[86] On the 7th of June, Mr. Fox moved for leave to bring in a bill to amend the Act of the 26th of George II., for preventing clandestine marriages. The bill passed the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords.
[87] “Mr. Fox never had much intimate intercourse with Horace Walpole; did not, I think, like him at all; had no opinion of his judgment or conduct; probably had imbibed some prejudice against him, for his ill-usage of his father; and certainly entertained an unfavourable, and even unjust, opinion of his abilities as a writer.” So says Lord Vassall-Holland in one of the passages from his pen printed in Russell’s Memorials of Fox. See vol. i., p. 276. It may be mentioned here, that Lord Holland’s Collections for the Life of Fox, which are contained in the work just referred to, include numerous extracts from manuscript papers of Horace Walpole. “These papers, the property of Lord Waldegrave, were lent to me,” says Lord Holland, “and have been long in my possession.” That the manuscripts to which Lord Holland thus had access comprised the portion of Walpole’s correspondence with Mann, which was first published in 1843, appears by several passages which his lordship quotes from these letters. Is it possible that this circumstance may furnish a solution of the ethnological question, to which we have adverted on p. 141, as to the descent of Macaulay’s New Zealander from Walpole’s Peruvian? From 1831 Macaulay had been an habitué of Holland House. Trevelyan’s “Life of Lord Macaulay,” vol. i. p. 176, et seq.
[88] An ordinance of the Great-Duke against high head-dresses.
[89] A neighbour at Twickenham.
[90] There can be no doubt that Horace about this time, as on former occasions, had dreamed of seeing Conway in the position of Prime Minister. The General had taken a prominent part in the last attacks upon Lord North, and when the latter gave place to Lord Rockingham’s second Administration, the services of the former were requited by the office of Commander-in-Chief, with a seat in the Cabinet. But Walpole’s illusion about his friend was finally dispelled when, in the search for a leader which went on during and after Lord Rockingham’s last illness, it appeared that Conway’s name occurred to no one but himself.—See Walpole to Mason, May 7, 1882, and to Mann, July 1, 1782.
[91] He did get but five of his sons into that Parliament.—Walpole.
[92] Lord Hood was an admiral.
[93] Almost all the hackney-chairmen in London were Irish.
[94] “The fact of the Duchess having purchased the vote of a stubborn butcher by a kiss, is, we believe, undoubted. It was probably during the occurrence of these scenes that the well-known compliment was paid to her by an Irish mechanic: ‘I could light my pipe at her eyes.’”—Jesse’s “Selwyn,” vol. iv., p, 118.
[95] “Fox said that Sayers’s caricatures had done him more mischief than the debates in Parliament, or the works of the press. The prints of Carlo Khan, Fox running away with the India House, Fox and Burke quitting Paradise when turned out of office, and many others of these publications, had certainly a vast effect on the public mind.”—Lord Chancellor Eldon, “Life of Twiss,” vol. i., p. 162. This very apt quotation is made by Mr. P. Cunningham in his valuable edition of Walpole’s Letters.