[188] On June 11, 1773, the Court of Proprietors of East India Stock determined to reject the loan and conditions offered by the Government; but on June 19 the East India Loan Bill was read a third time in the Lower House. Parliament was prorogued from July 1, 1773, to January 13, 1774. Sujah Dowlah was the Nawab of Oude (see note to Letter 192).
[189] Thomas Amory, into whom, says Hazlitt, "the soul of Rabelais passed," published (1756-66) The Life of John Buncle, Esq.—a curious book, which is in part autobiographical.
[190] Miss Anne Eliot, sister to Mr. Eliot, of Port Eliot, married Captain Hugh Bonfoy, R.N. Two portraits of her by Sir Joshua Reynolds are in existence—one painted in 1746, the other in 1754.
[191] David Hume, who was now living at Edinburgh, was, from 1763 to 1766, Secretary to the Embassy at Paris under the Earl of Hertford. The description is quoted from Mason's satire (published in 1773), An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers on his Book of Gardening—
"David, who there supinely deigns to lie,
The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty,
Though drunk with Gallic wine and Gallic praise,
David shall bless Old England's halcyon days."
[192] William Robertson, the historian (1721-1793), whose History of Scotland (1758) and History of Charles the Fifth (1769) had already appeared, was now engaged on his History of America (1777).
[193] After the death of Goldsmith in 1774, Gibbon seems to have succeeded to his place as Sir Joshua's companion to places of amusement, masquerades, and ridottos (Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. ii. p. 273).