FOOTNOTES:
[3] In the very amusing Letters of Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, recently published, we find the following spirited and lively sketch of Maclaine.
“I have been in town for a day or two, and heard no conversation but about M’Laine, a fashionable highwayman, who is just taken, and who robbed me among others; as lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, &c. He took an odd booty from the Scotch earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidable upon the justice’s table. He was taken by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. His history is very particular, for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero, that he cries and begs, and I believe, if lord Eglinton had been in any luck, might have been robbed of his own blunderbuss. His father was an Irish dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the Hague. He himself was a grocer, but losing a wife that he loved extremely about two years ago, and by whom he has one little girl, he quitted his business with two hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary, my other friend, whom he has impeached, but who is not taken. M’Laine had a lodging in St. James’ street over against White’s, and another at Chelsea; Plunket one in Jermyn street; and their faces are as known about St. James’ as any gentleman’s who lives in that quarter, and who perhaps goes upon the road too. M’Laine had a quarrel at Putney bowling-green two months ago with an officer, whom he challenged for disputing his crank; but the captain declined, till M’Laine should produce a certificate of his nobility, which he has just received. If he had escaped a month longer, he might have heard of Mr. Chute’s genealogical expertness, and come hither to the College of Arms for a certificate. There was a wardrobe of clothes, three and twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss, found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept mistress. As I conclude he will suffer, and wish him no ill, I don’t care to have his idea, and am almost single in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford, at the head of half White’s, went the first day: his aunt was crying over him: as soon as they were withdrawn, she said to him, knowing they were of White’s, ‘My dear, what did the lords say to you? have you ever been concerned with any of them?’ Was it not admirable? what a favorable idea people must have of White’s!—and what if White’s should not deserve a touch better! But the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe: I call them Polly and Lucy, and asked them if he did not sing, ‘Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around.’”