Memoir of John Murray
, vol. i. p. 212). In the words "predilection for poetry" Byron probably refers to the phrase in the Regent's letter to the Duke of York (February 13, 1812): "I have no predilections to indulge, no resentments to gratify." Moore, in the
Twopenny Post-bag
, twice fastens on the phrase. In "The Insurrection of the Papers", a dream suggested by Lord Castlereagh's speech— "It would be impossible for His Royal Highness to disengage his person from the accumulating pile of papers that encompassed it"—he writes:
"But, oh, the basest of defections!
His Letter about 'predilections'—
His own dear Letter, void of grace,
Now flew up in its parent's face! "
And again, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":
"I am proud to declare I have no predilections,
My heart is a sieve, where some scatter'd affections
Are just danc'd about for a moment or two,
And the finer they are, the more sure to run through."
The grandfather of Beau Brummell, who was in business in Bury Street, St. James's, also let lodgings. One of his lodgers, Charles Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, obtained for his landlord's son, William Brummell, a clerkship in the Treasury. The Treasury clerk became so useful to Lord North that he obtained several lucrative offices; and, dying in 1794, left £65,000 in the hands of trustees for division among his three children. The youngest of these was George Bryan Brummell (1788-1840), the celebrated Beau.