[1531] Lord Umbra may have stood for a dozen insignificant peers who had the ribbon of some order. Sir Billy was Sir William Yonge, who was made a Knight of the Bath when the order was revived in May, 1725. "Without having done anything," says Lord Hervey, "out of the common track of a ductile courtier, and a parliamentary tool, his name was proverbially used to express everything pitiful, corrupt, and contemptible." His one talent was a fluency which sounded like eloquence, and meant nothing, and this ready flow of specious language, unaccompanied by solid reasoning or conviction, and always exerted on behalf of his patron, Walpole, rendered his unconditional subserviency conspicuous.
[1532] Mr. Croker suggests that Gripus and his wife may be Mr. Wortley Montagu and Lady Mary. Pope accused them both of greed for money.
[1533] Oldham:
The greatest, bravest, wittiest of mankind.—Bowles.
[1534] From Cowley, Translation of Virgil:
Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name.—Hurd.
[1535] This resembles some lines in Roscommon's Essay:
That wretch, in spite of his forgotten rhymes,
Condemned to live to all succeeding times.—Wakefield.
Pope's examples would not bear out his language unless Bacon and Cromwell were generally reprobated, whereas both have distinguished champions and innumerable adherents.
[1536] MS.: