[169] It was his good sense rather than his inclination that made him condemn one with whom he had many points of sympathy. Speaking of the quarrel of Johnson and Chesterfield, he says, 'The friendly patronage [i. e. of the earl] was returned with ungrateful rudeness by the proud pedant; and men smiled, without being surprised, at seeing a bear worry his dancing-master.'
[170] 'Jephson's Count of Narbonne has been more admired than any play I remember to have appeared these many years. It is still [Jan., 1782] acted with success to very full houses' (Malone to Charlemont, Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Rept., App., Pt. x., 1891, p. 395). Malone wrote the epilogue.
[171] 'Silly Dr. Goldsmith' he calls him to Cole in April, 1773. 'Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts,' he says again to Mason in October, 1776.
[172] The rules of the so-called Female Coterie in Albemarle Street, together with the names of the members, are given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1770, pp. 414-5. Besides Walpole and Miss Lloyd, Fox, Conway, Selwyn, the Waldegraves, the Damers, and many other 'persons of quality' belonged to it.
[173] The Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, Lord Ossory's brother. He afterwards became a General, and Secretary at War. At this time he was a captain in the Grenadier Guards. As a littérateur he had written The Bath Picture; or, a Slight Sketch of its Beauties; and he was later one of the chief contributors to the Rolliad. Besides being the life-long friend of Fox, he was a highly popular wit and man-of-fashion. Lord Ossory put him above Walpole and Selwyn; and Lady Holland is said to have thought him the most agreeable person she had ever known. He died in 1813.
[174] One of the three beautiful sisters painted by Reynolds,—Elizabeth Laura, afterwards Viscountess Chewton; Charlotte Maria, afterwards Countess of Euston; and Anne Horatia, who married Captain Hugh Conway. 'Sir Joshua Reynolds gets avaricious in his old age. My picture of the young ladies Waldegrave is doubtless very fine and graceful, but it cost me 800 guineas' (Walpoliana, ii. 157).
[175] He was not successful as regards Hogarth, whose widow was sorely and justly wounded by his coarse treatment of Sigismunda, which is said to have been a portrait of herself. The picture is now in the National Gallery.
[176] Miss Hawkins (Anecdotes, etc., 1822, p. 103) did not think highly of these performances: 'Unless the proportions of the human figure are of no importance in drawing it, these 'Beauclerk drawings' can be looked on only with disgust and contempt.' But she praises the gipsies hereafter mentioned (p. [260] n.) as having been copied by Agnes Berry.
[178] The exact sum was £40,555. Cipriani and West were the valuers. Most of the family portraits were reserved; but so many of the pictures were presents that it is not easy to estimate the actual profit over their first cost to the original owner.