The North Briton was not of Mrs. Scott’s opinion with regard to Johnson’s merits. “I hope,” says Wilkes (No. 11, August 14th), “Johnson is a writer of reputation, because, as a writer, he has just got a pension of £300 per annum. I hope, too, that he has become a friend to this constitution and the family on the throne, now he is thus nobly provided for; but I know he has much to unwrite, more to unsay, before he will be forgiven by the true friends of the present illustrious family for what he has been writing and saying for many years.”
In the last-named month, occurred that great event, the birth of “the first gentleman in Europe.” Mrs. Scott thus speaks of mother and child:
August 13, 1762. Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson, Rome.—“On Thursday, the queen was brought to bed of a son, and both, we are told, are well. Many rejoiced, but none more than those who have been detained during all this hot weather in town to be present at the ceremony. Among them, no one was more impatient than the Chancellor, who, not considering any part of the affair as a point of law, thought his presence very unnecessary. His lordship and the Archbishop must have had a fatiguing office; for, as she was brought to bed at 7 in the morning, they must have attended her labour all night, for fear they should be absent at the critical moment of delivery. I wish they were not too much out of humour before the prince was born, to be able to welcome it properly.... The lady’s person is not the only thing that displeased. There is a coarseness and vulgarity of manners that disgust much more. She does not seem to choose to fashion herself at all.... Ned Scott’s wife is to suckle the Prince of Wales—an employment which in all probability will prove as good nourishment to her own family as to the royal babe; for her numerous offspring can scarcely fail of being provided for after she has served in such an office.
“... Peace is being much talked of, tho’ the terms are unknown. The Duke of Bedford is spoken of as the person who is to go to Paris to transact it. I hope much will not depend on secret articles; for I think he gave a proof, when old Bussy was here, that his old nurse could not be a greater blab!”
The chancellor who was present on the above occasion was “cursing Lord Northington,”—a coarse, witty man, married to a fool, who became the mother of the witty Lady Bridget Fox Lane. Northington, like Newcastle, had his fling at the bishops. In serious illness, he was counselled to send for a certain prelate. “He will never do,” said the patient. “I should have to confess that I committed my heaviest sin when I made him a bishop!” The primate who attended at the birth of the Prince of Wales was Secker; and as he was originally a dissenter, and was never baptised in the Church of England, there were anxious church-women who thought that his christening George Prince of Wales would never make a Christian of him. And it can’t be said that it did! Meanwhile, how things were otherwise going in England, Mrs. Scott relates to her brother, in Rome, in a letter dated September, 1762.
“The lowest artificer thinks now of nothing but the constitution of the government.... The English always seemed born politicians, but were never so universally mad on the subject as at present. If you order a mason to build an oven, he immediately inquires about the progress of the peace, and descants on the preliminaries. A carpenter, instead of putting up a shelf to a cupboard, talks of the Princess Dowager, of Lord Treasarre, and of secretaries of state. Neglected lie the trowel and the chisel; the mortar dries and the glue hardens while the persons who should use them are busied with dissertations on the government.
“... The Duke of Marlborough and Lady Caroline Russell were married eight and forty hours after his grace declared himself a lover. The Duke of Bedford was always known to be a man of business, but he never despatched a matter quicker than this. He gave to Lady Caroline £50,000 down, and is to give as much more at his death.”
The next letter, written at Sandleford, October the 8th, 1762, is addressed to the writer’s sister-in-law, “Mrs. Robinson, Recommendé à Monsieur Jenkins, Gentilhome Anglois au Caffé Anglois, sur la Place di Espana, Rome.” It commences with “My dear Madam,” and after a very prolix argument on the lack of interest in home news sent to travellers abroad, Mrs. Montagu refers with pride to the English triumphs at the Havanna and Martinico, and thus continues.... “But we are not much the nearer to a peace; for, as ambition subsides or crouches in the House of Bourbon, it rises in the Court of Aldermen, in London. When we shut the Temple of Janus, we shut up the trade of Change Alley, and the city finds its account in a war, and they clamour against any peace that will not give us the commerce of the whole world!...
“We have lately had a very fine public ceremony, the instalment of the new Knights of the Garter at Windsor. The king, assuming the throne of sovereign of the order, gave great lustre to the spectacle. I should have liked to have seen so august a ceremony; and my Lord Bath was so good as to ask me to go to Windsor with him, from his house at Maidenhead Bridge; but Mr. Montagu, not being fond of public shows, and apprehending his lordship offered to go out of complaisance, I declined it, and my lord spent three days here; so it was plain, his politeness to us was his only inducement to go to the instalment. I must own I should have taken some pleasure in being led back into former ages and the days of our great Plantagenets. I have a reverence, too, for the institutions of Chivalry. The qualities of a Knight were valour, liberality, and courtesy, and to be sans peur et sans reproche. And though the change of government and manners make this knightly character now appear a little extravagant, the Redresser of wrongs was a respectable title before a regular police and a good system of laws secured the rights and properties of the weak. I hear the late instalment was extremely brilliant. The helmets of the knights were adorned with gems; military honours, indeed, did not sit proudly on their crests; but if they have the virtues suited to the times we live in, we will be contented. The knights of Edward ye Third were, indeed, very great men. The assembly of British Worthies might have disputed personal merit with, perhaps, the greatest Heroes of antiquity, considering them singly and independently; but to enjoy an extensive or a lasting fame, men’s actions must be tyed to great events; then they swim down Fate’s innavigable tyde, otherwise, they soon sink into oblivion.”...