[225] Frederick, brother of Earl Cornwallis, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Young, of Norwich, was out of town, but adhered faithfully to Newcastle.
[226] Sir Francis Dashwood’s want of knowledge of finance opened a fine field for the wits of the day, and was of course greatly exaggerated. One of them describes him as “a man to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable secret.” His vocation, certainly, was not to the Exchequer; and he was unfortunate in having Mr. Legge for his predecessor. There were other high offices of the Government which he would have filled with credit, for he had respectable talents, was “spirited, frank, and manly,” and had gained the consideration of the House. (Smollet.) He was the only son of Sir Francis Dashwood, Baronet, M.P. for Winchelsea, by Lady Mary Fane, sister of the Earl of Westmoreland, often mentioned in these Memoirs. In his youth he had travelled much, especially in Italy, and passed some time at Rome, where he was long recollected from the following anecdote, which made a great noise at the time. “It was on Good Friday, when each person who attends the service in the Sistine Chapel, as he enters, takes a small scourge from an attendant at the door. The chapel is dimly lighted, and there are three candles which are extinguished by the priest, one by one: at the putting out of the first, the penitents take off one part of their dress; at the next still more; and, in the darkness which follows the extinguishing of the third candle, lay on their own shoulders, with groans and lamentations. Sir Francis Dashwood, thinking this mere stage effect, entered with others, dressed in a large watchman’s coat; demurely took his scourge from the priest, and advanced to the end of the chapel; where, on the darkness ensuing, he drew from beneath his coat an English horsewhip and flogged right and left quite down the chapel and made his escape, the congregation exclaiming ‘Il diavolo! il diavolo!’ and thinking the Evil one was upon them with a vengeance! The consequence of this frolic might have been serious to him, had he not immediately fled the Papal dominions.”—(Private Information.) His political life was by no means discreditable; and, in the unfortunate affair of Admiral Byng, he exhibited kindness of feeling not less than tact and decision, which Walpole has elsewhere handsomely noticed.—Memoirs, ii. p. 145. He had a taste for the arts, and brought sculptors and painters from Italy to decorate his country-seat at West Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, where he laid out an extensive park with skill and effect, and built a church and mausoleum. His private life was reported to be very licentious. He married the widow of Sir Richard Ellys, Baronet, by whom he had no children, and died in 1781. The peerage, to which his claim is mentioned in a following page, descended to the Stapylton family.—E.
[227] They called themselves the Dilettanti. In the year 1770, they published a pompous volume on some rubbish remaining of two or three temples in Ionia.
[228] William Henry, third son of Frederick Prince of Wales; afterwards Duke of Gloucester.
[229] Lord Bute held his levées at the Cockpit, Whitehall, as did afterwards the Duke of Grafton and Lord North. Till then, each minister saw company at his own house; but Lord Bute, who lived in a small house in Audley Street, Grosvenor Square, had not room enough.
[230] Mr., afterwards Sir Gilbert, Elliot, father of the late Earl of Minto. His connection with Lord Bute does credit to that nobleman’s discernment, for he was a most useful coadjutor; and Professor Stewart says of him, that he “seems to have united with his other well-known talents and accomplishments, a taste for abstract disquisitions which rarely occurs in men of the world, accompanied with that soundness and temperance of judgment which in such researches are so indispensably necessary to guard the mind against the illusions engendered by its own subtility.”—Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 530.—E.
[231] Dr. Smollet, originally a ship-surgeon, was an abusive Jacobite writer, author of a compilation of the History of England, in which he had spoken most scurrilously of the Duke of Cumberland for suppressing the Rebellion, and had been punished by the King’s Bench for slandering Admiral Knowles. [His “genius,” however, to use the words of Walter Scott, “has raised an imperishable monument to his memory,” in the poems and novels which Walpole does not deign to notice in this allusion to his works. Nor is the criticism just in other respects. Smollet’s tracts are not more virulent than most publications of a similar character of that day. His censure of the Duke of Cumberland has been confirmed by subsequent historians, and his punishment for the libel on Admiral Knowles reflects discredit on the Admiral rather than on himself.—See Walter Scott’s Lives of the Novelists, vol. i. p. 143.—E.]
[232] Murphy, once an actor, was turned hackney writer, and had engaged in a paper called the Contest, in behalf of Lord Holland. He stole many plays from the French, and published other things long since forgotten. [“The Way to keep Him,” and “All in the Wrong,” are alone a sufficient refutation of the above harsh criticism on Murphy. He was a person of considerable accomplishments, and wanted only a better temper and more independence of character to have risen to eminence. He died at an advanced age in 1805.—E.]
Smollet and Murphy, with Dr. Shebbeare, who was in Newgate for abusing King George the First, King George the Second, King William, and the Revolution, and Dr. Johnson, another known Jacobite, who even in a Dictionary had vented his Jacobite principles, were selected by Lord Bute to defend his cause, and pensioned by him as a patron of learned men. Johnson’s acceptance of a pension was the more ridiculous, as in his Dictionary he had lashed the infamy of pensioners. [Neither Smollet nor Murphy were pensioned by Lord Bute. The bounty of the Crown was never more inexcusably exercised than in favour of Dr. Shebbeare—a pamphleteer who was a disgrace to his party, and had not long before been concerned in some fraudulent practices at Oxford, when employed by the University to arrange the Clarendon papers. He died in 1788, at a very advanced age. Dr. Johnson’s pension was not subjected to any conditions.—Boswell, vol. i. p. 292.—E.]
[233] His father was a distiller.