(358) The Bishop of Norwich, who was a prelate of profound learning, and conscientiously zealous for the mental improvement of his pupil, disgusted the young Prince by his dry and pedantic manners, and offended the Princess, his mother, by persevering in the discipline which he deemed necessary to remedy the gross neglect of her son's education." Coxe's Pelham, vol. ii. p. 236.-E.
(359) Thomas Osborne, fourth Duke of Leeds. He died in 1789.-D.
(360) John, second Earl of Ashburnham. He died at a great age, April 8th, 1812.-D.
(361) Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Chester, was, for some reason which is not known, the constant subject of Gray's witty and splenetic effusions. One of the chief amusements discovered by the poet, pour passer le temps in a postchaise, was making extempore epigrams upon the Bishop, and then laughing at them immoderately. The following, which is the commencement of one of them, may serve as a specimen:
"Here lies Edmund Keene, the Bishop of Chester,
Who ate a fat goose and could not digest her."
(362) In the May of this year, Dr. Keene married the only daughter of Lancelot Andrews, Esq. of Edmonton, formerly an eminent linendraper in Cheapside, a lady of considerable fortune.-E.
(363) Dr. Stephen Hales, author of "Vegetable Statics," and "Vegetable Essays." This eminent natural philosopher and vegetable physiologist was offered a canonry of Windsor, but contented himself with the living of Teddington, which he held with that of Farringdon. He died in 1761, at the age of eighty-four.
(364) Walpole, in his Memoires, gives the following account of Lord Waldegrave's appointment: " The Earl accepted it at the earnest request of the King, and after repeated assurances of the submission and tractability of Stone. The Earl was averse to it. He was a man of pleasure, understood the court, was firm in the King's favour, easy in his circumstances, and at once undesirous of rising, and afraid to fall. He said to a friend, "If I dared, I would make this excuse to the King- -'Sir, I am too young to govern. and too old to be governed:' but he was forced to submit. A man of stricter honour and of more reasonable sense could not have been selected for the employment." Vol. i. p. 255.-E.
155 Letter 70 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 14, 1753.
I have been going to write to you every post for these three weeks, and could not bring myself to begin a letter with "I have nothing to tell YOU." But it grows past a joke; we will not drop our correspondence because there is no war, no Politics, no parties, no madness, and no scandal. In the memory of England there never was so inanimate an age: it is more fashionable to go to church than to either House of Parliament. Even the era of the Gunnings is over: both sisters have lain in, and have scarce made one paragraph in the newspapers, though their names were grown so renowned, that in Ireland the beggarwomen bless you with,-,, "the luck of the Gunnings attend you!"