her slender income. "how fatal has your eloquence proved to poor Mrs. Horneck!" "How fatal her own folly!" replied he; "Ods my life, must one swear to the truth of a song."

"Dear Sir," said I, when we met next,

To Wraxall's remark that Burke's Irish accent was as strong as if he had never quitted the banks of the Shannon, she adds, 66 very true." The description of him as "gentle, mild, and amenable to argument in private society," is qualified by, "not very;" and in the sentence, "infinitely more respectable than Fox, he was nevertheless far less amiable," she proposes to replace "amiable" by "respected."

"It is difficult to do justice to the peculiar species of ugliness which characterized his (Dunning) person and figure, although he did not labor under any absolute deformity of shape or limb.". Wraxall.

Note. Sir Joshua alone could give a good portrait of Dunning. His picture of Lord Shelburne, Lord Ashburton, and Colonel Barré, has surely no superior. The characters so admirable, the likenesses so strong."

Of the first Lord Loughborough she writes:

Wedderburn was particularly happy when speaking of Franklyn, who (he said) the Ministers had wantonly and foolishly made their enemy. An enemy so inveterate, said he, so merciless, and so implacable, that he resembles Zanga the Moor, in Young's tragedy of the "Revenge," who at length ends his hellish plot by saying:

"I forged the letter, and disposed the picture,

I hated, I despised, and I destroy."

The quotation struck every one.*

Benjamin Franklyn, who, by bringing a spark from Heaven, fulfilled the prophecies he pretended to disbelieve; Franklyn, who wrote a profane addition to the Book of Genesis, who hissed on the colonies against their parent country, who taught men to despise their Sovereign and insult their Redeemer; who did all the mischief in his power while living, and at last died, I think, in America; was beside all the rest, a plagiarist, as it appears; and

* Franklin never forgave this speech, and by making it Wedderburne aggravated the very mischief he was deprecating.

the curious epitaph made on himself, and as we long believed, by himself, was, I am informed, borrowed without acknowledgment, from one, upon Jacob Tonson, to whom it was more appropriate, comparing himself to an old book, eaten by worms; which on some future day, however, should be new edited, after undergoing revisal and correction by the Author.

There are some exquisitely pretty stanzas, very little known, written by one Mr. Dale, upon Franklyn's invention of a lamp, in which the flame was forced downward, burning in a new discovered method, contrary to nature. I had a rough copy of the verses, and they lay loose in the second volume of "Retrospection," but I suppose they dropped out, and I lost them, or they should have been written down here.

I cannot trust my memory to do them justice. stanzas praise his philosophical powers: —

"But to covet political fame,

Was in him a degrading ambition;
'T was a spark that from Lucifer came,
And first kindled the blaze of sedition.

"May not Candor then write on his urn,
Here alas! lies a noted inventor;
Whose flame up to Heaven ought to burn,
But inverted, descends to the centre." *

The first

"Like his nephew, Mr. Fox, the Duke (of Richmond) did not spare the King, when addressing the House of Lords; and he was considered as peculiarly obnoxious at St. James's.". Wraxall.

Note. He never forgave the preference given by the King's immediate advisers, when there was question of a Consort to the English Throne, where he hoped to see his beautiful sister (Lady Sarah) seated in vain! Lord Bute was too quick in providing a much safer partner.

* It is strange that she forgot to mention Turgot's famous motto for the bust of Franklin, by Houdon:

"Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."

Franklin's own criticism on it was that the thunder remained where he found it, and that more than a million of men co-operated with him in shaking off the monarchical rule of Great Britain.

"Burke exclaimed, that he (Pitt) was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.' Wraxall.

Note. Not quite. The old block's head was beautiful, and the eyes in it brilliant with intelligence.

Note. -I have seen Sheridan (the father of R. B.) on the stage in former days, acting Horatio in Rowe's "Fair Penitent," to Garrick's Lothario; but of his powers as a lecturer, Mr. Murphy gave the most ludicrous account, taking him off with incomparable powers of mimicry, — quite unequalled.

Note. He (Lord Mulgrave) was a haughty, spirited man, whom I should not suspect of any possible meanness, for any possible advantage. Rough as a boatswain, proud as a strong feeling of aristocracy could make him, and fond of coarse merriment, approaching to ill-manners, he was in society a dangerous converser one never knew what he would say next. Holla, Burke! (I heard him crying out on one occasion.) What, you are rioting in puns now Johnson is away." Burke was indignant, and ready with a reply. But Lord Mulgrave drowned all in storms of laughter.

"Why,

In reference to the "Optat Ephippia Bos piger" story of Lord Falmouth and Pitt, told by Wraxall, she writes:

I have heard my father relate the story somewhat differently, but in substance the same. He said some wag chalked the words on his (Lord Falmouth's) door, and that seeing them he exclaimed, "He would give £100 to know who wrote them." The first friend he met said, "Give me the money, Horace wrote them." Then comes the next mistake, "Horace! a dog, after all his obligations to me," &c.*

A similar story to this was related to me in Italy. Cardinal Zanelli was pasquinaded at Rome for his ingratitude to the Dauphin of France, whose influence, exerted in his favor, had procured him the dignity of Eminenza. Zanelli's coat armor was a vine; the statue exhibited these words:

"Plantavi Vineam, et fecit labruscas."

The enraged Cardinal, little skilled in Scripture learning

* i. e. Horace Walpole. Lord Falmouth's family name was Boscawen, and he had just been soliciting the Garter.

actually promised a reward to whoever would tell who wrote it. Next day Pasquin claimed the reward for himself, having marked under the words, 40th chapter of Isaiah.

Note.In this memorable year, 1782, the "Atlas" man-ofwar was launched, a three-decker of eminent beauty. We all know that the figure at the ship's head corresponds with the name, and I was informed that Hercules's substitute was a most magnificent fellow, fit to support the globe. When, however, they came to ship her bowsprit, he stood so high, that something was found necessary to be done; and the rough carpenter, waiting no orders, cut part of the globe away which stood upon the hero's shoulders. When it was examined afterwards, the part lost to our possession was observed to be America. Sailors remarked the accident as ominous, and the event has not tended to lessen their credulity.

When Montcalm was dying of his wounds in the great battle which deprived us of General Wolfe, "Well, well!" said he, "England has torn North America from us, but she will one day tear herself from the mother country. Once free from the French yoke, she will endure no other."

My father said those were his very words: my father died in the year 1762, but he always predicted American Independence.

"During his elder brother's life, when only Lord Harry Powlett, he (the Duke of Bolton) had served in the royal navy, where, however, he acquired no laurels, and he was commonly supposed to be the Captain Whiffle' portrayed by Smollet, in his Roderick Random."" Wraxall.

Note. I don't know whether this Lord Harry Powlett, or an uncle of his wearing the same name, was the person of whom my mother used to relate a ludicrous anecdote. Some lady with whom she had been well acquainted, and to whom his lordship was observed to pay uncommon attentions, requested him to procure for her a pair of small monkeys from East India, I forget the kind. Lord Harry, happy to oblige her, wrote immediately, depending on the best services of a distant friend, whom he had essentially served. Writing a bad hand, however, and spelling

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what he wrote for with more haste than correctness, he charged the gentleman to send him over two monkeys, but the word being written too, and all the characters of one height, 100,- what was poor Lord Harry Powlett's dismay, when a letter came to hand, with the news that he would receive fifty monkeys by such a ship, and fifty more by the next conveyance, making up the hundred according to his lordship's commands!

Note. They said Pitt and Legge went together like Cæsar and Bibulus, and so they did; all the attention paid the first, and none to the last-named consul.

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Note. The following epigram was handed about to ridicule Sir Thomas Rumbold: ·

Note.

"When Mackreith lived 'mong Arthur's crew,

He cried, Here, Rumbold, black my shoe;

And Rumbold answered, Yea, Bob.

But when returned from Asia's land,

He proudly scorned that mean command,

And boldly answered, Nay, Bob (Nabob)."

On this occasion (victory over De Grasse in 1782) Rodney is said to have taught them the method of breaking the line, by which I have heard it asserted that Lord Nelson won all his victories by sea, and Buonaparte by land; but which is a still stranger thing, Lord Glenbervie told me (and I believe him) that Epaminondas won the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea by the same manœuvre 2,178 years ago.

6

"The Princess of Franca Villa was commonly supposed to have bestowed on him (Lord Rockingham) the same fatal present, which the Belle Ferroniere' conferred on Francis the First, King of France; and which, as we learn from Burnet,* the Countess of Southesk was said to have entailed on James, Duke of York, afterwards James the Second." Wraxall.

In Italy it was supposed to have been the succession powder mingled with chocolate whilst in the cake, not in the liquid we drink. Acqua Toffana, and succession powder (polvere per successione) were administered, as I have heard, with certain although ill-understood effects. Lord Rockingham desired to be opened after his death, and was so.

*The story is told in Grammont's Memoirs.