-

Note. So it is mine. I well remember when they were most talked of- and N. Seward said, "How the arrows of Junius were sure to wound, and likely to stick." "Yes, Sir," replied Dr. Johnson; "yet let us distinguish between the venom of the shaft, and the vigour of the bow." At which expression Mr. Hamilton's countenance fell in a manner that to me betrayed the author. Johnson repeated the expression in his next pamphlet and Junius wrote no more.

Note. Lord Thurlow was storming one day at his old valet, who thought little of a violence with which he had been long familiar, and "Go to the devil, do,” cries the enraged master; "Go, I say, to the devil." "Give

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me a character, my Lord," replied the fellow, drily; people like, you know, to have characters from their acquaintance."

"The expression of his (the first Lord 'Liverpool's) countenance, I find it difficult to describe."- Wraxall. Note. It was very peculiar, but he was a delightful companion in social life. I know few people whose conversation was more pleasingly diversified with fact and sentiment, narration and reflection, than that of the first Lord Liverpool.

"Charles Fox,' observed he (Mr. Bootby) is unquestionably a man of first-rate talents, but so deficient in judgment, as never to have succeeded in any object during his whole life. He loved only three things; women, play, and politics. Yet, at no period, did he

He

ever form a creditable connexion with a woman. lost his whole fortune at the gaming-table; and with the exception of about eleven months, he has remained always in Opposition.' It is difficult to dispute the justice of this portrait.' Wraxall.

Note. He preferred Mrs. (now Lady) Crewe, to all women living, but Lady Crewe never lost an atom of character I mean female honour. She loved high play and dissipation, but was no sensualist.*

* Mrs. Piozzi was not personally acquainted with Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Crewe, who had no taste for blue-stocking parties. Her social celebrity was won in a different circle, and belongs to a later period. Far from being addicted to play, she hated the very sight of a card, and her mind was of too refined and active a kind to be wasted in dissipation. Towards the end of 1787 she paid a visit of some duration to Paris, and wrote a series of letters describing what she saw, heard, and felt with the freedom and minuteness of a private diary. A copious selection from these is now in the possession of her grand-daughter, the Honourable Mrs. Monckton Milnes, who has kindly permitted me to read them; and they contain ample evidence of the many estimable qualities of head and heart with which the writer is traditionally reported to have been endowed. The society in which she moved comprised all the leading personages of the French court and capital, and her remarks on people and things possess an historic value, as confirming, modifying, or amplifying the popular notions of the epoch. Few books have been received with greater interest, or read with greater pleasure, than the Journal of Mrs. St. George, recently printed for private circulation by her distinguished son, the Dean of Westminster; and an equally flattering reception might safely be guaranteed to the letters of Lady Crewe. I am tempted to give a single specimen: "Mons. Necker's daughter, married to the Swedish ambassador, was at this ball too, and Madlle. Bertin (the Victorine of the day) it seems had told her that she had prepared a dress which would at once express, by its ornaments, her father's genius and her mother's virtues. This

Note. Lord Sandwich came very early into a very small paternal estate; and his first entrance into life was marked by an apparently warm disposition towards

curious speech of the famous milliner is repeated everywhere. She may have verified her assertion; but, if so, genius and virtue are expressed in a language I do not understand."

For the following verses, which have never been printed before, I am also indebted to Mrs. Monckton Milnes:

To Mrs. Crewe, by C. J. Fox.

"Where the loveliest expression to features is joined,
By Nature's most delicate pencil designed;
Where blushes unbidden, and smiles without art,
Speak the softness and feeling that dwell in the heart t;
Where in manners enchanting no blemish we trace,
But the soul keeps the promise we had from the face;
Sure philosophy, reason, and coldness must prove
Defences unequal to shield us from love.
Then tell me, mysterious enchantress, oh tell,
By what wonderful art, by what magical spell,
My heart is so fenced, that for once I am wise,
And gaze without rapture on Amoret's eyes:
That my wishes, which never were bounded before,
Are here bounded by friendship and ask for no more?
Is 't Reason? No, that my whole life will belie,
For who so at variance as Reason and I?

Is't Ambition that fills up each chink of my heart,
Nor allows any softer sensation a part?

Oh no! for in this all the world must agree

One folly was never sufficient for me.

Is

my mind by distress too intensely employed,

By pleasure relaxed, or by vanity cloyed?

For alike in this only enjoyment and pain,

Both slacken the springs of those nerves which they strain.
That I've felt each reverse that from fortune can flow,
That I've tasted each bliss that the happiest know,

Has still been the whimsical fate of my life,
Where Anguish and Joy have been ever at strife.

virtue. He was, however, avowedly poor and proud; said that Sir Robert Walpole possessed no powers of gaining him over from the opposition party, whilst he was contented to live with the woman of his heart in a small house somewhere about Westminster, and walk to the House arm-in-arm with one friend, for whose opinions he had the highest deference. Sir Robert laughed, and only said, "We shall see how all this ends."

The Countess, though forty-four years old when Lord Sandwich came of age and could not be persuaded to forbear pursuing her, brought him a son, which cost her future health, and with her health that flexibility of temper, which before marriage he deemed her possessed of. But,

"To win a man when all our pains succeed,
The way to keep him is a task indeed."

Virtue and sense were soon found insufficient, joined to a faded form and fretted mind, wherein resided. sullen disapprobation of all that frolic playfulness to which her lord was naturally prone, and which his

But tho' versed in th' extremes both of pleasure and pain,
I am still but too ready to feel them again.

If then, for this once in my life I am free,

And escape from a snare might catch wiser than me,

'Tis that beauty alone but imperfectly charms,

For tho' brightness may dazzle, 'tis kindness that warms:

As on suns in the winter with pleasure we gaze,

But feel not their warmth tho' their splendour we praise :

So beauty our just admiration may claim,

But Love, and Love only, the heart can inflame.

interested friend taught him to consider as innocent, even when combined with late hours, loose company, and sometimes higher play than he could afford; although Lord Sandwich never was a rated gamester like Fox, or Fitzpatrick, &c. Ill received at home, however, his pleasures drew him thence, and they growing hourly more and more expensive, as his friend's amusements were all placed to his account.

The Minister felt happy to provide for both, and this young nobleman owed to his wife's stern virtue, and his companion's insidious indulgences, a character no man but Churchill could pourtray no man, I hope besides himself, deserve:

"Is God's most holy name to be profan'd?
His Word rejected, and His laws arraign'd:
His servants scorn'd as men who idly dream'd,

His service laugh'd at; His dread Son blasphem'd ?

Is science by a scoundrel to be led?

Are States to totter on a drunkard's head?

Search earth, search hell, the Devil cannot find.
An agent like Lothario to his mind."

The end of such men (with regard to this life) is safer to imagine than describe. When talents, though they can't protect, reproach their mad possessors, and conscience, which congratulates the good man's exit, lighting his last steps with her hallowed taper:

"Turns to a fury with a flaming torch,

Quickly extinguished in mephitic gloom!"

Oh let us, to use a phrase of Shakespear, sweeten our imaginations: and forgetting such characters,