[33] Jarchius has taken the trouble to give us a list of those clubs, or academies [i. e., the academies of Italy], which amount to five hundred and fifty, each distinguished by somewhat whimsical in the name. The academicians of Bologna, for instance, are divided into the Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, Ociosi, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, etc. There are few of these who have not published their Transactions, and scarce a member who is not looked upon as the most famous man in the world, at home.—Goldsmith, in The Bee, No. vi., for 10 November, 1759.
[34] Walpole to West, no date, 1739.
[35] Dr. Doran ('Mann' and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1876, i. 2) describes this connection as 'a distant cousinship.'
[36] Shortly after Lady Walpole's death, Sir Robert Walpole married his mistress, Maria Skerret, who died 4 June, 1738, leaving a daughter, Horace Walpole's half-sister, subsequently Lady Mary Churchill.
[37] Walpole to Conway, 25 September, 1740.
[38] Letters, etc., of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ii. 325.
[39] Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, 2nd edn., 1858, p. xxiii.
[40] This rests upon the authority of a shadowy Mr. Roberts of the Pell-office, who told it to Isaac Reed in 1799, more than half a century after the event. The subject is discussed at some length, but of necessity inconclusively, by Mr. D. C. Tovey in his interesting Gray and his Friends, 1890. Mr. Tovey thinks that Ashton was obscurely connected with the quarrel.
[41] Walpole to Mason, 2 March, 1773. The letters to Mason were first printed in 1851 by Mitford. But Pinkerton, in the Walpoliana, i. 95, had reported much the same thing. 'The quarrel between Gray and me [Walpole] arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the university, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, etc., while I was for perpetual balls and plays. The fault was mine.'
[42] Juvenis, non tam generis nobilitate, ac paterni nominis gloriâ, quam ingenio, doctrinâ, et virtute propriâ illustris. Ille vero haud citius fere in patriam reversus est, quam de studiis meis, ut consuerat, familiariter per literas quærens, mihi ultro de copiâ suâ, quicquid ad argumenti mei rationem, aut libelli ornamentum pertineret, pro arbitrio meo utendum obtulit.—Pref. ad Germana quædam Antiq. Monumenta, etc., p. 6 (quoted in Mitford's Corr. of Walpole and Mason, 1851, i. x-xi).