LORD HERVEY’S WIT.
Horace Walpole records Lord Hervey’s memorable saying about Lord Burlington’s pretty villa at Chiswick, now the Duke of Devonshire’s, that it was “too small to inhabit, and too large to hang to your watch;” and Lady Louisa Stuart has preserved a piece of dandyism in eating, which even Beau Brummell might have envied—“When asked at dinner whether he would have some beef, he answered, ‘Beef? oh, no! faugh! don’t you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things?’ ”—The man that said these things was the successful lover of the prettiest maid of honour to the Princess of Wales—the person held up to everlasting ridicule by Pope—the vice-chamberlain whose attractions engaged the affections of the daughter of the Sovereign he served; and the peer whose wit was such that it “charmed the charming Mary Montague.”