore, and saved 
 the ship's company. On Martha's Vineyard 
 they found a friendly governor, Ebenezer Allen, 
 who welcomed them with the large-handed hos- 
 pitality of the old colonial days, fed and clothed 
 them, and even proposed, there being but few 
 12
 
 178 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 whites on the island, that Told, who was better 
 educated than the others, should settle in the 
 place and marry one of his daughters. This 
 advantageous, and even ideal offer, for Allen 
 was immensely rich in flocks and herds, being 
 declined with thanks, he gave them forty shil- 
 lings each, and franked them to Sandwich on 
 the mainland. Making their way through Han- 
 over, they were treated with the same liberality 
 by the New Englanders, though they were 
 gravely rebuked for travelling on Sunday. At 
 last Silas reached Boston, where he lived 
 for four months. Of the Bostonians of that 
 day, he speaks with unreserved commendation. 
 ' Their behaviour,' he says, ' is altogether ami- 
 able, as peacemakers ; and they are naturally 
 blessed with humane inclinations, together with 
 such strict order and oeconomy as I never be- 
 fore observed ; nor do I ever remember to have 
 heard one oath uttered, or the name of the Lord 
 mentioned, save upon a religious occasion, dur- 
 ing the time I tarried at that place.' 
 
 Restless as Ulysses, Silas did not yet quit 
 the sea. After visiting his home in England, 
 he shipped as gunner of the slaver 'Amoretta, 1 
 bound to Old Calabar, and subsequently served 
 in the ' Ann and Judith.' He next went a voy- 
 age to the Mediterranean, whence returning he
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 179 
 
 was pressed, after the barbarous fashion of those 
 days, off the Isle of Wight, and transferred to 
 the ' Phoenix ' man-of-war. Here his captain, 
 one Trivil Caley by name, proved to be a pious 
 man, who differed as much from the sea-officers 
 of Smollett as his lieutenants closely resembled 
 those worthies. In this favourable environment, 
 Told's boyish instincts, which had lain dormant 
 during his wild seafaring life, began faintly to 
 revive. Again he saw visions as of old, and 
 listened to supernatural monitions. Then one 
 Christmas Eve he married, choosing for his 
 helpmate 'a very virtuous young woman' named 
 Mary Verney. After this he went with the fleet 
 to Lisbon, and was all but wrecked once more 
 on those rocks of Scilly which had proved so 
 fatal to that ' plain gallant Man, 1 Sir Cloudesley 
 Shovel. In February, 1736, he was paid off 
 in Chatham river, and never again saw blue 
 water. 
 
 Bred a Churchgoer in his boyhood, he still 
 as a man clung to his first impressions. But he 
 was near his turning-point ; and the behaviour 
 of the curate of the Essex village where, on 
 fourteen pounds a year, he now settled as a 
 schoolmaster, served not a little to disturb his 
 illusions. The curate loved a sea-song and a 
 bowl of punch ; but for this latter had not the
 
 i8o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 justification of the Ordinary in ' Jonathan Wild,' 
 namely, that punch ' is nowhere spoken against 
 in Scripture,' sitfce, as he informed his guest in 
 a burst of confidence, he did not (in spite of his 
 cloth) 'believe the Scripture.' This, in the cir- 
 cumstances, Told thought so terrible that he 
 promptly renounced him. Losing his school 
 soon after, Told came to London, where he 
 found employments of different kinds. One 
 day, in 1740, an acquaintance took him, much 
 against his will, to hear Wesley at the Foundry 
 in Moorfields, at this time a ruinous old building 
 m which the Methodists met almost secretly and 
 at extremely early hours. The magnetic influ- 
 ence of the preacher set his new listener on fire. 
 'This is the truth,' a voice seemed to say; and, 
 notwithstanding the opposition of his wife, he 
 became a zealous convert to Methodism. His 
 earnestness attracted Wesley's notice, with the 
 result that he was ultimately placed in charge of 
 the charity school in the band room at the back 
 of the Foundry a post which he filled faith- 
 fully for seven years and three months, working 
 from five in the morning until five at night. 
 While he was thus employed came what may 
 be called the determining moment in his career. 
 At one of the morning services in 1744 Wesley 
 preached from the text, ' I was sick, and in
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 181 
 
 prison, and ye visited me not.' To the school- 
 master of the Foundry the words seemed like a 
 special revelation of his calling. Henceforth, 
 until his death, he became a regular visitor to 
 the condemned cells at Newgate, earning in 
 time, as opposed to the ' Ordinary,' the popular 
 title of the ' Prisoners' Chaplain.' From the 
 outset he took his place in the cart with the con- 
 victs; and as Hogarth's ' Industry and Idleness' 
 was published in 1747, there can be no reason- 
 able doubt that he is the person actually intended 
 in the plate entitled ' The Idle 'Prentice Exe- 
 cuted at Tyburn.' Indeed, it is possible that 
 Hogarth may have sketched him without know- 
 ing his name, since the memoir from which the 
 above particulars are derived was not issued 
 until long after the death of both. 
 
 Silas Told's life, which, from the date of his 
 leaving the sea, had been comparatively un- 
 eventful, grows barren of personal interest at 
 this point ; and henceforth his autobiography 
 treats chiefly of the more notable of the male- 
 factors with whom he was brought into contact. 
 Among the strangest of his stories is that of 
 John Lancaster, one of a batch of ten poor 
 wretches sentenced to death, whom Told saw 
 upon his first visit to the prison. Lancaster, a 
 young man, had been a thief; but he had come
 
 1 82 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
 
 under religious influences while in confinement, 
 and he met his fate with a pious exaltation that 
 moved even the sheriff to tears. Being without 
 friends, there was no one to bury his body. The 
 moment it was cut down, it was consequently 
 pounced upon by the ' surgeon's mob,' who 
 carried it over to Paddington for dissection. 
 They had no sooner gone off than a gang of 
 eight sailors armed with truncheons appeared 
 upon the scene. Whether they had hoped to 
 rescue Lancaster is not stated, but they were 
 apparently in search of him ; and learning from 
 an old woman who sold gin what had happened, 
 they went after the ' surgeon's mob.' Having 
 recovered the corpse, they paraded it, two at a 
 time, about the suburbs until they were tired ; 
 and finally deposited it by common consent on a 
 chance doorstep. A startling result followed. 
 The noise which this proceeding made in the 
 neighbourhood brought down the frightened old 
 woman of the house, who, on seeing the dead 
 body, found it was that of her son I 
 
 The ' Prisoners' Chaplain ' speaks of the 
 hanging of Lancaster and his companions as 
 more like a fair than an awful execution. His 
 words, in fact, are almost a description of 
 Hogarth's print. ' There was a very crowded 
 concourse,' he says, ' among whom were num-
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 183 
 
 berless gin and gingerbread vendors, accom- 
 panied by pick-pockets ... of almost every 
 denomination in London. 1 In later years he 
 must often have witnessed that motley scene 
 again. Now and then, under the indiscriminate 
 rigour of the law, the cases were exceptionally 
 pitiable. Such, for example, was that of a 
 young man named Coleman, who was hanged 
 on insufficient evidence ; such, again, that of 
 Mary Edmonson, a poor girl who suffered on 
 Kennington Common, in 17^9, upon a charge 
 of murdering her aunt a charge of which, as 
 the event proved, she was absolutely guiltless. 
 Another case which Told narrates presents 
 something of the sensational element which 
 characterized that of John Lancaster. Four 
 gentlemen, one being a naval officer, got drunk 
 at an election dinner, took the road for a frolic, 
 and robbed an Essex farmer. The farmer fol- 
 lowed them into Chelmsford ; they were taken, 
 tried, and sentenced to be hanged. Many ef- 
 forts were made in their behalf; but George II. 
 was inexorable. ' His subjects.' he said, ' were 
 not to be put in bodily fear, and suffer the loss 
 of their property, merely through a capricious, 
 wanton whim.' Morgan, the naval officer, was, 
 however, engaged to a lady of rank, a daughter 
 (according to Told) of the Duke of Hamilton.
 
 184 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 His betrothed was untiring in her appeals to the 
 King to spare her lover's life, persisting up to 
 the very day preceding the execution, when His 
 Majesty at last yielded to her importunity so far 
 as to consent to a reprieve at the gallows' foot. 
 Told, who had visited the unhappy convicts 
 repeatedly during their confinement, and was 
 present as usual, only learned of this decision 
 by seeing one of the group fall fainting to the 
 ground under the shock of the announcement. 
 At first he thought it was a rescue, but he was 
 reassured when he found the respited man seated 
 in a coach beside the lady who had so devot- 
 edly pleaded his cause. The other three were 
 hanged. 
 
 The last of those of whom Todd gives an 
 account was the infamous and notorious Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Brownrigg, of Fleur de Lys Court, 
 Fetter Lane, who, in Canning's parody of 
 Southey, 
 
 'whipp'd two female 'prentices to death 
 And hid them in the coal-hole.' 
 
 He had many interviews with her, and seems to 
 have believed in her complete contrition and 
 repentance. He rode with her in the cart to 
 Tyburn ; and, in the frontispiece to an edition 
 of his autobiography published at Salford in
 
 The Prisoners' Chaplain. 185 
 
 1806, she is depicted much in the position of 
 Thomas Idle in Hogarth's print, with Told 
 seated at her side. But, if one may judge from 
 the ' authentick Narrative ' published by Mr. 
 Urban in September, 1767, she is not a male- 
 factor with whom it is possible to sympathize 
 greatly. Told's ministrations to her and to the 
 other inmates of Newgate, it should be added, 
 were not effected without difficulty ; and vested 
 interests, in the shape of keepers and Ordinary, 
 were often arrayed against him his clerical 
 brother, in particular, taking an infinity of pains 
 to harass and obstruct him in his pious offices. 
 But his invincible tenacity of purpose triumphed 
 over all obstacles, and he was even able to effect 
 some trifling reforms in the prison itself. Nor 
 were his exertions confined to Newgate, for, 
 in process of time, he visited (he says) 'every 
 prison, as well as many workhouses in and about 
 London ; and frequently travelled to almost every 
 town within 12 miles around this metropolis.' 
 
 In December, 1778, in his sixty-eighth year, 
 Silas Told's life of obscure and unselfish useful- 
 ness came to an end. But the 'Gentleman's 
 Magazine ' for that date devotes no obituary line 
 to the patient ' Prisoners' Chaplain ' from whose 
 lips so many hapless beings had heard the last 
 words of comfort and consolation. His best
 
 1 86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 epitaph is to be found in Wesley's ' Journal': 
 ' Sun. 20. I buried what was mortal of honest 
 Silas Told. For many years he attended the 
 malefactors in Newgate, without fee or reward ; 
 and I suppose no man for this hundred years 
 has been so successful in that melancholy office. 
 God had given him peculiar talents for it ; and 
 he had amazing success therein. The greatest 
 part of those whom he attended died in peace, 
 and many of them in the triumph of faith.'
 
 JOHNSON'S LIBRARY. 
 
 ""THERE are my friends; there are my 
 * books, to which I have not yet bid 
 farewell.' Thus Johnson writing in the last 
 months of his life to Dr. Brocklesby from Lich- 
 field speaks of the London that he loved so 
 dearly. He loved his books dearly too. But 
 his attachment for them, like his attachment for 
 his friends, was after all but a growling kind of 
 affection, not incompatible with much severe 
 discipline and no small amount of rough usage. 
 Whether he would actually have marked his place 
 with the countless straws ('paleas mnumeras' 1 ') 
 of the slovenly student in the ' Philobiblon,' or 
 as is related of another even more unpardon- 
 able amateur set the leg of a chair on a volume 
 to keep it open, may in charity be doubted. 
 What is certain is, that he would not scruple to 
 cut the leaves with a greasy knife, and read while 
 he was eating (one knows how he eat !) ; and it 
 is probable that with his imperfect sight, his haste 
 to ' tear out the heart ' of his subject, and his 
 frequent fits of absence or abstraction, he was
 
 1 88 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 not in the least the kind of person to whom one 
 would have cared to confide the masterpieces 
 of Miss Prideaux or Mr. Cobden Sanderson, 
 even though, out of abundance of caution, he 
 should cuddle them uncouthly in a corner of the 
 tablecloth, as he once did with Charles Sheridan's 
 ' Revolution in Sweden.' ' David ! ' he said to 
 Garrick, ' will you lend me your " Petrarca " ? ' 
 (Petrarch, it may be remembered, had been the 
 passion of his boyhood.) And Garrick answer- 
 ing doubtfully, ' Y e s, Sir 1 ' was greeted 
 with a reproachful ' David ! you sigh?' the 
 obvious outcome of which was that the treasure, 
 'stupendously bound,' and no doubt containing 
 the famous Shakespeare bookplate with its cau- 
 tionary motto from the ' Menagiana,' found its 
 way that very evening into Johnson's keeping. 
 4 He received it,' reported Boswell, who hap- 
 pened to be present, ' with a Greek ejaculation 
 and a couplet or two from " Horace " ; ' and 
 then in one of those transports of enthusiasm 
 which seemed to require that (like Dominie 
 Sampson) he should spread his arms aloft poor 
 Garrick's 'Petrarca,' 'stupendously bound,' 
 pounced over his head upon the floor, to be 
 forthwith forgotten in the train of thought to 
 which it had given birth. Can it be wondered 
 that Garrick, a precise, natty man, with the
 
 Johnson's Library. 189 
 
 ambitions, if not the instincts, of a connoisseur, 
 and a punctilious respect for externals, should 
 hesitate to lend his priceless ' old plays ' to such a 
 reader, a reader who, moreover, if he made 
 show of religiously registering his obligations, 
 seldom carried his good resolutions so far as to 
 return the books he borrowed, although like 
 Coleridge later he usually enriched them liber- 
 ally with unsolicited marginalia ? When a man 
 deals thus with the property of his friends, he can- 
 not be expected to spare his own ; and it may 
 easily be believed that Johnson's collection, 
 based, no doubt, on works originally brought 
 together for the preparation of the ' Dictionary,' 
 was, as described, ' by no means handsome in 
 its appearance.' Nor, though he was discov- 
 ered, on more than one occasion, in hedger's 
 gloves and a cloud of his own raising, vaguely 
 endeavouring to import 'Heaven's first law' 
 into his library by vigorously 'buffeting' the un- 
 fortunate volumes together, could those volumes 
 be said to be, in any sense, either well cared for 
 or well kept. ' He has many good books, but 
 they are all lying in confusion and dust,' wrote 
 Boswell to Temple in 1 763 ; and Hawkins reports 
 further that they were ' miserably ragged ' and 
 ' defaced,' and ' chosen with so little regard to 
 editions or their external appearance, as shewed
 
 190 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 they were intended for use, and that he disdained 
 the ostentation of learning.' That they grew to 
 be fairly numerous is nevertheless clear from the 
 auction catalogue drawn up in 1785 after their 
 owner's death. 
 
 Until very recently, this catalogue of Mr. 
 Christie, at whose ' Great Room in Pall Mall ' 
 the sale took place, was comparatively inacces- 
 sible. The Bodleian, we believe, possesses a copy; 
 and another was discovered by Mr. Peter Cun- 
 ningham ; while a third, which had belonged to 
 the Rev. Samuel Lysons, the antiquary, was 
 sold at Puttick's In November, 1881, with the 
 books of a well-known collector, Col. F. Grant, 
 being bound up in a volume containing other 
 valuable Johnsoniana which Lysons had col- 
 lected. As late as June, 1892, however, a fac- 
 simile which, as it was limited to 150 copies, 
 should speedily become rare was reprinted by 
 Messrs. Unwin for the meeting of the Johnson 
 Club at Oxford. It forms a pamphlet of twenty- 
 eight pages, and (engravings not included) 650 
 ' lots,' representing of course a much larger 
 number of volumes ; and it is entitled ' A Cat- 
 alogue of the Valuable Library of Books, of 
 the late learned Samuel Johnson, Esq ; LL. D., 
 Deceased.' The sale was to take place on 
 Wednesday, February i6th, 1785, and the three
 
 Johnson's Library. 191 
 
 following days. That it could not have com- 
 prised the whole of the Doctor's possessions 
 is clear from the fact that, in his will, he left 
 some of the more important volumes to friends. 
 Reynolds, for instance, was to have the great 
 French Dictionary of Martiniere, as well as 
 Johnson's own copy of his ' folio English Dic- 
 tionary, of the last revision ' ; Hawkins was to 
 have Holinshed, Stowe, the ' Annales Ecclesi- 
 astici ' of Baronius, and ' an octavo Common 
 Prayer-Book ' ; Langton, a Polyglot Bible ; 
 Windham, the Greek Heroic Poets. Other 
 persons indicated were also to select a book ; 
 and this may perhaps account for some conspic- 
 uous absences from Mr. Christie's pages. They 
 include the unworshipful ' little Pompadour,' the 
 translation of which Johnson indicated to Stra- 
 han in 17^9 as the model for the format of 
 ' Rasselas ' ; but they do not include ' Rasselas ' 
 itself. They contain Goldsmith's ' Citizen of the 
 World ' and ' Roman History,' but they show no 
 sign of ' She Stoops to Conquer,' a masterpiece 
 dedicated by Goldsmith to his friend, of a copy 
 of which that friend might reasonably be sup- 
 posed to have died possessed. This is the more 
 remarkable because Johnson had certainly pre- 
 served Francklin's ' Lucian,' Wilson's ' Archaeo- 
 logical Dictionary,' and several other efforts by
 
 192 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 authors far less able than ' Doctor Minor ' who 
 had inscribed to him their performances. The 
 difficulty, however, disappears if we assume ' Ras- 
 selas ' and the rest, to have been selected by the 
 persons named in the will, who, as Boswell is 
 careful to acquaint us, prevented any ' curious 
 question as to the order of choice ' by luckily 
 fixing upon different books. One of these me- 
 mentoes, being that which fell to the lot of 
 Cruikshank, the famous surgeon of Leicester 
 Fields by whom Johnson was attended in his last 
 illness, the present writer is fortunate enough to 
 possess. It is a copy of Dr. Samuel Clarke's 
 edition of ' Homer,' 1740-54, four volumes 410 
 in two ; and it bears, at foot of the title-page, 
 the words ' Property of W m . Cruikshank in 
 consequence of the Will or Testament of Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson. 1 Boswell records but one 
 quotation made by the Doctor from this edition 
 of the author ' whom he venerated as the prince 
 of poets,' and that is in no wise textual ; but 
 he says that at the close of Johnson's life (and 
 a little to the astonishment of his friends, since 
 Clarke was not considered orthodox) he was 
 frequently employed in reading Clarke's ' Ser- 
 mons,' which he also fervently recommended 
 to Dr. Brocklesby as ' fullest on the propitia- 
 tory sacrifice/ It is therefore not surprising that
 
 Johnson's Library. 193 
 
 there are two sets of the ' Sermons ' in the 
 Catalogue. 
 
 Bibliographical rarities, real or fictitious, do 
 not figure largely in Mr. Christie's pamphlet. 
 Only one work is described as ' elegantly bound,' 
 and that is a Leipsic edition of the ' Journey to 
 the Western Islands ' ; one only is characterized 
 as ' very scarce,' and that is Dr. Percy's ' Earl of 
 Northumberland's Houshold Book,' of which 
 Walpole had a copy in the library at Strawberry. 
 What is ostensibly a first folio of Shakespeare 
 is chronicled at p. 21. but the ' 1623 ' is plainly 
 a misprint for ' 1632,' such being the dates of that 
 second folio which, at Theobald's death, and, it 
 is to be presumed, before the historical assault, 
 was presented to Johnson by Osborne the book- 
 seller. Theobald had made many manuscript 
 notes ; Johnson made more ; and the volume in 
 which the first hero of the ' Dunciad ' and the 
 author of 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' so 
 curiously collaborate, is now in the collection of 
 Mr. Henry Irving, who bought it at the Aylesford 
 sale of 1888. Not very far from the Shakespeare 
 in the Catalogue is a Gerarde's ' Herball' of 
 1633, which, according to the author of ' Gossip 
 in a Library,' is ' the right edition ' of Gerarde, 
 whose editor and continuator, by the way, was 
 also a Johnson, having Thomas to his Christian 
 
 13
 
 194 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 name, 'citizen and apothecarye of London.' 
 Among the remaining folios on the same page is 
 Burton's ' Anatomie,' the only work which, the 
 good Doctor protested, ' ever took him out of 
 bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.' 
 This, which was bound up with Sir Matthew 
 Male's ' Primitive Origination of Mankind,' 
 1677, is the issue of 1676 ; and the volume now 
 forms part of the material for that gigantic enter- 
 prise at present in progress at Oxford under the 
 guiding hand of Dr. J. A. H. Murray. An in- 
 scription which it bears affirms it to have been 
 bought at Johnson's sale by one William Collins. 
 It was afterwards presented to the Philological 
 Society in 1863 by a subsequent owner, and so 
 passed into the Sunnyside arsenal of authorities. 1 
 The Hale part of the volume is freely embellished 
 by the lines and marks, described by Boswell 
 and others, with which Johnson prepared quota- 
 tions for transcription. Sometimes there are 
 marginal comments, of which the following is 
 cited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill. According to Hale 
 ' Averroes says that if the world were not 
 eternal ... it could never have been at all, 
 because an eternal duration must necessarily 
 have anteceded the first production of the world.' 
 
 1 We are indebted for these particulars to the courtesy 
 of Dr. Murray himself.
 
 Johnson's Library. 195 
 
 Opposite to this Johnson has written, 'This 
 argument will hold good equally against the 
 writing that I now write.' If we turn to the 
 ' Dictionary ' we shall find that he uses another 
 sentence from Hale as an illustration of the un- 
 usual word ' antecede.' 
 
 At p. 14 is the little ' Hudibras ' (1726), with 
 ' first impressions ' of the plates which Hogarth 
 is supposed to have adapted from the vagabond 
 painter and tavern-haunter, Francis Lepipre, and 
 which he afterwards so much surpassed by his 
 own inventions ; * lower down there is the ' Per- 
 spective ' of Brook Taylor by Joshua Kirby, with 
 Hogarth's quaint pictorial preachment upon the 
 perils which environ the adventurous in that art. 
 There is a copy of Cheyne's ' English malady ' ; 
 there are works of Mead, and Cheselden the 
 anatomist : 
 
 'I'll do what MEAD and CHESELDEN advise, 
 To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes.' 
 
 There is a copy of the ' Medicinal Dictionary ' of 
 Dr. Robert James of the Fever Powder (3 vols. 
 
 1 According to Wright, this copy, having Johnson's 
 signature, and dated Aug. 1747, passed into the collection 
 of Mr. William Upcott, whose books and MSS. were 
 dispersed in 1846. Mr. Upcott also possessed two vol- 
 umes of the proof sheets of the ' Lives of the Poets,' which 
 are now in the Forster collection at South Kensington.
 
 196 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 folio], for which Johnson, besides contributing 
 several of the articles, prepared the judicious 
 dedication ' To Dr. Mead,' which, according to 
 Boswell, was so excellently calculated ' to con- 
 ciliate the patronage of that very eminent man ' ; 
 there is also another book in which to use old 
 Thomas Heywood's figure he had certainly, if 
 not ' an entire hand, at least a main finger/ the 
 Brumoy's 'Greek Theatre' of Mrs. Charlotte 
 Lenox, whose translation of Sully's ' Memoirs' 
 is included in the collection. Among biogra- 
 phies, there is the ' Gustavus Adolphus ' of 
 Philip Stanhope's tutor, Dr. Walter Harte 
 that melancholy failure, to escape the expected 
 overpowering success of which its too-sanguine 
 author sought the retirement of the country ; 
 among histories, there is Macaulay's ' England,' 
 which reads like an anachronism. But it is, of 
 course, the forgotten performance of the egre- 
 gious lady once known as ' the celebrated female 
 historian.' And it must, moreover, have been a 
 presentation copy, for Johnson, who frankly 
 admitted that he had never taken the trouble to 
 read the book, would hardly have bought it, 
 even if he had not detested the writer. She 
 rouged ; and she was a red Republican ; and 
 ' 'A never could abide carnations.' 
 
 Theology, as may perhaps be anticipated, is
 
 Johnson's Library. 197 
 
 largely represented by other books besides 
 Clarke's ' Sermons ' ; and there is a goodly array 
 of authorities upon the Doctor's hobby of chem- 
 istry, a taste which had lasted from his life of 
 Boerhaave in the ' Gentleman's Magazine' down 
 to the days of that laboratory at Streatham, in 
 which he terrified the Thrale family circle by the 
 temerity of his experiments. There are naturally 
 numerous works on language and etymology ; 
 there is also an abundance of Greek and Latin 
 folios and quartos, including the 'Macrobius' 
 he had quoted with such excellent effect upon 
 his first arrival at Pembroke College. There 
 are many books by authors whose names are 
 familiar in the pages of Boswell : Reynolds' 
 'Discourses,' Grainger's 'Tibullus,' Hoole's 
 'Ariosto,' Nichols' 'Anecdotes of Bowyer,' 
 Carter's ' Epictetus,' etc. But, upon the whole, 
 it must be presumed, as Boswell suggests, that 
 it was a desire to possess a relic of Dr. Johnson, 
 rather than a desire to possess the books them- 
 selves, which prompted the majority of the pur- 
 chasers. In any case, the sum realized, 247 9$., 
 does not appear to have been regarded by the late 
 owner's contemporaries as an unusually unsatis- 
 factory amount. Why the sale itself attracted so 
 little public attention is not easy to explain. Be- 
 yond a trivial epigram in the ' Public Advertiser, 1
 
 198 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 where it was announced once, it seems to have 
 been wholly ignored by the press. In the 
 ' Gentleman's Magazine ' there is no mention 
 of it, nor is it noticed in any way by Johnson's 
 favourite news-sheet, the ' London Chronicle.'
 
 THE TWO PAYNES. 
 
 WHERE are the bookshops of old time? 
 Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Edmund 
 Gosse have each written a ballade of bygone 
 cities. Why should there not be a ballade of 
 bygone bookshops ? 
 
 CURLL, by the Fleet-Ditch nymphs caress'd; 
 
 TONSON, the Great, the slow-to-pay; 
 LINTOT, of Folios rubric-press'd; 
 
 OSBORNE, that stood in JOHNSON'S way; 
 
 DODSLEY, who sold the ' Odes ' of Gray ; 
 DAVIES, that lives in CHURCHILL'S rhyme ; 
 
 MILLAR and KNA.PTON, where are they? 
 Where are the bookshops of old time ? 
 
 So might it run, were playthings still the 
 mode ! Meanwhile, it is more easy to name than 
 to localize those old rallying-places of the Curi- 
 ous. Where, for example, was the establishment 
 of ' honest Tom Payne,' to whom belongs the 
 distinction of being among the first of the second- 
 hand booksellers who issued Catalogues ? He 
 began his career in Round-Court, Strand (now 
 effaced by the Charing Cross Hospital), at the 
 'Horace's Head 'of Olive Payne, his brother,
 
 2oo Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 who, in 1756, issued a folio edition of Capt. 
 Charles Johnson's once-famous ' Lives of the 
 Highwaymen and Pyrates.' Then Thomas 
 Payne set up in the same place on his own 
 account, putting forth in February, 1740, his 
 first printed list of ' Books in Divinity, History, 
 Classicks, Medicine, Voyages, Natural His- 
 tory, etc.,' further described as ' in excellent 
 condition, and mostly gilt and lettered.' But 
 from 1750 to 1790 he dwelt 'at the Mews-gate'; 
 and for the Mews Gate, as well as for the Mews 
 itself, which occupied the ground at present 
 covered by Trafalgar Square and the National 
 Gallery, the picturesque topographer may seek 
 in vain. Luckily some of Thomas Payne's early 
 Catalogues are more explicit in their indica- 
 tions, for they give his full address as ' in Castle 
 Street, next the Upper Mews-Gate, near St. 
 Martin's Church.' It is clear, therefore, that it 
 is not at the Union Club end of the Square that 
 we must look for the site, but at the bottom of 
 the new Charing Cross Road. Here, for forty 
 years, in a little shop shaped like an L, Thomas 
 Payne, assisted by his factotum, Edward Noble, 1 
 
 1 Another of Thomas Payne's assistants, from 1789 to 
 I 797 was John Hatchard, the founder of the well-known 
 bookselling house in Piccadilly ('Piccadilly Bookmen,' by 
 Arthur L. Humphreys, 1893).
 
 The Two Paynes. 201 
 
 dispensed his wares; and heie measuring 
 margins, or discussing the merits of wire-wove 
 and black-letter were daily to be found the 
 ' Doctor Dewlaps' of the day, the Greens, the 
 Gilpins, the Cossets, the Grangers, and the like. 
 Many once celebrated collections passed into 
 Payne's Catalogues, and were dispersed again 
 over his counter. He bought the books of 
 Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary, at whose 
 sale Horace Walpole acquired for 205. the vellum 
 volume of York Miracle Plays, of which the 
 price, in 1844, had risen to ^"305 ; he bought 
 the books of that corpulent connoisseur in 
 
 'auld nick-nackets ; 
 Rusty airn caps and jinglin' jackets' 
 
 Francis Grose. He was also to some extent a 
 publisher witness his issue of Cough's ' British 
 Topography.' But his chief claims to remem- 
 brance are his inflexible integrity, his unrivalled 
 knowledge of his business, and his genuine love 
 of letters. In that singular, and, judging by the 
 number of its editions, once exceptionally popu- 
 lar satire, Mr. T. J. Mathias his ' Pursuits of 
 Literature,' Payne is mentioned several times. 
 ' Must I ' says the author 
 
 'must I, as a wit with learned air, 
 Like Doctor Dewlap, to TOM PAYNE'S repair,
 
 2O2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode, 1 
 
 'Mid literary gods myself a god ? 
 
 There make folks wonder at th' extent of genius 
 
 In the Greek Aldus or the Dutch Frobenius, 
 
 And then, to edify their learned souls, 
 
 Quote pleasaunt sayings from The Shippe of Fdes.' 
 
 A foot-note to this reference, one of those 
 profuse annotations which, it is shrewdly sus- 
 pected, furnished the real pretext of the poem, 
 describes Payne as a ' Trypho Emeritus. 1 He 
 is also pronounced to have been ' one of the 
 best and honestest men living/ 'to whom, 
 as a bookseller, learning is under considerable 
 obligations.' 2 
 
 Not the least of these obligations is his pro- 
 tection and encouragement of his exceedingly 
 
 1 Jackson was the learned Dean of Christ Church, 
 Oxford; the Rev. Clayton M. Cracherode was a famous 
 Collector of the Classics. He left his library, etc., worth 
 .40,000, to the British Museum, of which he was a 
 Trustee. 
 
 2 There is an excellent portrait of Thomas Payne at 
 p. 435, vol. iii., of Dibdin's ' Decameron,' 1817. One of 
 his successors at the Mews Gate premises, after Sancho 
 the black, Ignatius Sancho's son, was Mr. James Bain, 
 who afterwards removed to No. I, Haymarket, where his 
 business is still carried on in accordance with the best 
 bookselling traditions by his sons. There are few Eng- 
 lish or American collectors who are not familiar with this 
 pleasant rendezvous for book-lovers.
 
 The Two Paynes. 203 
 
 eccentric and even disreputable namesake, Roger 
 Payne the bookbinder. This is the more meri- 
 torious, because, in spite of appearances to the 
 contrary, they were not in any way related. 
 Payne the bookbinder was born in 1739 on the 
 confines of Windsor Forest. Having chosen 
 his calling early, he was first employed by 
 Joseph Pote, the well-known bookseller of 
 Eton. He subsequently drifted to Osborne of 
 Gray's Inn, that 'rough, imperative tradesman 1 
 whom Johnson, for his intolerable insolence, 
 knocked down with a folio. Payne himself 
 was not of a particularly conciliatory disposi- 
 tion, and the ill-assorted pair soon parted com- 
 pany. Then Roger Payne came under the 
 influence of Thomas Payne, who ultimately, 
 somewhere between 1766 and 1770, set him, 
 up in business near Leicester Square. It may, 
 indeed, be said that to Thomas book-lovers owe 
 the existence of Roger. For, in addition to 
 other peculiarities, both inherited and acquired, 
 poor Roger Payne had an inordinate attachment 
 to ale. This kept him all his life-time in hope- 
 less poverty and squalor, although, strangely 
 enough, it did not for many years at least 
 impair his wonderful skill as a craftsman. He 
 seems to have had no graver vices than this of 
 ' barley-broth,' which to him (like ' orses and
 
 204 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 dogs' to the squint-eyed specialist in 'David 
 Copperfield ' who robbed poor David of his 
 coveted box-seat on the Canterbury Coach) 
 'was 'whiles and drink lodging, wife, and 
 children reading, writing, and 'rithmetic 
 snuff, tobacker, and sleep.' Once, according 
 to the younger Payne (Tom Payne's son), 
 Roger's day's record contained but the two Fal- 
 staffian 'items' Bacon, I halfpenny; Liquor, 
 1 shilling.' When he could get ale, he would 
 not work; when he worked, he grew lyrical at 
 the prospect of it, and broke into strange bursts 
 of disconnected doggerel in his bills. Here, 
 collected by Dibdin from oral tradition, is one 
 verse of two with which he sent home Sir 
 Edward Barry's ' Observations on the Wines 
 of the Ancients' (1775) : 
 
 ' Homer the Bard who sung in highest strains, 
 The festive gift, a goblet, for his pains ; 
 Falernian gave Horace, Virgil, fire 
 And Barley Wine my British Muse inspire. 
 Barley Wine first from Egypt's learned shore; 
 And this the gift to me from CALVERT'S store.' 
 
 With this regrettable infirmity not of rhyme, 
 but of liquor it may, perhaps, be guessed 
 that Roger Payne never had any extensive 
 establishment such as that in Duke Street, 
 Piccadilly, of his successor, Charles Lewis,
 
 The Two Paynes. 205 
 
 or the palatial premises now occupied in 
 Shaftesbury Avenue by another distinguished 
 bibliopegist, Mr. Zaehnsdorf. Indeed, for the 
 greater part of his career, he worked alone in a 
 bare and miserable garret, comprising in himself 
 all the Seven Stages of Bookbinding. He not 
 only made his own tools (of iron); but and 
 this undoubtedly gave to his work the charac- 
 teristic impress of one intelligence he was his 
 own puller, collater, sewer, forwarder, head- 
 bander, coverer, and finisher. Late in life he 
 took for assistant one Richard Wier, who was 
 also a votary of ' barley broth.' and whose wife 
 was a famous book-repairer and restorer, of 
 whom Dibdin gives a portrait. Wier and his 
 master, according to report, often quarrelled in, 
 as well as out of their cups, from which en- 
 counters, Payne, who was the weaker and older 
 man, generally came off badly. With the march 
 of years, he grew shakier and shabbier and less 
 skilful, and was finally maintained almost entirely 
 by his good-natured bookseller namesake, at 
 whose expense his portrait was etched and 
 published by Silvester Harding, the Pall Mall 
 miniature painter. The plate shows Payne in 
 his Duke's Court ' sky-parlour,' much as he is 
 described in Arnett's ' Bibliopegia,' surrounded 
 only by a few gallipots, and bending with thin
 
 2o6 Eighteenth Century t/igneites. 
 
 claw-like fingers upon his binder's press. He 
 looks round steadily at the spectator over a for- 
 midable hooked nose, out of a forest of unkempt, 
 grizzled hair. His shoulders are shrouded by 
 some temporary wrap ; his feet are thrust into 
 deplorable slippers, and one knee shows through 
 his ragged trousers. Underneath, after the 
 name ' Rogerus Payne/ and the words ' Na- 
 tus Vindesor : MDCCXXXIX. denatus Londin : 
 MDCCLXXXXVH', is the following elegiac coup- 
 let from the classic pen of Mr. James Bindley, 
 the annotator of Boswell and the benevolent 
 ' Leontes' of Dibdin : 
 
 ' Effigiem hanc graphicam solertis BIBLIOPEGI 
 Mvrnj.6<rvvoi' mentis BIBLIOPOLA dedit.' 
 
 One can imagine the astonishment of Lady 
 Spencer's French friseur, when he witnessed 
 the introduction into his mistress's dressing- 
 room of this fantastic apparition. ' Est-ce que 
 c'est ainsi qu'on se presente dans ce pais-ci dans 
 un cabinet de toilette ?' 
 
 What is perhaps more remarkable is, that, 
 apart from the failing which kept him poor, 
 Roger Payne, in addition to being an excel- 
 lent, and, for those days, almost unique artificer, 
 was also of a singularly independent and scrupu- 
 lously honest character. Otherwise, it would 
 have been hazardous to entrust him with treas-
 
 The Two Paynes. 207 
 
 ures as priceless as the thirty-two original designs 
 of Flaxman inserted in the Glasgow '^Eschylus' 
 (i79)), which he bound for Earl Spencer. His 
 bills for his work are minute even to tedium in 
 their laborious enumeration of the amount of 
 fine drawing paper used for inlaying, of ' Pickt 
 Lawn 1 ditto for interleaves, of silk for sewing, 
 of size for ' Sise-ing,' etc., together with the 
 precise time occupied in washing, reviving, 
 repairing, restoring, and so forth. And often 
 the total of a very long account is extremely 
 moderate. The '^schylus' above-named, which 
 is his masterpiece, cost but \6 7$., and out of 
 this } i $s. was expended on inlaying and pre- 
 paring the drawings for binding. This book 
 was bound in ' Rough-Grain'd Morocco ' lined 
 with Russia leather. Straight-grained olive 
 Morocco was Payne's favourite basis for tool- 
 ing, but he frequently employed Russia. Occa- 
 sionally, as in the case of an Aldine Virgil of 
 1505 executed for Cracherode, and copied in 
 the 'Portfolio' for May, 1893, l he inserted a 
 
 1 See, in that periodical, an interesting series of articles 
 on ' English Bookbindings,' by Mr. W. Y. Fletcher, of the 
 British Museum. Another of the books which Cracherode 
 entrusted to Payne was a copy of the Cambridge Euri- 
 pides, 1694, of which there is a representation in Mr. 
 Herbert P. Home's excellent ' Binding of Books,' 1894. 
 This, like the Virgil, is at Bloomsbury.
 
 208 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 cameo in the centre of the covers with excellent 
 effect. In all the progressive stages of his art 
 he was minutely careful ; but in the ' forward- 
 ing,' as the preparation of the book for its jacket 
 is professionally called, he excelled. His stitch- 
 ing, leaf-setting, headbanding, were all most 
 conscientiously executed, and left nothing to 
 be desired in the matter of strength and com- 
 pactness, although very rigorous critics have 
 complained that his backs were deficient in 
 that cardinal virtue of a well-sewn book, flexi- 
 bility. ' You may let a waggon roll over them, 
 and they will not be injured,' said Thomas Payne 
 the Second enthusiastically, referring to their 
 admittedly solid and durable character. To 
 which a matter-of-fact man might reasonably 
 reply (like Dibdin) that he did not require to 
 make a causeway of his library. In the 'finish- 
 ing,' or decorating, department, again, Payne 
 was pre-eminent. His tooling, expended as a 
 rule on the back rather than on the sides of 
 the volume, was generally adapted in some way 
 to the character of the contents ; and it was 
 often singularly happy in its symmetrical dispo- 
 sition of the minute leaves, studs, circlets, stars, 
 and crescents in which his soul delighted. His 
 end-papers, by common consent, were often ill- 
 chosen and unpleasant in colour. But there are 
 spots on the sun 1
 
 The Two Paynes. 209 
 
 Roger Payne, as appears from the inscription 
 quoted above, died in 1797, being then domi- 
 ciled in a tiny room in Duke's Court, St. Mar- 
 tin's Lane, and he lies buried in the Pratt Street 
 burying-ground of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. 
 Many of his quaint invoices of books bound 
 for Earl Spencer, for his friendly medical adviser 
 Dr. Benjamin Moseley, and others, have been 
 printed, more or less textually, in different 
 places. As a sample, we transcribe the fol- 
 lowing from a pleasant (and also rare) little 
 tractate upon Payne by Mr. W. Loring Andrews 
 of New York, which, it should be added, also 
 contains come admirable reproductions, by the 
 Bierstadt artotype process, of Payne bindings. 
 The original bill is in the possession of Mr. 
 Andrews, to whom the volume it concerns also 
 belongs. 
 
 ' The Earl of Northumberland's Houshold 
 Book Begun Anno Domini MDXII London 
 Printed MDCCLXX. Bound in the very best 
 Manner in Red Morocco. 
 
 ' No false Bands but Sew d in the very best 
 Manner on strong & neat Bands. The Back 
 lined with Russia Leather under the Morocco 
 Covering. Fine Drawing paper Colourd to 
 suit the original Colour of the Book Inside for 
 flying leaves and very neat Morocco Joints in- 
 14
 
 2io Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 side. The Outsides Finished in an elegant 
 Antiq Taste with Borders of 'S 'S & Laurel 
 Branch an Antiq Shield & Crescent in ye Bor- 
 ders. The Crescent is used in the Head piece 
 of ye preface which was my reason for using it 
 in the Back & Borders being suitable to the 
 Book. The greatest care hath been taken to 
 preserve the margins. Gilt leaves not Cutt. 
 2 leaves was very much staind at y e end of the 
 Book we washed them very carfully and they 
 are now very Clean.' 
 Then comes the modest price i is. od.
 
 THE BERLIN HOGARTH. 
 
 pvURING the last quarter of the Eighteenth 
 ^ ' Century, when, in France, Moreau le 
 Jeune was preparing his incomparable designs 
 to ' La Nouvelle HeloTse' ; when the famous 
 La Fontaine of Eisen, ' dite des Fermiers- 
 Gene'raux,' was on every collector's table ; when 
 Stothard in England was adding a chastened 
 charm to the decoration of the yet-young Novel 
 of Manners ; and Bewick with his ' Birds' and 
 Tailpieces was inaugurating the long triumphs 
 of the boxwood block, there was living quietly 
 at Berlin, in full activity of patient production, 
 an artist and illustrator as remarkable as any of 
 these, and possessing some of the distinctive 
 characteristics of each. Moreau himself was 
 not a keener lover of costume and detail ; like 
 Eisen, he delighted (though with Teutonic 
 sobriety) in the endless surprises of feminine 
 elegance ; he sought grace of grouping as un- 
 weariedly as Stothard ; and he had all Bewick's 
 passion for truth, and his pleasure in humorous 
 antithesis. His name was Daniel Nicolaus 
 Chodowiecki.
 
 212 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 It was at Dantzic, on the i6th of October, 
 1726, that Chodowiecki was born, his father 
 being a tradesman of that then-Polish town, and 
 his mother of French extraction. The father 
 had no means of making his sons (for two years 
 later came a second boy, Gottfried) anything 
 more than he was himself ; but he seems to 
 have given them such indifferent instruction in 
 drawing as lay in his power. An aunt, who 
 painted in enamel, also superintended their 
 early efforts, and under her guidance young 
 Daniel busied himself in copying the plates of 
 Bloemaert and Jacques Callot, of Perelle and 
 Martin de Vos, passing later to engravings after 
 Lancret and Watteau, which latter it was his 
 practice to reduce in size, so accustomed had 
 his eye already become to minute methods of 
 execution. From these reproductions, outlined 
 carefully with the pen and washed with Indian 
 ink, he proceeded to painting on parchment, his 
 performances in this way being purchased by an 
 uncle at Berlin. In 1740, owing to the death 
 of his father, his mother was obliged to appren- 
 tice him to a widowed relative, who kept a 
 grocer's shop. Here, from six in the morning 
 to ten at night, he served at the counter, and 
 even then his daily round was incomplete, for 
 later came evening prayers and ' singing of
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 213 
 
 anthems.' Yet so irrepressible already was his 
 enthusiasm for art, that he began to draw as 
 soon as he reached his bedroom, often dropping 
 asleep over his work. At church, again (like 
 Bewick), he managed to follow his darling pur- 
 suit by copying the pictures on the walls in the 
 covers of his hymn-book. It was during his 
 apprenticeship, also, that he made his first 
 studies from nature, wisely reproducing the 
 world about him ; and a sketch of the shop in 
 which he worked, including his mistress dis- 
 pensing her wares to her customers, still, we 
 believe, exists to attest his proficiency at this 
 date. 
 
 Fortunately, after a year and a half, the 
 grocer's shop was shut, and Chodowiecki re- 
 turned to his mother's house, whence, in 1743, 
 he went to the before-mentioned uncle at Berlin, 
 his younger brother having already preceded 
 him. At the capital he had hoped for larger 
 facilities for art-study. He was doomed to 
 disappointment. There were no pictures worth 
 seeing in the churches ; and the collection at 
 the palace was inaccessible. After some vague 
 experiments in water-colour and miniature paint- 
 Ing, coupled with a fruitless attempt at enamel- 
 ling, he finally recognized the impossibility of 
 living by art alone, and entered his uncle's busi-
 
 214 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 ness. But fate did not intend him for a shop- 
 keeper. With their uncle's consent, he and his 
 brother took lessons of a Polish artist, one 
 Johann Lorenz Haid, who had been a pupil of 
 the battle-painter Rugendas. Though a medi- 
 ocre craftsman, Haid, like Michael Cassio, was 
 skilled in ' bookish theorick ' ; he had known 
 men and cities, and his fluent studio patter once 
 more aroused Chodowiecki's ambitions and en- 
 thusiasms. Once more he resolved to devote 
 himself exclusively to art. This, his second 
 ' Kunstperiod,' as he styled it, took place in 
 17^4; and his commercial probation had there- 
 fore been sufficiently protracted. 
 
 " At this time Boucher and Watteau were in 
 full vogue, and engravings from their pictures 
 still formed his chief models. Gradually he 
 began to try his hand at original design. By- 
 and-by opportunities came to him of seeing pic- 
 tures at Potsdam and elsewhere ; and he made 
 the acquaintance of Antoine Pesne, Meil, Bern- 
 hard Rode, and several other contemporary 
 artists. In 1755 he married Jeanne Barez. a 
 gold-embroiderer's daughter, having decided to 
 support himself by miniature painting. At 
 Rode's private life-school the Berlin Academy 
 not yet having recovered from the disastrous fire 
 of 1742 he was a diligent student ; and while
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 215 
 
 in company he practised himself sedulously, 
 whenever opportunity offered, by sketching 
 groups and single figures. In oil painting he 
 had as yet made little or no progress. To this 
 latter he consecrated the winter evenings, sub- 
 stituting for daylight a cunningly devised arrange- 
 ment with a lamp. At length, being more than 
 thirty years of age, he made his first serious at- 
 tempt at etching. He selected for his subject a 
 certain deformed and ragged Thersites named 
 Nicholas Fonvielle, a broken-down die-sinker 
 and snuff-box engraver, who haunted the gam- 
 bling tables and diverted the company by his 
 jests. Chodowiecki sketched this oddity fur- 
 tively ; and merely with the object of multiply- 
 ing copies, transferred his design to copper. 
 Such was the beginning of what proved to be 
 his vocation. The ' Passe-dix ' or ' Dicer' 
 (' Der Wurfler'), as this plate is called, was 
 followed by others. Many of these were still 
 merely tentative, for he had at this time little 
 experience in the use of his materials, and par- 
 ticularly in the art of biting. Nor until some 
 years later did he seriously think of devoting 
 himself wholly to the needle, but eked out a 
 livelihood by enamel and miniature painting. 
 
 A chance circumstance diverted his attention 
 to the line in which he afterwards acquired so
 
 216 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 wide a reputation. In the year 1762, both in 
 France and on the Continent generally, the 
 famous Galas came cdlebre was attracting con- 
 siderable interest. Briefly, it amounts to this. 
 A morbid young fellow of nine-and-twenty, 
 named Marc-Antoine Galas, committed suicide 
 in a fit of temporary insanity. By one of those 
 inexplicable popular delusions which have been 
 rightly called ' the madness of crowds,' the pub- 
 lic persuaded themselves that he had been mur- 
 dered by his own father, who was a Protestant, 
 to prevent his turning Roman Catholic. The 
 whole Galas family were in consequence treated 
 with the utmost barbarity; and the old man, 
 after being repeatedly and fruitlessly tortured to 
 induce him to confess, was at length broken on 
 the wheel by sentence of the Parliament of Tou- 
 louse. His wife and children were acquitted ; 
 but it was not until three years later that, owing 
 to the exertions of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and 
 others, the unrighteous judgment was annulled, 
 and the memory of its hapless victim cleared in 
 the" eyes of the world. 
 
 Popular interest in the case had been revived 
 by this reversal, when an engraving by Lafosse, 
 after a drawing by the Prince de Conde's reader, 
 Carmontel, found its way to Berlin. Its title 
 was ' La malheureuse Famille Galas,' and it re-
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 217 
 
 presented the widow and her children receiving 
 the news of their acquittal. Chodowiecki seems 
 to have been strongly impressed by this print 
 so much so, that he copied it in oil. It then 
 occurred to him to paint a counterpart ; and 
 saturating himself with the literature of the sub- 
 ject, he produced a composition to which he 
 gave the name of ' Les Adieux de Galas, a sa 
 Famille.' The moment selected was that in 
 which the unfortunate father, surrounded by his 
 family, was summoned from prison to the scaf- 
 fold. It was a moving situation, realized with 
 much genuine pathos ; and the picture found so 
 many admirers that the artist was encouraged 
 to etch it upon a large scale. After one partial 
 failure he succeeded ; the result being the plate 
 which, in order to distinguish it from the 
 smaller copy afterwards used as a frontispiece 
 to C. F. Weisse's play, ' Der Fanatismus,' is 
 known to collectors as ' Der grosse Galas.' 
 
 With ' Der grosse Galas ' the course of Chodo- 
 wiecki's artistic career may be said to have been 
 finally determined. Commissions from book- 
 sellers and connoisseurs began to multiply ; and 
 he abandoned miniature painting as a profession. 
 Already, in 1764, he had been elected an Asso- 
 ciate of the Berlin Academy ; in 1769 he was 
 engaged to prepare drawings and etchings for
 
 218 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 that illustrious body. Then, by his own choice, 
 he executed for the ' Almanac Genealogique ' of 
 1770 a set of twelve designs to Lessing's ' Minna 
 von Barnhelm.' With these tiny ovals of little 
 more than two inches by one and a half, set in a 
 simply decorated panel a new epoch of book- 
 illustration, having Chodowiecki for its prophet, 
 may be said to have been inaugurated in Ger- 
 many. Henceforth, for the thirty years that 
 remained to him, there is hardly a known name 
 in contemporary literature for whose work his 
 busy needle did not provide embellishment 
 good, bad, and indifferent. Gellert, Gessner, 
 Goethe, Lavater, Schiller, in his own country ; 
 Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, in 
 France ; Goldsmith, Richardson, Sterne, Smol- 
 lett, in England : for all these, and a host be- 
 side, many of whom owed their fugitive vitality 
 to his all-popular inventions, he worked untire- 
 ingly. It was the hour in Germany of the illus- 
 trated calendars (they even wore them attached 
 to their watch-chains !), and the artist of the 
 illustrated calendars was Daniel Chodowiecki. 
 
 Having found what Carlyle would have called 
 his ' life-purpose/ Chodowiecki's subsequent 
 history presents little but the unvaried record 
 of his labours. For a long time he was unable 
 to quit Berlin. But in 1773 he snatched a brief
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 219 
 
 holiday in order to visit his mother in Dantzic, 
 where he had not been for thirty years. His 
 mode of travelling was characteristic. He rode 
 all the way, keeping a copious diary in French 
 (which is still unprinted), and sketching freely en 
 route, from his first setting foot to stirrup, all the 
 incidents which could be graphically committed 
 to paper. Often, it is recorded, he might be ob- 
 served standing, his horse's bridle between his 
 teeth, rapidly transferring to his ' Tagebuch ' 
 some object or group which had attracted his 
 attention. These pictorial records, undertaken in 
 the first instance for the delectation of his family, 
 he continued during his stay in Dantzic. The 
 drawings thus prepared, many of which attain the 
 level of finished studies in genre, swelled to a 
 collection of 108. They were long in the pos- 
 session of his descendants, by one of whom 
 they were at length, in 1865, presented to the 
 Berlin Academy, where they now remain. Exe- 
 cuted at first in pencil on the spot, and then 
 finished at leisure with pen and brush, they con- 
 stitute an invaluable ' document,' in the Zola 
 sense, as regards German (or rather Polish) 
 middle-class domestic and social life at the close 
 of the last century. In the first design, you see 
 Chodowiecki in his courtyard, bidding effusive 
 farewell to wife and weans. In the next, he is
 
 22O Eighteenth Century fignettes. 
 
 pacing forth, sword at side, on his long-tailed, 
 Roman-nosed horse, his voluminous riding-cloak 
 folded in front and his valise strapped en croupe. 
 Then man and beast are being punted across the 
 Oder in a wide flat-bottomed ferry-boat. At 
 Pyritz his charger has cast a shoe, and we see 
 it replaced ; at Massau we are treated to the 
 humours of the wayside inn, where Chodo- 
 wiecki and a fellow-traveller, lying on straw 
 like Marjorie Daw, are rudely roused from 
 slumber by a pair of noisy revellers, who exe~ 
 cute a minuet in top-boots on the wooden floor 
 to the music of some wandering musicians. 
 Storm overtakes the wayfarer, and he draws 
 it ; he comes to grief in a morass by trying a 
 short cut, and he straightway depicts both the 
 accident and the courtyard of the hostelry 
 where he afterwards scrapes the bog-mud from 
 his horse's hoofs. He sketches the poor tramps 
 he passes on the road ; he sketches the bandy- 
 legged innkeeper ; he sketches that other 
 innkeeper at Wutzkow who tells such blood- 
 curdling stories while the Silesian and his lanky 
 coachman are at supper, and the soldier's wife 
 feeds her child with a spoon. Then you see him 
 riding through the long lime-tree Altte of Lang- 
 fuhr, the Dantzic suburb ; then into Dantzic it- 
 self, where the town guard have turned out to
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 221 
 
 present arms to the Burgermaster in his state 
 coach. Next he has consigned his horse to a 
 livery stable keeper, and is striding down the 
 street to his mother's house in the Heiligengeist- 
 gasse. Presently he draws the house itself, with 
 its front door flanked by the pair of trees, called 
 respectively Gottfried and Daniel, which his 
 father had planted when he and his brother 
 were born. The last two pictures relating to 
 his journey proper show him first greeted by 
 his elder sister Ludovica in the hall, and then 
 embraced by his white-haired, half-blind mother 
 in the tidy schoolroom where the sisters Chodo- 
 wiecki, who 'kept an academy,' were accus- 
 tomed to teach their pupils. The pupils, for 
 the moment, are out of the way ; but their 
 vacant chairs, high-backed and otherwise (Cho- 
 dowiecki never tires of drawing chairs!), are 
 duly exhibited, disposed in admirable order. 
 One of the little scholars, herself not wholly 
 undistinguished in after-life, but more illustrious 
 through her greater son, became Johanna Scho- 
 penhauer. In her reminiscences she gives a 
 vivid picture (which Dohme quotes at length) of 
 the strange artist sketching the clusters of noisy 
 girls, bribed for a moment into quiescence by 
 gingerbread and raisins. Finally, he scrawls 
 off a rapid croquis of the inquisitive Johanna
 
 222 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 herself, and bids her take it as a present to her 
 mother. 
 
 This last-mentioned sketch naturally forms no 
 part of the collection at the Berlin Academy. 
 But henceforth the drawings illustrate the artist's 
 sojourn in his native town, and consist mainly of 
 interiors and single figures. He copies all the 
 notabilities : the Prince-Bishop, and Madame 
 QEhmken, his fat and witty Intendantin (or ' de- 
 cent friend,' as Walpole would have called her), 
 his niece, the Countess Podoska, the Waywode 
 Przebendowski, the Burgermaster Conradi, the 
 banker Dirksen, Brunatti the Secretary of Lega- 
 tion, the merchant Rotenberg, Mile. d'Aubonne 
 (who ' cuts paper ' like Mrs. Delany and my 
 Lady Burlington), Mile. Ledikowska, who 
 comes out of a lighted room on to a dark stair- 
 case on purpose to make a pretty picture. He 
 draws all these ; and he draws them in their 
 fitting environment ; the picturesque sixteenth- 
 century houses, with their balcony, and their 
 beischlag encroaching on the roadway ; the spa- 
 cious and carpetless reception-rooms, with their 
 tiled stoves ; the sleeping chambers, with their 
 tent beds, their scanty toilet tables, their stiff, 
 inhospitable-looking chairs. One of the most 
 charming of the larger compositions shows him 
 taking his mother's portrait in his bedroom (a
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 223 
 
 room which he draws repeatedly). The old 
 lady, in her Sunday cap, sits upright, with her 
 hands in her lap, decorously conscious that she 
 must look her best. Over one chair is Chodo-- 
 wiecki's coat; upon a second lie his hat and 
 saddle-bag. Another capital drawing shows a 
 Treckschutt, or drag-boat, crowded with people 
 upon a pleasure trip, and a timid lady clutching 
 at the artist's arm. But it would take many 
 pages to describe the minutiae of these attractive 
 designs to which their simple treatment and 
 scrupulous fidelity of costume and detail lend 
 all the authority of unimpeachable records. 1 
 
 Chodowiecki stayed nine weeks in the ' Nu- 
 remberg of the North, 1 sketching and painting 
 miniatures, feted industriously by his admiring 
 townsmen, and frequently constrained by hospi- 
 tality to hear the chimes at midnight. Notwith- 
 standing these distractions, he found time to 
 execute some plates, among others a set for the 
 ' Encomium Moriae ' of Erasmus. After his 
 return to Berlin, where he was at once engaged 
 on commissions from Lavater, he made a journey 
 to Dresden. His reception here was even more 
 
 1 They have been excellently reproduced in facsimile, 
 and at a moderate cost, by Messrs. Amsler and Ruthardt 
 of Berlin, who have prefixed to their collection a hitherto 
 unknown portrait of the artist by J. C. Frisch.
 
 224 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 cordial than it had been at Dantzic ; and the art 
 opportunities which the Saxon capital afforded 
 almost persuaded him to take up his residence 
 there for good. But his abilities were in such 
 continued demand at Berlin that he found the 
 transfer impracticable. In fact, a few rare 
 absences from home constitute henceforth the 
 only interruption to the persistent labour of 
 his life. After his mother's death, in 1780, 
 he once again went to Dantzic, to fetch his 
 sisters; and in 1781 he travelled to Hamburg 
 to value and catalogue a collection of engrav- 
 ings. Another pleasure trip, with his son-in- 
 law and some friends, took place in 1789, and 
 was duly commemorated in a ' Tagebuch.' He 
 worked almost to the last ; and at his death (7th 
 February, 1801) the number of his plates had 
 attained a total of 2,075. 
 
 The same ardour which, in Widow Broll- 
 mann's shop, had robbed him of his rest, seems 
 to have accompanied him in his prosperous later 
 life. Often, it is recorded, he would work far 
 into the small hours, lying down in his clothes 
 so as to lose no time when he awoke. ' The 
 day before yesterday,' he says in one of his letters, 
 ' I sat up till between one and two drawing, fell 
 asleep, and tumbled sideways from my chair 
 upon the ground.' At the end of the sheet
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 225 
 
 a few graphic strokes of the pen depict the 
 catastrophe. Sometimes he did not even go to 
 bed, but dozed in a sitting posture to avoid dis- 
 arranging his wig ; upon other occasions he 
 would tie a string from his alarum round his 
 thumb to ensure his rising at the hour appointed. 
 He spared his body so little, says Professor 
 Weise, that once, when he had the ague, it was 
 not until he was actually seized with shiverings 
 that he could be induced to drop his burin. 
 Naturally this inordinate application affected his 
 health. For the last twenty years of his life he 
 suffered from swollen feet ; but nothing checked 
 his industry, or daunted his indomitable spirit. 
 ' Ich bin ein armer Teufel, ich kann nicht mehr 
 marschiren,' he writes cheerily, quoting the 
 Halle student song. ' The best is that I can 
 forget the weariness and the frequent pain in 
 my work,' he says again, when he is too ill to 
 get up ; and he goes on to describe a table which 
 has been fitted above his bed, and upon which 
 table he draws and eats, sleeping under it at night. 
 Somewhat brusque and hard externally, Cho- 
 dowiecki's character was of a singularly lovable 
 and attractive type. Always domestic, con- 
 tented, and simple in his tastes, in his prosper- 
 ous days he added to these qualities a ready 
 generosity and a quick sympathy for his less 
 
 15
 
 226 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 fortunate neighbours. Many stories are told 
 of his charity and benevolence ; and his good 
 offices were not confined to presents of money. 
 To his mother he was a most dutiful son, and a 
 kind brother to his sisters. When, in 1781, his 
 brother Gottfried died, he took charge of his 
 widow and her children. After this, it is need- 
 less to add that he was also a devoted father, 
 unwearied in care for the well-being of his 
 family. In the famous ' Familienblatt,' or ' Cab- 
 inet d'un Peintre,' one of his best plates, which 
 had its origin in his mother's request for a pic- 
 ture of her grandchildren, we see them all 
 grouped about a table. The goodwife, matronly 
 and dignified, is standing, and with a kind caress- 
 ing gesture touches the cheek of her second 
 daughter Susette ; next is the little Henriette, a 
 baby. The elder boy, William, who became an 
 engraver like his father, is busily drawing a 
 prancing horse, watched by his admiring younger 
 brother, Isaac Henry. Opposite these two, 
 Jeannette, the eldest girl (afterwards Madame 
 Papin), who also showed much artistic talent, 
 is turning over a book of engravings. In the 
 corner by the window, a window where the 
 curtain is tucked back to get the fullest amount 
 of light, and the little shadows suggest green 
 leaves outside, sits the artist himself, glancing
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 227 
 
 for a moment over his spectacles at the pleasant 
 group, and apparently engaged upon one of his 
 favourite circular vignettes. All his children 
 turned out well. His younger son became 
 a minister ; his daughters married happily. 
 Speaking of Jeannette's wedding, he says in one 
 of his letters to a friend, ' It took place in our 
 little garden (in the Behrenstrasse) under the 
 open sky, and the shade of two fine pear-trees, 
 which are still in bloom. Possibly the orthodox 
 would scarcely approve, but it made a pretty 
 picture. Would that you had been here 1 ' 
 
 Chodowiecki's position in his craft can be 
 defined with tolerable exactitude. In oil his 
 attempts went little beyond the tentative stage. 
 He had an imperfect knowledge of his vehicle, 
 and he never received any specific instruction. 
 As an enameller and miniature-painter, his suc- 
 cesses were greater. His enamels are described 
 as marvels of finish; his miniatures, as full of char- 
 acter, and possessing the rare merit of realistic 
 resemblance. It is possible that this is true, since 
 finish and power of characterization are both 
 marked features of his work in other directions. 
 But his best claim to recognition rests upon his 
 efforts as an etcher or engraver, and designer. 
 Even here, nevertheless, some preliminary reser- 
 vations must be made. Although he shunned
 
 228 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 anything like the charge of imitation, his early 
 copying of minute engravings, combined with 
 the lack of positive academic training as a 
 draughtsman, had predisposed him to composi- 
 tions upon an unusually small scale. Hence, if 
 he ever strayed beyond the ' scanty plot ' of a 
 duodecimo or octavo page, his special qualities 
 seemed to desert him. ' Der grosse Galas ' and 
 the ' Cabinet d'un Peintre ' are almost the sole 
 exceptions to this rule ; but one reproduced 
 models with whose every gesture he was thor- 
 oughly familiar, while the other was copied from 
 a finished painting in oil to which he had given 
 unusual study. The rest of his larger engravings 
 have not these advantages ; and in such prints as 
 the ' Wacht-Parade in Potsdam ' of Frederick II., 
 in that which represents Duke Leopold of Bruns- 
 wick going to the rescue of the sufferers by the 
 floods of 1785, in the 'William Tell 1 of 1781, 
 and in the ' Ziethen Sleeping' of 1800, there is 
 little trace of the keen and delicate Chodowiecki 
 of the calendars. And if he is unsuccessful in 
 these examples, he is still more so in the mytho- 
 logic-heroic, that style so happily hit off by 
 Prior : 
 
 'The nymphs conduct him to the field : 
 One holds his sword, and one his shield: 
 Mars standing by asserts his quarrel : 
 And Fame flies after with a laurel.'
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 229 
 
 Nor, strange to say, since he is of the race of 
 Holbein and the Little Masters, can he be said 
 to shine in the department of allegory or emblem. 
 To quote an instance, the design for Madame 
 Daum's funeral-sermon a sarcophagus ap- 
 proached on all sides by persons of different 
 nations and conditions presents little but the 
 most rudimentary aspect of pictorial symbolism. 
 
 His true sphere lies in the representation of 
 contemporary manners in the form of book illus- 
 trations, either derived from the text or indepen- 
 dent of it ; and his work is strongest when he 
 most tenaciously retains his hold upon the every- 
 day world of his experience. Tried by this test, 
 his illustrations to Shakespeare, to Cervantes, to 
 Moliere, to Lesage, cannot fora moment com- 
 pare with the sympathetic series of vignettes 
 which he prepared for Richardson's ' Clarissa,' 
 for the ' Nouvelle Heloise,'for Nicolai's ' Sebal- 
 dus Nothanker,' for Amory's ' John Buncle,' for 
 Goldsmith's immortal 'Vicar' for a hundred 
 other books in which the costumes and acces- 
 sories were practically those of his own day. 
 But his greatest triumphs are the designs which 
 may be described as entirely of his own invention, 
 the excellent series of ' Amateurs' (' Liebhaber'), 
 the ' Centifolium Stultorum,' the two ' Proposals 
 of Marriage,' the ' Occupations des Dames,' and
 
 230 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 the numerous other sets, generally restricted to 
 twelve plates, in which he holds up the mirror to 
 the society of his time a society quasi-French 
 in its tastes and costumes, deficient in elevation 
 and imagination, but moral, moderate, methodic, 
 domestic the world of Gessner's ' Idylls 1 and 
 Gellert's ' Fables' the world where Hermann 
 met Dorothea, and Charlotte cut bread and but- 
 ter. ' Plus de heYos,' says Lessing somewhere, 
 as quoted by Cherbuliez ; ' plus de hros, je 
 cherche le bourgeois. 1 Chodowiecki not only 
 sought the bourgeois, but he found what he 
 sought. He is never tired of devising new 
 combinations for exhibiting the daily life of the 
 middle classes their meetings, greetings, part- 
 ings, promenades their eminently respectable 
 and slightly humdrum employments and amuse- 
 ments. Closely allied to these, with their skilful 
 variety of environment and grouping, their count- 
 less permutations of gesture and attitude, come 
 his refined and poetized costume pieces, ranging 
 from the bagwigs and hoops and powder of his 
 earlier days to the ringleted heads and waistless 
 figures ' & la Grecque ' of 1789 and 1790. 
 
 He has been styled the ' Berlin Hogarth.' 
 There is much virtue in the qualifying epi- 
 thet, and probably Chodowiecki himself would 
 scarcely have courted a comparison. That he
 
 The Berlin Hogarth. 231 
 
 was wholly uninfluenced by the great artist 
 whom his own best critic, Lichtenberg, so finely 
 and acutely expounded, is unlikely ; and no 
 doubt there are superficial resemblances be- 
 tween them. Both were pictorial moralists, 
 both were delineators of manners, both etched 
 or engraved their own works, both were humor- 
 ists and satirists. But in the satire of Chodo- 
 wiecki one seeks in vain for that Juvenalian 
 vigour, that ' sceva indignatio ' of power which 
 one finds in Hogarth ; and the German's picto- 
 rial raillery rather resembles the milder method 
 of Horace, such a Horace as one might sup- 
 pose translated by Voss or Cowper. Moreover, 
 in tragic grip, in imagination, in evolution, he is 
 surely infinitely below Hogarth. On the other 
 hand, he has what Hogarth lacks, a quality of 
 grace, combined with a subtle sense of the 
 naivetd of childhood, a refined appreciation of 
 feminine beauty, which Hogarth only rarely 
 shows. His humour, too, always genial and 
 kindly, is unquestionable. Something of this, 
 something also of the fertility of his invention, and 
 the perspicuity of his compositions, will readily 
 be gathered from any chance assemblage of his 
 works ; but his power of suggesting character 
 in figures of minute dimensions, his wonderful 
 precision of execution and command of his
 
 232 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 material, can only be studied adequately in care- 
 fully chosen impressions. In his life he was 
 freely copied and pirated ; and of late years a 
 cheap set of facsimile reproductions of a certain 
 number of his designs has been published by 
 Messrs. Mitscher and Rostell of Berlin. But 
 the veritable Chodowiecki is Chodowiecki en- 
 graved by himself. In the British Museum, in 
 five elephant folios, is a magnificent collection of 
 his plates : for his drawings, which are said to be 
 even more numerous, the student must resort to 
 the Berlin Academy. With Engelmann's excel- 
 lent catalogue in hand, however, he will find 
 more than enough to delight him in the quiet 
 Print Room at Bloomsbury.
 
 LADY MARY COKE. 
 
 WHEN, in Scott's ' Heart of Mid Lothian,' 
 Jeanie Deans, having obtained her sister's 
 pardon, repairs to Argyll House, in order to go 
 northward with the ducal establishment, she is 
 formally presented by John, Duke of Argyll and 
 Greenwich, to his Duchess and her daughters. 
 The only member of the family who takes any 
 prominent part in the interview is a lively young 
 lady of twelve, who 'chaffs' her noble father 
 about Sheriffmuir with considerable vivacity, and 
 gets her hair pulled for her pains. The young 
 lady referred to grew up to be Lady Mary Coke, 
 a part of whose letters and very curious journal 
 was privately printed not long ago in three 
 bulky volumes. How she looked as a girl, Sir 
 Walter does not tell us ; but her portrait at six 
 and thirty by Allan Ramsay, a copy of which is 
 to be found at the beginning of volume the first, 
 gives an excellent idea of what she became in 
 later life. 1 It shows us a graceful figure dressed 
 
 1 The original picture is in the possession of Lord 
 Bute at Mountstuart. There is a fine mezzotint of it
 
 234 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 in a white satin that would have delighted Ter- 
 burg, and leaning upon such a tall theorbo as 
 you may see in the cases at South Kensington. 
 It is in fact taller than she is herself; and she is 
 not small. On the contrary, she must have been 
 what that eminent connoisseur, Mrs. Colonel 
 James in 'Amelia, 1 would have described as 
 'a very fine Person of a Woman.' She has 
 an elegant shape and a beautiful neck and arm, 
 and, in the picture, might very easily pass for a 
 beauty. But her complexion, which in her old 
 age grew cadaverous, was always of a dead 
 white ; and the absence of well-defined brows 
 is said to have lent a certain fierceness to her 
 dark eyes. One can, however, conceive that, 
 with her fair hair and stately carriage, she must 
 have looked extremely well in the travelling cos- 
 tume of pea-green and silver in which Horace 
 Walpole met her at Amiens, and with which she 
 subsequently astonished the sober burghers of 
 Nuremberg and Aix. 
 
 Until a year or two ago, Lady Mary Coke 
 was little more than a wandering name. Scott's 
 reference to her as a girl, and a few passages 
 in Walpole's ' Letters,' Swinburne's ' Courts of 
 
 by McArdell. From a passage in Lady Mary's 'Journal' 
 for January, 1771, it appears that the prints were some- 
 times coloured by hand.
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 235 
 
 Europe,' and the like, made up the sum of the 
 record. Then, in 1863, was printed privately 
 the admirable account, by Lord Bute's youngest 
 daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, of John, Duke of 
 Argyll, and his family. Lady Louisa Stuart was 
 one of those writers whose silence is a positive 
 misfortune to the literature of the Memoir. 
 Living to a great age, for she died in 1851 at 
 ninety-four, she had accumulated a store of 
 memories, and she had inspected life with the 
 keenest perceptions and with unusual advan- 
 tages of position. But like Lord Chesterfield, 
 the Duke of Nivernais, and some others of the 
 ancien regime, she had an old-world prejudice 
 against the undignified publicities of type, and 
 her literary performances consist mainly of 
 manuscript statements, prepared for her rela- 
 tives, concerning persons or occurrences which 
 had come within her cognizance. It was she 
 who wrote the introduction to Lord Wharn- 
 cliffe's edition of the letters of her grandmother, 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu an introduc- 
 tion which sparkles with unpublished eighteenth- 
 century anecdote of the most brilliant character, 
 and she contributed many of the more inter- 
 esting notes to the Selwyn Correspondence. 
 Several epistles from her pen are included in 
 the recently issued edition of Scott's letters ;
 
 236 Eighteenth Century I/ignettes. 
 
 and her account of the Argylls, which extends 
 to one hundred and twenty pages, and which 
 was drawn up in 1827, has now been once more 
 privately printed by its present owner, the Earl 
 of Home, as a preface to Lady Mary Coke's 
 ' Letters and Journal.' This composition is, 
 we should imagine, Lady Louisa's masterpiece. 
 Although we have it on the authority of Voltaire 
 that ' il ne faut point d'esprit pour s'occuper de 
 vieux e"venements,' he would probably have ad- 
 mitted that they were none the worse for some 
 admixture of that ' ingredian,' as Lady Mary 
 Coke spells the word, and of everything that a 
 superabundance of ' esprit ' can lend to narra- 
 tive, Lady Louisa's pen has been prodigal. Her 
 sketch of ' Ian Roy/ of his homely duchess, and 
 of his four shrill-voiced daughters, is one of the 
 brightest and pleasantest pieces of writing which 
 it has been our good fortune to read, and it is 
 not too much to say that, in some respects, Lady 
 Louisa could give points even to that inimitable 
 gossip Horace Walpole himself. 
 
 Distinguished at once in war and statecraft, 
 for was he not Pope's Argyll, born to 'shake 
 alike the Senate and the Field ' ? Lady Mary 
 Coke's father had not been equally fortunate in 
 Love. In his green youth he made the old con- 
 ventional alliance of pedigree and pence with a
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 237 
 
 rich citizen's daughter for whom he cared but 
 little. The ill-matched pair promptly separated, 
 and the Duke's martial employments left him 
 but scant opportunity for the further cultivation, 
 in favourable circumstances, of what Steele calls 
 the ' Beautiful Sex.' Yet, by a strange chance, 
 no sooner had he retired from active life than 
 he became the object of a respectful and senti- 
 mental admiration on the part of one of Queen 
 Caroline's maids of honour. Stranger still, he 
 returned the compliment by what gradually 
 grew into a most durable attachment. Miss 
 Jane Warburton, as the lady was named, was 
 well-born and good-humoured ; but she was 
 neither handsome nor clever, and, moreover, 
 was so countrified, ignorant, and awkward as 
 to be 'the standing jest of her companions in 
 office.' Yet the affection with which she in- 
 spired ' red John of Argyll ' was unmistakable ; 
 and his first wife was no sooner under the 
 ground than, very much to the surprise of the 
 Court quidnuncs, he at once proposed to make 
 Jenny Warburton Duchess of Argyll. She 
 obliged him to wait six months, and then be- 
 came his wife. To the outsider, the union was 
 not one which promised ideal happiness, and 
 yet something very like ideal happiness was 
 achieved. ' To say the Duke of Argyll proved
 
 238 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 an excellent husband would be speaking poorly: 
 he remained throughout life a faithful, doating, 
 adoring lover.' These are Lady Louisa Stuart's 
 words ; and they are the more significant be- 
 cause this devotion seems to have survived one 
 of the greatest disappointments to which a man 
 in the Duke's position could be subjected, the 
 non-appearance of a son. ' Daughter perversely 
 followed daughter, to the number of five (one 
 dying a child) ; and his hopes, often renewed, 
 regularly ended in fresh mortification not the 
 less bitter because Lord Islay [the Duke's 
 brother, with whom he disagreed] was his pre- 
 sumptive heir.' The eldest daughter, Lady 
 Caroline, married the Earl of Dalkeith ; the 
 second, Lady Anne, the Earl of Strafford ; the 
 third, Lady Elizabeth, her cousin Mr. Stuart 
 Mackenzie ; while the fourth became the wife 
 of Lord Leicester's son, and is the Lady Mary 
 Coke of this paper. 
 
 Of each of the four sisters Lady Louisa Stuart 
 gives a sufficient account, but the bulk of her 
 memories is naturally devoted to ' that extraor- 
 dinary person,' the youngest. Lady Mary's 
 childhood seems to have yielded but few anec- 
 dotes ; and of these the chief, if it is scarcely 
 flattering to her, is far more discreditable to her 
 father. He used, it seems, to amuse himself by
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 239 
 
 putting her 'in a fury, crying, "Look! look 
 at Mary ! " when she flew like a little tigress, 
 screaming, scratching and tearing ; then, after 
 laughing heartily, he would finish the improving 
 lesson by coaxing her with sugar-plums to kiss 
 and be friends.' Under such an educational 
 system, it is perhaps scarcely to be wondered 
 that she grew up with the reputation of being 
 self-willed and unmanageable ; and there is in 
 truth every evidence that to misuse a phrase 
 of Herrick she was a distinctly ' tempestuous 
 petticoat/ In general ability she was in advance 
 of her sisters ; and, in a hard unsympathetic way, 
 made certain pretensions to what would now 
 be called culture. Her personal attractions, as 
 already implied, were considerable, though she 
 was not as beautiful as Lady Strafford. With 
 many definite good qualities, as sincerity, hon- 
 our, good nature, and some measure of generos- 
 ity, ' her understanding [in the uncompromising 
 words of her biographer] lay smothered under 
 so much pride, self-conceit, prejudice, obstinacy, 
 and violence of temper, that you knew not where 
 to look for it, and seldom indeed did you catch 
 such a distinct view of it as certified its exist- 
 ence.' This is a sweeping indictment, to which 
 it is further added that ' nothing ever happened 
 to her after the fashion of ordinary life.' Her
 
 240 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 friendships, her experiences, her ailments, her 
 estrangements, her emotions, her misfortunes, 
 real and fictitious, had all this peculiarity they 
 were unprecedented and unique. Such a dispo- 
 sition and endowments foreshadow remarkable 
 developments. In a humbler condition of life 
 these would probably have been of a sensational 
 kind ; and, in a modified form, they were not 
 wanting even to this exalted person of quality. 
 
 In 1743 the Duke of Argyll died of paralysis, 
 leaving his youngest daughter still unmarried. 
 To the fact that he also left her ^20,000 must 
 no doubt be attributed the speedy appearance 
 of an applicant for her hand in the person of 
 Viscount Coke, the Earl of Leicester's son. 
 Neither son nor father bore remarkably good 
 characters. But Lord Coke contrived to con- 
 ciliate the scruples of the Duchess, and Lady 
 Mary clenched the question by announcing 
 authoritatively that she was prepared to accept 
 him. Having gone so far, however, by a sudden 
 caprice she changed her tactics, and throughout 
 the prolonged engagement that followed, pro- 
 ceeded to subject her admirer to all the disdain 
 and aversion with which the ' scornful ladies' of 
 Restoration comedy are wont to discipline their 
 lovers. As she was too good a match to be sur- 
 rendered lightly to any matrimonial ' gentleman
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 241 
 
 of the road,' Lord Coke managed to dissemble 
 his indignation at this treatment. But being, 
 on his side, as unscrupulous as he was proud, 
 he waited until the marriage-knot had been 
 securely tied, and then insultingly left his wife 
 at the church door to her maiden reflections. 
 Lady Mary, transformed by this coup de Jarnac 
 from a ' scornful lady ' to a ' woman scorned,' 
 and being moreover a person of decision, 
 promptly retaliated by obstinately maintaining 
 the position by which it had only been in- 
 tended to punish her for a time. To the dismay 
 of her friends and father-in-law, she persisted in 
 continuing a wife only in name ; and her hus- 
 band, nothing loath, went back to his bachelor 
 distractions. Then the dread of losing an heir 
 to the succession converted Lord Leicester into 
 a tyrant, and, on both sides, family feeling be- 
 came embittered. Sympathizing relatives swelled 
 the contention, Lady Mary posing as an injured 
 martyr, Lord Leicester and her husband cajoling 
 and threatening by turns. Finally, after she had 
 been practically imprisoned at Holkham for six 
 months, Lord Coke was summoned to produce 
 her before the King's Bench, where she at once 
 swore the peace against him, and, upon the 
 ground of ill-usage, instituted a suit for divorce. 
 This, for obscure reasons, among which must 
 16
 
 242 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 be reckoned her own palpable exaggeration of 
 her wrongs, fell through, but she was eventually 
 permitted to live with her mother unmolested, 
 until at last, and luckily not very long after, 
 Lord Coke's excesses solved her difficulties, by 
 making her a widow at six and twenty. 
 
 When quitting the mourning which, being a 
 person of the nicest possible decorum, she wore 
 punctiliously for her departed lord Lady Mary 
 re-entered society, it was not without a certain 
 prestige. By many, who accepted her own 
 version of the circumstances, she was genuinely 
 pitied, and there is always an element of interest 
 attaching to a young and high-born widow, 
 especially when she is mistress of an income 
 which, in these days, would amount to about 
 <),ooo per annum. But Love, said those who 
 knew her best, had absolutely no part in Lady 
 Mary Coke's composition ; and, although she 
 had other admirers, none of them ever developed 
 into a husband. At thirty it was supposed that 
 she might marry that cynosure of so many eigh- 
 teenth-century ladies of quality, Lord March 
 (afterwards the notorious ' Old Q.'), but his 
 lordship, if ever in earnest, appears to have 
 speedily cried off, and in truth his openly pro- 
 fligate life offered but doubtful assurance of 
 domestic happiness. After this, Lady Mary
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 243 
 
 deliberately followed her own inclination, which 
 was to connect herself directly or indirectly 
 with the Court. She managed to establish 
 close friendly relations both with George II.'s 
 daughter, Princess Amelia, and with his mis- 
 tress, Lady Yarmouth. She even professed to 
 have a tendre for one of those ' good-humoured 
 asses,' as their aunt called them, the Royal 
 dukes, choosing for her special adoration that 
 chattering and ' mealy-faced boy' of twenty, 
 Edward Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, 
 who to his other qualities added that of being a 
 notorious flirt and farceur. The attachment, on 
 the lady's side of the most high-flown and super- 
 fine description, afforded great amusement to the 
 Royal Family, and also, it is hinted, to the ' ob- 
 ject ' himself, by whom it seems to have been re- 
 garded as an excellent joke. Letters, however, 
 frequently passed between the pair, in one of 
 which the Prince paid Lady Mary the compli- 
 ment of comparing her to Queen Elizabeth, a 
 simile not perhaps very lover-like, but singularly 
 palatable to the person addressed. She, no 
 doubt, fully believed herself destined to the 
 good fortune of Lady Waldegrave and Mrs. 
 Horton ; and her claims of birth were certainly 
 infinitely superior. All these day-dreams, how- 
 ever, were rudely dispersed by the Prince's
 
 244 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 premature departure from this world a catas- 
 trophe which furnished Lady Mary with a life- 
 long grievance, to which, in a few years, was 
 added the supplementary mortifications of the 
 marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and the 
 avowal of the long concealed union of the 
 Duke of Gloucester. 
 
 His Royal Highness Edward, Duke of York, 
 died at Monaco in 1767. His decease, besides 
 becoming to Lady Mary what Sir Thomas 
 Browne calls ' a melancholy Utinam,' is also a 
 convenient landmark in her career, and it was 
 succeeded shortly afterwards by the death of 
 the Duchess her mother, whose health had long 
 been failing. By this time Lady Mary was a 
 woman of forty; and, with the exception of 
 some not very definite advances from Lord 
 Bessborough, it does not appear that any fur- 
 ther attempts were made to induce her to 
 change her condition, or to imperil her fidelity 
 to the memory ' of the PERSON who is gone ' 
 a figure of speech by which Prince Edward, 
 with more or less garniture of grief, continues 
 for some time to be designated in her ' Journal.' 
 This she began to keep in August, 1766, not 
 long before the Prince's death, and she went on 
 keeping it for twenty-five years, or until 1791. 
 At her death the MS. became the property of
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 245 
 
 her niece, Lady Frances Scott. From Lady 
 Frances Scott it passed to that lady's nephew, 
 Lord Montagu ; and from Lord Montagu to his 
 grandson, the Earl of Home, by whom three 
 volumes have already been printed. These 
 three volumes come down to December, 1771, 
 and it is contemplated, says the Introduction, to 
 extend the reprint to 1774. One of the objects 
 in view having been the preservation of the 
 MS., it is reproduced without abridgment, a 
 course which, though absolutely justifiable in a 
 private issue, is naturally not entirely to its 
 advantage as a composition, since to say that 
 it is uniformly interesting would be to praise 
 it too generously. To a thoroughly popular 
 chronicle of this kind, description, character- 
 painting, or anecdote are as a rule indispen- 
 sable ; and in no one of these requirements 
 can Lady Mary be described as highly gifted. 
 She was truthful, and, although her bias was to 
 details rather than essentials, she desired to be 
 accurate; but her mind, eminently matter-of-fact 
 and methodical, was of too buckram a cast for 
 genuine enthusiasm, while her literary equip- 
 ment, certain stock-taking attributes excepted, 
 was of the slightest. Writing, moreover, not 
 like Horace Walpole to a wholly unin- 
 formed friend in a foreign land, but to her
 
 246 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 sisters, Lady Dalkeith and Lady Strafford, she 
 naturally dwells little upon the aspect of things 
 which were familiar to her correspondents, and 
 most of her picturesque passages such as they 
 are occur in her despatches from abroad. 
 Nevertheless, her ' Journal,' when all deductions 
 are made, contains many minute details of court 
 and social life in the second half of the last cen- 
 tury which cannot safely be neglected by the 
 future editors of its literature. 
 
 In politics, although she numbered among her 
 acquaintances that ardent politician and duplicate 
 of her brother, Miss Anne Pitt, Lady Mary 
 seems to have taken but slender interest. She 
 goes on one occasion to a debate in the Com- 
 mons, but she says little notable about it beyond 
 the fact that Elizabeth Neale (Mason's ' Patriot 
 Betty'), the fruit-woman of St. James's Street, 
 was also present, and that Lord John Cavendish 
 spoke ' with a moderation, candour, & polite- 
 ness, as is seldom practiced in that House.' She 
 also heard Burke, who ' talked chiefly to the 
 passions,' and was followed by Lord Clare (of 
 Goldsmith's ' Haunch of Venison '), who, unlike 
 Lord John Cavendish, was disrespectful enough 
 to style the preceding orator 'a rain-bow' that 
 ' had brilliant colours, but nothing else; allud- 
 ing [says Lady Mary] to his flow of eloquence.
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 247 
 
 without speaking much to the argument, which, 
 on this occasion, was just enough. 1 To a liter- 
 ary taste it has already been observed Lady 
 Mary made definite claims. ' We had some 
 conversation upon Books,' she writes, speaking 
 of Lady Charlotte Finch. ' She recommended 
 two to me upon religious subjects, I shall send 
 for them to Morrow. I have laid out in books 
 since I came to Town above fifty Pounds.' 
 Fifty Pounds was certainly more than she spent 
 on her new Sedan Chair, which cost }2 us. 
 But it is probable, nevertheless, that her reading 
 was more a duty than a pleasure ; and although 
 one is indisposed to side with her unworshipful 
 husband, it is difficult not to believe that when 
 (with needless brutality) he doubted her ability to 
 comprehend ' Locke on the Understanding/ he 
 was not far wrong. To judge from her comments, 
 she seems to read, as some folks travel, in order 
 to say she has done so ; and she seldom records 
 anything to show that she has otherwise profited 
 by the labour. She goes through Swift's wonder- 
 ful 'Journal' without so to speak a single 
 note of admiration nothing but a curt and 
 conventional it ' entertained me very much.' 
 'Measure for Measure' she likes more than 
 ' twellfth night'; Voltaire's History is 'very 
 partial'; Mrs. Macaulay's is 'very prejudiced';
 
 248 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Barrow ' Upon Contentment' suits her case ; 
 of all which one may say with Ben Jonson 
 ' 'Faith these are politic notes ! ' The only work 
 upon which she offers anything resembling an 
 intelligent opinion is Horace Walpole's ' His- 
 toric Doubts on Richard the Third.' ' 'Twas 
 (she says) about four hours reading [this is a 
 characteristic touch !] ; the style and Language 
 admirable, as everything that he writes is, but 
 he has not made it appear (at least to me) that 
 Richard was innocent of many of the crimes laid 
 to his charge by former Historians.' And if there 
 is little sign of any real enthusiasm about Letters, 
 there is still less of what sometimes accompanies 
 even very moderate manifestations of that en- 
 thusiasm a curiosity about authors. It was 
 the age of Gray, and Goldsmith, and Burke, 
 and Johnson, 1 and yet the literary personages 
 
 1 Under date of Friday, 18 March, 1768, the death 
 of Sterne (two volumes of whose sermons had been pre- 
 sented to Lady Mary by the PERSON) is thus referred to : 
 'L d Ossory told Us that the famous Dr. Sterne dyed 
 that Morning ; he seem'd to lament him very much. 
 L d Eglington said (but not in a ludicrous manner) that 
 he had taken his "Sentimental Journey."' Lord Ossory 
 was one of the guests at Fish Crawford's dinner in Clif- 
 ford Street, whence the footman John Macdonald was 
 despatched to Sterne's lodgings, 'at the silk bag shop 
 in Old Bond Street,' to inquire how he did. Macdonald 
 saw him die.
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 249 
 
 (Walpole excepted) with whom she actually 
 comes into communication are the smallest of 
 luminaries Mr. Mason, Miss Elizabeth Carter, 
 and so forth. Hume is a prominent exception. 
 But Hume was 'in society'; he had been a 
 Secretary of Legation, and he was an Under 
 Secretary of State. She met him at Park Place, 
 General Conway's house near Henley, and she 
 has several entries about him. ' Mr. Hume does 
 not like Shakespear,' she says. ' Wou'd you 
 have thought it possible that a Man of Genius 
 shou'd not be able to discover the Beauties of 
 that admirable Writer?' 1 'He has a violent 
 stomach,' she says again, speaking of his excel- 
 lent appetite for venison. On a wet Sunday she 
 engages him in a serious discussion. ' You know 
 Mr. Hume is a great Infidel : 'tis the only thing 
 I dislike in him. I have had some conversation 
 with him, but I have no hopes of converting him 
 
 1 Speaking of Shakespeare in the 'History' (Appendix 
 No. IV.), Hume himself amply confirms Lady Mary: 
 ' Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descrip- 
 tions abound in him [Shakespeare], but it is in vain we 
 look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total 
 ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however mate- 
 rial a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the 
 reader, we can more easily excuse, than that want of taste 
 which often prevails in his productions, and which gives 
 way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius.'
 
 250 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 from his erroneous way of thinking. 1 After this, 
 the record goes on to relate that she went to 
 Church (being the only one of the party that 
 did so), and got a new hat and gloves spoiled by 
 the rain because the chaise could not enter the 
 Church yard. ' The Sermon was not worth it, 
 & the prayers I might have read at home.' 
 
 Lady Mary's mention of Mr. Hume's appe- 
 tite is not by any means her sole reference to 
 eating. On the contrary, she is unusually ex- 
 plicit as to what she likes, and what disagrees 
 with her. With neither of these themes need 
 we linger. But a dinner at Lady Blandford's, 
 on which she pauses to comment, deserves men- 
 tion lor its suggestion of those confused and 
 copious entertainments which so much aston- 
 ished Thackeray in Swift's ' Polite Conversa- 
 tion.' ' I never saw her have a worse dinner,' 
 writes the diarist : ' a great round of boiled beef, 
 little mutton pyes, beans & bacon, Mackerel 
 without fennel sauce. The second course, a 
 neck of Lamb, a gooseberry pye, & two other 
 little things, not meat. . . . Boiled beef is a 
 good thing, but a dish I seldom eat, & little mut- 
 ton pyes are too savory for me, beans I hate, 
 & mackerel without fennel sauce I can't eat ; 
 judge then if I made a good dinner.' For some 
 of these gastronomic records, especially from
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 251 
 
 abroad, one has no doubt to thank the curiosity 
 of her sisters. * You see I obey your orders in 
 mentioning what I eat,' she writes from France, 
 ' & I shall certainly take notice of all the birds, 
 beast, & fish peculiar to the Country.' But there 
 is one pleasure of the table of which her record 
 is apparently involuntary, and that is play. 
 Whist or Loo (which she spells Lu *), tredrille 
 or quadrille, ombre or lansquenet, the traces are 
 everywhere ; and yet she does not seem to have 
 been, like Miss Pelham for instance, an invet- 
 erate card-player. Here, chosen almost at ran- 
 dom, is a sequence of days. Thursday. ' The 
 Duchess of Richmond, Ly Sondes, &c., play'd 
 till near twelve O'clock ; I lost fifty guineas.' 
 Friday. ' The Party lasted till near eleven 
 O'clock ; I won four guineas.' Saturday. ' I 
 won thirteen guineas.' Sunday. ' I play'd at 
 Quadrille with Madame de Viry, &c.' [No 
 money transactions recorded.] Sunday [a week 
 later]. ' At eight O'clock I went to M rs . Harris, 
 & lost five & twenty guineas at Lu.' And 
 so forth, on almost every page. One can im- 
 agine how heartily honest Parson Adams would 
 
 1 ' I observe (she says) I spell the game of Lu differ- 
 ently to everybody else, but I believe I am right, as I copy 
 Mr. Pope, who wrote it in the same manner : I refer you 
 to the rape of the Lock' [canto iii. 1. 62].
 
 252 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 have groaned over these deplorable evidences 
 of fashionable folly. Sometimes they have an 
 unexpected postscript, such as ' Read three 
 Chapters in the Revelations,' or ' Read a little 
 in the bible & went to bed.' Another pas- 
 sage refers to the supposed efficacy of the carp 
 bone (the palate) in bringing luck at cards. 
 * The carp bones are intolerable : in the evening 
 I lost eight & twenty guineas at Ly Hertford's : 
 I have thrown one [i.e. a carp bone] in the 
 fire, but whether 'tis yours or M rs . Jackson's I 
 can't tell.' Six years later, nevertheless, she is 
 still in bondage to the same fetish : ' I lost fifteen 
 guineas tho' the carp bone lay upon the table ; 
 but I fear the Princess [Amelia] has taken away 
 the virtue, for she unfolded the paper, took it out, 
 and called it an old tooth, which diverted the 
 company more than it did me, for from that time 
 I lost. At cards I am superstitious, & as it is only 
 at play 'tis pardonable. 1 
 
 Many of the entries in the ' Journal ' closely 
 resemble those of Addison's ' Fine Lady ' in the 
 ' Spectator.' ' From ten to twelve. In confer- 
 ence with my mantua-maker. Sorted a suit of 
 ribbons. ' Broke my blue china cup ' says the 
 fictitious Clarinda. ' Dined at home. In the 
 evening made several visits. Called on Ly 
 Frances : her dog tore one of my laced ruffles '
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 253 
 
 says the actual Lady Mary ; and it must be 
 confessed that the main texture of her record is 
 of a like material. Its warp is gossip; scandal 
 is its woof. Here and there, indeed, and es- 
 pecially when she is thinking of ' the PERSON 
 that is gone, 1 her reflections take an unusually 
 Gummidge-like turn. For example, ' I was not 
 born to be happy, & the same ill fortune that 
 attended me early in life pursues me still.' ' M r . 
 Pope or somebody else said in their letters that 
 the Unfortunate were of all others most unfit to 
 be alone, yet the World generally took care 
 they shou'd be so : this observation I have ex- 
 perienced to be true, for tho' within the little 
 distance of two miles & a half from Town [she 
 was at Notting Hill], 'tis very seldom that any 
 body ever comes to me.' 'The World little 
 knows the variety of sorrows that has attended 
 my life, as I have industriously kept many things 
 a secret.' ' I went to Church at the Usual time, 
 & was much pleased with the Sermon ; the text 
 was "it is good for me that I have been 
 Afflicted." 'Twas a very fine discourse, & very 
 reasonable ; tho' under the immediate pressure 
 of adverse fortune, one cannot find the good of 
 suffering. I submit most Humbly to the Will 
 of God in all those sorrows & disappointments 
 that has attended my Life, but what benefit is
 
 254 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 likely to arise from my present misery I am yet 
 to learn.' This note is at its highest after the 
 Duke's death ; but as time goes on, its manifes- 
 tations are more or less sporadic, and even at its 
 worst she is able to turn easily to such sublunary 
 matters as a marriage, a separation, or a possible 
 christening. The latest story about Fanny Pel- 
 ham or Lady Sarah Bunbury, the latest tittle- 
 tattle about the Duchess of Grafton or Lady 
 Bolingbroke, the latest scandal about Miss 
 Chudleigh or Lady Grosvenor and the Duke of 
 Cumberland all or any of these are sufficient 
 to divert her at once from the details of her own 
 misfortunes. With one confessed characteristic 
 of her style it is impossible not to agree. ' I am 
 not florid in my discriptions,' she says of a fGte 
 at Syon House ; and it is true that it would be 
 difficult to select from her pages any of those 
 graphic passages which, in Walpole. lie every- 
 where on the surface. This is abundantly evi- 
 dent when, as is sometimes the case, the records 
 of each treat of the same event, and the different 
 methods of the writers can be contrasted. In 
 the month of July, 1770, they both accompanied 
 the Princess Amelia, at her request, to Lord 
 Temple's house at Stowe in Buckingham, where 
 they stayed five days. Lady Mary gives a daily 
 register of the proceedings, dates and hours of
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 255 
 
 arrival and departure, state of the weather, oc- 
 cupations, amusements, and (though she does 
 not describe it) dwells particularly on the Roman 
 Arch which Lord Temple had erected in H. R. 
 H.'s honour. ' I think L d Strafford w d like it, 
 & I am sure he would be pleased with the 
 Scene from it as it is the most beautiful I ever 
 saw.' ' The Princess visits her Arch two or 
 three times in the day.' . . . ' I forgot to tell 
 you that after dinner the Coffee was order'd at 
 the Princess's Arch, Apollo with the nine muses 
 are placed on each side of it. While they drank 
 their Coffee, I observed Apollo held a paper in 
 his hand, but not being able to reach it, I 
 desired L d Temple's assistance, who with some 
 difficulty took it from the hand of Apollo : a copy 
 of which I enclose in this Journal [it is not there 
 printed]. Mr. Walpole is the Author. I'm 
 sure you'll think them [the verses] pretty.' 
 
 In a letter to George Montagu, Walpole tells 
 the same story. With a stroke or two he hits 
 off the whole party, touches lightly on the 
 famous associations of the place, scoffs at the 
 elderly valetudinarians (himself included) who 
 are playing at pastoral, and supping in a grotto, 
 ' which (he says) is as proper to this climate as 
 a sea-coal fire would be in the dog-days at 
 Tivoli, 1 and finally comes to Lady Mary's pi&ce
 
 256 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 de resistance, the Roman Arch, of which she 
 certainly gives ' no florid discription, 1 as it is im- 
 possible from her account to conceive what it is 
 like. But in Walpole it stands before us like 
 the stonework of Piranesi, framing a landscape by 
 Wilson. ' The chief entertainment of the week, 
 at least what was so to the Princess, is an arch, 
 which Lord Temple has erected to her honour 
 in the most enchanting of all picturesque scenes. 
 It is inscribed on one side, " AMELIA SOPHIA, 
 AUG.," and has a medallion of her on the other. 
 It is placed on an eminence at the top of the 
 Elysian fields [a part of the Stowe Gardens], in 
 a grove of orange-trees. You come to it on a 
 sudden, and are startled with delight on looking 
 through it : you at once see, through a glade, 
 the river winding at the bottom ; from which a 
 thicket rises, arched over with trees, but opened, 
 and discovering a hillock full of haycocks, be- 
 yond which in front is the Palladian bridge 
 [another feature of the Gardens], and again 
 over that a larger hill crowned with the castle. 
 It is a tall landscape framed by the arch and the 
 over-bowering trees, and comprehending more 
 beauties of light, shade, and buildings, than any 
 picture of Albano I ever saw.' Mr. Walpole 
 goes to confirm Lady Mary by saying that ' be- 
 tween the flattery and the prospect the Princess
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 257 
 
 was really in Elysium : she visited her arch four 
 or five times every day, and could not satiate 
 herself with it.' And then he copies for Mr. 
 Montagu the lines which Lady Mary claims to 
 have first detected in the grasp of Apollo. 
 
 ' T'other day, with a beautiful frown on her brow, 
 To the rest of the gods said the Venus of Stowe, 
 " What a fuss is here made with that arch just erected, 
 How our temples are slighted, our altars neglected ! 
 Since yon Nymph has appear'd, we are noticed no more, 
 All resort to her shrine, all her presence adore ; 
 And what's more provoking, before all our faces, 
 Temple thither has drawn both the Muses and Graces." 
 " Keep your temper, dear child," Phoebus cried with a 
 
 smile, 
 
 " Nor this happy, this amiable festival spoil. 
 Can your shrine any longer with garlands be dress'd ? 
 When a true goddess reigns, all the false are suppressed." ' 
 
 It is time, however, to turn from the unprofit- 
 able expanse of Lady Mary's town life to those 
 continental tours which are its oases. In 1767 
 she had already visited the Continent. In the 
 October of 1769 she again set out for Aix in 
 Provence, passing by Geneva, from which place 
 she visited Voltaire at Ferney. He received 
 her with great urbanity, ' in a flowered silk waist- 
 coat & night gown, a dark periwig without 
 powder, slippers, & a cap in his hand.' Although 
 seventy-six years of age, he insisted upon escort- 
 17
 
 258 Eighteenth Century fignettes. 
 
 ing her over his garden ; and he showed her the 
 ivory box, turned by the Empress's own hand, 
 which had been presented to him by Catherine 
 II. of Russia. ' I told him (says Lady Mary) 
 I thought it the best action of her life, con- 
 fessing I was no admirer of that great Lady's, 
 but that I thought her perfectly in the right to 
 endeavour to make him her friend ; He smiled 
 but made no answer.' ' He has lately publish'd 
 " Siecle de Louis 15 " (she goes on), which I 
 am now reading.' At Avignon she visits the 
 Tomb of Laura in the Church of the Cordeliers, 
 afterwards destroyed in the Revolution ; at Aix, 
 where she winters, she makes the acquaintance 
 of M. de Vence, grandson of Madame de Se- 
 vigne's granddaughter Julie de Simiane, whose 
 house and family portraits he is good enough to 
 exhibit to her, together with a number of books 
 containing Madame de Sevigne's manuscript 
 notes. A day or two afterwards she pays a 
 visit of ceremony to the Due de Villars, Gov- 
 ernor of Provence and son of Louis XIV.'s 
 famous Marshal. Her little sketch of this speci- 
 men of the great French noblesse almost attains 
 the proportions of a costume piece. ' Madame 
 de Montauban went with me : he received Us 
 in his Bed Chamber which is hung with a two 
 Colour'd velvet ; the Bed the same, with glasses,
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 259 
 
 tables, Clocks, & many other ornamented pieces 
 of furniture : his dress more studied then you 
 can imagine, fortho' the Duke is turn'd seventy, 
 he has more attention to his appearance then 
 many people in the prime of life ; he wears the 
 order of the Golden fleece in very fine diamonds, 
 & his waistcoat is only button'd at the bottom, 
 that the magnificence of his lace may not be 
 concealed, which from time to time he sets to 
 rights, perhaps to have it the more taken notice 
 of: the buttons to his Shirt being very fine 
 diamonds are likewise adjusted very often, prob- 
 ably for the same purpose : he is in his person 
 taller & thinner then almost any person I ever 
 saw, which, notwithstanding the many orna- 
 ments, gives an air of awkwardness to his figure : 
 he wears a little rouge & red heels to his shoes. 
 . . . He is perfectly good humour'd & polite, 
 excessively Charitable, & does a great deal of 
 good in this Country.' 
 
 Later on, Lady Mary makes a pilgrimage to 
 the ' fontaine de Vaucluse,' concerning which 
 she has only to record that she dined upon 
 ' some excellent fish taken out of the water that 
 flows from the Fontaine.' She then passes on 
 to Nismes, whence she visits the Chateau de 
 Grignan which, at that date, belonged to the 
 Marechal Comte du Muy. Her enthusiasm
 
 260 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 for Madame de Sevigne, though probably con- 
 tracted at second hand from Horace Walpole, 
 has a more genuine air than most of her raptures. 
 4 Me Void enfin dans cet Magmfique Chateau,' 
 records the 'Journal 1 for Monday, March 12, 
 1770. ' I have not been sensible of so much 
 pleasure for a very long time as I was when I 
 came in sight of this Castle, at my entrance into 
 it, & with the thoughts of passing the remainder 
 of the day, and lodging here at night. I have 
 walk'd over every room, & have already visited 
 the Apartment of Madame de Svign three 
 times.' [She sends for the ' oldest inhabitant,' 
 who gives her his recollections, points out where 
 Madame de S6vigne"s coffin was placed, recounts 
 the grief of her daughter Madame de Grignan, 
 who could not even endure to hear the bells 
 ring for her mother's death, and so forth.] ' I 
 am so proud of my present habitation that I am 
 inclined to set up all night to write letters, in 
 order to date them from hence. I am now 
 setting in a great apartment not within hearing 
 of a human being, nor is there anybody to lie 
 upon the same floor. There are five Apartments 
 as large as this : numbers in the floor above, & 
 the great Gallery mention'd in Madame de 
 Sevigne's letters is below, even with the terrace, 
 which is the finest I ever saw, much finer then
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 261 
 
 that at Windsor Castle. My imagination is so 
 totally imploy'd about Madame de Sevigne that 
 I am persuaded by and by I shall think She ap- 
 pears to me : every noise I hear I expect to 
 see the door open. . . . You cannot imagine 
 with what reluctance I left. . . . Upon a heath 
 not very far from Grignan I gather'd some cones 
 of pines which I shall sow on my return to Eng- 
 land in hopes of seeing something to put me in 
 mind of that Charming place.' 
 
 In 1770 Lady Mary again quitted England 
 for the Continent. Although she had liked Aix, 
 for some unexplained reason she did not return 
 there, but set her wings for Vienna. ' I have 
 always wished to see the Empress (she says), & 
 cannot take a better time then this Autumn to 
 put that project in execution.' Accordingly she 
 set out, in a travelling coach she had bought from 
 Lady Holland, and made her way vid Dover and 
 Calais to Brussels. At Nuremberg, the famous 
 pea-green and silver costume caused her to be 
 ' mobed,' an occurrence which, to use her 
 favourite expression, must have somewhat 
 ' hurried her spirits.' Then, embarking at Rat- 
 isbon, she went down the Danube to Vienna. 
 At Vienna she had many aristocratic friends, 
 Prince Kaunitz-Rietberg, the Prime Minister, 
 Lord Stormont, the British Envoy, Count Sei-
 
 262 Eighteenth Century l/ignettes. 
 
 lern, who had been Ambassador in England, 
 and others ; and it was not long before she 
 received the Empress's order to attend her. 
 Here is her description of Maria Theresa at 
 fifty-three. ' The door of the outward room 
 open'd & the Empress came in. L d Strafford 
 saw her in her great beauty ; but that, the 
 small pox & a great increase of fat, has de- 
 prived her off ; for every body here affirms that 
 till She had the small pox [in 1767] She was 
 extremely handsome. What remains I shall 
 mention ; She is about my height, & tho' very 
 fat not at all incumber'd with it, a genteel slope, 
 holds herself extremely well, & her air the most 
 Noble I ever saw : 'tis still visible her features 
 have been extremely fine and regular, tho' the 
 swelling from the small pox never quite gone 
 down & a little degree of redness remaining : 
 more spirit and sense in her eyes then I think I 
 ever saw, & the most pleasing voice in speaking. 
 This is the most exact picture that can be drawn. 
 She was very gracious & presented the Emperor 
 & the Arch Dukes herself.' Of the Austrian 
 Court and its decorums, of its parfilage * and its 
 
 1 This, a popular feminine occupation circa 1770-80, 
 consisted in pulling out the gold and silver threads from 
 cast-off lace, epaulets, tassels, etc., which threads were 
 afterwards sold. 'All the Ladys who don't play at cards 
 (says Lady Mary) pick gold : 'tis the most general fashion 
 I ever saw : they all carry their bags in their pockets.'
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 263 
 
 card-parties, Lady Mary has much to say. But 
 her most picturesque description, perhaps be- 
 cause it best lends itself to the touch of the 
 Court Circular in her style, is the famous Course 
 de Traineaux, or Procession of Sleighs, which 
 she was lucky enough to witness in February, 
 1771. 'There were eight and twenty Traineaus, 
 & two footmen, belonging to each Gentleman 
 who guided the traineau, on horseback in rich 
 liveries. The Emperor had eight & twenty ; but 
 all these preceeded the traineaus, for each Lady 
 had two running footmen in rich dresses that run 
 on each side. At twelve o'clock it began. A 
 Traineau with eight Trumpeters & one Kettle 
 Drummer came first, then eighteen equerries in 
 a uniform of red & gold preceeded the Em- 
 peror's Traineau, which was extremely carved 
 & gilt all over: the seat, where the Arch Duch- 
 ess sat, crimson velvet laced & fringed with 
 gold ; her dress crimson velvet trimed with 
 gold & sable, the body with diamonds & her 
 head covered with diamonds. The Emperor, 
 who guided the traineau, was dressed the same 
 as the Arch Duchess, crimson velvet laced all 
 over with gold, lined with sable ; his hair tyd 
 with a white ribbon, & a hat with white feathers 
 in the hat & three standing upright, with the 
 button & c . in diamonds ; a broad white ribbon
 
 264 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 across his shoulders to fasten his muff : four run- 
 ning footmen, two on each side, in crimson 
 velvet dresses lac'd all over with gold, the 
 Horse with white plumes of feathers all up his 
 neck & upon his head, the furniture which 
 cover'd all his body, crimson velvet imbroider'd 
 all over with gold. The next Traineau was 
 Prince Albert de Saxe & the Arch Duchess 
 Elizabeth, in all respects like the Emperor's, 
 only that he had but two running footmen, & 
 I think his hat was more covered with dia- 
 monds then the Emperor's.' [This completes 
 the Imperial Family, and justifies abridgment.] 
 ' Tis to no purpose to describe them all ; in 
 general the Lady's & the Gentleman's dress who 
 guided the Traineau were the same colour, 
 which had a very good effect. All the Gentle- 
 men had diamonds in their hats, & those ladies 
 who were dressed in blue velvet & gold, had 
 ermine instead of sable, & the gentlemen's coats 
 & muffs ermine also. The Ladys' dresses all 
 came down to their wrists & up to their throats. 
 It lasted two hours.' 
 
 Another of the scenes at which Lady Mary 
 assisted was a ceremonial which has been com- 
 memorated by the brush of Wilkie 1 the ancient 
 
 1 Wilkie painted two pictures on this subject one in 
 1827, ' A Roman Princess [the Princess Doria] washing
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 265 
 
 and still-enduring rite of the Fusswaschung on 
 Holy Thursday. 'Twas perform'd (she says) in 
 the great room where the Empress sees Com- 
 pany, where there are too tables, one for twelve 
 old men served by the Emperor & the Arch 
 Dukes ; the other for twelve old Women served 
 by the Empress & the Arch Duchesses ; all 
 dressed in the great dress with the addition 
 of a black veil. I never saw the Empress look 
 so Gracefull. She charmed me more to-day 
 then ever : all the Ladys of the Court attended 
 in black veils also. The Empress stood opposite: 
 the three first old Women, placed all the dishes 
 & took them off ; but with a grace that is not 
 to be discribed : her manner of holding the 
 napkin was so genteel that I cou'd have look'd 
 at her for ever, & if you had heard her talk to 
 those three old Women you wd have been de- 
 lighted. When I came up to the table She said, 
 " One of my oldest acquaintance is not here : 
 She was taken ill this morning in the Church. 
 She had come here from the time of my Grand 
 Father the Emperor Leopold." She afterwards 
 did me the honour to tell me that She was not 
 
 the Pilgrims' Feet,' and the other in 1829, ' Cardinals, 
 Priests, and Roman Citizens washing the Pilgrims' Feet.' 
 George IV. bought the former ; the latter was purchased 
 by Sir Willoughby Gordon.
 
 266 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 now able to perform the rest of the function : 
 She said her breath wou'd not permit her, but 
 added, " My Daughter will do it." She then 
 said : " but you shou'd see the Emperor perform 
 the ceremony." . . . Accordingly we went to 
 the other side, where the Emperor was serving 
 the twelve old Men, but I remark'd he did not 
 talk to them as the Empress did to the old 
 Women. ... I return'd again to the Empress 
 who was placing the second course upon the 
 table. When She had taken it off, the table 
 was removed & She sat down upon a stool. 
 The Ladys of the Court pulled off the shoes 
 & stockings of the old Women, & one of the 
 Chamberlains brought a great gilt dish & another 
 held a ewer with water. The eldest Arch 
 Duchess then kneel'd down, wash'd, & kissed 
 the feet of each old Woman going from one 
 to the other upon her knees, for She is not to 
 rise till She has perform'd it all. When She 
 has finish'd She gets up & is presented by one 
 of the Ladys of the Court with a ribbon to 
 which hangs a purse, which she puts over the 
 head of each old Woman. The Emperor does 
 the same by the Men ; they then all came to 
 the Empress who rose up & retired/ Shortly 
 after this, Lady Mary left Vienna, with the un- 
 usual distinction of having been embraced by
 
 Lady Mary Coke. 267 
 
 Maria Theresa at a private audience, and pre- 
 sented with a keepsake in the shape of ' a fine 
 medallion set with jewels.' At Paris, on the 
 way home, she visited Madame Geoffrin, Ma- 
 dame du Deffand and Madame de Boufflers ; 
 and she had a brief interview with Marie 
 Antoinette, whom she afterwards saw at the 
 Review of the French and Suisse Guards, to 
 which the Dauphiness came with the Princess 
 de Lamballe in a gorgeous Glass Coach with 
 eight white Horses. 
 
 The success of Lady Mary's visit to the 
 Court of Vienna, coupled perhaps with a cer- 
 tain coolness on her part to the Court of St. 
 James, arising as much from its heartless dis- 
 regard of her pretensions in respect of ' the 
 PERSON who is gone ' as from her own sense 
 of the reprehensible conduct of the Dukes of 
 Cumberland and Gloucester, induced her be- 
 fore the year was out to visit the Austrian 
 capital once more. She was again received 
 with cordiality ; but a third expedition in 1773 
 was unhappily a mistake. She had the misfor- 
 tune to become involved in some Court feud 
 and fell into discredit with the Empress. Dis- 
 credit with the Court naturally followed ; and 
 she ultimately left Vienna with the fixed idea 
 that Maria Theresa had condescended to be-
 
 268 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 come her enemy, and that, as usual, she was a 
 deeply injured woman. Unluckily, this, as time 
 went on, was not her only mishap of the kind. 
 She contrived to embroil herself hopelessly with 
 the good-humoured Princess Amelia, whom she 
 forced to give her her cong& ; and she alienated 
 even her faithful admirer, Horace Walpole, who 
 had rallied her vagaries with admirable bonhomie, 
 had dedicated to her the second edition of his 
 ' Castle of Otranto,' and had made her the 
 recipient of five-and-twenty most charmingly 
 playful letters, the majority of which, until 
 1892, remained unprinted among the papers of 
 the late Mr. Drummond Moray of Abercairny. 
 But though she lost her friends and her beauty, 
 she lost none of her peculiarities, which, with 
 the march of years, became even more pro- 
 nounced and more complicated. She lingered 
 into the second decade of the present century, 
 an old, lonely, unhappy woman, dying at last 
 in a dull little villa at Chiswick long since 
 absorbed in the grounds of Chiswick House. 
 Fantastic to the end, she is reported to have 
 insisted on quitting this vale of tears ' with a 
 high-crowned beaver hat upon her head.'
 
 RANELAGH. 
 
 THE pleasure-loving 'prentice of the last cen- 
 tury when, in Chepe or Fleet, he put up 
 his shutters, and put on his sword, can seldom 
 have been at a loss for amusement. Not only 
 had every inn on the outskirts of the sign- 
 haunted City its skittle-ground, or bowling- 
 green, or nine-pin alley, where he might doff 
 his tarnished gala-dress, perch his scratch wig 
 upon a post (as he does in Mr. Edwin Abbey's 
 charming pictures), and cultivate to his heart's 
 content the mysteries of managing a bowl with 
 one hand and a long ' churchwarden ' with the 
 other, but nearly every village within a mile or 
 two of Paul's boasted its famous summer garden, 
 presenting its peculiar and specific programme of 
 diversions diversions which included the envi- 
 able distinction of rubbing elbows with the qual- 
 ity, and snatching, for a space, the fearful joy 
 of ' Bon Ton.' At Pentonvillc there was the 
 White Conduit House, upon whose celebrated 
 cakes and cream Dr. Oliver Goldsmith had once 
 the misfortune of entertaining a party of ladies, 
 and of then finding himself like Seiior Patricio
 
 270 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 in Le Sage without the wherewithal to pay the 
 reckoning ; at Islington there was Sadler's Wells, 
 where you might not only genteelly discuss the 
 'killibeate' (as Mr. Weller's friend called it), 
 but regale yourself with the supplementary and 
 gratuitous recreation of ' balance-masters, walk- 
 ing on the wire, rope-dancing, tumbling, and 
 pantomime entertainments.' At Bagnigge Wells, 
 in what is now the King's Cross Road, you might, 
 after being received at the Assembly Room by 
 a dignified Master of the Ceremonies with a 
 Cocked Hat, enjoy, to the sound of an organ, 
 the refreshment (with gilt spoons) of tea, which 
 would be handed to you by a page with a kettle, 
 like Pompey in the second plate of Hogarth's 
 'Harlot's Progress'; at Cuper's (vulgo 'Cu- 
 pid's') Gardens, on the Surrey side of the water 
 over-against Somerset House, you might witness 
 the noted fireworks, listen to Mr. Jones, his 
 harp-playing, and assist at various other amuse- 
 ments, some of which, it is to be feared, were 
 more suited to Thomas Idle than to Francis 
 Goodchild. Then as time-honoured as any, 
 since they dated from Pepys and the Restora- 
 tion, and survived until Chatterton could write 
 their burlettas there were, at the bottom of 
 Harley Street, the renowned Gardens of Mary- 
 bone, which, in addition to the pyrotechnic dis-
 
 Ranelagb. 271 
 
 plays of Caillot and Torre, 1 and the privilege of 
 having your pockets emptied by the illustrious 
 George Barrington or some equally quick-handed 
 artist, offered the exceptional attractions of ' fine 
 Epping butter,' ' Almond Cheesecakes,' and 
 ' Tarts of a Twelve-penny size,' made by no less 
 a personage than the sister of Dr. Trusler, author 
 of that popular didactic work, the ' Blossoms of 
 Morality.' All of these, however, were but the 
 shadows of the two greater rallying-places, Vaux- 
 hall and Ranelagh, both of which were on the 
 Thames. Of Vauxhall, with its hundreds of 
 lamps, its Grove, its Gothic Orchestra, and its 
 statue of Handel, a sufficient account has already 
 been given in an earlier ingathering of these 
 papers. 2 It is of the more fashionable, but 
 not more frequented Ranelagh that it is now 
 proposed to speak. 
 
 To Ranelagh, as to Vauxhall, the pleasantest 
 approach was by water. If you walked, the old 
 guide-books which seemed to assume that 
 
 1 According to J. R. Smith, Torre was also a print- 
 seller in the Haymarket. Johnson used him for his unjust 
 depreciation of Gray, whom he called ' the very Torre 
 of poetry, [who] played his coruscations so speciously 
 that his steel dust is mistaken by many for a shower of 
 gold.' 
 
 2 See ' Old Vauxhall Gardens ' in ' Eighteenth Century 
 Vignettes,' 1892, pp. 230-261.
 
 272 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 every one started from Charing Cross are 
 careful to tell you that you must cross St. James's 
 Park, go out by Buckingham Gate, and make 
 your way toward Chelsea Hospital, on the left 
 side of which would ultimately become visible the 
 ' large Building of an orbicular Figure, with a 
 Row of Windows round the Attic story,' which, 
 according to a writer in the ' Champion,' ' a Man, 
 of a whimsical Imagination, would not scruple 
 to call, a Giant's Lanthorn ' the resemblance, 
 it may be added, being sensibly increased at 
 night by the fact that, for those days, it was very 
 lavishly illuminated within. Arrived at the en- 
 trance, known as Ranelagh House, you could 
 either present your ticket or pay your half- 
 crown, and, after purchasing 'a gift for your 
 fair' in the shape of a nosegay or button-hole, 
 pass through the building into the somewhat 
 contracted grounds in front of the central struc- 
 ture. But you might, if you chose, and you 
 probably would, turn to the left, descend a 
 flight of steps, and, entering a matted avenue, 
 repair forthwith to the Rotunda. After a few 
 paces you found yourself in a large circular 
 chamber or amphitheatre, about the size of the 
 Reading Room at the British Museum, the 
 accesses to which were through four equidistant 
 Doric porticoes. Between these porticoes, the
 
 Ranelagh. 273 
 
 sides of the room were filled with alcoves or 
 supper-boxes, slightly raised above the floor, 
 each of which had its table, its decorative 
 humorous painting as at Vauxhall, and its bell 
 candle-lamp. Above this line of alcoves was a 
 gallery containing a second row of boxes ; and 
 above these, again, the range of sixty windows 
 you had seen illuminated from without. In the 
 centre of the enclosure, rising to the ceiling, and 
 materially assisting in the support of the roof, 
 was a cluster of ' four triumphal arches of the 
 Doric order,' which, with the intervals between 
 them, formed an octagon. The upper part of 
 this was, at first, intended for the Orchestra, 
 but the position proved too high for the per- 
 formers ; and, from the circumstance that a huge 
 grate for heating the building had been con- 
 structed in the lower part, it came subsequently 
 to be known as ' the fireplace.' In the old 
 descriptions, this fireplace is magniloquently 
 characterized as ' one of the most curious con- 
 trivances that ever the judgment of man could 
 form, but when it is further stated that it could 
 neither smoke nor become offensive, it is obvi- 
 ous that something had been achieved to which, 
 even now, it is difficult to attain. The pillars 
 of the triumphal arches, which, as already stated, 
 also helped to hold up the roof, were two-storied, 
 18
 
 274 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 those at the bottom being coloured in imitation 
 of marble ; those surmounting them being painted 
 white. These latter were fluted, and above them 
 again were terminal figures in plaster of Paris, 
 the intervening spaces being filled with repre- 
 sentations of masks, musical instruments, and 
 the like. In front of and blocking one of the 
 porticoes was a large organ ; in front of this 
 again was the Orchestra, twelve boxes from 
 which came the Royal or Prince of Wales's 
 pavilion, surmounted with his crest. Mirrors of 
 course abounded ; and from the dome, which 
 was lavishly ornamented with panels and fes- 
 toons, hung twenty-eight coroneted chandeliers, 
 each having seventeen candles in bell glasses. 
 1 When all these lamps are lighted,' says the 
 enthusiast already quoted, ' it may be imagined 
 that the sight must be very glorious ; no words 
 can express its grandeur ; and then do the mas- 
 terly disposition of the architect, the proportion 
 of the parts, and the harmonious distinction of 
 the several pieces, appear to the greatest advan- 
 tage ; the most minute part, by this effulgence, 
 lying open to inspection.' Gas and electricity 
 have somewhat rectified our modern notions of 
 ' effulgence'; but there can be little doubt that 
 the symmetry of the structure, coupled with 
 the graceful decorations of Capon, the scene-
 
 Ranelagh. 275 
 
 painter, must have produced an imposing effect. 
 Johnson, it is known, declared the ' coup d'ceil 
 was the finest thing he had ever seen.' Nor 
 was this one of those occasions when the good 
 Doctor talked laxly, for he said elsewhere : 
 ' When I first entered Ranelagh, it gave an ex- 
 pansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I 
 never experienced anywhere else.' According to 
 Dr. Maxwell, he went there frequently, for he 
 regarded it as 'a place of innocent recreation ' 
 a sentiment which, on the whole, does more 
 credit to his simplicity than his judgment, since 
 the author of ' Sir Charles Grandison ' openly 
 speaks of it as a marriage market, and even 
 that unsophisticated philosopher, Mr. Moses 
 Primrose, does not scruple to compare it with 
 the notorious Fair of Fontarabia. 1 
 
 Ranelagh was first opened in 1742, being 
 nearly thirty years younger than its rival Vaux- 
 hall, which, as a pleasure garden, went back to 
 ' Sir Roger' and Addison. Its name came from 
 its site, a part of the house and lands of a past 
 Earl of Ranelagh, whose estate adjoined to 
 
 1 To Gibber, apparently, it served as a Book of Beauty. 
 'I have gone every evening to Ranelagh,' he told Mrs. 
 Pilkington in 1745, 'in order to find a face or mien resem- 
 bling Miss Harlowe \i.e. Clarissa], but to no purpose : the 
 charmer is inimitable; I cannot find her equal' (Richard- 
 son's 'Correspondence,' 1804, ii. 129). ,
 
 276 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Chelsea Hospital. When, in 1712, he died, his 
 property descended to his daughter, who, twenty 
 years later, sold it to a builder by whom it was 
 broken up into lots. Then Lacy, the Drury 
 Lane manager, acquired it conjointly with a 
 foreigner named Rietti ; the grounds were laid 
 out ; plans were prepared by ' Mr. William 
 Jones, architect to the East India Company'; 
 and the ' orbicular ' Rotunda began to rise 
 slowly. In Walpole's letters you may trace 
 its progress. ' I have been breakfasting this 
 morning at Ranelagh Garden, 1 he tells Mann 
 in April, 1742; 'they have built an immense 
 amphitheatre, with balconies full of little ale- 
 houses ; it is in rivalry to Vauxhall, and costs 
 above twelve thousand pounds/ [In another 
 place he puts it at ' sixteen thousand.'] ' The 
 building is not finished, but they get great sums 
 by people going to see it and breakfasting in the 
 house : there were yesterday no less than three 
 hundred and eighty persons, at eighteenpence 
 a-piece.' A month later, it is opened in state. 
 ' The Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, 
 and much mob besides, were there. . . . Every- 
 body that loves eating, drinking, staring, or 
 crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. . . . 
 Twice a week there are to be Ridottos at 
 guinea-tickets, for which you are to have a
 
 Ranelagh. 277 
 
 supper and music.' But he is too conservative 
 to give in at once to an untried novelty, of 
 which the fashion may prove no more than 
 ephemeral. ' I was there last night/ he says, 
 ' but did not find the joy of it ' ; and he goes on 
 to prefer Vauxhall, because ' one goes by water.' 
 It is hazardous to contradict a contemporary, 
 or one might suggest that it was also possible 
 to get by water to Ranelagh ; but it must be 
 assumed that, at this early date, the orthodox 
 approach was by land, and that Ranelagh Stairs 
 were not constructed. However, the prosper- 
 ity of the place as a rendezvous for persons of 
 quality seems to have increased so rapidly that 
 Walpole, after a few more doubtful references, 
 begins, as usual, to be of the opinion of all the 
 world. In July he takes Lord Orford there, 
 and is pleased to find that his father, though 
 fallen, is not forgotten. ' It was pretty full, and 
 all its fullness flocked round us : we walked 
 with a train at our heels, like two chairmen 
 going to fight ; but they were extremely civil, 
 and did not crowd him, or say the least imper- 
 tinence I think he grows popular already 1 ' 
 Two years later his note is no longer uncertain ; 
 and he announces his complete volte-face in one 
 of his most characteristic passages : ' That you 
 may not think I employ my time as idly as the
 
 278 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 great men I have been talking of [he has been 
 discussing the doings of the ministry and the 
 operations of the fleet], you must be informed, 
 that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh ; 
 which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes 
 anywhere else everybody goes there. My 
 Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says 
 he has ordered all his letters to be directed 
 thither. If you had never seen it [he is writ- 
 ing to Conway in London, not to Mann at 
 Florence], I would make you a most pompous 
 description of it, and tell you how the floor is 
 all of beaten princes that you can't set your 
 foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or 
 Duke of Cumberland. The company is univer- 
 sal : there is from his Grace of Grafton down to 
 children out of the Foundling Hospital from 
 my Lady Townshend to the kitten from my 
 Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere 
 friend.' One naturally turns to Chesterfield 
 himself for some confirmation of the above- 
 mentioned infatuation ; but save and except a 
 stray passage in one or two of his letters to 
 Madame du Boccage and Madame de Mon- 
 conseil, there is little on the subject, certainly 
 nothing that savours of abnormal excitement. 
 Yet he evidently regarded Vauxhall under 
 cover,' as it has been christened, in the light
 
 Ranelagb. 279 
 
 of a nursery, or rather hot-bed, for those GrAces, 
 Agrdmens, Biens6cinces, the careful cultivation, 
 and even forcing, of which he so persistently 
 enjoined. More than four-and-twenty years 
 afterwards he takes his grandson to Ranelagh, 
 and in a subsequent letter he is careful to im- 
 press upon this boy of eleven his obligations of 
 hospitality with regard to any friends who may 
 accompany him to similar resorts. ' Quand vous 
 irez a Vaux Hall' (he says), ' souvenez vous de 
 regaler toutte votre compagnie, et offrez les de 
 les regaler quelque soir au Jardin de Ranelagh ' ; 
 and a year later still, he tells the boy's father 
 proudly that young Stanhope has again been a 
 visitor to the Chelsea Pantheon, ' for the gentle- 
 man is at all public places/ Truly a precocious 
 bout d'homme ! 
 
 When one remembers that the refreshments 
 in the Rotunda were included in the entrance 
 money (at first a shilling, and afterwards half-a- 
 crown), and that the beverages were restricted 
 to tea and coffee, it is a little difficult to account 
 for the continued popularity of the place. The 
 staple attraction, of course, was the musical and 
 vocal performances. The organ, by Byfield, at 
 which, in later years, Dr. Burney often offici- 
 ated, was an excellent one ; there was a good 
 band and choir ; and with singers like Tenducci
 
 280 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and Carestini to ' pour th'enervate lays' of Gluck 
 and Metastasio with Beard and Brent for the 
 ' native notes' of Arne and Handel and Cer- 
 vetto and Giardini and Caporale as premiers 
 violons the lovers of music must have found 
 their money's worth. But for the rest for 
 those who were neither amateurs after the 
 fashion of Bramston's ' Man of Taste ' 
 
 (' Without Italian, or without an ear, 
 To Bononcinfs music I adhere '), 
 
 nor took their simple pleasure like honest Pastor 
 Moritz, in philosophically surveying the motley 
 crowd from the vantage ground of the gallery, 
 the chief resource must have been the monoto- 
 nous parading or promenading in the circular 
 space between the fireplace and the supper 
 boxes. Nonagenarians like Samuel Rogers well 
 remembered the long swish of the ladies' trains 
 as they swept round and round over the mats 
 which covered the plaster-of-Paris floor. 
 
 ' What wonders were there to be found 
 
 That a clown might enjoy or disdain ? 
 First we trac'd the gay ring all around ; 
 Ay and then we went round it again? 
 
 So sings Robert Bloomfield, whom, at the first 
 blush, one scarcely expects to find among the 
 ' society poets.'
 
 Ranelagb. 281 
 
 ' Fair maids, who at home in their haste 
 Had left all clothing else but a train, 
 Swept the floor clean, as slowly they pac'd, 
 And then walked round and swept it again? 
 
 The note of sarcasm here so lightly indicated 
 finds grumbling echo in the pages of ' Humphry 
 Clinker.' ' What are the amusements at Rane- 
 lagh?' asks that querulous critic, Mr. Matthew 
 Bramble. ' One half of the company are fol- 
 lowing one another's tails, in an eternal circle, 
 like so many blind asses in an olive mill, where 
 they can neither discourse, distinguish, nor be 
 distinguished ; while the other half are drinking 
 hot water, under the denomination of tea, till 
 nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake 
 for the rest of the evening. As for the orches- 
 tra, the vocal musick especially, it is well for the 
 performers that they cannot be heard distinctly.' 
 But Smollett was too keen a student of humanity 
 to let the testy Welsh squire have it all his own 
 way; and Mr. Bramble's niece is not at all 
 of Mr. Bramble's opinion. To the school-girl 
 imagination of Miss Lydia Melford, Ranelagh is 
 Mike the enchanted palace of a genie,' and her 
 enthusiasm rises easily to the gush of the guide- 
 books. For her the place is 'crowded with the 
 great, the rich, the gay, the happy, and the fair; 
 glittering with cloth of gold and silver, lace,
 
 282 Eighteenth Century I/ignettes. 
 
 embroidery, and precious stones. While these 
 exulting sons and daughters of felicity [she is 
 speaking of her uncle's "blind asses"] tread 
 this round of pleasure, or regale in different 
 parties and separate lodges, with fine imperial 
 tea and other delicious refreshments, their ears 
 are entertained with the most ravishing delights 
 of musick, both instrumental and vocal.' 
 
 ' Ravishing, 1 however, as may have been the 
 lyric performances of Dr. Arne and the ' Catch 
 Club,' or the 'famous chorus of Mr. Handel 
 in "Acis and Galatea," ' the epithet can hardly 
 have been applicable to others of the musical 
 efforts, which would be better described as 
 cacophonous. Such, for example, must have 
 been Bonnel Thornton's Burlesque ' Ode on 
 St. Caecilia's Day,' 'adapted to the Antient 
 British Musick : viz. the Salt-Box, the Jew's 
 Harp, the Marrow-Bones and Cleavers, the 
 Hum-Strum or Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the rest. 
 Dr. Burney, then resident in Norfolk, com- 
 posed the music ; and it was performed at 
 Ranelagh in masks to an enraptured audience. 
 Beard, the Vauxhall tenor already mentioned, 
 sang the air to the salt-box accompaniment of 
 Brent the fencing-master (Mrs. Brent's father). 1 
 
 1 Another illustrious performer on the salt-box was 
 Thomas Price, Master of the Farthing Pie-House at 
 Marylebone, of whom there is a folio mezzotint.
 
 Ranelagh. 283 
 
 Matthew Skeggs, who, in his very peculiar way, 
 enjoyed a considerable reputation, played the 
 broomstick as bassoon ; * and that ' iron lyre/ 
 the Jew's Harp, was twanged or ' buzzed ' by 
 another accomplished but unnamed expert. The 
 cleavers, according to report, were specially cast 
 in bell metal for the occasion. Johnson, Bos- 
 well informs us. was hugely diverted by the inge- 
 nuity of the jest, and was wont to repeat with 
 approval the following on the function of the 
 salt-box, which, by the way, figures among the 
 instruments in Hogarth's ' Strolling Actresses.' 
 
 'In Strains more exalted the SALT-BOX shall join, 
 And Clattering, and Battering, and Clapping combine : 
 With a Rap and a Tap while the hollow Side sounds, 
 Up and down leaps the Flap, and with Rattling rebounds.' 
 
 The whole, and this was not its least recom- 
 mendation, was an admitted gibe at the false 
 taste for foreign music ; but it could scarcely 
 have been heard by Miss Melford, as the ' Ex- 
 pedition of Humphry Clinker' belongs to a later 
 date than June loth, 1765, when, according to 
 the ' Annual Register,' Thornton's burlesque 
 was produced, having been previously pub- 
 
 1 Skeggs, Italianized by the caricaturists into ' Skeggi- 
 nello,' imitated other instruments on his broomstick, as 
 well as several animals. There is a print of him by 
 Houston, after a picture by Thomas King.
 
 284 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 lished as a pamphlet, to be found in the British 
 Museum. 
 
 The mention of the masks in which It was 
 performed calls to mind another of the Rane- 
 lagh diversions. In addition to the Ridottos or 
 Assemblies of which Walpole speaks, Masquer- 
 ades must have been added at an early date to 
 the rest of the occasional amusements. ' I am 
 going to a masquerade at the Ranelagh amphi- 
 theatre,' he says in July, 1742, ' the king is fond 
 of it and has pressed people to go.' By the 
 next letter it could scarcely have been a suc- 
 cess. ' It was miserable : there were but a 
 hundred men, six women and two shepherd- 
 esses.' In June, 1746, he speaks of another 
 for the Prince of Hesse. But his fullest de- 
 scription is devoted to the 'Jubilee masquerade 
 in the Venetian manner,' which, on the 26th 
 April, 1749, celebrated the Peace of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle. It was ' by far the best understood 
 and the prettiest spectacle I ever saw,' he says ; 
 ' nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it. ... 
 It began at three o'clock, and, about five, people 
 of fashion began to go. When you entered, you 
 found the whole garden filled with masks and 
 spread with tents, which remained all night very 
 commodely. In one quarter was a maypole 
 dressed with garlands, and people dancing
 
 Ranelagb. 285 
 
 round it to a tabor and pipe and rustic music, 
 all masqued, as were all the various bands of 
 music that were disposed in different parts of 
 the garden ; some like huntsmen with French- 
 horns, some like peasants, and a troop of har- 
 lequins and scaramouches in the little open 
 temple on the mount. On the canal was a 
 sort of gondola, adorned with flags and stream- 
 ers, and filled with music, rowing about. All 
 round the outside of the amphitheatre were 
 shops, filled with Dresden china, Japan, &c. 
 and all the shopkeepers in mask. The amphi- 
 theatre was illuminated ; and in the middle was 
 a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs 
 in tubs from twenty to thirty feet high : under 
 them orange trees, with small lamps in each 
 orange, and below them all sorts of the finest 
 auriculas in pots ; and festoons of natural flowers 
 hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches 
 too were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies 
 above. There were booths for tea and wine, 
 gaming-tables, and dancing, and about two thou- 
 sand persons.' The matter-of-fact 'Gentleman's 
 Magazine' puts the number much higher: it 
 says there were '2,000 coaches, and above 6,000 
 persons.' Probably aristocratic Mr. Walpole 
 only counted the ' carriage people.' This first 
 jubilee masquerade was followed by a second
 
 286 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 on May 8th ; and it was at this, or possibly at 
 both, for the accounts vary, that the notorious 
 Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Duchess 
 of Kingston and Countess of Bristol, appeared 
 as Iphigenia, in a costume so classic as to scan- 
 dalize even her fellow maids-of-honour ' not,' 
 says Mrs. Montagu censoriously, 'of maids the 
 strictest. 1 There are several contemporary sa- 
 tirical prints devoted to this lady's undress 
 vagaries, in which she was encouraged by 
 George II. ; and she is referred to repeatedly 
 in the correspondence of the time, as well as by 
 Churchill and the ' Connoisseur.' It was prob- 
 ably the licence of costume which ultimately led 
 to the suppression, at Ranelagh, of masquerades, 
 which practically ceased to take place there long 
 before the garden itself came to an end. 
 
 Externally the Rotunda could scarcely be said 
 to correspond with the magnificence of its 
 interior. Viewed from the outside, it was little 
 more than a flat-looking, round-topped, and 
 many-windowed wooden structure covered in 
 with slates. At the back of the lower, or ground 
 floor, supper-boxes, an arcade ran round the 
 entire building ; and above this, reached by 
 stairs from the four porticoes, was a roofed 
 gallery, giving access to the second row of 
 boxes. The grounds adjoining the Rotunda,
 
 Ranelagh. 287 
 
 which was slightly raised above the level, were 
 not extensive, but they were tastefully laid out ; 
 and from Horwood's map one gets a fair idea of 
 their general disposition. In the front they 
 were broken up into gravel walks and grass 
 plats, pleasantly shaded by trees. At the back, 
 a long grass-bordered walk of yews and elms to 
 the left led to the extreme end of the grounds, 
 and was terminated by the circular temple to 
 Pan which Walpole speaks of above as filled 
 with ' harlequins and scaramouches.' It was 
 painted white, and had a statue of a faun at the 
 top. To the right hand was a long piece of 
 ornamental water known as ' the Canal,' on 
 each side of which were gravelled walks with 
 carefully trimmed hedges. The canal had a 
 grotto at its southern end, and it contained a 
 ' Chinese building,' or pavilion, which could be 
 entered from the banks. The remainder of the 
 place presented the ordinary fountains, parterres, 
 and other features of a public garden, the only 
 object requiring further notice being the view 
 or ' scene ' described on the map as ' Mount 
 jEtna.' This stood in the cross-walk at the 
 bottom of the enclosure, and was used in the 
 frequent displays of fireworks, by which Rane- 
 lagh, in its later years, endeavoured to revive its 
 decaying attractions. When properly lighted,
 
 288 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 and working, it exhibited a complete volcanic 
 eruption, with flowing lava and showers of 
 scoriae. It also included a subterranean ' Cavern 
 of the Cyclops/ and a ' Forge of Vulcan.' 
 
 Many memories cluster about this ' mouldered 
 lodge ' of Vanity Fair, and references to its 
 garish glories are freely scattered through the 
 correspondence of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Car- 
 ter, and the fictions of Fielding and Fanny 
 Burney. It was at the portals of Ranelagh, in 
 1752, that Fielding's enemy, Dr. John Hill of 
 'The Inspector,' was caned by a gentleman he 
 had libelled; it was at Ranelagh, in 1764, that 
 the little Mozart, a boy of eight, gave some of 
 those precocious performances which were then 
 thought wonderful enough to be recorded in the 
 Royal Society's ' Philosophical Transactions.' 
 It was at Ranelagh, again, in 1791, that an enter- 
 tainment was arranged in aid of Charles-Gen- 
 evieve-Louis-Auguste-Andre-Thimothee d' Eon 
 de Beaumont, otherwise known as the Cheval- 
 iere d'lion, who at this date had fallen upon 
 evil days and was living chiefly by exhibiting 
 his prowess as a maitre darmes in petticoats. 1 
 
 1 Upon this occasion (June 24, 1791) a commemorative 
 portrait of the ' Minerve Gauloise ' was designed by J. 
 Conde, one of the Chevaliere's compatriots, as 'a monu- 
 ment of English generosity and French gratitude.'
 
 Ranelagh. 289 
 
 Four years earlier, he had fenced successfully at 
 Carlton House with the famous mulatto Saint- 
 George. By 1791, however, the vogue of Rane- 
 lagh was declining. Its last great festino, as 
 Walpole would have called it, was a reception 
 given at the beginning of the present century 
 by the Spanish ambassador. In 1804 the grounds 
 were closed ; in 1805 the Rotunda was pulled 
 down. Fifteen years later, Sir Richard Phil- 
 lips, of the ' Million of Facts,' moralizing on the 
 weed-grown site with much pumped-up sentiment 
 and plentiful notes of exclamation, could only 
 imperfectly identify the traces of the famous 
 pleasure-gardens which had once been like 
 the 'Waxworks' in Dickens 'the delight of 
 the Nobility and Gentry, and the patronised of 
 Royalty.'
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 is it, then,' some Reader asks, 
 What is it that attaches 
 Your fancy so to fans and masks, 
 To periwigs and patches ) 
 
 ' 7s Human Life to-day so poor, 
 So bloodless, you disdain it, 
 To "galvanise " the Past once morel ' 
 Permit me. ril explain it. 
 
 This Age, I grant (and grant with pride), 
 
 Is varied, rich, eventful ; 
 But, if you touch its weaker side, 
 
 Deplorably resentful: 
 
 Belaud it, and it takes your praise 
 
 With air of calm conviction; 
 Condemn it, and at once you raise 
 
 A storm of contradiction. 
 
 Whereas with these old Shades of mine, 
 Their ways and dress delight me ; 
 
 And should I trip by word or line, 
 They cannot well indict me.
 
 292 Epilogue. 
 
 Not that I think to err. I seek 
 
 To steer J t\vixt blame and blindness ; 
 
 I strive (as some one said in Greek} 
 To speak the truth ivith kindness : 
 
 But should I fail to render clear 
 Their title, rank, or station 
 
 I still may sleep secure, nor fear 
 A suit for defamation.
 
 GENERAL INDEX.
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 N. B. The titles of Articles are in Small Capitals. 
 
 Abbey, Mr. Edwin, 269. 
 
 Acis and Galatea, Handel's, 
 282. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 15. 
 
 ./Eschylus, Flaxman's, 207. 
 
 Akenside, Thomas, 43, 44. 
 
 Allen, Ebenezer, 177. 
 
 Amateurs, Chodowiecki's, 229. 
 
 Amelia, Fielding's, 80, 234. 
 
 Amelia, Princess, 243, 252, 254, 
 268. 
 
 Anatomic, Burton's, 194. 
 
 Andrews, Mr. W. Loring, 209. 
 
 Anecdotes of Bowyer, Nichols', 
 197. 
 
 Annales Ecclesiastici of Baro- 
 nius, 191. 
 
 Annual Register, 52, 56. 
 
 Anstey, Christopher, 145, 146. 
 
 Arbuthnot, Dr. ,-15. 
 
 Archceological Dictionary, Wil- 
 son's, 191. 
 
 Argyll, John, Duke of, 94, 233, 
 235. 2 36, 240. 
 
 Ariosto, Hoole's, 197. 
 
 Arne, Thomas, 280, 282. 
 
 Art of Preaching, The, 47. 
 
 AT ' TULLY'S HEAD," 28-56. 
 Atterbury, Dean, 15. 
 
 Bacon, John, 94. 
 Bagnigge Wells, 270. 
 Bain, Mr. James, 202. 
 Balthazar, 88, 104. 
 Banks, Miss Peggy, 73. 
 Barbauld, Mrs., 59, 61, 69, 70, 
 
 73- 
 
 Barber, Alderman, 10, 16. 
 
 Barrow, Isaac, 248. 
 
 Barthlemy, Abb6, 136. 
 
 Barton, Mrs., 15. 
 
 Bateman, Christopher, the book- 
 seller, 16. 
 
 Beard, the tenor, 280, 282. 
 
 Beaumont, Joe, 22. 
 
 Bedford, Duchess of, 115. 
 
 Bedford, Duke of, 112, 117, 118, 
 
 120, 124, 128. 
 
 1 Belfour, Mrs.,' 68, 78. 
 Bellamy, Miss George Ann, 51. 
 Belle-Isle, Marshal, 107. 
 Bentley, Richard, 93. 
 Bentley, Richard, Jun., 32.
 
 296 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Berkeley, George, 15. 
 
 BERLIN HOGARTH, THE, 211- 
 
 232. 
 
 Bernini, 97, 99, 105. 
 Bernis, Cardinal de, no. 
 Bessborough, Lord, 244. 
 Bewick, Thomas, 53, 167, 211. 
 Btbliopegia, Arnett's, 205. 
 Bindley, James, 93, 206. 
 Birkbeck Hill, Dr., 75, 194. 
 Blandford, Lady, 250. 
 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, 
 
 The, Dodsley's, 45. 
 Blossoms of Morality, The, 
 
 Trusler's, 271. 
 Boerhaave, 197. 
 Bolingbroke, Lady, 127, 254. 
 Bolmgbroke, Lord, 14. 
 Booksellers, The Old, 38, 39. 
 Boothby, Sir William, 69. 
 Boswell, James, 161, 167, 188, 
 
 192, 283. 
 Boufflers, Madame de, 129, 132, 
 
 267. 
 
 Bourguignon, Hubert (Grave- 
 lot), 102. 
 
 Bradshaigh, Lady, 79. 
 Bramble, Mr. Matthew, 140, 
 
 142, 147, 148, 149, 281. 
 Bramble, Tabitha, 140, 142, 145. 
 Brent, 282. 
 Brent, Mrs., 280, 282 
 British Museum, 155. 
 British Tomography, Cough's, 
 
 201. 
 
 Brocklesby, Dr., 187, 192. 
 Brownrigg, Mrs. Elizabeth, 184. 
 Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 254. 
 Bunyan, John, 171, 172, 173. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 52, 53, 56, 
 
 248. 
 
 Burne-Jones, Sir E., 69. 
 Burnet, Bishop, 55. 
 Burney, Dr., 279, 282. 
 Burney, Miss Fanny, 288. 
 Burns, 55. 
 Bute, Lord, in, 117, 118, 128. 
 
 Cabinet d"un Peintrc, Chodo- 
 wiecki's, 226, 228. 
 
 Caillot, the fire-worker, 271. 
 
 Galas Case, The, 216. 
 
 Galas, Der grosse, 217. 
 
 Calas, La Malheureuse Fa- 
 mi lie, 216." 
 
 Calas, Les Adieux de, 217. 
 
 Caley, Captain Trivil, 179. 
 
 Cambridge, Richard Owen, 48. 
 
 Canning, Elizabeth, 29. 
 
 Canova, Anthony, 95. 
 
 Capon, W., 274. 
 
 Caporale, 280. 
 
 Cardonnel, Mr., 159. 
 
 Carestini, 280. 
 
 Carmontel, M. de, 216. 
 
 Carp bones at cards. 252. 
 
 Carpentiers, Adrien, 101. 
 
 Carter, Mrs., 197, 249, 288. 
 
 Carter, Thomas, 88. 
 
 Catherine II. of Russia, 258. 
 
 Cave, Edward, 41. 
 
 Cavendish, Lord John, 246. 
 
 Centifolium Stullorum, Chodo- 
 wiecki's, 229. 
 
 Cervetto, 280. 
 
 Chamber-horse or hobby, The, 
 63-
 
 General Index. 
 
 297 
 
 Chambers, William, 121. 
 Chapone, Mrs. 71. 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 171, 270. 
 Cheere, Henry, 89, 90. 
 Cherbuliez, 230. 
 Cheselden, Dr., 195. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 34, 48, 50, 
 
 52, 56, 85, 93, 108, 109, 134, 
 
 235, 278. 
 
 Chichele, Henry, 96. 
 Chodowiecki, Daniel Nicolaus, 
 
 211-232. 
 
 Chodowiecki Family, The, 226. 
 Chodowiecki, Gottfried, 212, 
 
 221, 226. 
 
 Chodowiecki, Jeannette, 226, 
 
 227. 
 
 Chodowiecki. Ludovica, 221. 
 Choiseul, Count de, in, 120, 
 
 123, 124. 
 Chudleigh, Miss, 73, 128, 254, 
 
 286. 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 52, 286. 
 Gibber, Colley, 73, 74, 76. 
 Gibber, Mrs., 50. 
 Citizen of the World, The, 
 
 Goldsmith's, 85, 191. 
 ' Clarinda,' Addison's, 252. 
 Clarissa, Richardson's, 58, 59, 
 
 60,70,75. 7S,So, 138, 139, 229. 
 Clarke, Dr., 192, 197. 
 Cleone, Dodsley's, 50, 54. 
 Clinker, Humphry, 139, 141. 
 Clivc, Mrs., 40. 
 Clogher, Bishop of, 23. 
 Cobden, Sanderson, Mr. T. J., 
 
 1 88. 
 
 Coke, Lady Mary, 233-268. 
 Coke, Viscount, 240, 241, 242. 
 
 Conn's Kisses, Dodsley's, 46. 
 Collier, Arthur, 77. 
 Collier, Margaret, 59, 77. 
 Colliers, The Miss, 77. 
 Congreve, William, 14, 19. 
 Contemplation, Gifford's, 32. 
 Conway, General, 249. 
 Cornelys, Mrs. Teresa, 154. 
 Courts of Europe, Swinburne's, 
 
 2 34- 
 
 Coustou, Nicolas, 88, 104. 
 Cracherode, Rev. Clayton, 202, 
 
 207. 
 
 Craik, Mr. Henry, 23, 92. 
 Credulity, Superstition, and 
 
 Fanaticism, Hogarth's, 168. 
 Cruikshank, William, 192. 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 118, 119, 
 
 244, 254, 267. 
 Cunningham, Allan, 86. 
 Cunningham, Peter, 190. 
 Cuper's Gardens, 270. 
 Curll, Edmund, 39, 40, 199. 
 
 Dalkeith, Lady, 238, 246. 
 
 Dantzic, Chodowiecki' s Jour- 
 ney to, 219-223. 
 
 Dantzic notabilities, 222. 
 
 Dartiquenave, or Dartineuf, 
 Charles, 33. 
 
 Davies, Thomas, 199. 
 
 Deans, Jeanie, 233. 
 
 Deffand, Madame du, 267. 
 
 Delany, Dr., 67. 
 
 Delany, Mrs., 288. 
 
 Delvaux, 88. 
 
 D'lion, The Chevaliere, 112, 
 116, 122, 124, 128, 288.
 
 298 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Derrick, Samuel, 144. 
 Devonshire, Duke of, 119. 
 Dibdin, Dr., 202, 204. 
 Dingley, Mrs. Rebecca, 9, u, 
 
 13, 18, 20, 21. 
 
 Discourses, Reynolds', 197. 
 Dodsley, Robert, 28-56, 199. 
 Donellan, Miss, 77. 
 Drake, Dr. Nathan, 49. 
 Duck, Stephen, 40. 
 Dunciad, Pope's, 193. 
 Duncombe, Rev John, 71. 
 
 Earl of Northumberland's 
 
 Houshold Book, Percy's, 193, 
 
 209. 
 
 Echlin, Lady, 77. 
 Edinburgh, 159. 
 Edmonson, Mary, 183. 
 Edwards, Thomas. 76. 
 Eglinton, Lord, 248. 
 Egremont, Earl of, 117, 121, 
 
 124. 
 
 Elegy, Gray's, 44. 
 Ellicot, Mr., 133. 
 Encomium Morix of Erasmus, 
 
 22-5. 
 
 Engelmann, W., 232. 
 England, Macaulay's, 196. 
 English Malady, Cheyne's, 
 
 195. 
 
 Epictetus, Carter's, 197. 
 EPILOGUE (to this Book), 291. 
 ' Execution Day,' 169. 
 
 Familienblatt, Chodowiecki's, 
 226. 
 
 Fanatismus, Weisse's, 217. 
 Fawcett, Mr. Henry, 58. 
 Fielding and Richardson, 82. 
 Fielding, Henry, 59, 96, 138, 
 
 288. 
 
 Fieldings, The Miss, 77. 
 Finch, Lady Charlotte, 247. 
 ' Fine Lady,' Addison's, 252. 
 Flaxman, John, 97, 105. 
 Fleming, General, 95. 
 Fletcher, Mr. William Younger, 
 
 207. 
 
 Folkes, Martin, 93. 
 Fonvielle, Nicholas, 215. 
 Foote, Samuel, 85, 156. 
 Forster, John, 12, 23. 
 Fox, Henry, 119. 
 Frasi, Giulia, 73. 
 Frederick of Prussia, 1 10. 
 Fugitive Pieces on Various 
 
 Subjects, Dodsley 's, 53. 
 Fuss-waschung, The, at Vienna, 
 
 265-267. 
 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, 149. 
 Garrick, David, 51, 73, 98, 100, 
 
 149, 1 88. 
 
 Geoffrin, Madame, 109, 267. 
 Germaine, Lady Betty, 15. 
 Giardini, 280. 
 Gibbon, Edward, 127. 
 Gifford, Rev. Richard, 32. 
 Gill, the Bath pastrycook, 146. 
 Gisors, M. de, in, 127. 
 Glasgow, 163. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 244, 267. 
 Gluck, C. W v., 280.
 
 General Index. 
 
 299 
 
 Goldsmith, 150, 246, 248, 269. 
 Gorbodut, Sackville's, 40. 
 Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 199. 
 Gossip in a Library, Gosse's, 
 
 199. 
 
 Gower, Lord. 128. 
 Grafton, Duchess of, 15. 
 Graf ton, Duchess of (Lady Os- 
 
 sory), 128, 131, 254. 
 Grafton, Duke of, 278. 
 Grant, Colonel F., 190. 
 Gravelot, 103. 
 Gray, Thomas, 32, 45, 56, 248, 
 
 271. 
 
 Greek Theatre, Brumoy's, 196. 
 Grenville, Mr., 117. 
 Grignan, Madame de, 260. 
 Grose. Francis, 201. 
 Grosley, 114. 
 Grosvenor, Lady, 254. 
 Gustavits Adolphus, Harte's, 
 
 196. 
 
 Haid, Johann Lorenz, 214. 
 Hailes, Lord, 48. 
 Hale, Sir Matthew, 194, 195. 
 Handel, George Frederick, 9$ 
 
 280. 
 
 Harding, Silvester, 205. 
 Hardwicke, Lord, 119. 
 Hargrave, General, 95. 
 Harley, Lady, 15. 
 Harley, Robert, 14. 
 H arrogate, 156. 
 Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, 34. 
 Hatchard, John, 200. 
 Hawkesworth, Dr., 10, 12. 
 Hawkins, John, 189, 191. 
 
 Hayman, Frank, 90, 100. 
 Herball, Gerarde's, 193. 
 Herrick, Robert, 239. 
 Hervey, Lady, 128. 
 Hey wood, Thomas, 196. 
 Highmore, Joseph, 61, 70. 
 Highmore, Miss, 71, 74, 77. 
 Highwaymen and Pyrates, 
 
 Lives of the, Johnson's, 200. 
 Hill, Aaron, 60, 76. 
 Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, 31, 75. 
 Hill, Dr. John, 288. 
 Hills, The Miss, 80. 
 Historic Doubts, Walpole's, 
 
 248. 
 Hogarth, William, 61, 67, 93, 
 
 100, 102, 105, 115, 120, 121, 
 
 168, 181, 182, 195, 231, 270. 
 Home, Earl of, 245. 
 Home, Mr. Herbert P., 207. 
 Horton, Mrs., 243. 
 Hough, Bishop, 100. 
 Htidibras, Butler's, 195. 
 Hudson, Thomas, 97, 102. 
 Hume, David, 249, 250. 
 Humphry Clinker t Smollett's, 
 
 138-167,281. 
 Hurd, Bishop, 100. 
 
 Irene, Johnson's, 44. 
 Irving, Mr. Henry, 193. 
 
 fackson, Dean, 202. 
 fenkins, Winifred, 140. 142. 
 fenyns, Soame, 48. 
 [ervas, Charles, 10, 88, 92. 
 John Buncle, Amory's, 229.
 
 3 oo 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 73, 75. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 31, 41, 
 42, 5. 5i. 53. 54, 56, 67, 73, 
 103, 144, 150, 161, 166, 187- 
 198, 275, 283. 
 
 Johnson, Mrs. Esther (Stella), 
 9, n, 13, 14, 17, 20, 27. 
 
 JOHNSON'S LIBRARY, 187-198. 
 
 Jonathan Wild, Fielding's, 
 180. 
 
 Jones, Captain David, 173. 
 
 Jones, Henry, 30. 
 
 Jones, the harp-player, 270. 
 
 Jones, William, 277. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 248. 
 
 JOURNAL TO STELLA, THE, 
 7-27. 
 
 Journey to the Western Is- 
 lands, Johnson's, 193. 
 
 Kaunitz, Prince, 261. 
 Kent, William, 130. 
 Kerry, Lady, 16. 
 King and the Miller of Mans- 
 field, The, Dodsley's, 40. 
 King, Dr. William, 9. 
 Knapton, 199. 
 
 La Fontaine, Eisen's, 211. 
 Lacy of Drury Lane, 276. 
 LADY MARY COKE, 233-268. 
 Lamballe, Princess de, 267. 
 Lancaster, John, 181, 182, 183. 
 Lang, Mr. Andrew, 199. 
 Laura, Tomb of, 258. 
 Lavater, J. G. C., 223. 
 Leicester, Earl of, 238, 240, 
 241. 
 
 Lenox, Mrs. Charlotte, 76, 196. 
 
 Leonidas, Glover's, 40. 
 
 Lepipre, Francis, 195. 
 
 Le Roy de Sainte-Croix, M., 
 86, 87, 92. 
 
 Lessing, G. E., 230. 
 
 Leven Water, 163, 166. 
 
 Leven Water, Ode to, Smol- 
 lett's, 1 66. 
 
 Lewis, Charles, 204. 
 
 Lichtenberg, G. C., 231. 
 
 Licbhabcr, Chodowiecki's, 229. 
 
 Ligne, Prince de, 108. 
 
 Lillie, Charles, the perfumer, 
 16. 
 
 Lilly, Captain Moses, 172. 
 
 Lintot, Bernard, 39, 199. 
 
 Lismahago, Obadiah, 140. 
 
 ' LITTLE ROUBILLAC,' 84-106. 
 
 Littleton, Mr. A. H., 91. 
 
 Lloyd, Robert, 85, 89. 
 
 Locke on the Understanding, 
 247. 
 
 Lockman, John, 39. 
 
 Loggan, the dwarf, 74. 
 
 Lomond, Loch, 163, 164, 165. 
 
 London Chronicle, 198. 
 
 Long, Mrs. Ann, 15. 
 
 Loo or Lu, 244. 
 
 Lowther, Hon. Mrs., 33, 34, 37, 
 
 38. 
 
 Lucian, Francklin's, 191. 
 Lysons, Rev. Samuel, 190. 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 48, 52, 73, 133. 
 
 McArdell, James, 63, 102, 125, 
 
 234- 
 Macaulay, Mrs., 247.
 
 General Index. 
 
 Macdonald, John, 248. 
 Mackenzie, Lady Elizabeth, 238. 
 Macmillan, Mr. Malcolm K., 
 
 66. 
 
 Macrobius, 197. 
 Malone, Edmond, 92. 
 Man of Taste, Bramston's, 
 
 280. 
 Manners, Paul Whitehead's, 
 
 42, 47- 
 
 Mansfield, Lord, 119. 
 March, Lord, 128, 242. 
 Maria Theresa, 262, 263, 265, 
 
 266, 267. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 267. 
 Martin, David, 101. 
 Martiniere's French Dictionary, 
 
 191. 
 
 Marybone Gardens, 270. 
 Masham, Mrs., 13, 15. 
 Mason, William, 247. 
 Maty, Dr. Matthew, 93, 123, 
 
 127. 
 
 Maupertuis, M. de, no. 
 Maurepas, Count de, 108. 
 Maxwell, Dr., 275. 
 Mead, Dr., 93, 195, 196. 
 Medicinal Dictionary, James's, 
 
 195. 
 
 Melford, Jerry, 142, 147. 
 Melford, Lydia, 142, 143, 146. 
 Melmoth, William, 30. 
 Melfomene, Ode to, Dodsley's, 
 
 49- 
 
 Menagiana, 188. 
 Metastasio, 280. 
 Millar, Andrew, 39, 199. 
 Minna von Barnhelnt, Les- 
 
 sing's, 218. 
 
 Montagu, George, 255, 257. 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
 
 235- 
 
 Montagu, Lord, 245. 
 Montagu, Mrs., 286. 
 Montesquieu, 109. 
 Moore, Edward, 30, 48. 
 Moray, Mr. Drummond, 268. 
 Moriarty, Mr. Gerald, 27. 
 Moritz, Pastor, 281. 
 Morris, Captain Charles, 29. 
 Moseley, Dr. B., 209. 
 Moser, Michael, 103. 
 Mozart, J. C. W., 288. 
 Mulso, Miss (Mrs. Chapone), 
 
 7', 77- 
 
 Mulso, Mr., 71. 
 Mulso, Mr., Jun., 72. 
 Murray, Dr. J. A. H.. 194. 
 Murray, Mr. Hallam, 92. 
 Muse in Livery, Dodsley's, 31, 
 
 34-37. 4- 
 Museum, Dodsley's, 43. 
 
 Nash, Beau, 73, 74, 144. 
 Neale, Elizabeth (' Patriot 
 
 Betty'), 246. 
 Nevers, Duke of, 134. 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 118, 119. 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 99. 
 Nightingale, Mr. and Mrs., 98, 
 
 103, 106. 
 
 Nisbett, Mrs., 69. 
 Nivernais, Duke of, 107-137. 
 NIVERNAIS IN ENGLAND, 107- 
 
 '37- 
 
 Noble, Edward, 200. 
 Northcote, James, 97, 105.
 
 302 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Nouvelle Helo'tse, Rousseau's 
 
 138, 211, 229. 
 
 Occupations des Dames, Cho- 
 
 dowiecki's, 230. 
 Oeconomy of Human Life, 45, 
 
 46. 
 
 Onslow, Mr. Speaker, 73. 
 Orford, Lord, 277. 
 Orrery, Lord, 48. 
 Osborne, 193, 199, 203. 
 Ossory, Lady, 128. 
 Ossory, Lord, 248. 
 
 Pamela, Richardson's, 59, 65, 
 
 70, 75, 138. 
 
 Parfilage, The Pastime of, 262. 
 Parry, John, the blind harper, 
 
 102. 
 
 Passe-dix, Chodowiecki's, 215. 
 Pate, Will, the learned woollen- 
 
 draper, 16. 
 
 Patrick (Swift's servant), 17-20. 
 Payne, Olive, 199. 
 Payne, Roger, 203. 
 Payne, Thomas, 199-202. 
 Payne, Thomas, Jun., 203, 208. 
 Pelham, Miss Fanny, 128, 129, 
 
 131, 254. 
 
 Pembroke, Lord, 116, 131. 
 'Percy. Lucien,' 107, 134. 
 Perspective, Brook Taylor's, 
 
 195. 
 
 Peterborough, Earl of, 14. 
 Pctrarca, Garrick's, 188. 
 Philips, Ambrose, 15. 
 Phillips, Sir Richard, 289. 
 
 Philobiblon, Richard of Bury's 
 
 187. 
 Piccadilly Bookmen, A. L. 
 
 Humphreys', 200. 
 Pitt. Miss Anne, 128, 130, 246. 
 Pitt, William (Lord Chatham), 
 
 118, 119. 
 
 Plays, Old, Dodsley's, 44. 
 Pliny, 136. 
 Pliny's Letters, 135. 
 Poems by Sez'eral Hands, 
 
 Dodsley's, 44. 
 Polite Conversation, Swift's, 
 
 36. 
 Polite Learning, Goldsmith's, 
 
 53- 
 Pompadour, Madame de, 108- 
 
 121. 
 
 Pond, Arthur, 97. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 38, 39, 41, 43, 
 49, 56, 86,92, 105, 251,253. 
 
 Pote, Joseph, of Eton, 203. 
 
 Poyntz, Mr., 113, 116. 
 
 Preceptor, Dodsley's, 43. 
 
 Price, Thomas, 282. 
 
 Prideaux, Miss S. T., 188. 
 
 Primitive Origination of Man- 
 kind, Male's, 194. 
 
 Prior, Matthew, 15, 35, 55, 
 
 93. I 2 5- 
 
 PRISONERS' CHAPLAIN, THE, 
 68-186. 
 
 Pritchard, Mrs., 40. 
 Proposals of Marriage, Chodo- 
 wiecki's, 229. 
 Publick Register, Dodsley's, 
 
 43- 
 
 Pursuits of Literature, Ma- 
 thias's, 201.
 
 General Index. 
 
 303 
 
 'Q, Old,' 242. 
 
 Queensberry, Duchess of, 165. 
 
 Quin, James, 148, 149. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, 125, 233. 
 
 RANELAGH, 269-289. 
 
 Ranelagh House, 272. 
 
 Rasselas, Johnson's, 53, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Ray, the naturalist, 93. 
 
 Revolution in Sweden, Sheri- 
 dan's, 188. 
 
 Rex et Pontifex, Dodsley's, 46. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 97, 100, 
 101, 103. 
 
 Ricciardetto, Fortiguerra's, 135. 
 
 RICHARDSON AT HOME, 57- 
 
 83- 
 
 Richardson, Mrs., 67. 
 Rietti, 276. 
 Roach, Captain, 175. 
 Rockingham, Lady, 131. 
 Rode, Bernhard, 214. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 92, 280. 
 Roman History, Goldsmith's, 
 
 191. 
 
 Roubillac, L. F., 84-106. 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 138. 
 Russell, Lord William, 117. 
 Rysbrack, Michael, 86, 104. 
 
 Sadler's Wells, 154, 270. 
 Saint Ctzcilia's Day, Burlesque 
 
 Ode on, Thornton's, 283. 
 Sainte-Beuve, M., 135. 
 Saint-George, the fencer, 289. 
 St. John, Mrs., 14. 
 
 Saintsbury, Mr. George, 36. 
 Sancho, Ignatius, 202. 
 Sandys, Lord, 278. 
 Saunders, Sir Edmund, 75. 
 Savage, Richard, 40. 
 Scheemakers, 104. 
 Schopenhauer, Johanna, 221. 
 Scott, Lady Frances, 245. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 23, 233, 234, 
 
 2 35- 
 Sebaldus Nothanker, Nicolai's, 
 
 229. 
 
 Seilern, Count, 261. 
 Select Fables, Dodsley's, 53. 
 Selwyn Correspondence, The, 
 
 2 35- 
 
 Servitude, Dodsley's, 33. 
 
 Sevigne, Madame de, 136, 258, 
 260, 261. 
 
 Shakespeare Polio, Johnson's, 
 1632, 193. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 98. 
 
 Shannon, Lord, 100. 
 
 Shenstone, William, 52, 53. 
 
 Sherlock, Bishop, 42. 
 
 She Stoops to Conquer, Gold- 
 smith's, 191. 
 
 Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 179. 
 
 Simiane, Madame dc, 258. 
 
 Sir Charles Grandison, Rich- 
 ardson's, 59, 63, 70, 75, 138, 
 
 139. 
 Sir John Cockle at Court, 
 
 Dodsley's, 40. 
 Skeggs, Matthew, 283. 
 Smollett, Mr. Commissioner, 
 
 163. 
 
 Smollett, Tobias, 139, 141, 281. 
 Somerset, Lady, 15.
 
 304 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Spence, Joseph, 41, 43, 54, 56. 
 Spencer, Earl, 117, 207, 209. 
 Spencer, Lady, 206. 
 Stanhope, Philip, 109. 
 Stanhope, Philip, 279. 
 Steele, Richard, 15. 
 STELLA, THE JOURNAL TO, 
 
 7-27. 
 
 Sterne, Dean, 12. 
 Sterne, Laurence, 248. 
 Stewart, Lady Susan, 128. 
 Stormont, Lord, 261. 
 Stothard, Thomas, 211. 
 Strafford, Lady, 238, 239, 246. 
 Strolling Actresses, Hogarth's, 
 
 283. 
 
 Stuart, Lady Louisa, 235, 236. 
 Sublime and Beautiful, 
 
 Burke's, 52, 106. 
 Sullivan, Luke, 102, 130. 
 Sully's Memoirs, 196. 
 Swift, Dean, 10. 
 Swift, Jonathan, 7-27. 
 
 Talbot, Miss, 77. 
 Tedder, Mr. Henry R., 45. 
 Temple, Lord, 119, 255, 256. 
 Tenducci, 279. 
 Thackeray, W. M., 72. 
 Theobald, Lewis, 193. 
 Theodore of Corsica, 29. 
 Thomond, Lord, 117. 
 Thoresby, Ralph, 201. 
 Thornton, Bonnel, 283. 
 Tibullus, Grainger's, 197. 
 Told, Silas, 168-186. 
 Tom Jones, Fielding's, 79-81. 
 Tonson the Elder, 39, 199. 
 
 TOPOGRAPHY OF HUMPHRY 
 CLINKER, THE, 138-167. 
 
 Torre, the fire-worker, 271. 
 
 Townshend, Charles, 126. 
 
 Townshend, Lady, 278. 
 
 Toy Sliop, Dodsley's, 38. 
 
 ' Traineaux, Course de,' 263, 
 264. 
 
 Trifles, Dodsley's, 46. 
 
 Trusler, Dr., 170, 271. 
 
 Tucker, Captain Timothy, 173. 
 
 Two PAYNES, THE, 199-210. 
 
 Tyers, Jonathan, 90, 91, 95. 
 
 Upcott, William, 195. 
 
 Vanhomrigh, Esther, 23. 
 
 Vanhomrigh, Mrs., 18, 23. 
 
 Vanity of Human Wishes, 
 Johnson's, 44, 193. 
 
 Vaucluse, Fountain of, 259. 
 
 Vauxhall Gardens, 152. 
 
 Vence, M. de, 258. 
 
 Vertue, George, 10. 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, Gold- 
 smith's, 229. 
 
 Villars, Due de, 258, 259. 
 
 Villars, Marechal de, 107. 
 
 Viry, Count de, 128. 
 
 Viry, Madame de, 251. 
 
 Voltaire, 216, 247, 257. 
 
 Wacht-Parade in Potsdam, 
 
 Chodowiecki's, 228. 
 Wade, Marshal, 95. 
 Waldegrave, Lady, 243.
 
 General Index. 
 
 305 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 48, 54, 56, 
 86, 89, 91, 126, 128, 129, 148, 
 193, 201, 234, 236, 249, 254, 
 255, 256, 268, 276, 285, 287, 
 289. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Edward, 86, 89, 91. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 34. 
 
 Warburton, Miss Jane, 237. 
 
 Ware, Isaac, 102. 
 
 Warren, Admiral Sir Peter, 98, 
 99. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 56. 
 
 Weise, Professor, 225. 
 
 Wesley, John, 158, 168, 170, 
 180, 186. 
 
 Wharncliffe, Lord, 235. 
 
 Wharton, Dr. Thomas, 32. 
 
 Wharton, Duke of, 14. 
 
 Whiston, William, 73. 
 
 White Conduit House, The, 269. 
 
 Whitehead, Paul, 42. 
 
 Wier, Mrs., 205. 
 
 Wier, Richard, 205. 
 
 Wilde's Closing Years of Swift, 
 20, 27, 92. 
 
 Wilkie, David, 264. 
 
 William Tell, Chodowiecki's, 
 
 228. 
 
 Willoughby, the naturalist, 93. 
 Wilton, Joseph, 100. 
 Wines of the Ancients, Barry's, 
 
 204. 
 
 Wood, Robert, 124. 
 Wood, the Bath architect, 144. 
 Wordsworth, William, 99. 
 World, The, 48. 
 Woronzoff, Count, 128. 
 Worrall, Rev. Mr., 24. 
 
 Yarmouth, Lady, 116, 243. 
 York, Edward Augustus, Duke 
 
 of, 2 43> 2 44> 2 54- 
 Young, Dr. Edward, 30, 67, 72, 
 76. 
 
 Zaehnsdorf, Mr. Joseph W., 
 205. 
 
 Ziethen Sleeping, Chodo- 
 wiecki's, 228.
 
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