[18] William Ponsonby, Earl of Besborough, married Lady Caroline Cavendish, eldest daughter of William third Duke of Devonshire. Lord Besborough had been at Constantinople with Lord Sandwich. [He died in 1793, and was the grandfather of the present Earl.—E.]
[19] What authority Walpole had for this assertion does not appear. The Duke was without ambition, and content to live as an English nobleman on his splendid domain. He died in 1729.—E.
[20] Dr. Johnson, a violent political opponent, observed of him, “that he was not a man of superior abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse. He would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in keeping his word—so high as to the point of honour.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. iii. p. 167. The same lofty feelings characterised his public life, and caused him to be implicitly trusted by the great party of which, without his own seeking, he was the undisputed head. Lord Waldegrave seems to have entertained no mean opinion of his talents.—Memoirs, p. 86. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1737, and afterwards remained for a time in the Cabinet; but he accepted office with reluctance, and quitted it with disgust, for he loved his ease and scorned all the arts of intrigue. He died in 1755, aged fifty-seven.—E.
[21] Lord George Cavendish filled the place of Comptroller of the Household in 1762, and for some years represented Derbyshire. He had sufficient sense to speak respectably in Parliament. He died unmarried in 1794.—E.
[22] Lord Frederick Cavendish had frequently distinguished himself during the Seven years’ war as an excellent cavalry officer. In one of the last affairs of the campaign of 1762, he gained great credit by his spirited behaviour on the 6th of July, when, under the command of Lord Granby, he defeated a considerable body of the French stationed at Horn in order to preserve the communication of the main body with Frankfort, the result of which defeat was the evacuation of Gottingen. He attained the rank of Field-Marshal, and died unmarried at an advanced age in 1803.—E.
[23] The sarcastic tone of these remarks on the Cavendish family may be ascribed to a family quarrel, in which the Duke of Devonshire had sided with Horace Walpole the uncle, against Horace Walpole the nephew, the author of these Memoirs.—Mem. i. 170, note by Lord Holland. Lord John Cavendish had also displeased Walpole by often thwarting his plans for the management of the Opposition, and particularly by prevailing on General Conway to act contrary to his advice. On these occasions, however, Lord John was actuated by the purest motives, and no statesman of that day shewed a nicer sense of honour, or more strict notions of public duty. His influence with the Liberal party was considerable, and raised him afterwards to a higher post than his talents could alone justly claim. At the time to which the text refers he was about thirty-two years old.—E.
[24] There was shown about that time, and by that title, a Canary-bird that performed several tricks, by pointing to cards and numbers at command.
[25] The accomplishments of Lord Lyttelton were undeniable. Unfortunately they were overshadowed by an infirmity of judgment, that materially lessened the dignity of his character. He seems to have been the easy dupe of Archibald Bower. There was often much misplaced sentiment in his conversation. His letters teem with foolish conceits, and the extravagant notions he entertained of parental authority made him so severe and injudicious a father as to afford some excuse for the gross misconduct of his son, a young nobleman whose brilliant abilities he was almost the only person unwilling or unable to appreciate. Lord Lyttelton died in 1773, at the age of sixty four. His public and private life had been irreproachable.—E.
[26] Wilkes had attacked me in the North Briton, for a panegyric on the sense of the Scots, in my catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors: a censure I regarded so little, that when Lord Holland was engaged in his bitter persecution of the Whigs under Lord Bute, I sent an anonymous letter to Wilkes, pointing out a very advantageous character of Lord Holland that I had formerly written in the paper called The World, and inciting the North Briton to take notice both of the author and the subject of the character. Wilkes caught at the notice, said but little of me, and fell severely on Lord Holland, as I had foreseen he would.
[27] A similar story is related in Tacitus, of the visit paid by Augustus to his unfortunate grandson Agrippa, in the island of Planasia, having excited suspicions in the mind of Tiberius that caused him to hasten the Emperor’s death.—1 Annal. v.—E.